baseball rules - ever checked for consitency?

The Game Room
61

On the theory that the bird is part of the field, the same way mobile umps are. There is a rule as to what happens when an ump is hit by a batted ball in fair territory (and possibly other cases too): dead ball (IIRC).

Similarly for a ball that hits a field obstruction a the top of a dome in fair terriory. Which has happened. Not a no pitch, but a ground rule call, and the ball is dead on contact.

So this could be extended to other mobile and sentient beings that happen in the path of the ball as an extension of either the “hit the ump” rule or the “hit the stadium in fair ground” ground rule.

Not a perfect match, but probably OK either way.

62

not_alice, I think the reason that people are taking issue with what you’re saying — and the reason that any of the various example scenarios provided so far have failed to persuade you — is that the problem with your argument lies not in the difference between the practical versus theoretical aspects of baseball, but instead of the action you’re proposing.

In other words, for any example I (or Chronos, or Telemark, or anyone else) could give you, sure, you could come up with a rule to cover that situation and any number of permutations thereof. That’s not the issue, though.

Your original claim was that a trained engineer, or a subset of trained engineers and programmers, could conduct an analysis of the rules of baseball such that all possible situations, or categories of situations if you prefer, would be guaranteed to be covered. This is incorrect. Humans are fallible, and no one can predict everything (or even every *type * of thing) that might occur in the real world. That’s why some of the greatest works of architecture and engineering have collapsed, and computer programs worked on by the finest programmers still have unintended errors.

It doesn’t matter if you can concoct a rule that covers, say, a ball being blown into five distinct pieces; what matters is, would you personally have come up with the idea that that might occur? Even if you can be certain the answer is yes, you could certainly not predict every eventuality that might occur and assign it to its appropriate rule or category. No one could, engineer or not. That’s why these things still come up.

If your claim was that the rules of baseball could stand some scrutiny, and that the consistency might be greatly improved by having a trained analyst take a look at the ruleset as a whole, I don’t think you’d have encountered half the resistance you’re getting now. Are you perchance willing to restate the OP a bit?

63

I am a trained analyst.

There is no reason a game can’t be a closed system - in fact, to the extent that if fails to be internally consistent and complete, the game is weakened. Imagine a chess game where it was not clear how to move a pawn, or for that matter what happens when the pawn reaches the last row is not covered - you’d be stuck with either arguments each time it happened, or a pawn occupying a square and not able to move.

I promise you, there is likely very little in the rules that won’t cover edge cases if you simply list the edge cases. That is my professional judgment.

And there is at least one section where the rules appear ambiguous about whether of not a run scores.

Fixing these cases will not make the game more complex or more difficult to follow.

No, I don’t want to change the OP just because people want to answer a question that is not there.

The right answers to the OP are either yes,, no,, don’t know, don’t care, or ask such and such who might know more, with appropriate citations. I don’t really get why we are discussing Randy Johnson and birds, that is not what I asked about. I know I nibbled on it, but I regret it. Can we simply discuss the OP?

64

There’s a comment on rule 5.02 that states that if a ball come partially apart during a play, the play counts. I can’t find any rules that describe what distinguishes “partially apart” though. The stitching comes unraveled? The cover comes off? The ball breaks into multiple chunks? How much can a ball disintegrate before the rules break down and the play becomes meaningless? That’s a huge gap in the rules that is *impossible *to fill.

How do you define “minimal condition”? It’s a fuzzy term, not appropriate for a rigorous analysis of the rule set.

Them problem is that you’re approaching baseball as though it were a software system. The components of a software system are abstract entities with idealized properties. But important chunks of the system that is baseball are physical entities with real properties. The rules try to take into account that the behavior of a real baseball may deviate from the parameters of the ideal baseball, but they can never anticipate all the different ways that might happen.

65

missed edit window:

Of course I can and so can any number of hundreds of thousands or even millions of people around the world. We do this stuff for fun. Baseball rules are not complex in the larger scheme of things.

Were I teaching college level computer science or even logic, I would assign the OP as a freshmen level problem with no hesitation. I’d expect the same from 1st year law students, and probably first or 2nd year med students. Anyone claiming to be an engineer or analyst or similar that can’t take the existing rules of baseball and figure out if it is internally consistent and also complete is not worthy of the title IMHO.

Because it is easy to do, that is why I asked if anyone knew if MLB has done it or not. I am not really interested in excuses why it can’t be done, I dismiss those out of hand.

66

And I’m a professional game designer.

Note that chess does not depend upon the physical properties of its playing pieces. They do not form part of the system of constraints that defines the play space of chess. But baseball depends heavily on the physical properties of its equipment. And that’s an important difference. You can play chess with no pieces at all. Two chess masters can play an entire game just by calling moves out to each other. But you can’t play baseball with just your imagination. The rules have a physical component. And that physical component is what prevents them from being a closed system.

In my professional judgement, you’re wrong.

67

No.

68

Impossible for you maybe. I simply say it refers to a ball that is not in condition to be in play the next pitch.

If in some case it turns out that hitting the ball results in a mile long length of string, well, I guess you will end up with an inside the park homer since the batter-runner can’t be thrown or tagged out, then you get a new ball for the next pitch.

That is not so complicated is it? You play with what you have until the play is over, then you get new equipment. Same as anywhere else on or around the field.

Not sufficient to be used for the next pitch. Which is also fuzzy, but already in the rules. Remember, the point is to close the gaps by referring to existing rules and definitions where at all possible.

