The “dropped third strike” rule applies anytime that first base is unoccupied and/or there are two outs AND the catcher fails to secure the pitched ball. A wild pitch can allow the batter to reach first as long as it is a strike (the batter can swing at a ball far out of the zone for a strike if we wants too).
A dropped foul ball is scored as an error if, in the official scorekeeper’s opinon, the player reasonably should have been caught it. I’m pretty sure, anyway.
The rulebook says:
, so a dropped foul ball is an error.
The batter doesn’t automatically get first base on a wild pitch, but he can try:
. The rule makes no distinction between a passed ball or wild pitch; it just says a “third strike not caught”.
That first rule reference should be 10.13, not 0.13.
Until about 1950, catchers were charged with errors on dropped third strikes where a batter reached. It was not ruled a wild pitch or passed ball.
Mickey Owen’s famous dropped third strike in Game 4 of the 1941 World Series was immortalized in his NY Times obit as a “passed ball”, but it wasn’t. It was an error.
The NY Times didn’t print my correction.
Hence, I get all huffy about it here!
Pitchers DO get a lot of errors, though, considering the number of plays they make; pitcher fielding percentages are generally quite low, in the range of .950 to .960. Pitchers as a group have the worst fielding percentages of any position except third basemen.
Randy Johnson, of course, is arguably the worst fielding player to ever be a successful major league baseball player; going into 2005 his career fielding percentage was an astoundingly bad .899. No, that is not a typo.