AboutBrian Flaspohler Expertise Questions about baseball rules, general information about the game, statistical analysis, questions about players, questions about Baseball records. I am a member of the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) and a lifelong baseball fanatic.
Experience Lifelong fan, article about player movement from team to team throughout history.
Question Brian, I'm having a disagreement with a friend of mine on scoring hits and errors. Would you say a shortstop diving for a ground ball up the middle, or an outfielder coming in and sliding to make a catch "ordinary efforts"? One of us say if the fielders glove touches the ball in anyway, it is an error. The other says these are extra-ordinary efforts and should be awarded base hits.
Thanks.
Answer Dennis,
This is one of those things that falls into the realm of scorer's judgement. The official scorer must make a determination if the play would have been made by an ordinary effort of the fielder.
Everyone has a different opinion. I would not say that a sliding or diving play is necessarily one way or the other - it just depends. Kind of 'you know it when you see it'
Pretty lame answer I know, but that is one of the oddities of the baseball rule book.
