Praying for close games

[Manny A]

Originally Posted by LIUmp

Hogwash. Why would he toss a good pitcher against this team? Why would he not have his girls leaving early on EVERY first pitch they could once they reached base? Why would he not play "station to station"? Why would he not have his girls bunt or swing at whatever they could?

There are plenty of ways to not have a 43-0 score. That's disgusting. And he should be ashamed.

I agree. Pitching that same pitcher, and telling girls to keep running until they get tagged out when it's pretty obvious the defense is so bad a tag won't be forthcoming are not tactics to keep things from blowing out of proportion.

There have been plenty of games that I've umpired where the score could easily have been 43-0. But they ended up with less than half that many runs when the winning coach took every possible step to keep from running things up. The starters only play at most two innings. Pitchers that would never see the circle in a competitive game get their reps. Balls hit in the gap are singles. No base advances happen on wild pitches and passed balls.

Yeah, a counter argument could be made that that kind of play is negative training for the winning team's players. But scoring 43 runs and keeping the stud pitcher in the game for the duration provides no valuable training either. It also provides bad training for the umpire, who quickly loses focus and starts looking for anything to call to get out of there, especially against the coach who is letting this happen.

[SWFLguy]

Situation here is similar. With school choice, the area tends to have talent concentrated in a handful of schools. The rest are lucky to fill out a roster, and in some cases do not field a JV team. Thank goodness for 15 run after 3/10 run after 5 mercy rules. Also when JV's play before Varsity, we have a time limit. I do not mind doing those games as I know no matter what goes on, I'm out of there in a buck 30. Sadly all too many are not much of a game at all, with say +75% of pitches being balls and half of the pitches are passed balls. You get the picture.

[Tru_in_Blu]

Finally got a couple of varsity games in last week. Nothing like the 43-0 game, but neither of my games was competitive.

First was a 14-2 mercy in the bottom of the 6th. About 42 degrees and windy. At least the sun was shining.

Second was a game for 4 innings @ 0-0. Visitors ended up winning 9-0.