What Do You See?
As far as the ordinary rules are concerned, the strikeout on a foul bunt is unusual. Unlike a swing and miss, a foul bunt involves contact, and unlike a foul tip into the glove, a foul bunt isn’t caught. Plus, as players are constantly reminding us these days, bunting is hard, far harder than people think. But baseball is unquestionably better for having this rule in place. Without it, in theory, an at-bat could stretch on forever. In theory, any at-bat could already stretch on forever, but there would be nothing stopping a player from perfecting the skill of the two-strike foul bunt. Plate appearances might go 15, 20, 25, 70 pitches. Or strikeouts would be put off until everyone walked. Without the two-strike foul-bunt rule, baseball could very well collapse. At the very least, it would totally suck to watch.
I know about the two-strike foul-bunt rule. You know about the two-strike foul-bunt rule. It’s one of those rules baseball fans know before they turn 12. The question is, what does a two-strike foul bunt look like? That seems like a weird thing to ask, but after Wednesday’s game between the Brewers and Reds, this is suddenly in the news, and I want to know what all of you think.
It’s the perfect kind of baseball controversy — it’s controversial, but in the end, the call didn’t make that much of a difference. The judgment call in question benefited the Reds, at the Brewers’ expense. The Brewers ultimately won the game in extra innings. So this is kind of academic. Michael Lorenzen batted with two on in the bottom of the sixth.
Lorenzen spent his time trying to bunt. He failed his way into a two-strike count, when the moment took place. Lorenzen squared. Then Lorenzen arguably pulled back. The ball hit the bat and went foul. After some umpire discussion, Lorenzen was allowed to keep batting. Craig Counsell protested, to no avail. That’s the way most protests work.
You’ve probably heard about what happened. If Lorenzen struck out on the very next pitch, it would’ve all been lost and forgotten. Lorenzen, though, did not strike out on the very next pitch. Instead, on the very next pitch, he drilled his fourth home run of the season, and his third against Milwaukee alone. That made the call look all the worse in retrospect. Which isn’t entirely fair to the call, but at least it means I can write this post.
I want to know what you see here. You, the person reading this article. There’s a poll at the bottom, asking whether you see a foul ball or a foul bunt. In the judgment of the umpires, obviously, Lorenzen hit a foul ball. In the judgment of the Brewers, Lorenzen hit a foul bunt. It wound up indirectly — but kind of directly — making a three-run difference in the score. Before the poll, I’m just going to present a bunch more details. These might inform both sides of the conversation.
As it happens, earlier in the same at-bat, Lorenzen squared around and then twisted away from an inside pitch:
Here’s a screenshot of Lorenzen getting out of the way:
And here’s a screenshot of the controversial play. You might notice certain similarities, and differences.
In both cases, you can see how little time Lorenzen had to react. Never forget that the ball gets on the hitter in a damn hurry. In both cases, the bat is still kind of out there, but then, when Lorenzen twisted away, he had more of a turn in his shoulders. Down below, Lorenzen is more facing forward. Had Lorenzen fouled the ball in the first instance, it would’ve been easier to say it was an accident. When Lorenzen actually made contact with two strikes, he seemed to be more squared. An alternate view could be helpful:
I can bombard you with side angles. Here’s one!
Here’s another!
Here’s another!
After Lorenzen made contact, and after Lorenzen was allowed to stay in the box, the Brewers TV broadcast used words like “absurd,” “ridiculous,” “comical,” “embarrassing,” and “joke.” The Reds TV broadcast didn’t editorialize so much, but among the sentences used were “what am I missing here?” and “Counsell’s livid, and I don’t blame him.” In the immediate aftermath, both broadcast crews assumed the foul-bunt strikeout. It looked like a foul-bunt strikeout. Neither broadcast understood right away why Lorenzen wasn’t out. And this wasn’t just a home-plate umpire decision — the whole crew got together, and they reached the same conclusion.
From the perspective of the umpires, it’s all about intent. An excerpt:
Crew chief Bill Welke explained the situation after the game.
“It was a very unusual play,” Welke said. “Rule 5.09 says a batter is out when he bunts foul on [the] third strike. But now we have to go to, ‘What is the definition of a bunt?’ So if we go to the definitions in the rulebook, page 141, a bunt is a batted ball not swung at, but intentionally met with the bat and tapped slowly within the infield. He was in full retreat. It was not an intentionally met non-swinging attempt. He was not attempting to hit that. Therefore if he’s not bunting, it just becomes a foul ball.”
You can read the rules for yourself if you want. Here’s an excerpt from — I’ll be damned, page 141:
A BUNT is a batted ball not swung at, but intentionally met with the bat and tapped slowly within the infield.
According to the umpires, it was a foul ball in much the same way as this was a foul ball:
Lorenzen, in their judgment, was pulling back, and not trying to bunt the ball in play, as soon as he recognized where it was headed. At that point, it didn’t matter how he was holding the bat itself, or whether he’d shown bunt earlier on. Players pull back after showing bunt all the time. Lorenzen did it just moments earlier. A bunt can be rescinded mid-pitch. Still, even after the game, and even after the Brewers won, Counsell still thought Lorenzen had bunted foul. He thought Lorenzen was still sufficiently square. Sometimes players can mean to bunt those pitches:
And, on top of that, less than two months ago, this is how Chase Anderson once struck out:
Anderson was called out for that. He didn’t even try to stay in the box. But, visually, Anderson and Lorenzen don’t look so different. Now, granted, their behavior might matter here, in that it might reveal the intent. By walking away, Anderson made it look like he’d been trying to bunt. By staying put, Lorenzen made it look like he’d been trying to pull the bat back. Maybe that’s all the umpires needed to see. But, side by side, Anderson and Lorenzen appeared to make similar attempts. One was called a foul bunt. One was called a foul ball. The rule book leaves room for interpretation, and it’s not quite always black and white.
I reached out to former big-league umpire Dale Scott, and while on the one hand he supported the standing interpretation, he also admitted that it could’ve been seen the other way. And so we’ve come to this, a FanGraphs community poll. This, again, is the play we’ve been talking about:
So, now that we’ve gone over the circumstances, what do you see? I honestly don’t know on which side the majority of you are going to fall, which is entirely what makes this so fun.
Jeff made Lookout Landing a thing, but he does not still write there about the Mariners. He does write here, sometimes about the Mariners, but usually not.
I don’t see what’s so complicated here — he was obviously pulling his bat back, not trying to bunt at it.
If the ball had missed his bat, would anyone suggest that it should be called a strike because he was “trying to bunt?”
Also, so many TV announcers don’t understand the rules that it makes me ragey. It seems like that would be one of the first requirements to get paid to comment on a baseball game.
Same thing with the catcher/home plate collision rule. Most announcers are clueless and think all collisions are banned, which is incorrect.
If the catcher has possession of the ball, they can block the plate. If the catcher is blocking the plate with possession of the ball, the runner can initiate contact. Its not that hard.
Not correct, see Rizzo, Anthony. Still must slide/avoid contact. So, it is complicated.
