I don’t know whether it counts as at an official level but stats are now kept in rugby league and it is possible to bet on say, Joe Bloggs to make over or under 20 1/2 tackles in a game.
A few years back there was some controversy about a change made, after the game, that resulted in a different winner in a season long fantasy tipping competition.
Yes. For example, basketball and hockey have rules about who gets an assist on a scoring play.
Football has rules for assigning sacks, tackles and any number of other things.
I always blather about this, but it should be noted that baseball’s Official Rules on these things is a pastiche of nineteenth century stuff we can’t get rid of, modern sensibility where they could add it, value judgments and things that don’t make a great deal of sense. It should not be taken as a perfect arbiter of justice because it’s got a lot of logical errors on it.
Yes. More particularly, the scoring rules are both a derivation of Henry Chadwick’s idiosyncratic ‘moral’ view of baseball; and, based on a very different version of the game in which, for example, fielders did not use gloves.
Every sport has rules, often very detailed, about how to compile statistics. However baseball is the only sport of which I am aware, for which the scoring rules are incorporated within the playing rules. For every other sport, the playing and scoring rules are separate.
That is not the case. As has been already pointed out, hockey’s Official Rules specify the scoring rules for assigning goals and assists.
They’re only incorporated in the sense that they’re in the same rulebook. Baseball’s scoring rules are in a separate section of the rules, and are written in such a way that nothing in the playing rules depend on them.
Is baseball the only sport that has a required official whose only role is to make these non-game affecting decisions? Who the teams are required to treat with dignity and respect?
“The official scorer is an official representative who is entitled to
the respect and dignity of his office and shall be accorded full
protection by the Office of the Commissioner, with respect to
Major League scorers, and the League President, with respect
to Minor League scorers. The official scorer shall report to the
appropriate league official any indignity expressed by any manager,
player, club employee or club officer in the course of, or
as the result of, the discharge of official scorer duties.”
The NBA rule book has several mentions of the official scorer but I don’t believe that it defines the term anywhere. In basketball the official scorer actually has a responsibility that affects game play. He charges teams with mandatory timeouts if they haven’t taken them following the rules.
I posted that mostly because I thought the “respect and dignity” part was pretty funny. It turns out the MLB official scorer does have a responsibility that could affect the game - if somehow the umpires and teams lose track of how many outs there are and start to switch sides before the 3rd out, the scorer is supposed to correct them.
There was a classic case of defensive indifference in yesterday’s game between the A’s and the Astros. It was the bottom of the 9th, and the Astros were ahead 6 to 4. With the A’s at bat and two out, Chad Pinder walked. Pinder advanced to second on the first pitch to the next batter (Stephen Vogt). There was no throw, and neither the second baseman nor the shortstop moved to cover the base. Pinder didn’t represent the tying run, so it didn’t matter whether he was on first or second.
Vogt reached on an error on which Pinder scored. Arismendy Alcántara pinch ran for Vogt and was caught stealing to end the game during the next at-bat. Since Alcántara represented the tying run, the Astros weren’t indifferent to which base he occupied.
Why isn’t “different” the opposite of “indifferent?”
Except with respect to potential force plays.
With two out the difference is sufficiently tiny to merit the application of the defensive indifference rule.
Had there been none out, the DI rule probably would not be justified, since Pinder’s advancement could have significantly changed the likelihood of subsequent runners scoring.
You can differ or you can be indifferent.