Last night, the Phillies beat the BoSox 3-2 in 10 innings. Nothing remarkable about the game, except for the ending. Philly loaded the bases with no outs in the bottom of the tenth, and Edmundo Sosa checked his swing with the count 2-2. Philadelphia appealed, and after a replay, catcher’s interference was ruled. The batter was awarded first base, and the winning run scored.
It’s the first time an MLB game has ended on catcher’s interference since 1971.
Clear interference. Here’s the problem. From the above camera it’s pretty clear that the batter’s back foot is behind where the batters box should be. Catchers are further forward than ever due to the emphasis on framing. Umps let batters ignore the batters box once the line is obliterated. If you are going to allow both to happen this will continue to occur.
Do you have a url for the above camera? You certainly can’t tell from the linked video in the OP.
Jomboy Media has a video you can watch both on X and Instagram with a good angle in slomo.
Good above-the-batter view.
Came up in my feed. I’ll try and find it.
Here, I did a screenshot of the batter during the play and uploaded to Imgur, it should show pretty clearly what happened.
To my eye, he was standing right on the line in the back of the batter’s box, as you can still see where it was supposed to be (smudged out and grey). It’s also in-line with the box on the other side of the plate, where you can see part of the white line still visible. He wasn’t that far back.
Yeah that shows it. He’s not as far back as some but if you extrapolate off of the faint remains of the left box his foot is out the back of the box. The umps won’t say anything unless it’s much more egregious. The combination of catchers pushing forward and batters cheating back like they have always done leads to more CI.
You can’t go off the remains of the right line since that’s been moved and smudged. Holding a straight edge to the screen at least half of his foot is out of the box. It’s nothing new. Batters have been purposefully obliterating the back line and cheating back since the invention of chalk. The catcher is also supposed to be fully in his box and clearly the glove is forward of where the line should be. Unless they enforce the rules these things will happen.
Clearly not. You can stand on the line. You can’t stand “past” the line.
I tried to zoom in a little and drew a box around what looks like the line, based on the lighter color from the dirt around it:
Looks like he’s still in what the MLB considers part of the batter’s box.
He’s about as far back as you can go without being totally out of it, but he’s still legal. The catcher is way too close, though, if the bat can hit his glove.
Another issue though is just letting the batter’s box be obscured so much.
The rule is: (a) A batter is out for illegal action when: (1) He hits a ball with one or both feet on the ground entirely outside the batter’s box.
I would not say that applied at all. Certainly part of his foot was on the line.
Plus, he didn’t hit the ball.
I don’t know if I’ve ever seen CI on a non-swing before. I’m sure it’s happened but I’ve never seen it.
On a different subject, Rich Hill, 45 years old, will start for the Royals against the Cubs in Wrigley. KC is the 14th team that Hill has played for, which ties a record. He made his MLB debut on June 15, 2005, pitching in relief for the Cubs in Wrigley.
Paul Skenes needs to be liberated from Pittsburgh.
Going into his most recent game, this season he has a 2.01 ERA (1st in the National League), 0.93 WHIP (2nd), an OPP AVG of .189 (2nd), and 131 strikeouts (4th).
And he’s 4-8.
He has a 1.20 ERA in July, and hasn’t won a game since May.
He got a win two days ago.
But yes, being in Pittsburgh is not helping him accrue team stats.
Sounds like he’s trying to pitch for the cycle. That is, toss some for every team in MLB. 
Wasn’t there a recent post asking if there was ever a Cy Young winner with a losing record? Skenes has a shot at being the first starter to do that, and also the first with less than 10 wins. He currently leads the NL in ERA and both fWAR and bWAR.
Hill took the loss last night, but he didn’t pitch badly: 5 innings, 6 hits, 2 walks, 1 strikeout, 3 runs, but only 1 earned. Royals did him no favors by committing 4 errors, including 2 on back-to-back plays in the second inning, both of which should have been inning-ending double plays. And then in the fifth, there was a 2-out misjudged fly ball that was ruled an RBI double. Plus, of course, the impotent KC offense didn’t get a hit until the fifth inning and scored zero runs.
The Mets managed to go 10-9 for deGrom during his Cy Young 1.70 ERA season. The lack of production for him was awful. This is worse
Phillies scored on a different catcher’s interference. Not a walk off though. Runners on 2nd and 3rd and there was an attempted steal of home. The catcher stepped in front of the base. It looks like he would have been safe anyway but with this call the other base runner goes to 3rd and the batter is awarded 1st. This video explains it.