No, hardball14 is correct. If the catcher has the ball and is ready to make a play, then contact is permitted as long as the runner does not deviate from his path to the plate.
Here is the Comment to the Rule: “If a catcher blocks the pathway of the runner, the umpire shall not find that the runner initiated an avoidable collision in violation of this Rule 6.01(i)(1) (Rule 7.13(1)).”
Here is Craig’s take from last year’s Rizzo collision: “If [catcher] had the ball and he was blocking Rizzo’s path, then Rizzo is free to collide with [catcher].”
Rizzo was out because he deviated from his direct pathway to the plate in order to initiate a collision. Not because he failed to slide.
There’s a different Comment that says if the runner wants to be deemed *automatically* safe when a catcher *without* the ball blocks the plate, then the runner has to slide, but the “automatically safe” rule is almost never invoked on plays at home. It’s the “automatically out” rule that causes all the controversy.
Of all TV announcers, the Reds Chris Welsh knows the rulebook better than anyone. He writes a rulesbook newletter as a matter of fact. I didn’t hear what he said, but it is surprising to me if he didn’t understand the call.
I don’t think the letter of the rulebook is the issue with how the announcers called this. It’s precedent. I’ve never seen this call, ever, and I doubt they had either, even if it’s the right one.
Failed attempts should not get calls. He attempted a bunt, tried to pull it back and failed. A closer analogy is a batter attempting to check his swing on a ball in the dirt and still breaking the plane. I don’t care that he attempted to stop his swing, he broke the plane, its a strike. I don’t care that Lorenzen tried to pull back the bunt, he make contact and it went foul.
That’s a whole other debate. Breaking the plane isn’t the definition of a swing anyway
What is “breaking the plane” and where is it in the rule?
Just because he held the bat in bunt position doesn’t mean he’s not allowed to pull it back. And it’s not a foul “bunt” simply bc the pitch bore was inside and found the bat. If it hadn’t hit the bat, it would have been a ball, not a missed bunt (or strike). Pretty easy call.
So a check swing foul on a ball out of the zone, in which the bat only goes a third of the way around, should not be ruled a foul, either. It should be a ball, because “if he hadn’t made contact, it would’ve been a ball.”
Which rule covers what you care about?
This is an opinion on what the rules should be.
It’s a fair opinion imo- (1) made contact, (2) ball went out of play, therefore should be foul. This surprising rule makes an exception, though, for intent. The case above clearly shows no intent to bunt- the player fell down and was trying to avoid a pitch near the face.
I think the split in the poll (currently 40-60) comes down to a split between those focusing on what they feel the rules should be (40%, foul bunt) and those focusing on applying the written definition including the portion on intent (60%, foul ball).
That’s fine, but they never, ever call it this way.
As a lifelong baseball fan I don’t have the first clue what it means to break the plane… well, I know what it sounds like, but have seen enough baseball to know that that isn’t how anything is enforced.
I agree, I don’t think this is a hard call at all. (Edited after reading the thread to add that it seems to me what’s making it hard is that people aren’t sure how to define a bunt attempt, and in my opinion are wrongly seeing him holding the bat in position to attempt a bunt as the same as attempting one.) In the same vein as a checked swing, though, it’s very surprising how many professional, daily baseball commentators think there’s some kind of physical definition in the rule, rather than it being a judgement call about whether the batter made the attempt or not.
I think the check swing analogy is apt. If you watch the first gif, you can go through frame by frame and notice that he’s still attempting to line up the bunt until the last 4-5 hundredths of a second before it hits the bat.
If you attempt to swing and then decide, too late, that you don’t want to swing, it still counts as an attempt. To my mind, if you decide to bunt, and then decide too late that you don’t want to bunt, it’s still a bunt attempt-you spent 98% of the time the ball was in flight lining up your bat to hit it, and then you suddenly decided that you don’t want the ball to hit your bat after it’s too late.
This was very clearly not a bunt attempt. I get why Counsell would be upset in the moment, but there’s no way to view this on replay and say he attempted to bunt. There’s no gray area here.
You have to pull your bat back – that is what makes a bunt attempt not a bunt attempt. His fundamentals were poor and I think he should be held accountable for those – no need for a tedious rule definition or debate. Intentional doesn’t mean what people here are pretending it does in this context. In the rule, intentional means not a full swing – it doesn’t have to do with intent. A good bunt attempt does not look like it has intent (cushion the ball) – bad bunt attempts look like intent (stab at ball). IMO this looked like a non-attempt, but a lousy one. The correct analogy here is that batter who ducks under a pitch and the pitch hits his bat – its a foul ball. If I fouled a ball off on a bunt attempt with two strikes I would expect to be called out. it is the batter’s responsibility to pull back the bat in a bunt situation. If the bat is in a position to make contact with a pitched ball…
“You have to pull your bat back”
This is factually incorrect. All you have to do is not make an attempt. If I square around before the pitch and never move, it is not a bunt attempt. In this case he very clearly disengaged from his bunt attempt.
I’m not sure what you’re referring to re: fundamentals. There are no fundamentals involved with dodging a mid-90s pitch at your chest. Nobody practices that. There’s no “correct” way to do it. Just get the hell out of the way.
“If I square around before the pitch and never move, it is not a bunt attempt.”
What? Where is that in the rulebook?
Squaring around is not the same as offering at the pitch. Functionally, this is only relevant if the player were to square around with no intention of attempting to bunt. The moment he begins to track the pitch with his bat – which usually happens before the ball is even released – it becomes an attempt. The hitter can then cancel the attempt – like a checked swing – by pulling the bat back. But it’s a common misconception that the act of squaring around is the same as a swing. The batter also has to try to hit it.
The intent portion makes it an easy call.
I can understand thinking that the intent part is dumb, or that the rule should be different, or that any contact ought to count as a foul- but those aren’t the rules. The player was on one-knee, the ball was likely to hit him if he did not move, during moving out of the way he obvious fell down and made incidental contact.
Foul ball is the correct call, easily.
It’s just that before this probably 100% of us did not know the rule. There might be literally noone, between us commentators and the author, who knew that (1) there was any sort of contact-with-the-bat that (2) goes out-of-play and (3) is not a foul.
I don’t get how this is an easy call. Go through the first gif literally frame by frame and tell me the instant he first decided he wasn’t bunting. His intent for the vast majority of the ball’s flight was to bunt the ball, and we’re basing this all on intentions.
If you had heard the Brewers announcers you’d know two guys that would NOT like any evidence supporting anything but he was out. What I almost got from it was a kind of “if with two strikes the picture is still trying to bunt throw one high and tight so it hits the bat and he’s out”.
That’s absolutely where a pitcher should throw the ball with a guy trying to bunt.
The ball hit his bat and ended up in foul territory. What is complicated about that?
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As of 12:04 the vote is at 51.52/48.48
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vs. Chase Anderson. IMHO Anderson is not trying to take the bunt off. He’s trying to adjust to a pitch that is high and inside. He’s becoming more upright and adjusting himself a bit back in the box … but not trying to get out of the way.
