I’ve seen some of those so-called easy tosses thrown passed the catcher and base runners have advanced as a result. That’s why those throws should be made, rather than waived.
Which I mentioned in post 5. I also enjoy the “Little League homerun”.
Let’s say a hitter smashes the ball and it goes solidly into the stands for what 999 times out of a thousand would be a home run. But then the super golden child of fielders makes some crazy Jackie Chan triangle jump off the wall and with perfect timing has a highlight reel catch to wow people for decades. Does the hitter get credit for the homer even though he’s caught out?
The degree of difficulty may vary but the principle is the same. You don’t have to actually execute the play. All you have to do is to inform the umpire of the desired outcome, and poof! it is granted.
Is there any parallel in any other sport?
Bunting is far harder than an intentional walk.
Besides, with an intentional walk, it’s the defense deciding to put a runner on. The offense can’t be allowed to bypass play and put the batter on base or move a baserunner along.
It would be a bit of a travesty.
Can you imagine a batter coming to the plate, waving four fingers and being given a home run? 
So, maybe a parallel would be, in football… the defense decides to give up a 3-yard run on 3rd and 10… they just tell the ref, ok advance the ball 3 yards…
And yes, it’s a travesty…
The batter shouldn’t get credit for a hit, but the “out” doesn’t exist. I think the best solution would be to count like a sacrifice. Speedy players would benefit because they force errors (hurried throws) while regular joes would just get an slight uptick in their OBP.
It did until the fielder bobbled it. Why let the batter off the hook for what he did?
That’s not the real problem. The out doesn’t exist. If there was one out when the error occurred, there is still only one out. Yet in the statistics, it’s technically recorded as an out against the batter. Which doesn’t exist. I’m not sure how it should be scored, but definitely not as an out.
No, of course not. As Will Munny said, deserve’s got nothing to do with it.
The statistics are supposed to be a record of what happened. Saying a batter made an out when he didn’t make an out is not an accurate record of what happened.
The rule is transparently illogical. We give a hitter a hit if the fielder is stupidly positioned, or if the fielder breaks the wrong way when the ball is hit, or if the fielder is fat and slow. In all cases that’s on the fielder, not the hitter. I have seen thousands of hits the hitter didn’t “deserve,” where he got the hit because the fielders were just slow or didn’t take the correct route to the ball. I bet Manny Ramirez personally was responsible for 200 such hits. In no other way do we give the hitter “credit” for hitting the ball hard, or remove credit if the fielder fails. Which makes sense; hits and outs should be a record of what happened and whether or not the guy reached base. But in the specific case of fielding ineptitude that involves the fielder getting to the ball but failing to make the play assuming the scorer doesn’t decide it was a hard play, a nonexistent out is put in the batter’s stats. That’s dumb. It’s akin to a hockey player scoring a goal but not getting credit for it because the goalie really blew it.
Your argument that the out existed “until the fielder bobbled it” is nonsense. The out does not exist at all until an umpire declares someone out.
Now, if you want to argue that the batter should not be credited with a hit, I think you have a perfectly logical argument here. Like walks or HBPs, it would make perfect sense to count “reached on error” as a separate category (it would possibly be very interesting to see if some batters who make contact and run well, like Jose Altuve, are substantially more adept at getting on base this way than slow batters who strike out a lot, like Mark Trumbo. I’m not sure how big the difference would be.) At least then you are not manufacturing nonexistent outs.
Or, alternately, were pitches that would be outside of a normal batter’s ability to hit, but Vlad Guerrero (with Stretch Armstrong arms and a 42" bat) would knock into the cheap seats.
If you’re using BA as a means to assess the batter’s own ability and performance (and why else would you care?), then absolutely the defense’s prowess following whatever the batter does is irrelevant.
Sometimes they’re supposed to be a way to see how good a player is. Same question - why do *you *care about BA?
This. Baseball statistics exist NOT to act as sabermetrics, but to tell you what happened. In a baseball game, the visiting team gets three outs per inning played; the home team gets 24 outs, plus however many added outs were needed to end the game, if any. Giving hitters “outs” which don’t show up in any other category (pitchers stats, for example) would drive an accountant crazy. 
