Never reward a bad Defensive Play !
 

LAA vs. BRS

Batter hits into a DB, but the second throw to F3 is off-line and pulls F3 off the bag. F3 struggles to get his foot back to the bag, and does so at the same time the runner touches the bag. Umpire calls safe ! BRS coach comes out to talk about it.

Good call in my opinion. If it had been a good throw, just close, yes ring up an out. But when it was a sloppy defensive play like this one, give it to the offense.

If F3 gets his foot back on the base before the runner touches the base, I call him out, whether it's sloppy or not. If the runner beats F3, he's safe. There are no ties, the runner must beat the play in order to be safe. I would say the Red Sox manager had a good beef on that one, if the BR and F3 touched the base at the exact same time.

Too much unnecessary thought.

If he's out, he out. If he's safe, he's safe. Instead of worrying who made what play, determine if the runner's really out or not and make the right call.

ditto to every word that rich just said

I don't know how some guys can think about so much stuff before making the call!

Me? I see the play, determine safe/out, then make the call. I will mess it all up if I think about anything else! :(

In college ball, I DO however require that the catcher "stick" the pitch to give him a strike. If the pitch is breaking low and/or outside, if the catcher cannot stick it, I don't care a rats booty where that pitch crossed the plate. If he cannot hold it in a place that looks somewhat like a strike, I ain't calling it. I will do this in a good high school level game too IF the pitchers are pretty good. But this is really a different standard than the subject at hand in my opinion.

Well I guess we're done, then. We can shut the officiating.com down and the discussion board down.

"Just call what you see."

Case closed, everybody knows everything there is to know about umpiring.

I saw the play in question; the umpire made the right call. He made it because the actual result was a coin-flip in which the "benefit of the doubt" clearly should have been weighted against the - yes, that's right - sloppy defensive play.

You guys of the "just call what you see" persuasion are perfectly within your rights, but I don't understand what you're doing in these discussions. Call what you see. Right. We get it.

I hear umpires say "I call 'em like I see 'em" all the time. My response to them is, "I call them like they are."

Steve - both feet hit the bag at the same time. Proposterous.

Two independent events don't happen at the same time. Either he was out or safe. Ties don't exist! :)

Good lord, boy, where did you get your education?

Event 1 occurs at 1:24:06pm, Central Daylight Time.

Are you saying it is impossible for Event 2, 3, 4, 5, etc. to happen at exactly that same point in time?

To any level of precision short of infinity, two events most assuredly CAN occur at EXACTLY the same time. To the human eye, even the best of them, the level of precision is far short of infinity.

The whole point is, you have to make either a safe or and out call. You can't tell the coach that both events happened at the same time.

Yes, there are times that the way the play was made enters in to the out/safe decision. But the bottom line is that the runner has to beat the play in order to be safe. The onus is on him to actually get there before the tag, not arrive at the same time. Same time = out.

If you read my post carefully, you will see that I said there are no ties. I don't believe in ties, even if the ball and runner happened to arrive at exactly the same time. Ties do not go to the runner. That is on the myth list, for sure.

That is simply your way of reconciling the inability to distinguish which came first, an arbitrary decision that "same time = out."

The "benefit of the doubt" concept that I and some others advocate is simply an alternative manner of making the decision on the coin-flip call. It's a concept I endorse because it is not arbitrary and it has a logical and understandable rationale behind it. It is a concept that finds the umpire more often making "the expected call" and therefore has implications for smoother game management and the development of the perception among other game participants that you're a consistent and competent umpire.

It is a bit more nuanced than "call what you see, and if it's a tie then call "out," so I do have to give your system credit for perfectly adhering to the KISS principle, no doubt about that.

Time doesn't exist "short of infinity". Just because you saw things happen at the same time doesn't mean they happened at the same time. There hasn't been any tool that can back up what I'm saying, my theory is based off of philosophy rather than science :)

Just joggling ya'lls brain, nothing more.

With all due respect, I don't care about my perception, other than my uniform, to other game participants and worrying about what teams think about my umpiring abilities.

I will call what I got, not make calls to make games go more smoothly. And I'm sure the head hanchos will commend me for this.

Then explore your exception - why do you dress professionally, but otherwise don't care what others think about your performance as an umpire?

I would submit that most of us want to be perceived by our subordinates, superiors, peers, and others as good at what we do. For those with ambition to move up the ladder, such perceptions are necessary, or at least helpful.

The 60' Little League fields are littered with one-year 25 times veterans who have never learned that.