Lorenzon falls to one knee while trying to twist away from the pitch. He’s also doing so relatively late in the flight of the pitch. If there’s an argument to made, I think it’s that he didn’t take the bunt off in time. But I do think he was trying to take the bunt off.
He never twisted away from the pitch. Hence the four side-angled photos mid-article.
I see a foul bunt. I don’t care that he may or may not have been attempting to draw the bunt back. He squared to bunt. His hand was still on the barrel of the bat in a bunting position when the ball struck the back. His attempt to pull the ball back are inconsequential to me. He attempt to bunt, and pushed it foul. It should have been strike three.
So if he makes the same motion and that ball is thrown up and outside, caught by the catcher rather than fouled off, you call a strike? I don’t see it.
That is a false equivalency an you know it. If the ball is high and away he doesn’t make the same motion, but likely attempts to stab at it, pulls his bat back, or leaves it over the plate . Two of those three actions results in strike 3.
So if he did the exact same motion, but instead of hitting his bat, the ball sailed under his chin to the backstop. Do you say it’s strike 3 due to the attempted bunt??
If you try to tell somebody what they know, you should be pretty certain you’re correct (you’re not).
You also seem to be obfuscating the point. The example I mentioned just illustrates that you need to consider the motion he made independent of if the ball strikes the bat based on your line of reasoning. What I’m trying to show with the example is that there’s not a chance that the motion he made would be considered a bunt attempt.
Okay fine. It’s an up and in pitch and he makes the exact same motion but it misses the bat. Is that strike three?
“I don’t care that he wasn’t attempting to bunt”
“He attempted to bunt”
Make up your mind, bro.
Could be inconsequential to you, but if you go back to the definition of a bunt on the rule book it clearly says the bat needs to meet the ball intentionally, so making a clear attempt to pull back have a direct relationship to intention.
If you say it is a foul bunt because you think he intentionally attempted to make contact on that pitch, I wouldn’t agree on you observation, but would respect calling this a foul bunt strikeout. But what you are saying is because he squared to bunt and his hand remained in a bunting position we should forget about the rule book and about intention. That for me, is not acceptable
This isn’t ‘seeing’ something different.
It’s rather you ‘don’t care’ about intent, and are arguing that the criteria that you have listed (squared, hand on barrel when ball struck, etc) ought to be the criteria for the rule- you don’t think intent should be part of it.
This generally isn’t a disagreement about what people are seeing. It’s a focus-of-discussion split between the (atm) 60% who are focused on interpreting the rule as written, and the 40% who are focused on discussing what they think the rule ought to be.
I think the word “intentional” in the rule does it for me. He was holding the bat like he would when bunting, but was pulling it back in the attempt not to make contact, therefore foul ball, not foul bunt.
Count me in this “intentional” camp. The ball hits the bat not the bat hitting the ball. The intent seem pretty clear – get the #$#@ out of the way.
I don’t see how you can say he was pulling it back in an attempt not to make contact. If he wants to not make contact, then why is he leaving the bat head out over the plate and level with his hand still on it? He could just as easily be keeping the bat there and attempting to deaden the ball
I didn’t see the bat head as being over the plate. It was in the batter’s box, which also happened to be where the ball was. My personal read on Lorenzen’s body language was that the holding and positioning of the bat stopped being intentional once he realized he needed to get out of the way of the pitch.
It’s pretty obvious.
The ball being four or five inches inside and at the top of the zone confounds the issue, because it’s harder to get the bat out of the way there. Also, having runners on, Lorenzen wants to make the receiving difficult, or even encourage a passed ball, so he wants to keep the bat out as long as possible, especially with the ball outside the strike zone. Between those two factors, it’s clearly a foul ball.
On a related note, my vote for “how best to shorten baseball games” is to make all foul balls with 2-strikes count as strikes, with the batter thus striking out. There’s nothing more boring than watching a hitter foul off a bunch of pitches, and if fouling off a pitch is considered a failure on the part of the hitter where there are 0 or 1 strikes, it should be considered a failure when there are 2 strikes, too.
One benefit of this change would be that there would be no need for umpires to subjectively determine whether a given foul ball with 2 strikes was bunted at or swung at…
I have to disagree, long at bats display a mental battle representative of what’s so great about baseball.
There seems to be an assumption that batters who foul off pitches with 2 strikes are fouling them off intentionally, as if fouling off pitches (rather than putting them in play) is a particular skill that players can not only learn, but strategically employ.
But there’s no way for us to know whether a batter has intentionally batted a ball into foul territory or not. How do we know that the batter wasn’t trying to put the ball in play, but failed to do so and batted into foul territory instead? When there are 0 or 1 strikes, we assume that all fouled pitches were failed efforts to put the ball in play, and therefore we penalize the batter by giving him a “strike”. Why do we completely abandon this assumption when there are 2 strikes?
And even if “fouling off pitches” IS some kind of actual skill, it makes more sense to me to consider this to be a kind of “delay of game” tactic that should be discouraged rather than celebrated…
To think fouls after two-strikes should be outs directly assumes they do it intentionally. ‘They do it so many times, prolonging games and at bats, lets prevent them from doing it.’
Why on earth would you penalize someone for a foul if they can’t control it (according to your logic)?
If they can’t control it, why would you penalize someone for a foul with 0 or 1 strikes?
The penalty would be for a failed attempt.
Batters cannot entirely control whether they make contact or not when they swing either- and yet are still penalized for swinging and missing.
No offense, but this sounds like an awful idea.
You want a complete change to the hitter-pitcher dynamic to solve a problem that happens once or twice per year??
No, I want the change in order to shorten baseball games, which is something the league is actively trying to accomplish.
Eliminating the controversy that this article is about would be a (however small) side benefit of my suggested change, but not the primary reason to make it…
I don’t think the league wants to make 50%* of ABs end in strikeouts. Not in what could possibly be the last year that MLB as a whole has more hits than strikeouts.
* – a total guess
There are already too many strikeouts in today’s game, so this strikes me as a bad idea.
Yes, what the game needs is MORE strikeouts! [sarcasm]
Ha! One of my pet (and somewhat inconsequential) proposed rule changes is that a caught foul-tip with two strikes should be treated like a foul ball and the at bat should continue. A small thing to slightly tip some of the advantage pitchers have with velocity and movement back towards batters even if this happens like once a game.
It would change the game too much, effecting 1-strike counts etc. It would, however, speed the game up- but at a large continuity cost.
I voted foul ball, because I think he was trying to pull back. But yeah, it’s a judgment call, and I can’t fault anybody who sees a foul bunt there.
But here’s a question for everybody who voted foul ball – imagine that Lorenzen had made that same motion to avoid the pitch, but that, completely by accident, the ball had struck the bat such that it actually rolled toward the field of play and only just went foul. Maybe Lorenzen even tries to run it out before it rolls foul. Does your vote change?
To add to your last point, what if Lorenzen makes the same motion but somehow hits/bunts it fair, and is thrown out as first? Would that be scored as a sac bunt? Because if it would be scored as a sac bunt, then I don’t see how this situation is a foul ball and not a foul bunt.
