MLB Already Backing Off New Slide Rule
Major League Baseball’s new slide rule has not been without controversy, both in its creation and in its implementation. Some might feel hard slides are just a part of baseball and need no legislation at all. Those parties have already lost this particular battle. There are those who might like some sort of rule, but feel the new rules are a bit too onerous. Still others might feel the new rule is a good one and should be implemented uniformly (I am in this camp). Those who want the rules tweaked appear to be winning now, though, as MLB seems to be backing off full implementation of the slide rule, perhaps to avoid more controversial plays like those which occurred in April.
In the sixth inning of a tied game on Tuesday between the Detroit Tigers and Washington Nationals, James McCann came to bat with the bases loaded and one out. McCann hit a ground ball that appeared as though it could start a double play, thus ending the Tigers’ threat. Anthony Gose, running from first to second, did this:
This play clearly violates the new slide rule. Gose is not close to the bag at all, never even attempts to touch it or be near to it, and is clearly attempting to break up a possible double play. McCann got down the line quickly enough that he likely would have beat the throw even without the slide, but that fact is immaterial to the new slide rule as it was introduced this offseason.
In the end, the play was reviewed, the replay official deciding it was not a violation. Here’s MLB’s explanation as relayed to MLive (H/T Hardball Talk):
Even though the judgment was that runner failed to engage in a bona fide slide, the Replay Official must still find that the runner’s actions hindered and impeded the fielder’s ability to complete a double play. In the absence of the hindering/impeding element — which is a judgment call — the runner cannot be found to have violated 6.01 (j). The judgment on this one was that there was no hindering or impeding of the fielder.
What we find here is a distortion of the rule and a direct contradiction of the clearly written language in which it was authored. Nowhere in the rule does one find the words hindering or impeding or anything similar. When the Jose Bautista slide ended a game earlier this season season, we went over the rule in great detail. Reading the explanation above, however, it would seem that there are actually two requirements for interference in this situation: first, a failure to execute a bonafide slide and, second, that the runner’s actions actually hindered or impeded the fielder. This is not the rule as written.
There are in fact two requirements stated by the rule as it appears in the books. The first one, regarding the bonafide slide, is the same. The second requirement concerns a runner who “initiates (or attempts to make) contact with the fielder for the purpose of breaking up a double play.” That’s the second requirement for interference under the rule, and the framers of the rule are specific regarding its enforcement, stating “If the umpire determines that the runner violated this Rule 6.01(j), the umpire shall declare both the runner and batter-runner out.”
Hindering/impeding language does appear in the rule book, but elsewhere, in rule 6.01(a)5:
Any batter or runner who has just been put out, or any runner who has just scored, hinders or impedes any following play being made on a runner. Such runner shall be declared out for the interference of his teammate (see Rule 6.01(j))
We could read the “see Rule 6.01(j)” as somehow inserting this rule into that one, but given how specific and how clear the new rule is, it’s hardly credible. The much more reasonable explanation is that you should see Rule 6.01(j) for a specific interpretation of how the interference rule should be applied in a specific instance.
The evidence contained in official reviews also fails to support MLB’s new contention. Consider this Colby Rasmus play:
Here, we find that the fielder doesn’t even attempt to make a play at first with Jose Altuve running, but that Altuve is called out, anyway. Here was the explanation of the call after the game by umpire Tom Hallion:
“My second base umpire [Dan Bellino] determined that it was not a bona fide slide because Rasmus did not attempt to stay on the base,” he said. “He could not stay on the base. With that, that is the rule of interference.”
A more recent case confuses the idea of “interference,” however. Consider this slide by Josh Harrison while shortstop Jordy Mercer runs to first.
Interference? Nope. Even if you don’t believe Gose hindered or impeded above, it’s hard to argue that Harrison didn’t do so here. A run scored as a result of this play — a run that interference would have nullified in a game that ultimately went to extra innings.
