Four Out Inning?

The Game Room
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Crazy play in major league baseball last night. The Pirates got a run because the Nationals failed to get four outs in an inning.

Good explanation and video here

To summarize…Bucs have runners at 2nd and 3rd with one out. Batter hits a low liner to the first baseman. Both runners are running on contact. The first baseman makes the catch for the second out…and then it get weird.

He throws the ball to third base, and the following things happen, in this order…

The runner advancing from third crosses home plate
The third baseman tags the runner advancing from second, who is now standing on third.
The third baseman steps on third base.

The result is a double play and the runner from third scores a run.

Because the third out was made via a tag out, the run counts because it occurred prior to the tag. In order to prevent the run from scoring, the Nats would have had to made an appeal play for a “fourth out” on the runner who left third too early. The fact that the third baseman stepped on the base does not constitute a valid appeal. He would have needed to make it clear to the umpire that he intended that to be an appeal play. Alternatively, had the third baseman stepped on third prior to the tagging the runner who had advanced from second, that would have made the runner from third the third out, and no run would have scored.

What a country.

Anyway…this left me with a question. In reading the rules, it seems that any time a runner advances on a caught fly ball without tagging, he is put out via appeal. Section 5.09(c) deals with appeal plays:

Any runner shall be called out, on appeal, when: (1) After a fly ball is caught, he fails to retouch his original base before he or his original base is tagged.

I’m familiar with the traditional appeal play on a runner that left too early. The pitcher steps off the rubber prior to the next pitch and throws to the base where the runner was originally located. The position player steps on the base.

If I’m reading the rule correctly and runners that leave early can also simply be tagged out, even if they’re standing on the next base, why isn’t this standard procedure for the defense? If a runner tags on a fly ball and is advancing from second to third, even it it’s a close play at third, why wouldn’t the defense ask for an appeal every time? Why the rigmarole of sending the ball back to the pitcher, the pitcher toes the rubber, steps off, throws to second?

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Everything is happening to the Nats this year, and some of it isn’t even their own fault.

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You only need to send the ball back to the pitcher to step on the rubber if the ball is dead. It is not automatically dead in the situation you describe. However, one reason to throw the ball to the second baseman is the second base umpire is probably the one who will know if the runner left early. This is particularly true if there is also a runner on third. The third base umpire will be watching to see if he left early. I suspect if you tag the runner on third and appeal to the third base umpire that he left early, he might confer with the second base umpire. I assume, but don’t know, that you don’t need to appeal to the “obvious” umpire.