THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Thursday, May 26, 2011

Posey at the plate

I did not see the play yet, but it’s irrelevant to this thread. 

The best part of Neyer’s article is this:

Of course it’s wrong. Baseball was not designed, and is not best played, as a contact sport.

He’s on the mark here.  If you look at other sports that are designed as contact sports, they have severe penalties for lopsided or otherwise unwarranted contacts.  Goalies are severely protected by the league, because they know they are not in a man-on-man situation.  They are sitting ducks, as well as focused on the puck.  And they are well-padded.  Catchers are sitting ducks, as well as focused on the ball.  And they are not well-padded.

The unwritten rule in hockey was always: you don’t touch my goalie, and I won’t touch your goalie.  But the NHL went further, and added actual rules, and giving the goalies more space: lines drawn on the ice that specifically says that the goalies are not to be touched within those lines.  It’s a safety zone.

In lower-level leagues, in order to prevent runner on catcher contact, you might sometimes see something called a “commit line”.  It’s a line drawn, about a third of the way between home and thirdbase, where once the runner crosses that line, the play turns into an automatic force play (and he can’t uncommit by going back).  The runner scoring from third base with the catcher at home will now treat that play identically to the batter trying to reach first base, with the firstbasemen standing on the bag.

Yes, it’s exciting to have the sliding play at the plate, as the ball comes from the outfield, and you have the swooping tag from the catcher as the runner slides under.  It’s also exciting when a skater rams right into the goalie, knocking him into the net, and getting the loose puck for an easy goal.

Is that particular excitement necessary?  As Neyer said, baseball is not a contact sport.  If a contact sport like hockey goes out of its way to protect its goalie, why would a non-contact sport like baseball shrug its shoulders?  (Hockey by the way has solved its bench-clearning brawl problem, which was also hugely exciting.  Baseball has yet to address it.)

Then ask yourself this other question: Suppose we always had the commit line, and then someone said: “You know what would be exciting?  Forcing the catcher to tag the runner, and allowing the runner to slide into the catcher, possibly injuring him!” Would people really clamor to bring that rule in?  Would fans clamor to allow skaters to knock goalies down?

You take a fan of multiple sports, of baseball and hockey, or baseball and football, and that same fan somehow will react to rule changes differently.  While that fan will see rule changes in hockey and football as an advance or evolution, as a sane response to the unnecessary roughness, that same fan will treat baseball as the pure virgin snow, where inertia is to be prized, and any changes nothing more than the yellowing of that snow.

Protect the catchers.

UPDATE:
Here’s the updated proposal.  That area inside the redlines, the redzone, belongs to the runner.  If the catcher is in that zone, and the runner is also in that zone, the runner is automatically safe.  The catcher must tag the runner from outside that zone.  Think of it like a goalie’s crease or a batter’s box.  If the runner makes contact with the catcher outside that zone, the runner is automatically out.