Deflected Ground Ball Situations

[BretMan]

That's a quirk of the NFHS rules and it's been discussed here before. I don't know that we can tell you WHY the Fed rule is the way it is...it just is.

All I can guess is that when they first wrote their rules it was assumed that a ball deflected by the pitcher would give the runner plenty of time to react by the time the ball got all the way out to the next fielder.

Personally, I don't agree with that. On a deflected ball it's possible that the next fielder will change directions quickly and unpredictably. Why should a runner be forced to avoid someone reacting in an unpredictable manner that might not be avoidable?

As a side note, ASA does handle this in a consistent manner, protecting the runner from an accidental interference call in both cases.