Milk crate-related comedy aside, that was a helluva hockey game.

No Mario or Link, perhaps, but the 1 of dots is a KoopaTroopa.

Aw. We like YOUUUUU..... :(

Not quite. He can be talked into seeing things your way if you have the persuasion points, but it's a pretty high bar to clear and I think you have to go paragon.

Nah, it can be a tricky rule. Kudos for taking the time to double check.

The focus should not be on what Middlebrooks did or didn't do. It's about what Craig couldn't do—take the shortest route from where he was to home plate without being slowed. When it's a fielder without the ball doing the slowing, the runner is entitled to restitution—not necessarily of 90 feet, but of however many…

As far as the play is concerned, yes. You can do what you need to do as a fielder if you're trying to do something with the ball. Once the ball's out of the picture, the fielder should be too.

Maybe not as bad as all that, accuracy-wise, but when you miss even slightly with a ball that should've been so deep in your pocket that you need an endoscope to get it out, you get to be the goat. This would have been E2 had WMB not trumped it with an E5.

Indeed.

I know it's traditional to scoff at the academic "prowess" of Division I athletes, but... Christ on a cracker, when is the band finding time to study?

Well, that one's on the MLB web admins; the current rules are actually in PDF form. In that version, 7.09(i) refers to fakeouts by base coaches. 7.09 (j) applies to a runner's action, intentional or not, with regard to batted balls and intentional actions on thrown balls. Basically the comment is designed to clarify…

... on a batted ball. See above. DS muddied the waters real good by including that super-irrelevant rule.

Heh, yeah, those little leaguers will test every paragraph, line, and punctuation mark in the book every inning.

[deleted; here I was rebutting an argument that was rescinded. 'sall good.]

Truly, there are no fit words to describe the idiocy of this comment, so these will have to do: You win minus-one internet.

You're right that the penalty is assessed based on where the umpires believe a runner would have ended up had there been no obstruction. On a play like that, though, an unobstructed runner scores 9999 times in 10000 (the ball being as far away from the fielder as the runner was from home); even if he did stumble a…

Sure, it gets reviewed. And upheld in seconds. Like I said, this was a very easy call for the umpires.

I think you're overcomplicating it a bit. The only rule that makes reference to "the baseline" does so in limiting the runner's ability to zigzag all over creation to avoid the guy with the ball.

Plumb neighborly of you to say so, thank you. This is the sort of thing you see a lot in amateur ball, so if you umpire that for a while you get reeeal familiar with the rule. And with defending it while getting sprayed with spittle.

Intent doesn't matter; effect does.