And now look at this slide by Manny Machado.
Did it count as interference when Machado reached out and touched the fielder, potentially preventing a triple-play in the process? The answer is no. Again, hard to argue there’s no impeding or hindering at play here. Perhaps if a throw was attempted, the call would be different. It’s difficult to deal in hypotheticals, though. Machado is clearly just doing what he was taught in the past at some point — to interfere in a way that has now (theoretically) been declared illegal by the league. Depending on your level of lip-reading, you might find Machado confessing to his mistake.
If MLB wants to change the rule, they can. If these rulings had gone the other way, we likely would have heard more about this controversial rule, and how the rule as written had gone too far away from its intent. There is the possibility that when creating the rule, MLB and MLBPA didn’t consider all applications and, indeed, never intended for plays like those above to count as interference. If true, those are problems with the rules, and the rules should be changed.
The new slide rule itself does everything it can to strip away judgment to create clear conditions for interference. The explanation from MLB inserts judgment back into the picture and allows for context. The Gose play and the Harrison play likely would not have made an impact on the play at first. And the impact of the runs that scored on the play very well could have been considered by the replay official. The official is now being given discretion to consider other factors when impeding/hindering language is added. Perhaps the Colby Rasmus play might have gone a different way if it happened yesterday instead of the very beginning of the season. Perhaps the Harrison and Machado plays are ruled differently if the fielder makes a wild throw.
That discretion and judgment that is given to the replay official and umpires on the field might very well provide better practical application of the takeout slide rule, but it is certainly not a written part of the new rule, and it isn’t consistent with plays at the very beginning of the year. In just one month, MLB has already backed off the slide rule as written. If they are going to continue to do so, we can expect some judgment calls to go unusual ways as the season progresses and it might be in MLB’s best interest to re-write the rule so it says what they mean it to say.
Craig Edwards can be found on twitter @craigjedwards.
This has quickly become like the strike zone, which is bad for baseball. There’s a written rule, there’s a generally understood interpretation, and then there’s a lot of variance in how umpires call it. There is terrible for fans and I imagine pretty bad for players as well.
I don’t care WHAT the rule is on plays at second, but write a rule then call it by the rule book.
Well-stated.
I thought the same thing when I saw the McCann play. Let’s hope it was just a one time thing. The McCann play looked just like the old take out slides of past years.
I agree. As another example, when was the last time a HBP was nullified because a batter didn’t attempt to get out of the way? Just imagine how many HBPs Craig Biggio would’ve lost over the course of his career were that rule commonly enforced!
Ron Kulpa would like a word with you.
Espinosa jumps 5-6 feet away from the base to avoid being taken out, but the slide did not hinder the play? So does he have to get clobbered in order for the rule to apply? This is stupid.
Looked to me like that was part of his natural motion, and he had no chance throwing out the runner anyways.
His natural motion because he knows that Gose is going to plow into him? For self preservation? If his natural motion takes him 2-3 feet to the right of the bag, he might have ended up with a broken leg.
I do agree that if Gose isn’t even there, he still doesn’t throw him out, but that isn’t the point at all.
But the fact that he couldn’t make the play at first regardless is the point. You can’t hinder or impede a fielder from making a play if he never had a chance to make it in the first place.
No, you are trying to disincentivize the behavior. Guys get suspended for throwing at hitters even if they miss.
Yes, and isn’t the main intent of the rule to AVOID INJURY? So if you let these kinds of slides go, because the fielder had no play at 1B, then you’re still putting the fielder at risk.
Also, if they would have ruled no interference because there was no play, what if the fielder made an errant throw causing the batter to reach 2B? Clearly, the batting team would stand to benefit from such a slide, so would the interference rule be applied differently if an extra base is gained as a result of such a slide? Or what if the throw to 1B is somewhat bad, demonstrating that an obstruction did occur, but not bad enough to cause a runner to advance? Would interference be applied exactly the same way in that case? If not, then potentially that would be telling the fielder to make as crappy of a throw as possible to draw the interference call (sort of like taking a dive in hockey). Of course, you risk a no-call and a runner advancing, but in certain situations, it’s probably worth the risk to try to gain another out.
