Another interesting call

[jayflyer98]

I would love Bretman's take on this one. But I am 99.9% sure what should have happened.

Situation: Sixth inning, 3-1 ballgame with the trailing team in batting. Runner at first base with no outs. Batter bunts from right side and the ball clips the leg of the batter out of the box. Ump comes flying out yelling dead ball (twice) very loud. Pitcher fields the ball and stops because it was ruled dead. Runners are unaware and continue running. Ump walks further out and sends the runner from first back to first base and rules the batter out. Coach comes out and argues the call and the ump reverses the call!!! and puts a runner at third and batter at first with no outs. I have played a lot of baseball in my career and coached a lot of softball in the summer... I have never seen something like this. Here is what should have happened in my opinion.

1- Play stands, dead ball, batter out, runner back to first.
2- If for some reason it was determined it did not hit her, send the runner back to first and batter back to the play. Do-over...

What ended up happening never should be allowed to happen when an umpire yells dead ball twice. This was a Varsity High School game.

 

[Captain_Thunder]

The only question once the Umpire called the play off should have been - did the ball hit her in the box or out of the box....

 

[BretMan2]

Usually I can come up with some explanation of why a call might have been made. On this one, I have absolutely no clue!

If the umpire judged that the batted ball hit the batter-runner it’s either a foul ball (if it hit her in the batter’s box or in foul ground) or an out (if it hit her out of the box over fair ground).

How you could come up with runners at first and third after calling a dead ball...I have no clue whatsoever.

If it was determined that the ball didn’t hit the batter, the solution of where to place runners is entirely up to umpire judgment. Sorry, but there are no do overs! You need to determine the most likely outcome if the correct call had been made in the first place and which team was disadvantaged by the call. If I had to reverse this one...maybe batter-runner out and runner at second base? That’s the most likely outcome for a sacrifice bunt.

I would just love to hear the umpire’s reasoning for why they reversed this and why they came up with the solution they did. I doesn’t really make sense.