Hit or error?

[canyonjoe]

It SHOULD be an error, but by convention it's a double. From what I can tell from the official rule book, you COULD (and in my opinion should) record it as an error because (to summarize) the out could have been made by an ordinary player with ordinary effort. This is never done though. I don't know why. Misplayed balls should be errors. As per MLB, "A fielder is given an error if, in the judgment of the official scorer, he fails to convert an out on a play that an average fielder should have made." and as per NCAA, "it is not necessary that the fielder touch the ball to be charged with an error. If a ground ball goes through a fielder’s legs or a pop fly falls untouched and, in the scorer’s judgment, the fielder could have handled the ball with ordinary effort, an error should be charged."

I think mental mistakes (I won't all them errors) fall into 2 categories. If a fielder break wrong on a ball I don't think that should be an error. They have to make a split second decision in order to be successful and sometimes don't do it right. On the other hand a routine fly ball that is just misjudged is a different story. It should be an error if it's right to you and you have plenty of time to get to and just move in 2 steps to far. That's a far cry from getting a wrong jump on the ball. The one thing that I think is really wrong is not having a team error. It makes no sense that a popup that every infielder could have caught but no one does is a hit. If 2 OF both could catch ball and it just drops the same thing. I am sitting next to the official scorer this year for a minor league team. I'll be interested to see how he scores plays.

 

[LEsoftballdad]

The team error is a great idea. This happened in our game yesterday when one of our players hit a little pop fly between the 2nd baseman and the pitcher. By any right, it should have been easily caught by either player, but neither called for it, and it dropped between them while they stared at one another. To whom do you give the error? And, honestly speaking, the batter didn't deserve a hit, either.

Like I've said before, scoring rules are subjective and weird.

 

[JayW]

Final tally:

Hit 73,455
Error 1

 

[_MIA_]

And, honestly speaking, the batter didn't deserve a hit, either.

Sure, but she didn't deserve to be out when she hit a rocket right at the CF either..things typically even out.

 

[radness]

Why is a physical mistake an error but not a mental one? It makes no sense.

Because every single play in the game could be blamed on mental error.

It's been explained numerous times in this thread.

There has to be a way written
aka guidelines
to help consistency of doing the stats book.

That's all it's for consistency of doing the stats book.

 

[_MIA_]

Off-topic (or maybe not..) I didn't know that you could go into GC and change box scores around without re-scoring the game. I found this out the other day when I just happened to have a box score open and it magically changed after the game..

 

[radness]

Off-topic (or maybe not..) I didn't know that you could go into GC and change box scores around without re-scoring the game. I found this out the other day when I just happened to have a box score open and it magically changed after the game..

Nifty....

 

[_MIA_]

Nifty....

All I will say is that one beneficiary was related to the scorer and the other beneficiary , my DD, was used in an attempt (I think) to cover tracks

 

[Greatdaytobeawildcat]

I am now almost 3 years clean of looking at GC. Every time I’m tempted to look, I just remind myself of threads like this.

 

[Shiloh]

That's what I don't understand. Why is a physical mistake an error but not a mental one? It makes no sense.

Like I've said before, scoring rules are subjective and weird.

With respect -

Mental errors are not recorded because they require the scorer to impute what the fielder was thinking.
The purpose of a rulebook is to take subjective and weird out of the equation.

Nothing more subjective and weird than a scorer saying they know for certain what a fielder was thinking at a specific moment.