Indians v Twins tonight

[BretMan]

A tough call indeed. It's one of those that is so quick you could blink and miss it. Not that your view will be all that great anyhow. You need to see two separate elements- the batter's feet and the ball hitting him- and your view is often blocked by the batter himself.

Isn't that why this is one of those calls you should only make if you are 100% sure you saw it? Otherwise, give the benefit of the doubt to the batter and call the foul ball instead of the out.

With the advantage of multiple replays and stop-action video, it looks as if the ball hit the batter while his left foot was on the ground, inside the box, and his right foot was in the air, still over the area of the box. The right foot didn't land on the ground outside the box until after the batter was already hit. That's a foul ball!

On a related side note, this play does kind of tie in with the OBR rule change/clarification that was added this year. The exact point that a batter should be considered "out of the box" after hitting the ball was always vaguely defined. Was it when one foot was out and on the ground? When he had fully exited the box? Give the batter the benfeit of the doubt and call it foul?

This year, wording was added to 6.05(g) to clarify this. The rule now reads that if his fair batted ball touches him while he is in a legal position in the batter's box it is a foul ball. The rule refers to 6.03 to define the batter's "legal position".

While it's nice that OBR now better defines this, in my opinion they picked a bad definition. Rule 6.03 is the rule that defines the batter's legal position in the box prior to the pitch- ie: both feet entirely within the box, with no portion of the foot extending beyond the lines.

A batter may, of course, legally hit the ball with a foot partially out of the box but still touching the lines, as described in rule 6.06(a). So, if the batter legally hits the ball with, say, his heel touching the line and the rest of his foot on the ground outside the box, for the purpose of legally batting the ball he is considered to be "in the box". But if he doesn't budge from that position, and the ball ricochets up off the ground and hits him, by rule he is now considered to be "out of the box" the instant the ball touches him.

It just seems incongruent that the batter can now be considered "in the box" (when hitting the ball) then be "out of the box" (when the ball hits him) an instant later without ever changing his position.

It would have seemed more consistent to consider a batter "out of the box" the same as "out of the box" is defined when hitting the ball- a foot entirely on the ground outside the lines, rather than by his legal position before receiving the pitch.