Obstruction

[MD Longhorn]

Originally Posted by CT1

Sorry -- I didn't realize we had morphed into a softball discussion.

Just out of curiosity, what is the rationale for making an immediate decision in softball as opposed to baseball? Is OBS an immediate dead ball?

No ... but I would actually ask this question the other way around.

Here's why... once a runner has been obstructed, every action taken by every player on the field (runners and fielders) is possibly altered from what it would have been had the obstruction not occurred.

I often hear an umpire (you implied this) say, "he was obstructed by about a step or two, the throw beat him by less than that, so he surely would have scored without the OBS." But this completely ignores the thrower - who threw the ball with a certain amount of speed after seeing where the runner he was throwing out was. Fielders don't throw every ball as hard as they possibly can. If the runner would have been 2 steps further along the path, would they have thrown the ball harder to try to make the play?

The same concept works the other way around as well. The runner is thrown out by 3 steps after an OBS that you think was "worth" about 2. But, if the runner was two steps closer and the fielder had to hurry the throw more, would it have been as accurate?

There's simply no way to calculate every single decision and what would have been different from what actually played out. MUCH more accurate to see the positions of the ball, fielder, and runner and decide right then... "absent that obstruction, the runner would have gotten to third".