Originally Posted by Ron Van Redick:
Had a situation last night where a right-handed batter pulled a hard one-hopper that the third baseman was late to react to. The ball hit off his knee (otherwise, he never touched it). My initial ruling for our scorebook was E-5 b/c it was hit right at the fielder, but now I'm having 2nd thoughts. Would appreciate others' opinions on how they would have ruled it. Thanks.
There are a lot of things having a bearing on the decision for me, and without seeing it makes it even more difficult, but I’ll try to run through some of the factors for you.
1st is, do I think the average F5 at that level would have made that play? Since obviously that’s the thing at question, I’d have to look deeper. What size field and where was the F5 playing, and was the play inside his “body frame”? Lots of 14Us play on the 54/80 field, and that means the F5 is gonna be 10’ closer on every play. If the F5 was playing behind 3rd on a 60/90 and the ball was inside of his body frame where he wouldn’t have to make much if any lateral movement, chances are I’m popping him. Of course as he moves in or the ball gets further away from him, that has to be taken into account.