Good coaching or poor sportsmanship?

[SOFTBALLS14]

There are few tournaments out there that are 7inn guaranteed, but not many.
Those where some of the best games we played. And yes some went extra innings but that made the weekend even more fun.
Here's my answer... Some tourneys are sometimes about the money..... And not the players...JS

Now here is MY Tourney that someone should pull off and you'll have them wanting in no matter how much it costs!!
4GG ... 7-innings each game NO time limit...next game is 15 min after end of game / 2- game pool / into double elimination Bracket....
Rings for first and second ....tourney shirts for 3....and 4.....
1-Team cooler.... allowed
This could be done if you limit the number of teams 12u and up only ...(sorry, 10u but you are in the fundamentals stage) ... Then there is a demand ...
College coaches like this to see what players, CAN handle the WHOLE game...
There you go ...JMO

 

[jimhamrick]

I've got one for from this weekend at Lasers. I'm playing a team(as the home team) batting with 2 outs, no one on base, trailing 9-4, 5 minutes on the clock.
Opossing coach makes a pitching change! Needless to say, I had a few choice words for him!
He then tried to tell me that he had an exact pitch count on his pitchers and he changes them at that number of pitches!

 

[BretMan2]

I've got one for from this weekend at Lasers. I'm playing a team(as the home team) batting with 2 outs, no one on base, trailing 9-4, 5 minutes on the clock.
Opossing coach makes a pitching change! Needless to say, I had a few choice words for him!
He then tried to tell me that he had an exact pitch count on his pitchers and he changes them at that number of pitches!

So...you started a verbal confrontation when a coach made a perfectly legal pitching change?

A pitching change shouldn't take more than 1-2 minutes (umpires need to stay on top of this and keep things moving along!). No way in the world that should run five minutes off the clock, so I'm not sure that you were extremely disadvantaged.

Would any coaches in this situation, with time running out, have a player purposely make an out so that another full inning could be played?

 

[coachjwb]

As others have said here and many times in the past, this is not a game meant to be played with a clock. Yes, other games are played with a clock, but the clock doesn't run in those sports while coaches and/or players do things to make the clock run out. Taking your time to run a play in football, or to take some pitches is pretty much the same thing ... but calling timeout (with the clock running) to tie a shoe you untied before you got to the plate, or to talk to or change out a player that you don't really need to has no comparison. If you're going to play with a clock in softball, then give each team 2 or 3 true timeouts where the clock stops to talk to a player or make a change. I hate all of the unlimited visits to the mound and such that happen in MLB, but at least they don't prevent another team from getting their at bats and catching up and/or actually finishing a game. Can you imagine a football game where you only got to play 3 quarters because the other team delayed and the time ran out??

 

[jimhamrick]

So...you started a verbal confrontation when a coach made a perfectly legal pitching change?

A pitching change shouldn't take more than 1-2 minutes (umpires need to stay on top of this and keep things moving along!). No way in the world that should run five minutes off the clock, so I'm not sure that you were extremely disadvantaged.



Would any coaches in this situation, with time running out, have a player purposely make an out so that another full inning could be played?

I'm not suggesting I was disadvantaged, and nothing illegal, just not something I'm going to do to avoid playing another inning. And then to suggest you have an exact pitch count on each pitcher and she is removed on that number??

 

[LakeErieHillbilly]

Daughters team was playing a team from the Mansfield area down in Marion couple weeks back where they was up 1 run with 7 minutes left. First base coach kept yelling at each batter "untie your shoes" when coming to the plate. Yelled this from the coaches box and the ump granted time every time. Last batter when we had two outs, after told to undo her shoe laces outloud, she called time, took off each batters gloves one at a time, sat down in the dirt to slowly tie her shoes. Well time ran out on game, we lost by 1.
I say if you cant win in the right matter, you shouldn't be coaching! Yes there are little tricks to be used, but that was low class of that coach and organization.

 

[BretMan2]

Daughters team was playing a team from the Mansfield area down in Marion couple weeks back where they was up 1 run with 7 minutes left. First base coach kept yelling at each batter "untie your shoes" when coming to the plate. Yelled this from the coaches box and the ump granted time every time. Last batter when we had two outs, after told to undo her shoe laces outloud, she called time, took off each batters gloves one at a time, sat down in the dirt to slowly tie her shoes. Well time ran out on game, we lost by 1.
I say if you cant win in the right matter, you shouldn't be coaching! Yes there are little tricks to be used, but that was low class of that coach and organization.

This would be an example of illegally stalling the game. Umpire should have addressed it and nipped it in the bud.

 

[LakeErieHillbilly]

^^^^^^^
Agreed!

 

[Maxdad]

With the standard medium to large tournaments these days time limits are an ABSOLUTE NECESSITY. Has anyone ever played a high school tournament without time limits and started a game three hours after the scheduled start time? (Maybe a slight exageration).

Generally, the better the pitching, the shorter the game. Imagine a game between two good hitting teams that either don't have good pitching or don't play defense well. You could have each team scoring 6,7,8, or more runs per at bat. A final score of 58-52. Four hours later........

For those against time limits and who think games need to be seven innings, I assume you feel run rules/mercy limits should not be part of the game either?

 

[Fairman]

The slowest game would set the start time for the next round and then the slowest game would do the same and on an on.
You could probably do something like a small round robin but a major tournament without time limits would just become unmanageable.

 

[coachjwb]

I am all for mercy rules, and I do understand the reasons for time limits in tournaments. I have to say I have never seen nor heard of a 58-52 game, or anything remotely close to that in 7 inning games, but yes it's conceivable if there were no time limit at all. I am much more amenable to time limits of 90 minutes (and finish the inning) or more, like you will see in pool play at national tournaments. Personally I'd rather play 5 seven inning games than 7 five inning "partial" games, but not everyone feels the same way. The game was just designed to be played without time limits, so just understand that it's being bastardized when you artificially insert them, and then there's the BS gamesmanship like this thread was about. High school, college and pro games are 7 innings, and we've also had a couple of college coaches state here how they feel about short games and the lack of real (vs. time limit) strategy. We can agree to disagree, but my opinion has always been the same and it's not going to change now.

 

[yossarian]

This just happened this past weekend. With the heavy rain on Friday, Saturday's pool play games were shortened to 60 minutes, drop dead. So I knew to expect to see stalling tactics in close games. Game 1 of pool play, our girls had one of those games where we gave them all their runs on mistakes and then couldn't hit. It happens. We start to mount a comeback and got go ahead runs on the bases with under five minutes to go. I told my wife, watch what's about to happen. Sure enough, "time", switch out a pitcher who was solid all game and drag drag drag the time out. Umps had to tell him to move along but he managed to slow walk it until the buzzer went off. I heard one guy watching from the outfield yelling "BUSH LEAGUE!" That was hilarious.

We got another run at them in the championship game. We jumped out early and never looked back.