If we’re going to make it a judgment call about whether the runner at first would have been out, then you remove the actual penalty from the rule. Before, the runner had every reason to bowl the fielder over if he knew it was going to save his man at first, but now he risks having the batter called out regardless of the rest of the play if he attempts to interfere with the fielder. The rule creates a disincentive to interfere. If umpires are going to turn it into a judgment call about whether they had a chance at the runner at first, then there’s no reason not to interfere just like before.
It’s not interference if no one needs to be carried off in a stretcher. 🙁
Gose was not interfering in the same way that throwing high and behind a batter isn’t headhunting.
Do people seriously think the Rasmus and Harrison slides should be considered illegal? They both slid directly into the bag, and made no attempts to directly hit the fielders. In both cases, the fielders were tripped up because they were on top of the bag, not to the side of it.
Only having seen the GIF above of the Rasmus play, I’d argue that he slides slightly off the bag to AVOID hitting the fielder who was actually standing on top of the base. So the rule was created to avoid collisions, Rasmus goes out of his way to avoid a collision, and still he hit on the rule. Seems wrong to me.
Yeah this is the only view I’ve seen of it too, but you’re right. At worst, he’s sliding right into the bag. But, I do agree it looks like he might have been slightly behind the bag while the fielder was moving to in front of it. Still a completely clean slide in my book, along with Harrison’s.
Yeah, the Rasmus slide does look like he’s trying to avoid, BUT his slide is so late that the fielder doesn’t know what the runner is going to do. If you really want to avoid injury, and that’s the purpose of the rule to begin with, don’t allow over-slides PERIOD. If a runner is sliding that late that he can’t stop at the bag, to me that implies that the runner is not trying to just make it to the base safely.
However, in the other two cases, they both CLEARLY over-slid the bag, and to me, that implies no intent to side to actually reach base safely.
I think the intent to interfere was clear in both cases. Rasmus made no attempt to slide into the bag and he did it in order to interfere with the throw. Harrison slid into the bag just fine, but he also intentionally reached out to grab the fielder’s leg. That one was particularly obvious.
stan, you mean the Machado slide? Harrison doesn’t keep his hands down but he doesn’t reach out to grab the fielder…
Ubuntu, are we looking at the same GIF? Rasmus slides directly at the left leg of the fielder at second….
And Harrison clearly slides late and can’t stop at the bag. He’s not exactly going that far out of his way to make contact with the fielder, but the manner in which he slid is threatening to make contact should the fielder try to throw. And that’s, supposedly was the point of the new rule, to take threat of bodily harm out of turning the double play, correct?
Right. Harrison slides way PAST the bag, and makes no attempt to stay on the bag. Would he have slid this way if he were trying to steal 2nd, for example? Of course not. They are doing what they’ve been taught, and it just takes several reps to change a learned behavior. MLB backing off the enforcement of the rule is the worst thing they could do. I’m a school teacher. With any new rule, you have to enforce it consistently for a while and weather the blowback that always comes with change. After a while everyone gets it and the behavior norms are changed. Hardly anyone would slide like that if they called it consistently for like half a season. And after a couple years it would be a relic of the past never seen anymore. If you *know* you will lose you won’t push it anymore. But if it is called inconsistently, then you slide in this way more often. Thus, longer replays, more subjectivity, more frustration, with teams that get it called against them feeling unfairly penalized. Nice.
These look okay to me, but it is tough to tell if they are over-sliding the bag. If there is one thing that should be given to the runner, it should be the direct path to the bag (so long as the slide starts before the bag). If the fielder knows that they just have to stay out of the basepath, that seems like it would be fair.
