THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

An unsporsmanlike conduct in football would be 15 yards. That’s a pretty good chunk of real estate.

Ouch.  It does seem though that refs in football don’t mind calling that penalty (or any penalty really).  You think the whole nature of start/stop and having 11 officials on the field contributes to that?  It’s almost like penalties is an accepted thing in football.

Isn’t a warning similar enough to a yellow card?  As opposed to individual though it is team wide to each side.

A technical foul is usually called when a player is to demonstrative with his anger by a call.  Or if two players talk too much they each get a tech, with no foul shots and that is like a yellow card.  If it crosses the line to a foul that is too rough or intentional there are more calls that the refs have at their disposal.

I like that there is some room in sports for players to police themselves.  It adds some narrative I guess.  It is not very rational, but as long as they don’t cross the line I am okay with it.

The warnings thing is that both sides get the warning.  Accumulation of yellow cards goes on your record, and you can handle additional punishment beyond just 2 yellows = ejection.

@4:
That was the point of the second sentence.  I do not know that it would work giving individual warnings.

In the linked article, if the ump just cards Price, there is no stopping the Red Sox from hitting a player next inning.  I am guessing the Ump was aware of the situation from the night before, and that is why he gave the quick warning to both sides, to say “All right, all even, move it along”

I guess I am unclear on what you are trying to prevent.  Is it players getting ejected?  Is that what is too harsh?  I think yellow cards in soccer are pretty harsh.  I don’t follow soccer as much as I like, but it seems that a yellow card can really change play, when you factor in the limited substitutions and a second is ejection and the team plays a man down.  And aren’t there additional penalties if they get ejected for two yellows, or is that just for a red card?

I agree that a baseball ejection would be too harsh if the team had to lose a player on the field the rest of the game.

Thinking about it more, I guess a warning followed with an ejection can be pretty harsh because it can change the way the pitcher pitches if they are afraid to pitch inside.  Especially in the situation linked where the other pitcher hadn’t even stepped on the mound yet (if I read it right)

I guess leaving it to the umps discretion works, but that can be dicey too.

Yellow cards carry over into future games.

Tango/2: There are 7 officials on a football field in the NFL and college. A head referee, an umpire, a head linesman, a line judge, a back judge, a field judge, a side judge.

Yellow cards developed over a long period of time; originally they were just warnings, then they became a “booking” - a written warning (the ref carries a small book that he writes the notes for the game into, including naming the players he has giving a written warning to).

Then a rule was introduced (somewhere between the two wars) that any player given a second booking would be automatically sent off.

Issuing cards so that the booking was clear to the crowd, and so a second booking produced a yellow and a red instead of a straight red (so it was obvious that it was a second booking) started in the seventies.

Counting up the numbers of cards and then issuing penalties for accumulating too many cards didn’t start until the late eighties / early nineties.

Yellow cards don’t carry over as yellow cards into a future game, ie a player with a yellow in the previous game and a yellow in the current game is not sent off.  But there is a count up, and after so many yellows (normally three or five) a player gets a one-game suspension.  The team is not penalised by playing short-handed unless the player gets a second yellow in the same game.

The code sucks, if for no other reason than that we can never be sure which point of the code is being enforced. First, we have to assume that Youk was plunked, not for hitting the game winner Wednesday, but for accidentally kicking Kotchman Tuesday and not being contrite about it. I have no idea why we’d assume that when Youk had 4 PAs Wednesday without incident.

But anyway, I’ll concede that point. What that leaves us is the idea that because Youk isn’t cuddly enough he deserves to have someone throw a baseball at him within a foot or so of his head. That’s stupid and wrong. And Youk’s complaint about the warning is just as stupid and wrong because no one should throw a baseball at Evan Longoria either. The warning is good because it stops the stupidity before it escalates.

As for fixing it, there are plenty of options. If the defensive team commits the infraction, give any runners one base and award the batter 1st. If the bases are empty, give the batter two bases, just to be sure that there’s not an incentive to plunk someone with 2 out and nobody on. Penalizing a batter or runner is simple too. He’s out if he would otherwise have been safe. If he would have been out, tack an extra out on.

There are probably better options, but those are what I came up with in a couple minutes and seem proportional to me.