I don’t think this is a fair comparison. Sacrifices are only defined in section 9 which is about “official scorekeeping” and does not have any bearing on the outcomes of game action, only on the specific annotations that get marked in the official scorebook.
The scorekeeper might say “that’s a sacrifice bunt” and move on. It wouldn’t count as an AB, so Lorenzen wouldn’t complain, and it’s what he was trying to accomplish in the plate appearance anyways.
If the scorekeeper is diligent they could say “that wasn’t a bunt attempt” and score it as an at-bat with a 6-3 putout. Lorenzen’s batting average would drop (since it counts as an at bat) and if he cared enough he could file a complaint through the MLBPA to have it reviewed. They would probably look at the rule book and come to the same conclusion as these umpires – it wasn’t technically a “bunt” and therefore can’t be a “sacrifice hit” and therefore the 6-3 ruling stands. 0 news outlets would report on the topic. If they did, it would be “hey look at this fun quirk” and we’d all shrug our shoulders and go “huh, neat”
Basically, the scorekeeper’s actions are undergoing far less scrutiny than an umpire’s call that directly effects outs on the field, so using that as a proxy for correctness of an umpire’s call is probably a false equivalence – they are measured against different standards.
Good point that I hadn’t thought of. Maybe this is a case of the rulebook not lining up with some notion of “baseball intuition”. Whether that needs correcting, I’m not sure.
Exactly this-
two conversations going on, one about the rulebook and a legalistic application of it’s plain meaning
another about baseball intuition.
Technically, there isn’t much of a judgement call or a ‘what do you see’ disagreement (as nearly all agree on what they see and judge as far as intent), but instead a situation where the rulebook and baseball intuition mismatch a bit to create a couple odd scenarios.
If Lorenzen is thrown out at first on a fair ball, that’s the third out of the inning, so it can’t be a “sacrifice” anything.
Looking at the wrong picture, ignore that post.
There were no outs at the time, I’m not sure if that was noted in the article or not (but if there were 2 outs, well its an odd time to be bunting anyway).
Your point doesn’t address the written definition- it instead makes reference to normative scoring, as if scoring habits defined the rule.
The definition of the rule is fairly clear on intent. Lorenzen’s motion of falling backwards and pulling away from the ball, inside his own batters box, is fairly obviously is not an intention to bunt the ball.
Your scenario merely presents a circumstance-
(1) delayed call on technicality, plus (2) immediate compelling live action,
which suggests that a group of Umps/scorers might be likely to ignore the rule in favor of scoring the live action. As you describe it, I find it likely and agree that in such a scenario, the umps/scorer would likely want to ignore the rule and simply go with the live action- as it is rare for an ump to call-back 15 seconds or so of live action play in order to make a call on a technicality.
With the angle the bat was at, the only way it goes even close to fair is if he cue-balls it off the knob. In that case, it’d still be a non-bunt-attempt.
I don’t think the angle is relevant because I think this article would equally apply to a “bunt attempt” where the angle of the bat is towards the field, but the batter fouls it off up and back. Maybe the angle is relevant in determining whether it was actually a bunt attempt, but I can definitely imagine a scenario where the bat is angled to put the ball fair but the batter is clearly ducking out of the way.
Probably true in this case. But it’s still an interesting question on an attempt to pull the back bat and avoid the pitch that leaves the barrel in a position for the ball to strike it squarely.
I once grounded out on a pitch that put me in the dirt. The ball went through the space my head had been in, hit the barrel of the bat, and bounced back to the pitcher. Baseball!
Yeah, that’s a weird argument. Like if the ball hits the bat, lands fair, but then rolls foul, that clear would be a foul bunt.
But on the other hand, as a commenter above pointed out, if the ball misses his bat entirely, it would be ludicrous to call him for a swing on the play.
But really, I think we have to take this as Schrodinger’s bunt. It is neither bunted nor not bunted until we see the result of the play. And in this case, to me he was pulling back and thus it does not appear as a bunt to me.
It would not ‘clearly be a foul bunt’ by the rules- only by intuition.
The rules specify that intent must be made- if there is no intent to bunt, it cannot be a foul bunt no matter if the ball inadvertantly goes into play.
Just because it is obvious that an ump would ignore the rule and let the players’ play- just as a cop generally wouldn’t pull over someone going 2 mph over the speed limit- doesn’t mean that the rule as written changes. Umps make wrong calls regularly, for various reasons.
It would be the same. I don’t see the intent to bunt, but not a mind reader so I could be wrong on it as a judgement call. Whether it goes 5 inches foul or straight back, without intent it is a foul ball.
There is a judgment call to be made on intent: but nearly everyone agrees, there was no intent to bunt. The agreement on this is something like 90+%. There are almost no arguments being put forward that this was an attempted bunt, save maybe 1 or 2 comments that falsely state that the bat head was in the box (not a judgment, but false observation).
The reason the poll and comments are split closer to 50-50 is because two slightly different conversations are going on- (1) application of the written rule- the people having this conversation pretty much all say foul ball because of intent; or (2) what the rule should be- much of this group says foul bunt because they feel the intent portion shouldn’t be in the rule.
It’s actually very difficult to make an argument for ‘foul bunt’ while including intent.
Your example is merely a good example of how an ump could make the wrong call. Sure, if there is an attempt by a batter to avoid getting hit by a pitch, which accidentally knocks the ball into play: if the batter runs and gets thrown out, it’s hard to imagine the umpire ignoring all the live-action and going back to the bunt-stage of the play to rule it a foul ball. For game aesthetics, pace of play, and our internal preference for live action over set-piece technicalities- such a call would feel bizarre.
But that is again an illustration of the difference between what the rule is, as written, and what it feels like it should be.
I have a (maybe?) hot take: any foul ball on a pitch that is at the batter should be a ball (of course, barring a swing). It’s such bullshit that you throw the ball so far away from the strike zone, and at the batter as well, and you get gifted a strike (or non-ball in a 2 strike count).
So I might be biased, but I see a foul thanks to the rule. I see nothing there suggesting a bunt attempt. If you do a bunt attempt and miss the ball, it is a strike. So if you are saying he was intending to bunt that, then the first one should also be a strike, and that would be ridiculous.
The worst thing I think is that they’ll sometime call a batter for a “swing” on a ball that almost (or does!) hit him, because in trying to dive out of the way he brings his hands too far forward or whatever. If I’m remembering correctly, when Jon Niese hit Giancarlo Stanton in the jaw a few years back, Stanton was said to have struck out on the pitch. It’s garbage and should never ever be called that way.
Stanton’s plunking was by Mike Fiers, not Jon Niese, and it was only on strike 2. Since he was injured on the play, he had to be replaced by a PH (Reed Johnson) to finish out the at-bat. Sure enough, the first pitch to Johnson hits him as well, and he’s also deemed to have went around enough for a swing (but there was understandably a bench-clearing incident in the process, so they had to wait for that to cool down before making the call).