I’ll give that the Machado slide is bad because of the hand, and the Gose one is questionable. I think the bag and a foot to either side of it should belong to the runner, if they make contact any further than that or prevent the fielder from making the play at first (provided the play could have been made) then it should be illegal.
The Machado play wasn’t at all dangerous, but it was just a blatant violation of the rules against interference.
I disagree wholeheartedly that whether the play could be made should matter. If that were the case, there would not really be any punishment for breaking the rules. I guess plowing into the guy would prevent the chance of a bad throw, but those aren’t common. It would make guys still try to do takeout slides. And thus you’d see guys like Espinosa jumping 5-6 feet away to avoid them.
I think it is important to note that this rule was instituted for player safety. Interference was already a rule on the books. This was an additional rule to strengthen player safety. Your idea would not accomplish that at all. In fact, I’d think the already in place (but admittedly seldom called) rules would cover that.
I don’t think you can give free outs to the fielding team when they would have not been able to make the play to begin with. It would equate to if a runner plows the catcher at home (against the recent rule change there) you call the runner out and also the batter who is safely sitting at first or second base. There’s no reason the fielding team should be given an out that they didn’t earn.
I don’t think you can write a rule, and then make stuff up like “if it wouldn’t have impacted the play”.
1) Why have the rule if you’re not going to follow it?
2) We have NO IDEA what would have happened if the interference didn’t occur.
Example – IF Espinosa doesn’t have to factor into his motion a 5-6 foot lateral move to avoid contact, how do we KNOW that he couldn’t have made a quicker turn and/or stronger throw. Based on the play where he was interfered with, it sure looks like he couldn’t make the play. But we can’t begin to know what not being interfered with would look like. Any time you start dealing with alternate realities, and basing imaginary outcomes on events that might have occurred…that’s when you start to lose me.
3) I like rules that are black and white. The less interpretation the better. Adding a “only if mattered” caveat adds TONS more interpretation into these plays. 🙁
4) The point of the rule is player safety. Whether the runner would have been safe at first no matter what…or not…doesn’t stop a dudes ankle from getting rolled or leg getting broken.
The penalty for a bad slide is not just to rectify the situation, but it is also supposed to be a deterrent. I am ok with the fielding team coming out ahead if the goal is to deter bad slides that can result in injury.
Also, in the catcher-plowing example, you do get a free out if the catcher does not (or even could not) tag the player. You can’t run over the catcher so long as he doesn’t have the ball. You just can’t do it no matter what. “Can’t do it no matter what” is a much easier and better rule.
Think about this. If Harrison were trying to be safe on this play, would he slide like this? Of course not. So, to me that’s not a bona fide slide. And the rule seems to back this up.
Why do people advocate letting people who are already OUT do things to impact play? In what other sport are people who have been eliminated or excused from actual play allowed to impact what happens on the field?
Professional wrestling
I think the consensus, from these comments, seems to be:
Rasmus slide: Dangerous but not in bad faith
Machado slide: Not dangerous but in bad faith
Harrison slide: Either both or neither, depending on your opinion of the rule
The issue with the Rasmus slide is two fold. One it is right at a fielder who has to skitter to the other side of the base and cannot be described as being at the base so much as at the fielder. But it may have been called because his foot comes up to knee height which the rule forbids.
I’m not sure I understand where this article says “Gose is not close to the bag at all or even attempt to be near it”. He did not touch it, which I believe qualifies this as a double play. I agree with the new rule enforcement would’ve led to a double play here, but his feet came within 4-6″ of the bag. That is “very close” IMO.
For a professional athlete, I would argue missing a target on the run my six inches is not close.
I would also argue that if he was called safe on a tag play and he was this distance away from the bag, no one would call him “very close” to the bag. Which is kind of the point of the rule. Make a bona fide slide. If it doesn’t count as “very close” for a real slide. It shouldn’t count as “very close” for a take out slide.
