Is there anything dumber than the unwritten rules of baseball? Ask Fernando Tatis Jr | MLB

IIf you had any doubts about the inherent silliness of baseball, note that Fernando Tatis Jr was simply criticized for the crime of driving too many races. In a grounded-in situation in the eighth inning of Monday’s game against the Texas Rangers, the ridiculously talented young San Diego Padres shortstop swung on a 3-0 offer from Juan Nicasio and dropped the ball into the pockets. stands for the first grand slam of his career. The problem, if there was a problem, was that his team were already leading 10-3 and his manager Jayce Tingler claimed he gave him a sign that he shouldn’t be swinging on the pitch. Instead of being happy for the extra points, Tingler was upset that his player had broken one of the unwritten rules of the game.

“Just to let you know,” Tingler said after the game, “a lot of our guys have the go-ahead [to swing on] 3-0. But in this particular game, we had a comfortable little lead, and we’re not trying to boost the score or anything like that.

In baseball tradition, when the batting team has a big lead late in the game, it’s bad form to swing on that field 3-0, which is almost always a strike in the middle. The idea is that by swinging you embarrass the opposition because the game is theoretically out of reach. Now you won’t find any mention of this in any book, it’s just part of the unwritten rules of baseball, obscure knowledge passed down in clubs and canoes since time immemorial (or the 19^e century at least).

When a player breaks the unwritten rules, there are consequences. One of their teammates will usually pay the price by getting hit by a pitch on the next bat. It’s an immature way to settle disputes, but that’s the way things work in the game.

Don’t try to find logic in the rules. In situations like the one above, doing all you can to score is wrong and “breaking the game”. In other situations, failure to run hard to reach the first goal on a routine ground ball, regardless of the score or the situation, is considered “a lack of push” and also “a lack of push”. respect for the game ”. Celebrating a home run too vigorously – or, panting, knocking your bat – is unnecessary staging and is often the main cause of retaliation. When a starting pitcher has a legitimate shot at a non-hitter late in the game, it is a major misstep for an opposing hitter to attempt a bunt in an attempt to get on goal. After all, you wouldn’t want to spoil your opponent’s personal milestone with something as awkward as trying to do something to help your team win.

The Rules of Mercy exist in other sports but not in MLB, in part because the game does not have a running clock. In football, for example, there comes a time when it is virtually impossible to overcome a sufficiently large lead. Baseball doesn’t stop until the final. You could argue that when New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick his team scores touchdowns late in the kicks he “goes up the score.” You can’t make that argument in baseball when there’s always technically a chance to blow a lead, even when you’re 11-0 and the other team has one.

This is the main reason why all of the fury over Tatis’ grand slam is absurd. Of course, the Padres were seven points ahead at the end of Monday’s game. Yes, they were in a great position to win the game unless things were terribly wrong, but things go terribly wrong all the time in baseball. Just ask the 2003 Florida Marlins who gave the Boston Red Sox 14 runs in one set. Or the New York Mets, who were 10-4 last season in the last inning and lost 11-10. Heck, Tatis witnessed firsthand the last time a team overcame a seven-point deficit: it happened in 2019 when the Padres beat the Colorado Rockies.

In all fairness, some players have supported Tatis. “Keep hitting home runs, whatever the situation … Keep bringing energy and flash to baseball and making it fun … The only thing you did wrong was apologize.” Stop that,” wrote Cincinnati Reds pitcher Trevor Bauer on Twitter.

When he apologized for his “infraction” Tatis said he was aware of the taboo of swinging on a 3-0 pitch when there was a big lead, but he made the very good point that he did did not know exactly when the differential score is large enough for the game to be considered out of reach. The problem with “unwritten rules” is that they are unwritten. Different players and teams will inevitably have different sets of standards. In other words, unwritten rules aren’t actually rules.

The unwritten rules are a relic of a distant past when baseball was much more lawless for free-for-all. The teams had to control themselves on the ground because at the end of the 19^e century, no one was there to protect them. There was a direct interest between the teams in preventing bad feelings from escalating into violence. Now, however, unwritten rules are much more likely to trigger conflicts than to prevent them. In 2020, there’s no reason for teams to throw projectiles at each other every time they feel unfulfilled. Baseball should be an adult game played by real adults, especially when many believe the game has become out of touch with time.