By rule, if a pinch-hitter comes in on a 2-strike count, and goes on to pick up strike 3, then for statistical purposes the at-bat and the K are charged to the original batter. Hence, Stanton didn’t strike out on a pitch that hit him…he struck out on a pitch that hit *the guy who replaced him*! Isn’t that the kind of superlative player who makes perfect sense in the Bronx?
Oh! Right. Niese drilled Heyward, that’s what I was thinking of.
And yeah, I may have just been thinking of the fact that Stanton was called for a swing, not that he literally struck out on that pitch.
Hard agree from me here. A ball (as in not a strike) that hits a bat when the batter doesn’t swing should absolutely be a ball or a HBP.
When there are 2 strikes, why is it considered a “failure” for the batter to foul when bunting, but considered “neither a failure nor a success” for a batter to foul when swinging? Why is this distinction made? Why not treat fouls when bunting and fouls when swinging the same?
That was explained rather well in the article.
Because it would be easy to keep bunting foul forever.
Because a batter could (relatively) easily learn the skill of bunting any strike foul, and therefore extend an at-bat basically forever (or at least so absurdly long that pitchers would have to start throwing hundreds of pitches per game).
I suspect this was more of an issue in the early days of baseball before every pitcher was throwing 96mph 2-seamers with 8″ of break, but it seems far more plausible that a batter could still perfect the skill of bunting strikes for foul balls as opposed to swinging and hitting foul balls indefinitely.
You are correct about the origins of the foul bunt strike 3 rule (at least according to this recent article): https://www.cbssports.com/mlb/news/history-of-two-strike-bunt-rule-a-reminder-pace-of-play-issues-are-over-a-century-old/
Because the result would be hugely boring, and practically ruin baseball.
Why favorite part of this entire debacle has to be the swagger that Lorenzen, a pitcher, flipped his bat with.
My, not why. Not sure how that one happened.
My opinion is very skewed by the awesomeness that is Lorenzen’s hitting. Pitchers who hit!
When I first saw the clip, I was surprised he wasn’t called out, but after reading the umpire’s explanation, I think it was the right call. Otherwise, pitchers could theoretically aim for the batter’s head and hope for this outcome.
I think the rule could use some clarification, but either way, this is a really tough call to get right in real-time.
I am surprised that this poll is close, although it is likely colored by the article itself. This is a foul ball. He was not attempting to bunt.
When I first saw the clip I thought it was a foul bunt because I thought the ball went closer to the first base line. The side angle shows it went basically straight back and the bat is almost parallel to the pitch so I would say he successfully pulled the bat back
Let’s give some credit to Shaw for throwing exactly where he needed to throw in this situation. I don’t know what Shaw’s reaction was after all of this, I guess he knew he just needed to keep pitching, but I’d be livid if I were him. Getting the batter to bail and pop the pitch up or foul it off is exactly what he was trying to do.
As a former pitcher, my gut instinct says he’s out.
That being said, I see why the call was upheld. It makes sense to me either way. Hats off to Lorenzen for capitalizing on the opportunity.
I doubt very much that Lorenzen was consciously trying to either bunt or pull back the bunt once he realized the ball was coming at him. The action he took was to try and throw his body out of the way and minimize his body’s profile, the bat moving was just a side effect. But either way, it should work like a check swing, in that failing to check completely still results in a called strike (and thus an out in this case). Failing to pull the bunt in time results in a foul bunt.
This is the only argument for foul bunt that has made any impression on me. Every other argument for foul bunt has completely ignored the intent that is necessary for something to be considered a bunt by the rule (If I missed your comment where you made a point that took intent into account and you still argued foul bunt, I apologize). I still think it’s a foul ball, but you’ve made the first decent argument otherwise.
I think an aborted bunt does work like a check swing, in that failing to abort completely results in a strike. I just don’t see why the ball hitting the bat should automatically transform an aborted bunt attempt into a non-aborted attempt. It’s the batter’s intent that matters, not anything to do with the ball.
“it should work like a check swing”
Sure, maybe, on sentiment- but just to be clear, this is an argument for what the rule should be (and a fair one): it’s agreed that he’s just trying to avoid a pitch, not trying to bunt the ball.
While I loved the whole article and things like this are what I love about baseball, I’m left with only one question:
Why is he bunting?? He has an ISO over .5 for the year and the manager tells him to sac bunt? It’s 2018! Even worse, this is on the Reds! A pitcher HR probably brings in more revenue than a win and is way more fun. My baseball hot take is that managers who make pitchers like this bunt should be fined for the good of the sport. Way more important than pace of play!
First inclination: Foul Bunt. Read through article and interpretations, seems fairly convincing that it should be Foul Ball. But, in my opinion, if you’re squaring around with two strikes, you’re assuming the risk that a foul will result in a strikeout, so I think Lorenzen should have been called out regardless of how far back he pulled the bat. Don’t leave it up to umpire interpretation of what was in the batters head.
Foul Bunt.
To me it’s a foul bunt. Just like we don’t call it a ball when a batter making a normal swing tries to jackknife out of the way of a pitch and it accidentally goes off his bat, or when the batter defensively brings the bat around with no intent to make contact with the ball in a reflexive reaction to the ball coming up and in, I think it’s the result (ball struck bat in what’s universally recognized as bunting position) that matters here. The rule’s requirement of intent can be inferred from the batter’s stance.
He was squared up with 2 strikes on him when the ball was released. He had no intent to swing at the pitch to begin with. I say foul bunt.
He doesnt need to have intent to swing at the pitch for it to be a foul ball. The ball can hit the bat behind the batter’s head and it is a foul ball. He is pretty clearly getting out of the way and not attempting to bunt the ball.
My point is that he clearly intended to bunt. Then the ball hit his bat and went foul. The ball can hit a bat behind someones head and still be a hit. I wouldn’t compare them.
That he was prepared to bunt doesn’t mean he actually attempted to bunt.
Batters are usually prepared to swing. Does that mean we should charge them with strikes on ever pitch, or maybe should we use a different standard?
As a Brewers fan who was watching the game (and what a game! I might add…) I was very confused at the time and of course the Brewers’ announcers were not helpful in understanding how it could have been anything other than a foul bunt for an out. It only dawned upon me later that the umps must have decided that he pulled back from the bunt as he avoided the inside pitch. Of course, this was confirmed by the umps later. The home run on literally the next pitch was a gut punch, but as a fan of baseball generally, I had to appreciate it too. The home crowd sure loved it. And the bat flip really was top tier, even though I’m not usually about bat flips.
Foul bunt. The wording of the rule seems to point in the opposite direction, but…
A player could learn to bunt it foul with 2 strikes even while “pulling back”. With a little practice, it would probably be easier than actual bunting, since you’re unconcerned with where the ball is placed, as long as it’s somewhere to the backstop. You’d just need to make sure your bat is more or less parallel with the flight of the ball.
With that in mind, I think you take the batter’s intent (squared away to bunt) and the fact the ball glanced off his bat, and you call it a foul bunt.
