Tag: weird baseball rules

The Braves’ Adam Duvall was called out on a home run after umpire’s weird blunder

You don’t see that happen too often.

Braves outfielder Adam Duvall has quietly been having one of the best offensive seasons in baseball. He leads the National League with 109 RBI. He’s second with 37 home runs. And he’s one of the main reasons that the Braves have been able to stay in first place despite a season-ending injury to Ronald Acuña Jr.

But he absolutely deserved to finish Wednesday’s game with an extra home run and RBI to his name. He has umpires Sam Holbrook and Mike Muchlinski to blame for that.

In the first inning at Chase Field, Duvall drove a fly ball to deep center field that cleared the fence after bouncing off Diamondbacks outfielder Jake McCarthy’s glove. It should have been a home run. Yet, confusion from the umpiring crew had the Braves in disarray on the base path.

Neither Holbrook (the crew chief) nor Muchlinski at second base made a ruling on the play, which had Austin Riley thinking the ball was caught. As Riley went back to first to tag, he let the confused Duvall pass him on the base path. That mishap took away Duvall’s home run.

This brought the rarely seen MLB Rule 5.09(b)(9) into play, which determines that the runner is out when he passes a preceding runner. Because Duvall ended up in front of Riley, Duvall was called out while Riley and Freddie Freeman were able to score. It was ruled a two-run single for Duvall with an out on the base path instead of a three-run home run.

Baseball is weird like that.

Still, all that confusion really fell on the umpires. In that situation, you’d like to see the crew briefly call the play dead to determine what happened (and get the call right) rather than punish a team for reacting to a no-call. Had they called it a home run from the start, Riley wouldn’t have retreated to first, and Duvall wouldn’t have passed him.

The Braves can laugh about it, though, because the call didn’t impact the game. Atlanta went on to win, 9-2.

Umpire’s counting mistake confused Braves and Dodgers when he enforced rarely called interference rule

Counting is hard.

It’s not every game that you see players on both MLB teams at a complete loss over a rule, but home plate umpire Mike Estabrook managed to make that happen on Monday. Losing track of the count will do that.

During the series opener between the Braves and Dodgers, Ozzie Albies tried to move into scoring position in the eighth inning on an attempted steal of second base. Jorge Soler was at the plate with a 1-1 count and swung (and missed) at the pitch from Corey Knebel.

That was when all the confusion started. Jomboy Media came in with an excellent video breakdown of the several-minute delay at Dodger Stadium.

While Albies successfully swiped second, he was initially called out because Soler’s momentum from the missed swing caused an interference with the throw. We can see that, yeah, Soler was sort of in the way of the throw.

At that point, though, the enforcement of MLB Rule 6.03(a)(3) went off the rails because Estabrook lost track of the count. According to the rule, the batter is ruled out on an interference, and the baserunner has to return to the previous base. But because Estabrook thought Soler struck out (the count was 1-1, not 1-2), Albies had to be out as punishment for the interference while Soler’s strikeout counted separately. You can’t call a player out twice, after all.

Again, Soler didn’t strike out. It was the second strike. So, both teams were standing around laughing out of confusion and trying to get a sense of what was going on.

Here’s the rule:

If the batter interferes with the catcher, the plate umpire shall call “interference.” The batter is out and the ball dead. No player may advance on such interference (offensive interference) and all runners must return to the last base that was, in the judgment of the umpire, legally touched at the time of the interference. If, however, the catcher makes a play and the runner attempting to advance is put out, it is to be assumed there was no actual interference and that runner is out—not the batter. Any other runners on the base at the time may advance as the ruling is that there is no actual interference if a runner is retired. In that case play proceeds just as if no violation had been called.

Yes, every MLB rule is worded in the most incoherent way possible.

Eventually, the umpires would go to the headset and figure out that Soler didn’t strike out on the play. They’d accurately call him out for interference and let Albies return to first safely. You also have to love how Albies didn’t really know what happened in the first place because he didn’t see the play due to the slide into second.

I can only imagine how confused the fans at the game were — just seeing both teams standing around with no explanation. But that’s the magic of baseball — sometimes nobody knows what’s happening!

Freddie Freeman would end up grounding out to end the inning, and the Braves would lose, 5-3.

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