Tag/No Tag

[MD Longhorn]

Originally Posted by Manny A

Hmmm. In the discussion of the Ichiro play, you mentioned that the tag attempt starts when the catcher had the ball and started to make his turn. Here at 0:35, the first baseman has the ball and is starting to move towards the runner. What's the difference?

Proximity. Besides, you corrected me on the Ichiro one - that tag attempt probably started a quarter to half second later than I actually said.

I understand that. But his momentum from when the tag was actually made (but judged as missed) and where he ended up was essentially a straight line. If he was that far from the bag on the slide, he was pretty much that far from the baseline he started from when the fielder initiated his tag attempt.

When two lines are not parallel, the further you go along them away from their intersection, the further the distance between them. In this case, not 3 feet while the tag attempt was still going on. Perhaps 3 feet (if so, just barely) 2 steps and a dive later.

On this particular play, Yes. But the use of IR for a certain call should apply to all situations. You really shouldn't have a policy that says, "We will use IR for tag plays only if there is no follow-on action."

An odd statement. Why? I think that's EXACTLY what they need.

That's why MLB is reluctant to use IR on catch/no catch. It would be pretty straight forward to use IR if the catch/no catch situation came with no other base runners. But once you have multiple runners that either tagged up or didn't tag up, etc. etc., IR would cause problems.

Yes. Exactly. Which is why IR really only works for plays with no follow on action, or at least none that is directly or indirectly affected by the play in question.