You could define a rule that way, so that behavior after the pitch is thrown is irrelevant — square to bunt, spin away from a throw behind your head, it hits your flailing bat, foul bunt — but that’s not our rule. And I don’t see that we need to change it on your hypothetical of pull-back parallel-bat foul bunting, because honestly that sounds really hard.
Going in off of the article title, I assumed that the rules were VERY explicit in terms of what a “bunt attempt” is defined as–especially w.r.t. where the bottom hand must be. That the bottom hand isn’t even in there at all surprised me.
I thus think the rule should be rewritten, since there would now be an inconsistency between regular “unintentional” fouls and u. bunt fouls (my fave is an old clip of Willie Stargell ducking a high and tight pitch which ends up ticking his bat-the bat never budged off of his shoulder). Something as nebulous as “intent” shouldn’t figure into it at all.
And as the post I am replying to indicates, now there’s a possible way as a hitter to induce foul bunts which aren’t 3rd strikes.
As with nearly all the ‘foul bunt’ arguments-
You agree that the written rule says foul ball (“wording of the rule…opposite direction”), but you argue that the rule should be different than what it is (because of an issue with intent).
yep, correct.
If all else remains the same, but the ball had somehow gone fair, does the scorekeeper award him a sac bunt or groundout? I think the answer is sac bunt, because he bunted it. If this isn’t a foul bunt, a pull back fair bunt isn’t a…bunt
I love it
The question is about intention and when you decide intention matters. What I see is a guy who put his bat in the zone, and it largely stayed where it was until the ball bounced off of it. His body is falling back but the bat is mostly stable. As such, the bat was located where it was, intentionally, even if he did not at the moment of falling backward intending to make contact. It would be different if he were falling backward and flailing madly with the bat to keep his balance, accidentally contacting the ball.
If the ball hadn’t hit the bat, would it have been called a strike?
That’s the question that needs answering. If it would have been a strike, then it was an attempted bunt. With the ball hitting the bat, it then becomes an actual bunt that went foul, so he’s out.
Except it wouldn’t have been called a strike. We have directly relevant examples. Batters square to bunt and then bend back out of the way of an inside pitch, just like Lorenzen did here. That the ball hit Lorenzen’s bat isn’t relevant to whether he was bunting. Whether he was attempting to bunt is.
Look at HBP calls. If the hitter swings at a pitch that hits him, it’s a strike, not a HBP. So whether he was trying to swing becomes relevant. This is the same thing. Was Lorenzen trying to bunt? And we know the answer to that, because we’ve answered in innumerable times in cases where the ball didn’t hit the bat.
That the ball hit the bat here is not relevant to the question of whether the batter was attempting the bunt. Take that out of the question, and we know he wasn’t trying to bunt, therefore it’s not a foul bunt.
This shouldn’t even be controversial. I’m appalled Foul Bunt got as many votes as it did.
“That’s the question that needs answering.”
No, that’s the question you want answered, because it supports your conclusion.
Reasoning must ALWAYS precede the conclusion.
Rationalization (making up one’s justification after-the-fact) is the greatest human failing.
It might not be THE question that needs answering, but it is one.
The issue is intent to bunt. If Lorenzen did have intent to bunt, then if the ball hadn’t hit his bat, the rule regards such a ball as a strike. So answering the question about the strike also answers the question about intent.
He was squared up at the point the pitch was released in a 2 strike count. He was bunting.
You are advocating a different set of criteria. It’s a fair argument to make (i.e. re-write the rule), but it is not seeing something else, nor is it a disagreement about whether Lorenzen intended to bunt the ball during contact.
The article frames it as a 50-50, ‘eye of the beholder’ debate. It’s fun for people to take the ‘anyone could see anything’ perspective. It’s also fun and folksy for people to say, ‘a bunt is a bunt,’ and ignore the technicalities of the rule.
Further, there are some protest votes because people think the rule should be different.
Since the word ‘intention’ is in the rule, I believe that it’s a foul ball. Everything else, though, would have led me to say it’s a foul bunt.
How do you define intention? ‘There’s no way he’d go for it, it’ll hit him’ type logic that makes sense but hard to prove, or ‘he didn’t turn away from it and he kept his bat there’ physical evidence that goes against intuition? If I was the umpire, I’d have ruled a foul bunt in the moment, but I could see both ways, depending on how you determine his intent – with logical thinking or physical viewing.
Bunts aside, what is the rule if a hitter bails out but the beanball glances off the bat? Is that a foul, or is a swing required for a foul?
Its foul.
Similarly, if they swing its a strike, even if its deliberately thrown at them.
Upon further review, what needs investigation here is the extended dead-cockroach routine. Why is that?
Just as a parenthesis, I don’t agree that the Anderson attempt is all that similar to the Lorenzen one in question. Even apart from Anderson’s tacit admission by walking away that he was in fact attempting to bunt that ball, he was clearly steering the bat toward the ball — attempting to bunt — almost until it was on top of him, where Lorenzen, to me at least, appears to be bailing out immediately when he picks up the ball. I think the umps clearly called both plays correctly and it’s not actually all that difficult to distinguish them.
This is absurd. There is no possibility for intent after the ball leaves a pitcher’s hand. There is no time to perceive, process, devise, and intend anything. There is only reaction in those milliseconds. All intent occurs pre-pitch. His intent was decided when he squared to meet the ball with the bat and push it in the infield. Everyone knows that this is a bunt attempt. He was just not prepared for the location of the pitch. If the ball is high or low, but not in the batter’s box, and he tries unsuccessfully to pull that bat back and a foul occurs, we all call that a bunt foul, yes? This is definitely not a swing attempt, it is a bunt attempt. It is a foul bunt.
I half agree. (See my reply to the main discussion above). If there were no possibility for intent after the ball leaves a pitcher’s hand, batters could never check swing on pitches. But I do agree that his attempt to bunt was never withdrawn. Regardless of the fact that he was forced into a protective posture, he never withdrew his bunt attempt. Should have been strike 3.
The definition of “swing” is defined by intent and as far as I can tell, many players make decisions about whether or not to swing in the time it takes for a pitch to arrive.
if the ball went in play, as opposed to foul, it would be a bunt. So he bunted it foul. Just my .02
Except that, according to the rulebook definition, it wouldn’t be a bunt, because the contact with the ball was not intentional. I wish the definition did not include the word “intentionally”, but it does.
Great discussion. To me it all comes down to interpreting the batter’s intention. If he demonstrates clear intent to withdraw his bunt attempt and the ball still somehow hits his bat, it’s a foul ball. I get that rule. But to me, there has to be a very clear motion of the batter pulling the bat back away and out of the strike zone. The batter in this case never does that. He gets sort of corkscrewed down when the ball makes contact with the bat. It’s tough luck because yes, the pitch is way out of the zone and nearly hits him but you shouldn’t get the benefit of the doubt in that bunt situation. In the spirit of the rule, that should have been a foul bunt and strike three.
I chose not to vote, because I’d rather focus on this question:
— How have you seen umps call this play in the past?
