While attending a minor league game yesterday an interesting question came up. Is it legal for a batter to hit a pitch that has bounced in the dirt before crossing the plate? That is, if the pitcher thrown a pitch that hits in front of the plate then bounces in such a way the hitter can swing and hit the ball while he (the batter) is still in the batter box. Would this be a hit? If he missed it, would it be a strike?
The 8-10 people in my section (all claiming to be avid fans) were fairly evenly divided on the issue. Half said that the pitch would be a ball and half thought the ball would still be in play and is legal to swing (and hit).
I must confess that in my 45+ years of watching baseball I have never seen the situation. I skimmed the offical rule book but didn’t see it addressed there (although I’m sure it’s there some where).
I’m not doubting your answer Zev (sounds right to me), but where did you come up with it?
I’d be interested to see if it’s actually in the rulebook, as like the OP pointed out they’d never seen it.
If you can cite some pertinent rules, that’d be interesting. Or if you could relate a story in which this happens and the umpire’s ruling, that’d be interesting too.
I realize this doesn’t answer the specific situation, but the rulebook makes no distinction between a bouncing pitch and any other pitch that’s not a strike. You can get a hit on a 58-footer just as you can on a pitch that is over your head.
Says nothing about the state of the ball. Technically a batter could swing at an intentional walk pitch.
I’ve just reviewed the entire MLB rulebook (Oy!). At no point during discussions of pitches or dead balls does the ‘bouncing off the dirt’ concept come up. From that, and the rule above, I would infer that a batter has the right to swing at a pitch that bounces off the turf.
Look at it this way … if a ball bounces before reaching the plate and the player swings and misses, it’s a strike. This is not a rare event at all, especially when a pitcher has a nasty sinker. So if the player actually makes contact on such a pitch and puts the ball in play, it should be legit. Of course, if the batter didn’t swing, it’d been called a ball. Anyhow, the official rules say:
If you don’t believe that batters can swing at pitches in the dirt and hit them, then you haven’t seen Vladimir Guerrero play. He’ll swing at just about anything. And make contact too.
Tony Oliva was notorious at his ability to hit bad pitches.
Then there are guys who swing at balls that bounce because they stink.
Didn’t that happen at an All-Star Game a few years ago? IIRC, it was one of the Phillies, like Kruk or something. He was being intentionally walked and was steamed because he wanted to hit. So for shits & giggles he lunged at the pitch and swung at it.
The A’s (IIRC) set up Johnny Bench that way in the '74 Series, I forget the pitcher. After running the count full, and a long conference on the mound, they set up the catcher outside for an apparent intentional walk, then caught him looking with a fastball for a strike.
Rico Carty, a former batting champ and a Puerto Rican, was once asked why so many other Latino players seemed to be such free swingers. His reply: “A walk won’t get you off the island.”
I recently saw this occur. Batter had two strikes and swung at a ball in the dirt that the catcher caught. The ump ruled that it was the equivalent of an uncaught foul tip and kept the count at two strikes.
May 16, 1972: In the Reds 4–3 win over the Giants, Pete Rose knocks in the winning run on an attempted intentional walk. On a 3–0 count, Giants pitcher Ron Bryant comes close to the plate with ball four and Rose drives it on the ground and reaches base on an error.
In that situation the batter must have hit the ball or else it would have been strike three. Depending upon the outs and base runners, if a batter swings at a pitch in the dirt and misses for strike three, the batter has to be put out on the bases.
As far as bouncing a ball in the dirt in front of home plate, this is pretty much how Trevor Hoffman of the Padres makes his living. I have watched him his entire career, and the more velocity he loses as the years go by, the more he “crafts” his pitches. He seems to be the current master at setting up batters with a slider in the dirt before striking them out with an 86 mph fastball on the next pitch.
Just because the OP posted a decent question, and a subsequent link sent me to the MLB rulebook, I have one question: Can someone explain to me what a legitimate “error” is? I looked in the defenitions section, but couldn’t find it. And to me-an engineer-an ‘error’ seems kind of nebulous. Heck, they report it in the papers, but I don’t know what it is.
I stick to hockey, and occasionally play some softball or football. That’s more or less all I know.
Errors are explained in section 10.13 (scroll down). There is a lot to it, but the basic idea is that an error is a situation where a fielder physically mishandles the ball in such a way as to allow the other team to reach a base that they otherwise wouldn’t have, or to extend an at bat (by failing to catch a foul fly ball). There are exceptions and special cases, but that is basically it.