Pitching Rules

[Tom Cook]

I'm having trouble with one little thing. Can a pitcher step outside the 24" pitcher's plate when she steps back? The rest of her steps are inside the plate.
Question #2: I saw this happen during warm-up pitches between innings. The pitcher who has a rather high forward step hit her foot after releasing the ball, which then dribbled toward home plate. I would call this a ball during live play. What would you guys do?

[Steve M]

quote:

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Originally posted by Tom Cook:
I'm having trouble with one little thing. Can a pitcher step outside the 24" pitcher's plate when she steps back? The rest of her steps are inside the plate.
Question #2: I saw this happen during warm-up pitches between innings. The pitcher who has a rather high forward step hit her foot after releasing the ball, which then dribbled toward home plate. I would call this a ball during live play. What would you guys do?

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Tom, I am assuming that you are speaking of Federation rules, since you speak of the pitcher taking a step back - rocker step. Question 1 - Can the pitcher step outside of the width of the rubber on the rocker step? Answer is NO. Though the chances are very good that the base ump will be unable to see this well enough to determine that it's outside the rubber's width AND the plate ump has other things to watch more closely - this is a low priority for a plate ump so it's not going to be called unless the pitcher is painfully obvious about being outside the rubber's width.
Fro Question 2 - A ball is pitched, hits the pitcher's foot, and then dribbles to the plate. This is a ball - unless the batter swings - and I have seen some pretty goofy things done by batters so this is unlikely, but not impossible. Otherwise, it's just a ball on the batter and any/all runners may advance since it remains a live ball until it crosses into dead ball territory - if it does that, just move each runner 1 base since it came from the pitcher on the rubber.

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Steve M
Member UT