The problem is that there is a wide range of plays that can look like just maybe they are legitimate slides. Perhaps you should require the player to actually reach the base at the end of the play? If you make any contact with the fielder and you end up not being able to reach the base, both runner and batter are out. And you have to actually be touching the base, so there is no judgment. You touch the fielder with your body, you must end the play touching the base.
I’d still also keep the other rules of interference, too.
Agreed…seems pretty simple to say “must touch and remain touching the base” in a revision of the rule. That would clarify many of the borderline calls.
That’s a good idea, although there should also be room left to disallow things like what Machado did in the play above.
Yes, what Machado did was just garden variety interference. The rule has to be in place for when guys have some reasonable claim that they are just sliding into second base.
I think it *does* say something like this. I remember the runner has to attempt to touch the base (Gose and Rasmus), and must attempt to remain ON the base (Harrison). Am I recalling incorrectly?
They have to be able to attempt to stay on the base, they don’t have to actually do it. If you make they do it, you take the subjective judgment out of it.
I don’t really understand all the confusion. The rule that MLB adopted this year is essentially the same rule that all of these guys have been playing with through the amateur ranks, no? It’s not that hard to just slide directly into the base – any slide in which you deviate from the base to make contact with the defender is called interference. It seems pretty straightforward to me.
Canada gets screwed again!
This.
Part C of the rule is that the offending team must be Canadian.
This Gose case seemed ridiculous to me when I saw it.
As I read the rule, the idea was simply to identify a “legitimate slide”–an act which would be performed if primarily trying to be safe–and then simply call a double play in any case where a legitimate slide was not make. While the notion of a legimate slide might need revision, incorporating slides that didn’t meet the original definition, I thought the main point was a really good one: we should be able to judge whether a slide is only a take out by asking whether the runner slid into the base and stayed there. This also had the advantage of not accidentally penalizing a runner for trying to be safe.
Oh well.
If I’m not mistaken, in cases of a “legitimate slide”, a fielder’s body has a way of responding so that he does not get hurt.
The problem with the “hindering” interpretation is that it basically means there’s no foul if the 2B dodges the slide to avoid injury. Which is what Murphy did in the first play discussed above. If he stays closer to the bag he risks injury, but would almost certainly have drawn the interference call.
That’s a perverse incentive.
I can see making a judgement call on if the double play might have actually happened or not. e.g. was the batter-runner so far up the line that even a unhindered play from 2B wouldn’t have earned an out. But making the judgement based on how close the runner gets to the 2B is a crap interpretation. That runner has to slide for the bag. Period.
If the runner would be safe either way, a takeout slide is not necessary.
Therefore, no runner should ever feel the need to do a take slide.
The only way to disincentize takeout slides is to make ALL illegal slides illegal. Don’t give players breaking the rule a free pass because their teammate runs fast.
The advance runner probably doesn’t have any idea if the batter-runner will be safe or not. All they can see is the 2B/SS attempting to turn the double play. They need to slide at the bag, period.
The argument for the judgement being on the batter-runner, is that a 2B might attempt to draw interference (say, by standing on the 1B side of the bag, in the way of the advance runner) on a double play attempt that doesn’t actually have a chance of catching the batter-runner. It’s also somewhat crap, but it’s a more appropriate thing to judge than “no blood, no foul”.
I find it highly unlikely that a major league baseball player can’t figure out how likely it is that a runner behind him is going to make it to first base when he knows how fast the runner is and can see how quickly the fielders in front of him are making the play. Heck, the little leaguers on the team I coach can figure that out.
I don’t see 2nd basemen standing on the wrong side of the bag to try and get interference. That *would* be a judgement call for the umps to make that the fielder had no intention of getting out of the way. Low chance of success and high chance of injury – i don’t see it happening.
Kind of off topic, but watching the Orioles/Twins series, I noticed that when Machado plays short, he plants his foot directly in front of second base A LOT. Either he’s very confident that runners will avoid him because of the new rule, or he’s waiting to get his leg broken. Either way, it’s a dick move.