In other words, what is the DE FACTO standard? Because that’s mainly what players and managers get really mad about — “you called that same pitch a ball all night, and NOW it’s a strike???”
Of course it’s a judgment call, and an uncommon play. But here’s why I would expect that to be called a foul bunt:
— Pitchers at bat almost never get the benefit of the doubt.
On a 3-0 count to a pitcher, most umps give inches off the plate in every direction. Check swing by a pitcher, almost always a strike.
I don’t think Lorenzen actually tried to bunt that ball. But I’ve seen many times that a pitcher in bunt posture tried to pull his body away from a close pitch and accidentally made contact, without any sign of intent at the moment of contact. That’s almost always called foul bunt, in my experience. The only difference here is the degree of movement. But he never really changed the bat’s position relative to his chest.
And in some sense, the very act of squaring around with 2 strikes suggests total commitment to the bunt. A small thing, but part of the picture.
Lastly, suppose the ball had gone fair and advanced the runners. I’m pretty sure the official scorer would call it a sacrifice. So, to me, by the standards of what I’ve seen, it was a foul bunt, strike three.
If “the very act of squaring around with 2 strikes suggests total commitment” then how come it’s not generally called a bunt-and-miss unless he extends the bat toward the ball? I feel like a lot of people are getting crossed wires here about the relationship between squaring around and actually attempting to bunt — maybe it’s helpful, when asking “is this a bunt attempt,” to ask yourself if you’d call it a strike if he missed?
Good point about “would it be a strike if he missed?”
Still a thorny issue, though. A “proper” sac attempt, as I was taught in Little League long ago, is not pushing the bat at the ball, but actually pulling back slightly just when the ball arrives, trying to “catch the ball on the bat.”
In that light, it’s very hard to judge intent, once the batter has squared around but then has to dodge the pitch. We presume he no longer means to bunt it, but if he’s using the classic technique, what visible difference would there be if he still did meant to bunt? That was the sort of context in which I meant that the act of squaring with 2 strikes had some bearing on the question of intent.
Again, I don’t think Lorenzen did mean to bunt once the pitch came so far in. I just don’t recall seeing an ump rule that way when there was contact after squaring around. I also don’t recall such a play where the batter recoiled this much from the pitch, but … I really hate rules that makes the ump judge intent; we think we know the intent here, but we’ve all seen players “intentionally” do some crazy things. So I’d rather see this ruling: He squared to bunt, and the ball hit the bat when the bat was still in a bunting attitude. Yer out.
I might be departing from the rulebook but it seems to me like as soon as he squares around to bunt the pitch/hit sequence becomes a bunt attempt even if he pulls back, unless he then tried a butcher-boy swing. Otherwise calling a foul bunt on borderline “attempts” comes down to judging the intent of the batter in that exact moment, which is needlessly difficult. Much easier to just say that he was attempting to bunt as soon as he squared around and never attempted a swing.
On the other hand, I’m probably wrong.
If that’s the case, every pitch following a batter squaring around should be called a strike.
I first thought it was a blown call but I have changed my mind. The key word to me is intentionally. He was clearly in a bunting position but all he was trying to do was get out of the way. The fact that he wasn’t making any type of bunting motion leads me to agree with the umpires.
But the reason the ball hit the bat anyone is that he spent 98% of the ball’s flight lining it up. He decided with about 4 hundredths of a second that he wanted to get out of the way and not let the ball hit his bat. Should his intentions not matter except the very last instant of the ball’s flight? I’m seeing a lot of grey area and not a lot “clearly the right call.”
My god this article is beautiful. Also , the umpires were 100% correct. Foul ball. I will say only that in my opinion, that he hit a home run only made the call more fun. If they’d called a foul & then he’d struck out looking, that would have been kinda lame. Being called out for a bunt attempt when you were just trying not to be murdered by the monster baseball is perhaps the most entertaining way to strike out. Unless someone has struck out on ball thrown past their head & it clips the bat & is caught? Someone should power rank the possible ways of being struck out.
I propose a follow up post. Greg Garcia was hit in the leg and foot a few minutes ago while attempting to bunt. He was arguably trying to pull the bat back but it was still called a strike. I’d like to se a similar article/poll for that play.
What I see here is some bad managing. Why are you having a guy who is certainly one of the 5 best hitters on your team whose homering once every 6 plate appearances bunt at all, much less with two strikes?
I thought this was about Urena throwing at Franmil Reyes
Analyzing a bunt attempt like this is way too subjective which causes the problem. It is pretty simple, the ball hit his bat- its a strike. As you perfectly shown in your other Gifs, a ball hitting a bat has always been a strike. How would a “robot umpire”call it? A strike I imagine. He was out, plain and simple.
well that’s just not what the rule says. Ball hits bat and goes into foul territory it’s a foul ball. Batter tries to bunt and intentionally hits the ball it goes foul it’s a foul bunt. Or maybe you meant they should change the rule such that if you square to bunt and the ball goes foul it’s a foul bunt regardless of whether you pulled back, dropped the bat entirely, or after squaring pulled the bat back and offered a full swing?
MLB contradicts its own rules.
As noted,
“A BUNT is a batted ball not swung at, but intentionally met with the bat and tapped slowly within the infield.”
Well, the rulebook clearly defines what is considered the “infield” and foul teritory is not considered part of the infield.
Rule 2.01:
“The infield and outfield, including the boundary lines, are fair territory and all other area is foul territory. ”
The rulebook also states that “An infielder is a fielder who occupies a position in the infield” and that ” all fielders other than the catcher shall be in fair territory” furthering the definition that the infield is in strictly in fair territory, and foul territory is not considered part of the infield.
So the rulebook states a bunt must be tapped within the infield, yet foul territory is not part of the infield. Therefore, it is impossible to bunt a ball foul.
Hey, downvote brigade: downvotes aren’t for expressing disagreement (comments are), they’re for when someone is being a jerk. If someone is just expressing an opinion that’s different from yours, leave it alone and upvote the opinions you agree with.
I’d like this to be the case, but there’s never been any statement from Fangraphs about what the buttons are supposed to be used for or why they’re there, so I think it’s pretty natural that people use them for the different (and in my view, too, dumb) purpose of expressing knee-jerk disagreement or dislike without having to use their words and state their reasons for thinking so. It’s probably best just to ignore the little numbers entirely, and given how this plays out I really wish they’d just get rid of them — they don’t add anything except to make people even crankier.
I voted foul ball because it directly led to a pitcher home run, which is just the best
He was pulling the bat back so that he could get it on the ball, which was an inside pitch. Foul bunt.
For it to be a pullback, he would have had to slide his top hand back toward the knob in an attempt to assume a *regular* batting stance. He didn’t do that, so he was still bunting. Sliding the hand back toward the knob is what indicates intent.
This is nonsense. By this logic, if a batter squares to bunt, but pulls back when he sees the pitch is in the dirt or three feet outside, he would have to slide his hand back toward the knob (which they almost never do) in order for the pitch not to be called a strike.
