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MLB 2022: Playing Ball, But Is Anyone Still Watching?

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Check out the second caught stealing on Acuna tonight, one of the wildest plays I've seen in a while.
 
French Rage said:
How is the play not dead if at least one ump calls foul? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X00CmHqE32o
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This was the play Sparty and I were discussing a bit earlier in the thread.

This was a complete breakdown of UMPIRE 101 type things on this play. The Plate umpire ruled fair on a ball that wasn't his call to make. Williamsport seemed to have "fair" as the call on the field, and there wasn't a good angle to show the ball actually being foul. So they went with "Call Stands".

That said, under ANY ruleset, once a ball is called FOUL, that's it, end of play... You can't "unring" the bell at that point. This play absolutely should have been a foul ball since U3 clearly called that. But he kept quiet about it for reasons only known to him. My guess is that his partner on the plate was probably quite difficult to work with and had a "God" complex on the field. So U3 just kept his mouth shut to not antagonize the plate guy/Crew Chief.
 
RaceBoarder said:
This was the play Sparty and I were discussing a bit earlier in the thread.

This was a complete breakdown of UMPIRE 101 type things on this play. The Plate umpire ruled fair on a ball that wasn't his call to make. Williamsport seemed to have "fair" as the call on the field, and there wasn't a good angle to show the ball actually being foul. So they went with "Call Stands".

That said, under ANY ruleset, once a ball is called FOUL, that's it, end of play... You can't "unring" the bell at that point. This play absolutely should have been a foul ball since U3 clearly called that. But he kept quiet about it for reasons only known to him. My guess is that his partner on the plate was probably quite difficult to work with and had a "God" complex on the field. So U3 just kept his mouth shut to not antagonize the plate guy/Crew Chief.
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Ignoring that the plate ump either didn’t see U3’s call or decided to trump it while ignoring or not knowing the dead ball rule, ignoring that U3 didn’t speak up for his own call while ignoring or not knowing the dead ball rule, ignoring U1 not coming in to be a crew saver and say the foul call trumps all (unless he didn’t know what happened), I cannot believe this went to review in Williamsport and no one there spoke up about it. Clearly the foul signal showed up in what they were reviewing. The call literally went to the very top levels of the league and they didn’t even enforce it.
 
French Rage said:
Oops, missed the earlier discussion, my bad. Sparty sums it up best, ignoring all of the other goof-ups, how does the review not immediately rule everything dead? It's not like they were in a hurry to get out of there and use their extra time to make the bunk beds in the players' village safer: https://www.cnn.com/2022/08/16/us/li...bed/index.html
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Best guess as to why the call wasn't changed:

- An umpire's actions (verbal/signals) are NOT reviewable. Therefore video can NOT overturn them. That's how the rules/protocols are written. They must be followed. The call on the field was "Fair". Video didn't show clear evidence of the ball being in foul territory at the point of ruling (crossing the 3rd base bag).

With video review, what IS/IS NOT reviewable is clearly laid out. This was a situation that is NOT reviewable, despite the call being asinine. Simple as that. Think about the Pass Interference deal the NFL went through a few years ago. Same deal.

Edit: For the record, I am NOT a fan of the LL organization as a whole, so I do laugh at the absurdity of this screw up.
 
RaceBoarder said:
Think about the Pass Interference deal the NFL went through a few years ago. Same deal.
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Except a blown PI call doesn't blow the whole play dead; there's no whistle, it's just a lack of a flag where there should be one, the play is still ongoing, the players should continue to play until the whistle.

One of the umps on the field signalling the play dead means the play should be dead. Even if it's not the right one, when players need to make split-second decisions, they shouldn't be figuring "well ump A makes such and such calls and ump B makes such and such calls so let me see, what call was that and who made it and oh fuck I just let in 3 runs while thinking about that". Correct or not, if any ump says a play is dead it should be bead. There might not even be a reason for it; maybe he had a complete mental breakdown and gets carted right off to the loony bin before the next pitch; regardless, he was an ump on the previous play and if he blew a play dead it's dead.
 
French Rage said:
Oops, missed the earlier discussion, my bad. Sparty sums it up best, ignoring all of the other goof-ups, how does the review not immediately rule everything dead? It's not like they were in a hurry to get out of there and use their extra time to make the bunk beds in the players' village safer: https://www.cnn.com/2022/08/16/us/little-league-world-series-player-injured-bunk-bed/index.html
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Speculation on Fark is that the home plate umpire has a god complex and is primarily a basketball ref rather than a baseball ump given his use of the "count it" sign after review. So he probably told the replay crew the call on the field was fair and ignored the 3rd base ump calling it foul.
 
French Rage said:
Except a blown PI call doesn't blow the whole play dead; there's no whistle, it's just a lack of a flag where there should be one, the play is still ongoing, the players should continue to play until the whistle.

One of the umps on the field signalling the play dead means the play should be dead. Even if it's not the right one, when players need to make split-second decisions, they shouldn't be figuring "well ump A makes such and such calls and ump B makes such and such calls so let me see, what call was that and who made it and oh fuck I just let in 3 runs while thinking about that". Correct or not, if any ump says a play is dead it should be bead. There might not even be a reason for it; maybe he had a complete mental breakdown and gets carted right off to the loony bin before the next pitch; regardless, he was an ump on the previous play and if he blew a play dead it's dead.
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UNO's comment below hits on the main point here. Williamsport can only go on what they are told. They also can NOT rule on things that are NONRENEWABLE.

