Along with the regular rule book, baseball has a few unwritten rules that you may be familiar with. Some make sense. For instance, it?s bad manners to steal bases when your team has a huge lead late in a ballgame.
Some make little, if any sense, like the one on display during the Orioles? ninth-inning meltdown in Boston Sunday: On an infield pop-up ? even if it looks like the ball might hit the pitching rubber ? the pitcher needs to get out of the way and let a position player make the catch.
I?ve never quite understood that one. I presume the implication is that the pitcher is, in some way, risking serious injury should he call for the ball himself. The same theory explains why AL pitchers rarely, if ever, are used as pinch runners.
I put the whole “pitchers shouldn?t catch pop-ups” dispute to this column?s senior pitching consultant, Dave Johnson, ex-Orioles right-hander and current pre-game radio voice.
“This has never made much sense to me,” he said. “Virtually every big-league pitcher was at one time the best player on his high school or college team. We can catch a pop-up. If they?re so concerned with pitchers getting hurt, why let us shag flies in the outfield before games?”
Devil Rays scout Mike Cubbage, who played every infield position during an eight-year career, agrees that there?s not much logic to the practice.
“It?s what they teach throughout the minor leagues,” he said. “Still, I know I tripped over the mound a couple of times going after a pop-up from both sides of the infield. No question that the pitcher can catch those without hurting himself.”
Remember Don Robinson? He was called “Caveman” during a 15-year career in which he won 109 games, all but one in the National League. Robinson was a middle-of-the-rotation guy, and one of the best-hitting pitchers in the game. Big (6-foot-4, 230 pounds) and strong, he was a career .231 hitter with 13 home runs. He was a three-time winner of the Silver Slugger Award in the NL. As a pending free agent in 1991, the Giants shopped him, and the O?s expressed interest.
I recall a conversation I had with Roy Krasik, then an assistant GM with Baltimore. When I brought up the fact that Robinson would give the Orioles another bat off the bench, he quickly replied, “Oh, we wouldn?t let him hit.” Why not? “We wouldn?t want to risk him getting hurt,” he said.
I asked if I had somehow missed hearing about a rash of injuries to pitchers batting in the NL. He shrugged: “Well, that?s not the point.” It?s exactly the point, unless the point is that pitchers are less accomplished as athletes than position players are.
Was pitcher Jeremy Guthrie in a better position to catch Coco Crisp?s pop-up on the third-base side of the mound last Sunday? Perhaps. The wind was a factor for catcher Ramon Hernandez, but regardless, the muff turned the knob and the Red Sox kicked in the door.
The idea that pitchers lack the requisite skills to make simple defensive plays is absurd, but it will take more than the Orioles? ninth-inning Fenway nightmare to change many minds.
Contact Phil Wood at [email protected].
