Obstruction

[rwest]

Originally Posted by GROUPthink

What's odd about this line of thinking is that baseball has always allowed post-obstruction evidence to help with the award on Type B obstruction (I get that all softball obstruction is "Type B" or delayed-dead). In this example, where the play required a swipe tag and the play was mighty close, I'm 100% certain that in baseball an obstructed runner would be awarded the plate.

I'm not arguing this and not intending to make this a baseball vs. softball thread -- I'm genuinely curious of the mentality of the head honchos in softball that force the umpire to make a guess at the time of the obstruction and why they think that's a more valid determination. Any thoughts?

I can't say what they were thinking but I can give you ideas as to why, in my opinion, post-obstruction evidence is a bad idea. Suppose a runner is obstructed between 1st and 2nd and you determined she would make it to 3rd. In attempting to beat the play at third she pulls her hamstring rounding 2nd and is thrown out at 3rd by 5 steps. Are you going to call her out? The post-obstruction evidence says she would never have made it to third because of the injury. I could argue the injury might not have occurred had there been no obstruction. If you can use post-obstruction evidence to grant another base, why not use post-obstruction evidence to reduce the base award? I know one can argue, as Steve has, that you don't reduce the award because you don't want to reward the defense for the obstruction. However, I can think of scenarios where this argument doesn't hold water. For instance, the obstructed runner misses 2nd base and has to go back to touch 2nd. She then is thrown out at 3rd. I can argue reducing the award due to post-obstruction evidence because she returned to touch 2nd. I can argue the obstruction wasn't the cause of her missing 2nd.

There are too many factors, in my opinion, to use post-obstruction evidence.