Seems like an overly harsh assessment.
I’m not sure why your second case is a dick move.
If he’s hung like a horse, planting his foot like that would have to be followed by a dick move. Don’t wanna get spiked there.
Just neighing.
Leave it to MLB to make a pretty simple rule into a clusterfuck.
Players have to slide into second on a double play the same way they would slide under any other circumstances. You wouldnt slide through the bag/wide of the bag/stick out your arm etc etc on a stolen base attempt or on a close play on at third. So dont do it during a double play.
Its really that simple.
Exactly – it’s the same rule that nearly every baseball league other than MLB has had on the books for decades – from Little League through college. There seems to be little confusion following and enforcing the rule in other levels of baseball, I’m not sure why MLB is having a difficult time doing the same.
Yes. I would go as far as to suggest there should be a slide-line about 4-5 feet before the 2B bag at which (or before) a slide must be initiated or it would be considered too late and illegal, but that would open the door for interpretations of what is meant by “beginning a slide.” If that could be defined, having a line could go part of the way toward clarifying what’s allowed.
I don’t even think that’s necessary. All you need is a rule the clarifies that the runner has to slide ‘directly into the base’ – and and deviation from that is called obstruction. If amateur players can follow the rule without confusion, I’m not sure why professionals can’t.
I think the point of the line is to prevent players from sliding PAST the bag.
I seriously hope that whoever was in New York that night was just a retard and MLB is covering for him. I mean, the entire point of the rule is to eradicate the behavior for player safety, and it was working extremely well because those slides were already down to once-every-few-days level. Plus, I don’t think there were even any cases of questionably-clean slides getting people called out anyway (as opposed to the catch-rule disaster a couple of years ago), so they wouldn’t even be addressing a problem. If they’re really walking it back this way on purpose, I don’t even have words. It incentivizes runners to keep taking shots, it incentivizes fielders to stand there and get hit, it turns a fairly well-defined rule into total judgment nonsense, and it solves exactly nothing in the process.
I agree. I REALLY hope they are just covering for him, because this opens a disastrous can of worms if this is the route they are really taking.
I definitely think there were some questionably clean slides that were called double plays. The Rasmus play above is a great example – no interference, no throw even attempted, but by the letter of the law it is a double play, and it ended the game. There is even an argument that Rasmus slid away from the bag specifically to avoid contact because it was clear he was already out and there was unlikely to be a throw.
The point is though…I don’t care. I’d rather questionably clean slides be ruled double plays than establish a gray area. Like you said it was working pretty well as it was, and if the rule is always called by the letter the rule-breaking clean slides and (more importantly) the dirty slides just go away. Now we are right back to “in the umpire’s judgment”, and it could get worse than when we started.
I meant questionably clean as in one where you could argue with a straight face that the runner was trying to go for the bag and stay on it as opposed to trying to mess with the fielder- Rasmus clearly wasn’t trying to go to 2nd and stick the landing.
Agreed that the rule is not being enforced consistently. The rule was implemented without much thought in response to a couple of freak injuries, what did everyone expect? If you guessed several revisions of the rule over a period of years or decades, you guessed right.
My question is this: Eventually, maybe a couple of days from now, or maybe 50 years from now, some 2B/SS is going to hurt a runner by stepping on them after throwing a ball to 1B to complete a double-play. (Another 2 freak accidents that happen from time to time.)
To make it matter, let us say that it’s Bryce Harper and Carlos Correa on consecutive days. So now, the media starts shaking and gets real nervous stating that these types of injuries have to be prevented. They will say it’s for player safety but in their guts it will selfishly be because two of the most loved players are out for some time.
The majority of fans, sheep that they are, jump on the bandwagon and demand that any player who touches another player with any part of their bodies other than their glove should be thrown out of the game because not only does this mean they are racist, it also needs to be eliminated because baseball was never a contact sport.
