Balk or not

[RingEmUp]

I know its been a while since I posted but I just haven't had the time.  I've been lurking mostly. 

Summer woodbat league 16u, MLB rule set. 

I'm PU, base loaded, partner in C.  Pitcher had a strange pickoff move, I felt it was a balk but partner disagreed and as PU I tend to defer to base ump on these types of calls.  Right handed pitcher would step over towards second base but pump fake to third base. 

[ALStripes17]

I know its been a while since I posted but I just haven't had the time.  I've been lurking mostly. 

Summer woodbat league 16u, MLB rule set. 

I'm PU, base loaded, partner in C.  Pitcher had a strange pickoff move, I felt it was a balk but partner disagreed and as PU I tend to defer to base ump on these types of calls.  Right handed pitcher would step over towards second base but pump fake to third base. 

So he would fake across his body while stepping to 2nd base?

Sent from my XT1254 using Tapatalk

[noumpere]

It sounds like a balk to me.  Either for feinting toward third and / or for stepping toward one base and feinting to another and / or for feinting to an unoccupied base (assuming there was no R2).

 

Now, if there was an R2, and it was separate moves (step toward second, break contact with the rubber, arm feint toward third), that's all legal.

[umpire_scott]

What noumpere said makes sense.  It all depends on when the feint was made.  OP already said the bases were loaded so there was a runner on second. So I would assume he would have to spin towards second, step towards second and completely come off the rubber, then fake to third, otherwise it would be construed as one move that started from the rubber and included a fake to third, which of course is a balk.

[maven]

2 hours ago, RingEmUp said:

Pitcher had a strange pickoff move, I felt it was a balk but partner disagreed and as PU I tend to defer to base ump on these types of calls

This is the part of your post that concerns me, independent of the move you describe.

1. We shouldn't be calling balks based on "feel," we want to know the rule and apply it. (I don't mean to pick a nit over one word: I apologize if that's not quite what you meant.)
2. See a balk, call a balk. This particular balk can be gotten easily by either umpire. In any case, no mechanic requires or recommends PU to defer to BU. At many levels, balks are generally easier to sell when called by both.
3. Strange ≠ illegal. The pitching restrictions permit F1 to do 3 things once he's engaged: he may disengage, step and throw/feint to a base, or pitch to the batter (after coming set, if in the set). It is failure to do one of these required acts — or doing them improperly — that accounts for 99% of all balks (including, it seems, yours).

[umpire_scott]

1 hour ago, maven said:

This is the part of your post that concerns me, independent of the move you describe.

1. We shouldn't be calling balks based on "feel," we want to know the rule and apply it. (I don't mean to pick a nit over one word: I apologize if that's not quite what you meant.)
2. See a balk, call a balk. This particular balk can be gotten easily by either umpire. In any case, no mechanic requires or recommends PU to defer to BU. At many levels, balks are generally easier to sell when called by both.
3. Strange ≠ illegal. The pitching restrictions permit F1 to do 3 things once he's engaged: he may disengage, step and throw/feint to a base, or pitch to the batter (after coming set, if in the set). It is failure to do one of these required acts — or doing them improperly — that accounts for 99% of all balks (including, it seems, yours).

So Maven are you in agreement that if he fully disengaged while stepping to second and then feinted to third it would be okay?  I sometimes have interpretation issues with the step-off and the "all one move" interpretations.  In that video you posted of Latos I believe being called for a balk most construed it was "all one move" and stated that a step-off had to be immediate and with only that foot moving.  So on the OP for this thread I'm envisioning F1 spinning towards second and then stepping towards second with his pivot foot disengaging on the step.  Or does this move constitute all one move that was initiated from the rubber?

[noumpere]

You need to distinguish between a "disengagement" (stepping back with the pivot foot) and a "feint to second breaking contact with the rubber with the pivot foot."

Think of the formerly-legal 3-1 move.  99.9% of the time, it was step to third (with non pivot foot), break contact (with pivot foot), place pivot foot on the ground, re-step with non-pivot foot.  If it was step-and-then-pivot-on-the-free-foot, that was a balk (and this is what the OP sounds like to me).  If it was step-don't-break-contact-pivot-on-pivot-foot-step-to-first, that was also a balk (in OBR).

[maven]

2 hours ago, umpire_scott said:

In that video you posted of Latos I believe being called for a balk most construed it was "all one move" and stated that a step-off had to be immediate and with only that foot moving.

 

25 minutes ago, noumpere said:

You need to distinguish between a "disengagement" (stepping back with the pivot foot) and a "feint to second breaking contact with the rubber with the pivot foot."

What he said.

Once F2 makes a legal step and feint to a base, he will almost certainly come off the rubber. At that point, the pitching restrictions no longer apply, and he may do as he pleases with the ball.

[umpire_scott]

Got it.  Thanks for clearing it up.  

[RingEmUp]

As PU I am not typically watching the pitchers feet as closely as I do the shoulders and hands.  Clearly this is an area I still need to get better at. 

I would say this was an all-in-one move and he never broke contact with the rubber.  The more I think about the more I am convinced that this should have been a balk but my partner was sure that it wasn't.  We didn't get to discuss it much since we had two more games to go that day.