Speak for yourself :slight_smile:

I used to work for NASA on teams that managed the physics of satellite orbits and attitudes. Each scientific satellite had unique physical properties. We set up software and human processes that incorporated through analyses, and never lost one, despite at least one very serious edge case I described wlsewhere - an astronaut sent one tumbling in 6 dimensions during a repair mission by grabbing it and pulling it with his gloved hand.

Those software systems had millions of lines of code, many orders of magnitude more complex then the brief baseball rulebook.

Really.

Analyzing baseball rules for completeness and consistency is child’s play for a pro. That might surprise you, but that you are surprised or even skeptical does not make it not so.
The rules try to take into account that the behavior of a real baseball may deviate from the parameters of the ideal baseball, but they can never anticipate all the different ways that might happen.
[/QUOTE]

69

This thread seems to now be a closed system. Maybe now we can get the OP to actually bring some examples to the table and show off his professional analytical abilities.

70

[quote=“The_Hamster_King, post:66, topic:495395”]

And I’m a professional game designer.

Note that chess does not depend upon the physical properties of its playing pieces. They do not form part of the system of constraints that defines the play space of chess.

But the board does. And if you read the baseball rules, you have read it by now, right? - you will see that the playing space is sufficiently constrained (or at least close enough for this post) to eliminate most physical issues. Ground rules cover most of the rest already. Maybe all of the rest, that is really part of what the OP asks.

There is nothing different about the game of baseball on one field or another that the rules don’t already cover.

Really? Specifically what is different about the physics of, say the New Yankee Stadium from, say, the old Polo Grounds, or any other stadium past or present, that is not covered in the rules already?

Remind me not to hire you to analyze or design test cases or write complex mission critical code then :slight_smile: J/k, this is not the pit.

71

That is my suspicion. For you does it rise above that, have you seen or participated in something that would provide supporting evidence, or is it just a guess like mine?

72

Different people may interpret “in condition to be in play” differently. It’s very subjective. If you want to analyze the rules rigorously, you need a definition that’s unambiguous.

Baseball is not software.

If the constraints governing the play of baseball were completely abstract and rigorously defined, then I would agree with you.

73

I have already done so repeatedly on the cases you bring up, and also on the stealing home case, which no one seems to have taken an interest in discussing or rebutting.

But don’t say it isn’t there.

I might ask around at other baseball nerd places, and if the answer remains no, then I might take it on as I said. Not here though, this is not the place.

74

It is already part of the rules.

well duh, right, that’s what I am saying. This is a simple game, not a complex one.

But then you seem to mistaking the difference between analyzing and repairing.

I don’t know what the results of such an analysis would find, but I have strong suspicions that there is at least one case where one interpretation of the rules allows a run to score, and an different interpretation prevents the run from scoring.

As a game designer, do you really think it is a good idea in a deterministic (not based on randomness) game to not see if the scoring (however you define it for your game) is not consistent?

Say what you will, but baseball’s scoring rules are deterministic. The players and fans deserve to know unambiguously whether a certain play is a scoring play or not, wouldn’t you agree?

75

Uh, no it doesn’t. People play chess in their heads all the time. The physical properties of the board are immaterial to the rules of chess.

“Most … most” … yes, but not ALL. Any as an engineer you should note that for a rigorous analysis, “most” is not good enough.

Say there’s a depression in the outfield caused by a leaky pipe. The ball rolls into it and the fielder must retrieve it. How deep can it be before the play is ruled void? One inch? Twelve inches? Thirty-six inches? How do the existing rules of baseball RIGOROUSLY address fluctuation in the physical space of the playing field?

76

Cite?

77

I would have heard or read about it if any such attempt had been made. In addition, the large number of omissions and minor inconsistencies in the rules make it obvious that this is not a priority (nor should it be). Hell, the first rule in the book says that baseball is a game of nine players, and yet the DH makes ten.

78

I don’t want to discuss chess. You mentioned that the fact that the field is physical distinguishes it from chess in the sense that the field, being real, can not be described or accounted for in the rules.

An actual perusal of the rules and definitions on mlb.com would belie that claim. Start with Section 1.

In case you haven’t noticed, I haven’t conducted the analysis yet. If you have, and you have a counter example, please raise it. And if you can show that the rules are vague on the way this field vs. that one is configured, then that just proves my point that the rules are either incomplete or inconsistent or both.

And as a “game designer”. perhaps you are not aware of what an analysis actually is? Or actually do it for a living? Because design is not the same as analysis, you know, right?

I don’t know and neither do you. That is why I wonder if anyone has looked into it.

I did notice on a scan earlier today that at least part of the field is specified to be level, maybe all of the area between the foul lines. If it is not, then existing ground rules will cover it, as they do when a ball gets hung up in the ivy at Wrigley Field, where other stadiums have smooth surfaces.

You don’t need to define the variations, only have a ground rule to ciover what happens if a variation comes into play. This might or might not be different from an online game, it depends on the level of abstraction you are coding at I suppose. And I don’t know if you design online games or not.

I also seem to recall from past readings, that at least some other sports organizing bodies , such as football, DO define the rise that is allowed in a field, presumably for drainage reasons. There is usually going to be a hump in the center and the rules account and allow for that.

If we extend your argument, even a game such as tennis, which has rules far simpler than baseball even, can not be a closed and consistent rules system, because of the physics involved, is that a correct understanding of your position?

79

Are you on the/a rules committee or something? Can you elaborate on your statement that if this happened (I asked about any rules sanctioning body in the world, IIRC) that you would have heard about it?

80

OK, then, how much deviation from level is allowed? And if it turns out that one region of the field is three Ångstroms lower than another region of the field, what are you supposed to do about it?