The Cheater’s Guide to Baseball Blog

Yesterday, Mark Stacy wrote:

There’s a play I see sometimes that probably doesn’t strictly fall into the category of cheating, but … I call it “out on general principles.” Such a play occurred in last night’s Pirates-Marlins game.

Dan Uggla was on second with less than two outs, no runner on first, when the batter grounded to short. Uggla tried for third anyway and Jack Wilson threw to Jose Castillo at third for the tag out. Well … it was hard to tell from the replay, but let’s just say it appeared possible that Uggla beat the tag. But the out call stood and Uggla didn’t argue.

My take on this is that if you do something that strikes the umpire as dumb, such as try to advance on a ball right in front of you, you have to be really, REALLY safe (like the third baseman drops the ball or the throw goes into the dugout) or you’ll get called out whether you’re safe or not. “General principles” because the principle is, if you do something dumb you deserve to get called out.

I write about this in the book a bit, and it’s worth expanding on a little.

Umpires get a lot of calls wrong. They’re human, and perception’s a funny thing. There are two ways you’ll frequently see outs go the wrong way:
- as Mark notes, on many plays, there’s almost a default call, and you have to clearly be on the other side of it to be called out
- the umpire seemingly makes a decision based as much on the aesthetics of the play as what actually happened

It’s also true (as I point out in the book) that there are wide variances between umpires in how often they call out runners stealing second, for instance. But generally speaking, on close plays at first, the runner’s out. If you have a Tivo or similar DVR, watch how many plays the runner actually does get there in time: a couple years ago, when I was just starting the book, I couldn’t believe how severe the prejudice is. To be safe consistently, you really have to be over the base as the ball arrives, and even that doesn’t guarantee you’ll get the call.

Generally, this is accepted. In practice, umpires as a group enforce it on each play, so there’s no particular bias against any team or player.

More interesting is the “good-looking” play. I jokingly complain in the book about Derek Jeter’s sweep tags (because when he pulls it off against my home team it’s hard to appreciate his artistry), which sometimes don’t even touch the runner but still get him the call, but it’s true in many other cases. It’s much the same way umpires really are to some extent vulnerable to pitch framing, where a pitch may be called a strike if it goes where the catcher set up and they catch it cleanly but a ball if they have to reach across to snag it as it almost gets by them.

If a third baseman receives a throw from the outfield early, fields it cleanly, and applies a smooth tag, they’re far more likely to get the call even if the runner gets a hand in, and if the throw comes in off the base and requires the fielder to dive to make the tag, they don’t get the benefit of the prejudice to call an out.

It’s an interesting phenomenon, and as long as umpires are human (and that’s a whole other subject) it’ll be another area where players can find ways to take advantage of them, and why sometimes, the smoothness of the tag matters just as much as whether or not the tag is actually made.