Rule 10- Official Scorer and putout

[SanDiegoSteve]

Originally Posted by Rich Ives

So when did the rule change?

I mentioned Johnson because the K's greatly exceeded putouts. How could that be if K's counted as putouts?

As for catchers:

Bill Dickey had 7,965 putouts in his career.
Gabby Harntet 7,007 as a catcher.
Yogi - 8,738 as a catcher.
Ernie Lombardi - 5,694.
Al Lopez - 6,644

How would a catcher get that many without having the K's count?

The rule changes must have been added when the playing rules were revised a couple years ago, like the same time the 20 second rule was changed to 12, or the rule about the batter being out on an uncaught 3rd strike when he leaves the dirt circle on his way to the bench.

The rule was probably rewritten just to clarify what was common scoring practice, but in the book I have (from the 1990's) catchers weren't automatically given the putout on strikeouts, at least according to the rules.