Throwing the bat

[yawetag]

6 minutes ago, Senor Azul said:

Mr. Biscuit, as a high-school aged player you should know that FED takes bat safety seriously and it isn’t just “uncontrolled or malicious” that is taken into account.

Until you brought it up, FED was never mentioned in the thread. Lower levels, where teaching kids is a bigger priority, were.

[Senor Azul]

Thanks, Mr. yawetag, for pointing that out. I really don’t have any reading comprehension skills so I appreciate your help. I was responding to Mr. Biscuit’s post that appears just above mine where he was trying to define throwing the bat. Additionally, in another thread in the High School forum, just four hours ago Mr. Biscuit told us he is a high-school aged player. So I thought he ought to know what FED thinks of the issue of throwing bats carelessly.

Besides that, I was also answering Mister B’s question posed just 22 hours ago (and appears just above Mr. Biscuit’s post) about how to define a thrown bat.

[Aging_Arbiter]

Mr Konyar's comments (I believe you stated were 20 years ago), may have been before mandatory play rules were put into effect......OR before the thought of how it may affect MPR.  If you (or the coach) bench a player, you could be forcing him into an MPR violation. As we saw an MPR violation a couple of years ago on ESPN (Bristol, CT game), NOT a road I want to go down.  If he is unsafe AFTER the warning, he's got to go.

[Rich Ives]

On 1/29/2019 at 9:53 AM, Aging_Arbiter said:

Mr Konyar's comments (I believe you stated were 20 years ago), may have been before mandatory play rules were put into effect.NOPE.....OR before the thought of how it may affect MPR. NOPE  If you (or the coach) bench a player, you could be forcing him into an MPR violation. As we saw an MPR violation a couple of years ago on ESPN (Bristol, CT game), NOT a road I want to go down.  If he is unsafe AFTER the warning, he's got to go.

I'm not going to let an ejected player claim a MPR violation or punish the manager.

 

[Mudisfun]

46 minutes ago, Rich Ives said:

I'm not going to let an ejected player claim a MPR violation or punish the manager.

 

First, if we are at tournament time, I am going to enforce the tournament rules. Warn and then eject. Also, in tournament, most teams play with enough on the squad that MPR is only one at bat, which this player just had. The kids have had a whole season to figure out how to play so this resolves the issue your mentioning Rich of a MPR violation as the Manager is no longer on that hook. 

In our regular season, we play CBO, even at the Majors division locally, so the chance of an offender coming up, getting warned and then doing it again prior to meeting his defensive MPR is slim... BUT... if it happened, and I told the coach that player needs to be removed from the game due to his repeated violations two things are going to occur:

1) The coach is going to comply. If he does not, then I just EJ the player. Same result for me, other than filling in a report. Most likely ejecting the manager as well, but I hope they see the light.

2) As the UIC of our league, I will defend the coach from an MPR violation.  I am ordering him to do something, and I am disqualifying the player per 9.01d. Under 9.01b: Each umpire is the representative of the league, and Little League International, and is authorized and required to enforce all of these rules. Each umpire has authority to order a player, coach, manager, or league officer to do or refrain from doing anything which affects the administration of these rules and to enforce the prescribed penalties. 

Since I disqualified the player and ordered the manager to sit the kid, I would defend the manager and argue that no MPR violation happened since the player was precluded from obtaining his MPR due to his actions, and my administration of 9.01d and d.

[LRZ]

On 1/25/2019 at 2:46 PM, humanbackstop19 said:

First player I ever had to dump in high school was because he threw the bat - 4 times - hitting the catcher above the shin guards twice and myself in the hip another time.  I caught the HC between innings with an informal warning the second time, a formal warning after the third time, and finally an ejection after the fourth.  Each time I addressed the safety issue we were facing.

Boy, that's a lot of warnings! Four at-bats, four potentially dangerous throws of the bat? 

[Rich Ives]

1 hour ago, Mudisfun said:

 

Since I disqualified the player and ordered the manager to sit the kid, I would defend the manager and argue that no MPR violation happened since the player was precluded from obtaining his MPR due to his actions, and my administration of 9.01d and d.

Which is what I said. 

[Mudisfun]

1 hour ago, Rich Ives said:

Which is what I said. 

I'm thinking that you, as the coach, have little to no impact if little Jimmy's mom and dad want to make a to do about it.

As a BOD member, as much as it hurts to say it... I will defend the manager since the decision was taken out of his hands.

Now I feel icky, I sided with a coach ... 

[Aging_Arbiter]

4 hours ago, Rich Ives said:

I'm not going to let an ejected player claim a MPR violation or punish the manager.

 

My point.  If you "remove" and don't eject, it may be an issue.  If you eject, they aren't available to meet MPR.

[beerguy55]

On 1/29/2019 at 7:53 AM, Aging_Arbiter said:

Mr Konyar's comments (I believe you stated were 20 years ago), may have been before mandatory play rules were put into effect......OR before the thought of how it may affect MPR.  If you (or the coach) bench a player, you could be forcing him into an MPR violation. As we saw an MPR violation a couple of years ago on ESPN (Bristol, CT game), NOT a road I want to go down.  If he is unsafe AFTER the warning, he's got to go.

Maybe.   But, since he's throwing the bat, he's had/having his at bat.   It would only really be an issue if he throws/releases his bat twice in his first plate appearance, in the first couple innings of the game.   The vast majority (if not 100%) of the times I've seen it become an issue is in a player's second or third at bat - the warning comes in/after the first at bat, but I've never seen a warning and a subsequent violation both occur in the first at bat.   So, except in very rare circumstances MPR shouldn't be a factor.   Unless, I suppose, you provide a warning to both teams after the leadoff batter does it, then batter two does it...

And for reasons like that I think people like you and other LL/younger age umpires are saints.

[humanbackstop19]

On 1/30/2019 at 12:39 PM, LRZ said:

Boy, that's a lot of warnings! Four at-bats, four potentially dangerous throws of the bat? 

Our association in Iowa has made on emphasis on limiting unreasonable ejections and keeping players in the game for acts that do not meet a criteria of "malicious" or "unsportsmanlike".  In this case, the initial infractions, in my judgement, did not meet this criteria.  However, once an official warning for the specific act was given and the act repeated itself once more, I felt I had grounds to eject.  

[LRZ]

1 hour ago, humanbackstop19 said:

Our association in Iowa has made on emphasis on limiting unreasonable ejections and keeping players in the game for acts that do not meet a criteria of "malicious" or "unsportsmanlike".  In this case, the initial infractions, in my judgement, did not meet this criteria.  However, once an official warning for the specific act was given and the act repeated itself once more, I felt I had grounds to eject.  

I would distinguish between malicious/unsporting and safety. After three instances of bat-throwing, serious enough to elicit informal and formal warnings, an ejection would not be unreasonable, in my opinion. I'm not giving a batter three bites of the apple, but YMMV.