So I ask the anti-contact people, why are you not demanding this rule now to help promote player safety in the future? Do you realize that one of your favorite stars will some day have a chance to be affected by this totally preventable outcome?
What say the hypocrites who speak of player safety but don’t care to eliminate it in all forms until star players are injured?
Even though I disagree with you, I love this post.
Player safety is important to me, but it is of secondary relevance to the frustration of a successful take-out slides to me. Double plays are (well…were) broken up by slides far far more often than injuries occur on those kind of plays. The preventable injuries are a huge factor in my opinion, but even if there was never an injury from this kind of slide I don’t understand why every one accepts it as part of the game. We made it part of the game, but tradition is a bad reason to accept something that is against the rules and doesn’t make any sense in context.
For a very long time it has been the job of the base runner to break up a double play. But why? Because it was tolerated and called that way I suppose. It’s completely illogical though. A base runner’s job is to run the bases. It is to try to not get out. It should not be his job to do what he can to preventThe meta-gaming of creating contact with a fielder has snowballed into something completely outside the scope of the rule book, with unwritten rules within unwritten rules (some defying actual written rules), and I don’t really know how/why it has become acceptable for a base runner who has already been thrown out to actively affect the outcome of the rest of the play.
I understand it isn’t a video game where runners are removed from a play immediately after being thrown out. Human bodies occupy physical space and, until teleportation becomes a thing, incidental contact is simply going to happen on occasion when athletes are moving at high speeds towards the same object. I just don’t subscribe to the idea that a guy who has been ruled out still has a job to do and that job is to try and screw up the guy with the ball in his hand. The injury threat is real, but irrespective of that, this is still an aspect of baseball that has always bothered me, and I don’t know why it’s a big deal to suddenly start enforcing the rule.
To remind you, this rule was catalyzed by RUBEN TEJADA getting hurt. RUBEN TEJADA.
All I know is I’m PISSED if I’m Toronto and I miss the playoffs by a game, because they lost because of the rule being called correctly earlier this year, and now suddenly it isn’t being called correctly. Like the first comment says – the most important thing is consistency, and forget one game. This being called inconsistently could, theoretically, keep a team out of the playoffs who could (for all we know) have won the World Series if given the chance. This rule could directly impact the entire champion of the league.
So yeah. I sure hope that Toronto either makes or misses the playoffs by more than a game.
According to the Tigers broadcast the following game, manager Ausmus said that MLB had sent out a memo a few days prior to this Gose play saying that impeding the fielder was now a requirement for an interference call.
So the written language has indeed been changed at some level.
Which is kind of silly given that a fielder might, in self preservation, execute a play in a less than optimal way to get the outs and in doing so make it look like he wasn’t impeded by the runner.
It basically sets up a game of chicken, whose going to flinch first? The runner knowing that in taking it too far might get an interference call or the fielder who if he stands his ground risks injury?
Do they do some kind of secret competition to find the dumbest mongoloid in the world and then let the winner go nuts with a rule? If not, hard to tell the difference from the outside.
If you’re going to change the rule, I’d suggest changing the rule.
The rule should just be this; the slider has to stay on the base. That’s it, that’s the whole rule. That is a good compromise for safety and reasonable slide-ness. The fielder is in danger in that zone as always, but egregious off-base slides will result in automatic double-plays.
Once again, bad umpiring. Once again, umpires imperiously deciding what the rules are, regardless of what the rules say.
Time to fire this entire crop of umpires and to replace them with people who understand that their job is to apply the rules as written, not to selectively enforce the rules, not to interpret the rules, and not to make their own rules.
Regarding the “memo” from MLB received right before the Tigers game… is it really possible to change the language of a rule part way through the season?… seems silly to me.
Yeah, they “changed” the interpretation of the catch rule midseason 2 years ago, which was a good change… and the idiot rule is still in the rulebook 2 seasons later. They’re completely incompetent