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.