Baseball Scoring Question

Factual Questions
1

I work for the Tri-City Dust Devils (Colorado Rockies) of the Northwest League and we had an interesting play today.

**Situation:**Man on 1[sup]st[/sup], one out, count is 2-2.

Action: The pitch is VERY inside, the batter swings but tries to check up. The ball gets away from the catcher. Our runner on 1[sup]st[/sup] takes off and gets to 3[sup]rd[/sup]. Our guy complains that he was hit by the pitch, Blue says that he went around so the fact that he migh have been hit, is negated by the strikeout.

But here is the kicker…Blue tells our guy on third to return to first base.

I don’t understand this. At first, I thought that he swung, scoring the K, but then the ball DID hit him, causing the dead ball. I got confirmation from our PA Announcer that this might be the case.

But our Radio Announcer disagrees claiming that it would still be a live ball, Blue screwed up, and he screwed our runner out of 3[sup]rd[/sup] base. I still disagree as I think it makes no sense (Why couldn’t the catcher then just kick every third strike as hard as he could?). But alas I’m a recent high school graduate, and this guy has been broadcasting sports for years in our city.

It doesn’t matter what SHOULD have happened, as my scoring would have been the same, so I guess it could be “Pointless” but I think our National Pastime deserves GQ.

2

The Ump made the right call. If you swing at a pitch that hits you it is a strike. Period. The ball is dead and base runners cannot advance.
The rule book says:
“The batter becomes a runner and is entitled to first base without liability to be put out (provided he advances to and touches first base) when …(b) He is touched by a pitched ball which he is not attempting to hit unless (1) The ball is in the strike zone when it touches the batter, or (2) The batter makes no attempt to avoid being touched by the ball; If the ball is in the strike zone when it touches the batter, it shall be called a strike, whether or not the batter tries to avoid the ball. If the ball is outside the strike zone when it touches the batter, it shall be called a ball if he makes no attempt to avoid being touched. APPROVED RULING: When the batter is touched by a pitched ball which does not entitle him to first base, the ball is dead and no runner may advance”.

http://www.mlb.com/NASApp/mlb/mlb/baseball_basics/mlb_basics_batter.jsp