The batter’s box is where the hitter’s feet have to be. This is more about where the batter’s body is positioned. I don’t know what the rules say, but hanging over the plate has been tolerated for a while even if it’s not allowed. There are some complaints that batters further skewed this equation unfairly when they started wearing large pads on their bodies.
Who says he shouldn’t? He’s trying to get an advantage. The pitcher doesn’t want him to get that advantage.
Every sport has unwritten rules, baseball has just been around forever, and seems to have more of them.
The batters box is a chalk line laid down before the game starts. So what does the first guy up to bat do? Erase as much of it as he can, accidentally of course, while digging himself in. By the second inning that back line and inside line of the batters box is practically gone. No batters box line, so it’s near impossible for an ump to call foul on the hitters for setting up with their front foot on or over the line, so the hitter has now gained a little advantage.
Well that answer was a little out of…oh. Nevermind.
The first thing a leadoff batter does is erase the inside of the batters box. They want to have a chance to get good wood on a pitch that nibbles at the outside edge. The pitcher of course, wants to get them to swing at an almost unhittable outside pitch. So he brushes them back away from the plate.
Is “not throwing purposefully at a batter’s head” really an unwritten rule? Not rhetorical, I really want to know
To me, again coming from a no-baseball perspective, that isn’t breaking the rule. The feet have to be in the batter’s box, and the feet are. Any contortion of the body to hang over the plate is fair game for the batter
The pitcher says he shouldn’t, and he enforces that by illegally (maybe) throwing a ball at the batter’s head. Now, two things I get from that are:
If it’s not forbidden for the batter to crowd the plate like that, then the pitcher should not throw at the batter’s head to move him back. The pitcher should accept that the batter gets an advantage
If the umpire warns the pitcher and can throw him out, then it can’t be an unwritten rule (again, awaiting response from my question above to Munch. I really don’t know if that’s a written rule or not) and must be illegal, so pitchers should never throw the ball at a batter to push him back from doing a legal move
It seems to me, from this issue, pitchers are being dicks. They could just follow the rules (if it exists) and not throw the ball at the batter’s head and just accept that batters will crowd the plate. Adjust your pitch accordingly
I really don’t see how batters are doing anything wrong if the rules simply state that their feet have to be within the line. If what leftfield6 says is true and batters like to erase the mark, simply make a rule stating they can’t or they get a strike or something. Or make the marks on the ground unerasable
I think the only rule (6.03) says “The batter’s legal position shall be with both feet within the batter’s box” and that’s it.
The rule (8.02 (d)) says this:
All of which is to say that trying to hit someone is against the rules, but pitching inside to back someone up is not against the rules in and of itself, and all of it is a judgment call.
You also keep restricting this to throwing at the batter’s head. If a pitcher wants to hit a batter, he usually won’t aim for his head.
Well, then throwing intentionally at the batter then. Of course, that’s up to the umpire, but it’s pretty obvious sometimes, especially if such a pitch is precipitated by something that broke the unwritten rules of baseball.
I’m not saying this is a perfect example, but in the NBA, if teams are getting testy and lots of emotion is being shown on the court, especially during the playoffs, refs often start calling the games tigher to bring the game under control, or handing out technical fouls to the next guy who even remotely warrants it
In baseball, maybe after one guy gets a homerun and shows off or something, angering the other team, the umpire can warn the pitcher that any pitches towards the batter, as long as it looks like its intentional, will be a major foul on the pitcher’s part and get him thrown out. If the intention is to follow the rules as it is written, then pitchers shouldn’t be allowed to retaliate
It’s obvious sometimes, but other times, it’s not obvious. Frankly, they get it wrong often enough as it is. The umpires are very quick to assume a pitcher is throwing at a hitter.
When a batter crowds the plate, a certain type of pitcher pretty much has to throw inside in order to get the batter out. One of the most common pitching patterns is high inside fastballs and low outside breaking or off-speed pitches. The idea is to keep the batter off-balance - it’s hard to prepare for and react to both types of pitches. A batter who crowds the plate is in a good position to hit a low outside pitch, and in a poor position to hit a high inside fastball. A pitcher who relies on this pitching pattern will give the batter a steady diet of inside pitches in this situation until the batter backs away from the plate. The purpose is not just to scare the batter with the threat of being hit with a pitch - it’s to throw pitches that will be hard to hit.
The perfect counter to this problem is for the catcher, on the appropriate exchange of signals, to call time, turn to the batter, and alert him, in the umpire’s presence, “I am required by the laws of this state and the rules of baseball to warn you that one of the next few pitches is likely to be a high inside pitch, which will be aimed to pass a foot from you in your normal stance in the batter’s box if not hit. However, if you insist on crowding the plate, it should pass about an inch from your head. Naturally we cannot guarantee pinpoint accuracy, so it is my duty to warn you that a pitch which may unintentionally strike your body is forthcoming.” If the batter continues to insist on crowding the plate, well, it’s been made clear that he’s not being intentionally aimed at.
There’s already a solution to the problem of batter’s crowding the strike zone, it’s just not enforced. If the ball is in the strike zone when it hits the batter, it’s a strike.
If the batter wants to lean in right up against the strike zone, that’s fine and the pitcher should pound the inside part of the plate. And as long as he can keep it over the plate he’ll do fine.
But too many hitters today actually hang over the plate and take part of the zone away because if they get hit the umps give them the base rather than call it a strike.