You're not wrong on the part about reversing a call that kills a play. That is UMPIRE 101. But this play went off the rails and here we are. We're here because some officials followed procedure and won't break procedure to fix another official who didn't follow procedure.

Also from a legal sense, not following procedure here (despite making things "right") can open things up to a protest from the other side. We all know OJ did it. But he was acquitted in a court of law, so we can't go back and fix that now. Same deal here.

unofan said:
Speculation on Fark is that the home plate umpire has a god complex and is primarily a basketball ref rather than a baseball ump given his use of the "count it" sign after review. So he probably told the replay crew the call on the field was fair and ignored the 3rd base ump calling it foul.
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Jimjamesak said:
They make how much money a year and can't pay umpires? No wonder they have screw ups like this.
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It really is amazing they’re still pushing and getting by on the mystique of the volunteer umpire. Maybe back in the day during the founding of LL did guys work for free as part of service groups to give back to the community, but that had to have fallen by the wayside decades ago. There cannot be a single league today, at least in the US, that still does that.

Everyone I know that works it is paid for regular season and district playoffs. Can’t speak for states, but not sure why that would be any different. Is it just the regionals where it’s officially a LLHQ sponsored tournament that they stop getting paid? I know they do pay expenses, so umps aren’t technically losing money (but they are losing PTO), but it can’t be that much more expensive to pay them in more than “prestige.” OTOH it does buy LL an out when stuff like this happens to point and say they’re just volunteers.
 
It goes beyond LL just pushing the "volunteer" official (which as mentioned, they had to end at the local level because no one wanted to do it AND people complained about the 79 year old guy they had as an umpire that had been doing it for 34 years and stopped learning new mechanics/methods 24 years ago).

It's more the way LL looks down upon "travel ball" and makes it seem like these kids are truly picked as the "All-star" team of the league just a few weeks before they begin their journey to Williamsport. Reality is that any of these teams have had these 12-15 kids playing together since they were 10 years old. Many of them play a pretty extensive travel schedule and will just drop in to play their required 8 or 10 "house league" games on weeknights and then disappear with their travel team on weekends. Many, MANY of these coaches are outright d-bags towards officials when they are with the travel team, but flip the switch for LL competition. Personally seen this with both of the Chicago teams (Jackie Robinson West and Lemont, IL) that made it to Williamsport in the past 20 years, but have also heard through the grapevine of working with Triple Crown Sports on their "National" level tournaments that this is also regular with teams from places like GA, SC, NJ, PA, and elsewhere. The reputations of these teams/coaches precedes them.

And LL is blind/deaf/dumb to it all because they polish the crap out of them for these TV games that ESPN picks up starting at the Regional level.

That is my issue. The classic "knowing how the sausage is made" story. What you see is vastly different from what you actually get.
 
RaceBoarder said:
It goes beyond LL just pushing the "volunteer" official (which as mentioned, they had to end at the local level because no one wanted to do it AND people complained about the 79 year old guy they had as an umpire that had been doing it for 34 years and stopped learning new mechanics/methods 24 years ago).

It's more the way LL looks down upon "travel ball" and makes it seem like these kids are truly picked as the "All-star" team of the league just a few weeks before they begin their journey to Williamsport. Reality is that any of these teams have had these 12-15 kids playing together since they were 10 years old. Many of them play a pretty extensive travel schedule and will just drop in to play their required 8 or 10 "house league" games on weeknights and then disappear with their travel team on weekends. Many, MANY of these coaches are outright d-bags towards officials when they are with the travel team, but flip the switch for LL competition. Personally seen this with both of the Chicago teams (Jackie Robinson West and Lemont, IL) that made it to Williamsport in the past 20 years, but have also heard through the grapevine of working with Triple Crown Sports on their "National" level tournaments that this is also regular with teams from places like GA, SC, NJ, PA, and elsewhere. The reputations of these teams/coaches precedes them.

And LL is blind/deaf/dumb to it all because they polish the crap out of them for these TV games that ESPN picks up starting at the Regional level.

That is my issue. The classic "knowing how the sausage is made" story. What you see is vastly different from what you actually get.
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Somewhat similar to youth soccer about 20 years ago when I was trying to move up as a referee. How I hated the entitled fucks who ran the various state youth soccer associations. I just know LL is a billion times worse.
 
The LL umpire thing is volunteer because they've got a line a mile long for people to apply. I know a guy who umped the championship several years ago. It's a process. These aren't, generally, chumps.
 
dxmnkd316 said:
The LL umpire thing is volunteer because they've got a line a mile long for people to apply. I know a guy who umped the championship several years ago. It's a process. These aren't, generally, chumps.
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To travel to Williamsport, no. That experience sells itself.

But everything from the State level on down is guys that are at the same level I work at for a best case scenario and in other cases significantly below. Many of these guys will NEVER even be in consideration for the gig at Williamsport. Those are more the guys that I'm referencing above.
 
ESPN just came out with a docuseries on the Savannah Bananas, a college summer league team that also plays an alternate schedule with games under different rules, essentially the Globetrotters but for baseball. To coincide with that they're televising one of the games tonight. Former MLB pitcher Bill Lee (age 75) plays for them, but just collapsed in the bullpen and now they've cut away and have just been showing parts of the documentary for the last fifteen minutes.

Edit: Now they just came back and he's up and walking off with assistance.
 
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