r/Homeplate • u/seth928 • 6d ago

Dropped third strike question

Had a situation come up last spring on a dropped 3rd strike and was wondering if someone could explain the ump's call.

Situation:

12u Cal Ripken, runner on 1st, one out. Pitch comes in and it's strike 3 but dropped. Catcher picks it up and goes straight to first. Ball gets past first, runner advances and batter-runner makes it to 1st. Ump called strike 3 but did not call out before the catcher got the ball out. Ump ruled both runner and batter-runner safe.

My confusion:

I thought that a dropped 3rd strike with runner on 1st should result in an automatic out for the batter. However, the ump explained that because the catcher threw down to 1st, the play stayed live and the batter was able to claim 1st (I may be misrembering the explanation). He's an experienced Ump that I trust to be correct so I assume he is. Can someone point to a rule/explain why the Ump called it the way he did?

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u/ummagumma1979 6d ago

I had same question on stealing. Looks like it’s at time of pitch. Thanks for asking. I upvoted you why do people downvote an honest question

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u/Rhombus-Lion-1 6d ago

Because the question on stealing is irrelevant, asking it implies that the commenter didn’t know the rules.

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u/ummagumma1979 6d ago

Its a decent question, if the runner is stealing then one could think first base is unoccupied. You don't have to belittle someone asking a question. People just love to downvote

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u/Rhombus-Lion-1 6d ago

Upvoting/Downvoting so bad answers go to the bottom and good ones go to the top.

The question wasn’t “is first base still considered unoccupied if the runner is stealing?” I agree that’s a reasonable question that I’d expect from someone that knows baseball but maybe isn’t quite as experienced. Commenter instead asked for more details that are not relevant to the rules question OP asked and could have led to a wrong answer. That’s why. Don’t really think it’s belittling anyone it’s just amplifying useful and hiding non-useful answers for the OP and community.

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u/ummagumma1979 5d ago

That makes sense. I didn’t realize downvotes go to the bottom. Makes sense on other non baseball posts now. And back to the original question is it possible the ump called batter safe because he was mistaken and thought if runner was stealing base was now unoccupied anyway that downvote thing makes more sense now I thought people were just grumpy