Mariners' France & Rays' Paredes Collide - Was it Interference or Obstruction?

[Lindsay]

With Mariners baserunner Ty France on second base, batter Teoscar Hernandez hit a ground ball between third base and shortstop. Rays third baseman Isaac Paredes charged in to field the ball, but instead collided with Seattle baserunner R2 France, resulting in both players falling to the ground and the ball rolling into shallow left field, where it was retrieved by Tampa Bay's shortstop Wander Franco.

3B Umpire Chris Guccione called "Time" and signaled R2 France out for interference—until the crew got together and reversed course to obstruction, awarding France third base. Let's review the rulebook.

Official Baseball Rule 5.09(b)(3) pertaining to interference states, "Any runner is out when they intentionally interfere with a thrown ball; or hinder a fielder attempting to make a play on a batted ball."

OBR's definition of obstruction is "the act of a fielder who, while not in possession of the ball and not in the act of fielding the ball, impedes the progress of any runner."

Thus, we can form a rudimentary system for this type of play based on the timeline of events—namely, when the ball is still a batted ball vs when it is not a batted ball.

Batter hits ball: Fielder has right of way and responsibility to avoid belongs to runner

Penalty for runner's infraction (impeding the fielder): Interference

Fielder no longer in act of fielding: Runner has right of way and responsibility to avoid belongs to fielder

Penalty for fielder's infraction (impeding the runner): Obstruction

Here, we see that fielder Paredes appeared to have already attempted to field, and missed, the ball such that Paredes was no longer in the act of fielding when the impeding act (the collision) occurred. Therefore, this is obstruction—type b (or type 2) as there was no play actively being made on the runner at the time of the obstruction, the penalty for which was to do precisely what the umpires did to nullify the act in awarding obstructed runner France the base he would have achieved had obstruction not occurred (third base). Of course, the even more correct call would have been to have called it live (and thus, kept play alive), but the outcome and runner placement of first and third base seemed proper.

Video as follows:

Alternate Link: Ty France and Isaac Paredes collide - is it interference, obstruction, or a legal play?

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[maven]

For pro ball, I guess I'm OK with switching to OBS for this. The expectation is clearly that F5 could have gotten a glove on this, and when he didn't, he lost his protection. So, fine.

But for amateur ball, I dunno. At the levels I work, with a big kid running at F5 as he's approaching a batted ball, I think I'd have INT every time. Who wouldn't be hindered by footsteps coming fast?

I also regard with suspicion the policy of using slow motion on this kind of play. As with pass interference in football, if you slow play down enough things look completely different. Yes, here the ball was past F5 when the contact occurred. In slo-mo, that looks like a long time, but in real time it was a tiny fraction of a second. The pro ruling drops the protection on F5 the instant the ball gets through: he can't even land a step. Perhaps that's the price to pay for having 25 HD camera views.

For amateur ball, with no slo-mo replay, I'd have had exactly what Gooch (U3) had in the video, I'd be content with the call, and I'd hope nobody was hurt.

[Jimurray]

2 hours ago, maven said:

For pro ball, I guess I'm OK with switching to OBS for this. The expectation is clearly that F5 could have gotten a glove on this, and when he didn't, he lost his protection. So, fine.

But for amateur ball, I dunno. At the levels I work, with a big kid running at F5 as he's approaching a batted ball, I think I'd have INT every time. Who wouldn't be hindered by footsteps coming fast?

I also regard with suspicion the policy of using slow motion on this kind of play. As with pass interference in football, if you slow play down enough things look completely different. Yes, here the ball was past F5 when the contact occurred. In slo-mo, that looks like a long time, but in real time it was a tiny fraction of a second. The pro ruling drops the protection on F5 the instant the ball gets through: he can't even land a step. Perhaps that's the price to pay for having 25 HD camera views.

For amateur ball, with no slo-mo replay, I'd have had exactly what Gooch (U3) had in the video, I'd be content with the call, and I'd hope nobody was hurt.

There are a couple of no INT calls in MLB where F1, chasing a ball, pulled up at the 1B line to avoid getting trucked. You have to get trucked in MLB and even then you might not get the call. 

[JonnyCat]

1 hour ago, maven said:

For amateur ball, with no slo-mo replay, I'd have had exactly what Gooch (U3) had in the video, I'd be content with the call, and I'd hope nobody was hurt.

This! 

[The Man in Blue]

Going along with @maven’s logic, I don’t like this.

A fielder is protected while in the act of fielding — nothing says that he has to be successfully fielding the ball.  Additionally, we all know that “the act” does NOT stop the moment there is or is not contact between a glove and a ball or we would never need to determine if it was a catch/no catch on a dropped ball.

Why was the runner going in front in the first place?  The fielder’s momentum was not going to magically stop had he made the catch.  The runner fully intended to be a hindrance.  You bailed him out due to bad timing.

I understand the MLB logic, but I don’t agree with it.  Nah, don’t like it at all.

[834k3r]

Such an incredibly fine line here between OBS and INT, and if I were U3 here I'd probably call INT every time and not have anyone argue the call. I didn't put a stop watch to it, but I'm guessing F5's miss of the ball is about .1 seconds before R2 collides with him. That's not very long and I understand why U3 initially called INT.

As to the "out of the base path" issue, why do broadcasters continually miss such basic rules? They do an amazing job preparing for games, but to not know basic rules?

[The Man in Blue]

Come on ... they only call 162 games a season, it's not like they do this every day!  

Broadcasters have got to be better.

How can you be a professional and miss that play by that much?

That's inexcusable ... Horrible!  Terrible ... how can you put that on the airwaves?

They just changed that rule this year, didn't they?

(Eagerly awaiting Aaron Boone's post-managing career in the broadcast booth.)