Another high tag out ...

[Thunderheads]

another high tag ..... this time at second on a pick-off.  Learning moments folks ...what can we take away from these high tags and our typical view of them as an umpire?

[maven]

I'm not sure we learn anything. We know that some high tags yield outs, but on bang-bang plays everyone in the ball park, including the defense, reads them as safes.

In the HS game there's still a place for the "expected call," since we don't have 11 HD cameras looking up our butts.

[umpstu]

We're taught to watch the edge of the bag on pick offs.  I think we need to spend the extra billion dollars and get us replay cameras on every level.

[maineump]

Any tag is an out as long as it happens before reaching the base. We need to read the throw and adjust to it.

[ElkOil]

This is a loaded question, but here 'goes...

Is it bad to anticipate in cases like this?  For instance, on steal attempts and pick-offs, you're pretty sure when the throw is getting there in time and when it isn't -- before the play itself.  How many times do you -- be honest here -- read the play ahead of time and then, regardless of whether or not you actually see the tag or the touch, make the "expected call" as @Maven said.  Seems like that would have worked in this instance. 

[maven]

This is a loaded question, but here 'goes...

Is it bad to anticipate in cases like this?  For instance, on steal attempts and pick-offs, you're pretty sure when the throw is getting there in time and when it isn't -- before the play itself.  How many times do you -- be honest here -- read the play ahead of time and then, regardless of whether or not you actually see the tag or the touch, make the "expected call" as @Maven said.  Seems like that would have worked in this instance. 

Short answer: yes, it's bad to anticipate. Don't frack up your timing because the throw was early.

Longer answer: If a throw is early and the fielder swipes too early, so that he misses the runner entirely, I'm not calling the runner out. I had exactly this once, and DHC started yelling immediately — at his fielder, "keep the damn glove down!" The fielder's bad play negates the expected call here.

If the throw is there, the glove is down, and the runner does something hinky at the last second that might or might not have gotten a fingernail on the base ahead of the tag, that's an out every time. That's where going against the expected call can get you in trouble.

If we see the runner clearly in ahead of the tag — he slides around it, or under it, or whatever — then the time the fielder has had the ball is irrelevant, call him safe.

See what you call, and call what you see. The tighter the call, the slower we call it: with tight action at the base, give your brain time to process all the info you've gathered.

[noumpere]

If the players make me look, I'm going to look.  If the players don't make me look, I'm not going to look.

 

For example (real life): R1 steals second.  throw there in plenty of time, but R1 does the old "show an arm, take it away and reach with the other for the base" routine (the same sort of thing that some Cubs player, iirc, did at third in some video shown here -- start a slide, pop up short of the bag, then continue).  Ruling:  safe.

Next, R2 (same guy) steals third.  Throw there in plenty of time, R2 slides straight in with both hands outstretched.  Ruling:  Out.

 

As R2 is going to play defense, he says to me "both my arms went around the glove and I was never tagged, but I get why I was called out.  good call."

[maven]

 

As R2 is going to play defense, he says to me "both my arms went around the glove and I was never tagged, but I get why I was called out.  good call."

There's a kid playing the long game.