Was I Trigger Happy?

[SouthGARef]

Originally Posted by mbyron

Apart from putting up with all the BS, you might have missed this one.

1. You don't say so, but presumably the defense did not get an out on this play. I'm assuming that because otherwise they wouldn't have complained.

2. I'm concerned with these parts of your post. I think that you're giving the offense too much benefit of the doubt.

The defense has absolute priority on a batted ball. If the runner's presence caused the fielder to hesitate or otherwise disrupted the play, that's sufficient to call INT here.

As you note, contact is not required for INT here. But neither is intent: on a batted ball, the runner might simply be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Indeed, his intent might have been obviously to AVOID interfering, and he could still be guilty of INT on this play.

So it's hard to know based on what you posted, but I suspect that the defense had a legitimate gripe here.

And I knew that, and the parent-coach and I had that conversation out on the field in a very cordial manner. I didn't mention many of the specifics of our discussion or the play in question because the main point of my post was the Team A coach. The play was just backstory.

This is undoubtedly one of those HTBT plays. There was very definable space, in my opinion, for the fielder to make the play even with the runner in the vicinity. In fact, F6 fielded the ball cleanly but simply didn't make a really strong throw to first so the batter-runner was safe. The bad throw can not be blamed on the runner either, as by this point the runner had already cleared the premises.

I don't think you can stretch "absolute priority" of F6 to such a limit that you completely impede the runners opportunity to make it to a base safely.