You can “check” a bunt attempt just as you can check a swing. In neither case do you need to change the position of your hand(s) on the bat.
That’s absurd. Moving his hand would give him less leverage, and thus make it harder to move the bat.
There are no rules about how the bat is held.
Ump made the right call here. For one, the rulebook is pretty clear about intent and Lorenzen was not trying to do anything besides get out of the way. Additionally, alhough this pitch was not supposed to be where it was— given where the catcher set up I think it was a failed slider— the also likely do not want to encourage throwing up and in (that is, at the hitter) like that by ringing up Lorenzen here.
Finally, Lorenzen’s bat flip the pitch after was great, immediately proving the uno made the right call
“A BUNT is a batted ball not swung at, but intentionally met with the bat and tapped slowly within the infield.”
I see a lot of comments saying “well the rule as written indicates it’s a swing, there is no debate! If you don’t like it, just change the rule.”
I disagree.
The rule as stated makes a clear distinction between a swing attempt and a bunt attempt. They are two different plays entirely. So much so that they needed to clarify the rule in the rulebook. We all agree on that.
As such, we need to treat what happens after the pitch is released differently, since they are viewed as two distinct events. Lorenzen was in some stage of bunting when the ball struck his bat. It wasn’t a perfectly squared away bunt. It wasn’t what you typically think of as a successful bunt, but he was in a bunting situation. It’s not like he squared away, pulled back and then moved his bat forward in a half swing type motion. That would be a foul ball.
No, Lorenzen was still in the process of bunting, and the ball hit his bat. It’s a foul bunt. Whether he was perfectly squared away or in full retreat, it doesn’t matter, he was in the process of bunting. The pitch just happened to be inside and up.
Now, if he had completely exited the bunting stance, generally fallen into a “swing” stance, then sure, foul ball. That’s not what happened here. His knees are bent in bunt mode. His hand is still mid-bat in bunt mode. The ball strikes his bat in bunt mode…
It’s a foul bunt, and I think the rulebook supports this view. The ump made a judgement call, and that’s fine, I can be convinced either way, but I think the certainty with which a lot of the comments supporting Foul Ball is misguided.
Agree completely. I am firmly in the “intent” camp (he was completely turned into a bunting position and still in a bunting position when the ball hit his bat that he was trying to pull out of the way), and I think this post summarizes my point of view on the matter in a much better way than I was able to do it which is why I hadn’t posted.
Except foul territory isn’t the infield. Therefore, no bunt.
Foul territory clearly is part of the infield, otherwise there’d never be any such thing as a foul bunt strikeout, even though it happens all the time.
This is acually incorrect. Check my comment earlier. The rulebook actually states foul territory is not part of the infield.
Bunting is not that difficult if you actually practice it. I doubt MLB players seriously practice bunts much… hence it seems difficult. I get that they lay a few down every day in BP, but that doesn’t help with much. In today’s game you have a bunch of technological advancements, and some real changes in how players prepare (diet, rest, exercise), but the on-field reps are certainly not there. In my life situational defense, base-running and just general baseball polish has never been less.
Aside from the rant, yeah that’s a foul ball. Even that weird play could have resulted in a fair bunt, what if that ball shoot off fair? Are we discussing anything at that point? If he doesn’t want to strike out on that he needs to pull the bat back, which he didn’t – baseball fundamentals…
I think you’re contending that it’s actually a foul bunt, not a foul ball?
1) The definition of a bunt needs to be changed. The current definition (“A BUNT is a batted ball not swung at, but intentionally met with the bat and tapped slowly within the infield.”) allows room for umpires to interpret ANY foul bunt as a regular foul: “Well, the ball was NOT tapped slowly within the infield, therefore it wasn’t a bunt.” Notice the language: the intent must only be to meet the ball with the bat.
A batter has SO much control of the bat when bunting that I propose we change the definition of a bunt to: “When a batter meets the ball with the bat while holding the bat with his hands more than 6″ apart.” Honestly, if you can’t get your bat out of the way while holding it like a staff, you deserve to foul out.
2) If the definition is NOT changed, then all you REALLY need to do, as a batter, is practice bunting while pulling the bat back, and you can have an infinite at-bat. You can foul balls off night and day, but because you were pulling the bat back, there was no “intent” to bunt fair, right?
Honestly, we could have avoided all this crap if we had a cleaner definition in the first place. If you hit a foul while holding the bat for a swing, its a foul. If you hit a foul while holding the bat for a bunt, its a foul bunt. Pretty simple huh? Nope, the umpires at the Reds-Brewers game fu–ed-up the call, and they proposed a stupid interpretation of the rules in order to cover their tracks. Way to go guys. *slow clap* I personally think the umpire’s union is too strong, but that’s for another day.
It isn’t even questionable. He was pulling back, therefore the hit doesn’t meet the explicit definition of a bunt according to the rule book.
If the bat misses the ball, it’s called a ball. So no foul bunt
Go to the first gif. Start it at the 1.8 second mark. You can advance it literally frame by frame. At 2.0, he’s clearly still trying to line it up with the bat. At 2.05, still trying to line it up. 2.11, still trying to line it up. 2.15, he still looks like he’s attempting to line it up.
2.18 is the first single frame where it appears that maybe, possibly, he’s reconsidering his attempt to bunt it. At 2.22-2.23 (somewhere in there, hard to tell without super high definition), it hits the bat. For the vast majority of the ball’s flight, he was attempting at it, and there’s maybe 5 hundredths of a second where he’s maybe not attempting to bunt it.
He might be pulling back, but just barely. Most of his “Back” motion actually happens after the ball hits the bat. To me, this is the same gray area as a check swing-If you attempt to swing, and then decide too late that you actually don’t want to swing, it’s too late. This feels like he decided too late that he actually didn’t want to make contact with the bunt, and then he did.
I’ve seen that called a foul bunt so, so many times. That contact is what you seek if you’re the pitcher in that situation.
It may be the right call, but I’ve never seen it called that way.
It looked to me like he was trying to put bat on ball even as he was falling down, if for no other reason than to protect his face. I’m sticking to my minority opinion that it was a Foul Bunt.
I agree.
As if had the ball landed fair he wouldn’t run to first and concede he wasn’t trying to bunt it.
Is it impossible to actually have a foul bunt if a bunt is only a bunt if it’s within the infield?
So….after reading the “intent” part on page 141, I have no problem with this being called a foul ball. He pretty clearly wasn’t trying to bunt. What I DO have a problem with is that I’ve seen this play dozens of times and NOT ONCE was it ever NOT called a strike. Which is why the announcers (who’ve seen a heckuva lot of games) were so stunned. It’s wrong to suddenly drop this on everyone after so many contrary examples. Consistency is the backbone of good umpiring and I’m fine with either call…..just not changing it from one (many) games to this one. And the Anderson 3rd strike foul (?) bunt only confirms this. No one argued that one! Because it’s what we’re used to.
Foul ball. The umpires and the replay officials got it correct – and God knows that I hate both groups and would love to say that they both screwed the pooch here, but no, they both got it exactly right.