11/05/24
April 06, 2014
New Home Plate Rule Confuses Yankees: The New York Yankees lost a run at home Saturday on a play where they believe the plate was illegally blocked. New rules this season don't allow a catcher to block the plate before the ball arrives, part of an effort to reduce violent collisions. Toronto Blue Jays catcher Josh Thole was straddling the plate as Francisco Cervilli ran home and tagged the runner out. The Yankees lost 4-0. "This is going to be the toughest replay of all of them because it's such a judgment," Yankees manager Joe Girardi said. "The way it was explained to us, if the catcher is in front of home plate toward third base, straddling the base, that is considered blocking home plate if you don't have the ball. And I believe that's how it was."
There was a play in a Giants game a few days ago where the runner didn't even try to score for fear of colliding with the catcher. If he had slid, he likely would have touched the plate before the catcher tagged him. I need some more examples of these new rules in practice to understand them.
posted by rcade at 07:29 PM on April 06, 2014
This rule is a disaster and is going to bite MLB in the ass during the playoffs.
posted by phaedon at 12:47 AM on April 07, 2014
Yeah, that rule is going to be a problem. A real issue I had was that the replay seemed to show Cervelli was actually safe, but Girardi thought the run would count due to the catcher blocking the plate. He would have had to challenge the play to have them check to see if the actual safe/out call was blown.
It's strange that a play can still be reviewed for something (in this instance the blocking of the plate) but even if it's apparent the actual safe/out call was missed, it won't be changed unless the manager challenges it. Here I was under the assumption the goal was to get calls correct.