Batter Hit by Catcher's Throw

[BigUmp56]

When you have a batter still in the box and the catcher catches the pitch before he attempts to retire the runner you cannot expect the batter to disappear. Absent an overt act to interfere there is no call until the ball enters DBT.


When the ball gets by the catcher the batter is now treated as another teamate, as he's no longer attempting to hit a pitch. This places a little more burden on him to get out of the way of any potential interference, although not much. Now if he's hit with a throw you have to determine that it was blatently avoidable to rule interference. It doesn't have to be intentional. It's commonly referred to as "willfull indifference" in the J/R manual.


Tim.