There’s no obvious way to me to do it better. The runner doesn’t get credit for a SB. The catcher’s CS% doesn’t go down.
In the case of a batter reaching on error, how could that scoring be improved? The batter didn’t reach by a hit or walk, so he didn’t really earn anything. The pitcher did what he was supposed to do. The fielder is charged with an error.
Now, the scorer’s judgment when deciding SB or DI or hit or error can always be put to question. But the methodology in place is logical to me.
There are two ways you could improve it:
- Simply call it a hit.
- Create a new classification, like a walk, that isn’t a hit or an out.
Of course, this will result in batting averages changing (albeit not by that much; not a lot of errors are made anymore) so if someone bats .400 or something people will whine that it would have been different in the olden days. So, really, it should never have been done the way it’s being done, but you can’t change history.
+1
The key here isn’t the decision not to pick off the runner, but rather the tactical choice given the play on the field to not risk it.
When a defense makes the decision not to worry about the runner advancing even when there’s no other immediate, happening threat. . . a stolen base under those circumstances is just stat padding.
And occasionally, the batter would manage to reach out and nail a pitch, thereby ruining the other team’s day.
I disagree that it would be an improvement to credit a batter with a hit when he reaches on an error. Mostly because it works against the pitcher’s stats. But also the batter gets credit for something he didn’t really earn. Hits and walks are earned. And if you simply call it a hit, do you even keep track of defensive errors?
Creating a new classification would be slightly better. But even if reaching by error basically counted the same as a SAC (no at bat, but you could get an RBI) it still works unfairly against the pitcher.
I get the “He didn’t earn it” sentiment. The problem is that you’re not applying it with any sort of statistical consistency.
Suppose the left fielder is an incompetent, slow footed oaf, like Greg Luzinski. The batter hits a lazy fly ball that 99% of major league outfielders, and indeed almost all minor league outfielders, will easily catch. But the oaf breaks the wrong way, panics, slips and doesn’t get within ten feet of the ball. It bounces merrily away for a double. I saw Rance Mulliniks get an inside the park home run once, solely because the left fielder was Kevin Reimer, the worst MLB outfielder I’ve ever seen, and he bungled what should at most have been a bloop single into a ridiculous home run. Rance didn’t “deserve” that homer, but he in fact scored on his own hit without an according-to-Hoyle error taking place, so it’s a home run.
That’s not an error; it’s counted as a double. But it was a catchable ball, and is no more “earned” than a well hit fly ball that pops out of a running fielder’s glove and is called an error. MOST fielding mistakes in major league baseball are not, technically, errors, even thought they can often be more egregious boneheadery than an actual bobbled play.
Obviously, some hits are more “Deserved” or “earned” than others. Some doubles are rockets off the wall and some are topped bloop flies down the lines. Some singles are scorched up the middle and some are swinging bunts. And some outs are more deserved than others; sometimes a guy strikes out, and sometimes he hits a booming, 390-foot blast that would have been a home run but Steve makes an astounding leaping grab at the wall. We do not assign “deserve” statistics to those. If the ball goes over the fence it’s a home run and if it’s caught it’s an out; how hard the guy hit it isn’t the point. The stats are a reflection of what took place. Only with errors and the phantom outs they put into batters’ numbers are they not.
ERA is a dumb stat, but you could still count it. There’s nothing preventing the official scorer from distinguishing runs scored by benefit of an error from ones that aren’t, even if errors don’t count against a batter’s stats.
But hitters aren’t given “outs” really. First batter singles, second batter grounds to the shortstop who tries for the force at second, but it’s too late. Batter is changed with a an AB, it’s scored as a fielder’s choice, but no out was recorded and there was no error. How do you want that scored?
Or to make it more obvious. Score tied in the bottom of the ninth with a runner on third and one out. Batter hits a ground ball to short stop. He’s never going to throw to first base (even if that’s an easy out and even if the batter falls coming out of the batter’s box). It’s really pointless to even indicate the batter reached first.