We had this happen in our game the other night and it caused some problems for the defense. Here was the situation- With no outs, runners on first and second, the pitcher throws a breaking ball in the dirt in front of home plate the ball takes a glancing blow fromt he catcher and carreens towards the dugout on the third base side. Cathcer gets up and is looking everywhere for the ball and can't find it. The pitcher is shouting and pointing to no avail as the catcher is not looking at him but at the ground trying to find the ball. The third baseman debates going and getting the ball but stops because now he has a runner advancing towards third. This is one of those brain-farrt moments. So the runner that was on second he advances to third, rounds third and this is when both the catcher and pitcher are now heading towards the ball and no one is at home. So, the catcher goes to the ball and the pitcher heads to home but the runner scores and now there is a runner at third and still no out.
Later that night I asked my son what happened and he honestly said he had never seen anything like that before and at the moment nobody on the team was working together or knew how to react. Third basemen don't usually chase down wild pitches especially when they have runners approaching them. The pitcher thought it was his job to cover home plate and direct the catcher where the ball was. The catcher never once looked at the pitcher for directions until it was too late. He also said that they never practice those situations in practice.
This got me to thinking that in the past teams my son has been on, no one has practiced those situations with any regularity. Only once have I seen son's team practice that situation but it was only with the pitcher and catcher and didn't involve any other players.
I talked it over with my son and we decided that every player needs to be moving on a situation like this. With the ball being closest to the third baseman, he should have gone and chased the ball down. SS should have come over to third. First base should have gone to back up throw at plate. Second goes to second, etc. What could have prevented this in the first place is for the catcher not immediately finding the ball needs to look directly at the pitcher for directions- where he is pointing. The pitcher rather than just standing and pointing needs to be running towards home plate vicinity while still pointing. If the pitcher does get close to home and the catcher still can't find it then the pitcher needs to tell the catcher to stay put while the pitcher retrieves the ball. Logically, the runners should get one base out of that situation but never two bases.
This all could have been prevented if the team was to practice different situations with runners on base while fielding wild pitches. All players on the team need to know how to play these situations. Unless a runner is stealing on the pitch he should never get two bases on a wild pitch, especially if he starts at second and gets home!
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