Out Of This World

An Unreal Finish To An Unreal Road Trip

You wouldn’t be faulted for thinking a six game road trip against the Pirates and Marlins sounds about as milquetoast as it gets. But you’d be wrong. The Padres finished back-to-back three game series in Pittsburgh and Miami 5-1, and there’s an argument that this was the most enthralling stretch of the season to date. We’ve never seen anything like it.

There is a wealth of fantastic coverage of the special things that happened on the trip. The Padres won four games in which they trailed in the 8th inning or later. Jackson Merrill accomplished things that suggest he’s not just an All-Star but burgeoning superstar. The importance of a deep bullpen could not have been more evident after an egregious rain delay in the first game against the Pirates chased Dylan Cease after he’d completed only one inning, and every available relief arm was called on through the rest of the series. And more. But there’s a moment that we need to write about and process. So that we can understand. And so that we can all move on.

The Padres have never gone 6-0 on a road trip in franchise history. Trailing 7-6 in the bottom of the ninth in the final game of the trip the team was down to its final out when Ha-Seong Kim did this:

The home run tied the game, or so it seemed. Play didn’t resume right away after Kim rounded the bases. It turns out there was a crew-chief review of the play. Umpires Bill Miller, Chad Whitson, Malachi Moore, and Scott Barry were reviewing whether it was a home run. Here’s the slow motion of what they saw in the moment outfielder Kyle Stowers tried to field the ball:

The ball bounced off the padding, hit Stowers’ glove and went over the wall. The umpires reviewed it and called it a ground-rule double. The run was taken off the board. Kim was sent back to second. Luis Campusano would strike out in the next at bat to end the game.

There are several interesting facets to this play but before we go any further we need to make it clear that it appears this is the correct ruling. The first image that popped into most fans minds when seeing this unfold in real time is the notorious Jose Canseco play in which a fly ball bounced off his head and over the fence for a home run:

The key distinction in the play Sunday was the ball first hitting the fence, then hitting the fielder. A fly ball is considered a ‘fair fly ball’ if it never hits the ground or the fence. Once it hits the fence it is considered a ‘bounding fly ball’. And the rule book treats them differently. This excerpt from closecallsports.com summarizes the rules:

By rule, a fair ball passing over a fence at a distance of 250 feet or more is a home run, but a bounding fly ball entitles the batter and runners to two bases. The MLB Umpire Manual further clarifies that a fair fly ball that strikes the top of the wall and bounces over the wall shall be ruled a home run, while a fair fly ball that strikes the top of the wall and bounds back into play shall be live and treated the same as a fly ball that hits off the wall and rebounds back onto the playing field.

The umpires made the correct call. But there is some very interesting history here. Remarkably this play has happened several times before. September 3rd, 2017 the Guardians were playing the Tigers when Jose Ramirez hit a ball that bounced off the top of the wall:

Source: @cook17

This was as clear as it gets. Mikie Mahtook tried to field that ball and knocked it over the fence. The thing is, this play was called a home run. And it’s not the only time.

May 27th, 2019 the Guardians played the Red Sox when JD Martinez hit a ball that bounced off the right centerfield wall:

Source: @the_crotty

Oscar Mercado accidentally knocked the ball over the fence with his glove as he attempts to field it. And this was also called a home run.

It’s hard to know why those plays didn’t get a crew-chief review and become ground rule doubles. Maybe it’s because they occurred during relative blowouts, the runs just didn’t matter that much. So it would be interesting to see what happened if a crucial late game play unfolded this way. It turns out there’s an example from earlier this season. April 6th, 2024 the Royals played the White Sox and were tied 0-0 in the bottom of the 7th when MJ Melendez drove a ball deep into centerfield:

Here’s the still frame showing the ball hitting the wall first before being knocked over by the fielder:

The crew-chief would surely want to make certain that a home run was the correct call. But this play was not put to a crew-chief review. It was called a home run. And it was a pivotal call because it came with a runner on first base; a ground rule double would have ensured no runs scored on the play. What’s even more interesting is to look at the umpiring crew that night: Bill Miller, Chad Whitson, Malachi Moore, and Dough Eddings. Three of the four were the same umpires who called back Kim’s home run Sunday.

There are a few things that can be said about this objectively. We can objectively say that this rule is applied inconsistently. There should be no controversy in that statement whatsoever. And it’s fair to ask why this rule is applied inconsistently by the same umpiring crew, in the same season, in two very crucial situations. The thing is, from MLB’s perspective there is only one possible answer to that question. The answer that will be given, if any is given, is that the crew missed an opportunity to make the correct call earlier in the season but are always working to improve their craft and made the correct call when they were given another chance. And this is a hard argument to assail, largely because it’s true. But it’s not true that umpiring crews always get it right when given a second chance. The umpiring crew that witnessed perhaps the most obvious of these plays, Jose Ramirez to Mikie Mahtook, included Jerry Meals and Ron Kulpa. They got their opportunity to correct their mistake two years later when they were on the field for JD Martinez’ bounding fly ball off the glove of Oscar Mercado. But they called it exactly the same: home run, no review.

You can fairly say the umpires made the correct call Sunday by the accepted interpretation of the rule book. You can also fairly say the umpires went against baseball convention in making the correct call. And that’s a problem.

Let us consider a final aspect of this rule from a game theory perspective. Going back to the canonical Jose Ramirez home run, imagine there’s a runner on first and an outfielder has the wherewithal to realize the rule book is giving him a chance to prevent a run scoring:

Batting the ball over the fence there makes it a ground rule double. The runner on first can take only two bases. He must stop at third. There will be no throw, and no opportunity for a throwing error. The rule clearly favors the pitching/fielding team... it presents an opportunity for a fielder to steal some win probability by making a non-baseball play… Mikie Mahtook: MLB’s unheralded, and almost certainly unintentional, 4D chess grandmaster. It took the game eight years to discover the brilliance of his strategic baseball mind. Future manager?

These calls are made inconsistently in large part because they happen fast, most players/fans/possibly some umpires don’t know the rules, and because intuitively these plays seem like home runs. It doesn’t seem like a fielder should be rewarded for the baseball equivalent of slipping on a banana peel. But here we are.

Poorly thought out, often misapplied, and poorly understood, which when either applied correctly or incorrectly results in an injustice. Such are the hallmarks and badges of bad policy.

We’ve dissected this play quickly but thoroughly in part so that we can move past it, and on to what should be the real focus after an otherwise sublime road trip.

The True Takeaway

There’s a last an uncanny detail from the play on Sunday: the padding was displaced inward in the very section of the wall where the ball lands:

It’s quite possible this ball bounces differently if the padding was properly aligned…

Source: @Bad_Andy86

And this raises a last point that we really want to emphasize: It shouldn’t matter how the padding on the wall is aligned. The allegorical layer to this game was that the Padres cannot count on outside forces to get them to the post season. The ball isn’t always going to bounce their way. They gave up three unearned runs earlier in the game Sunday which is why the Marlins led 7-6 in the ninth. And that, not the home run, was the difference. They will not receive the league’s charity in close calls. Their opponents, even the toothless Marlins, will not roll over for easy wins. And their competition for the playoffs, most notably the Diamondbacks whose incandescence nearly burned Philadelphia to the ground this weekend, is going to challenge them zero-sum right down to the wire. The season is in its third act. There are 43 games remaining for the Padres to prove they deserve to make the post season. They’ll need to continue to play torrid baseball. Monday the Pirates return to face Joe Musgrove, their prodigal son. A season like no other continues. If the Padres want to survive it will come down to what they do between the lines. Their fate is in their hands. What more could they ask for?