Substitution Final
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Patrick: [00:00:00] And it's worth noting that a lot of coaches don't really know these rules, and so they're going to incorrectly come to you thinking they're going to get an illegal substitution by a pinch hitter and get an out, but instead the answer most of the time is going to be coach, it's an unannounced substitute.
He became legal whenever he stepped into the box. Hey, I'm on vacation every single day 'cause I love my occupation. Hey, I'm on vacation. If you don't like your life, then you should go and change it. Hey everyone. Welcome back to the Pregame in Umpire Classroom podcast. I'm your host Patrick Farber, and today we're delving into an interesting substitution scenario that occurred in one of my recent collegiate summer games.
Now, to set the stage, it's one out in the top of the fifth inning, and the defense is heading to the bullpen. The coach goes straight to the mound and signals to the bullpen without [00:01:00] talking to me first. The pitcher then gets to the mound and the coach walks off the field. But then, the coach tells the pitcher to stop before the first warm up pitch and before he engages the mound.
The coach then talks to his assistant and pulls in a different pitcher altogether. Now, this raises some interesting questions. Does the original substitute need to face a batter? Does he still have re entry into the game? Now, for some added context and what I figured but confirmed later, the reason for this change was that the original substitute pitcher didn't have any pitches left based on the previous usage and wasn't eligible to pitch by league rules.
And, this information is pretty crucial for umpires to know because we generally don't want to force a pitcher to violate pitch count rules. The league will get in a ton of trouble if we do that, and they'd much rather you pull the pitcher out. Now, it's worth noting that in NFHS [00:02:00] rules, a pitcher may be pulled pretty much at any point for running out of pitches, even if they haven't faced the minimum number of batters.
In that scenario, the only penalty is that he cannot return to pitch later in the game. The same thing would apply if the starting pitcher listed on the lineup card Now, getting back to our scenario, the first question here is, do we have a legal substitution? And in all rule sets, we need to know that they all have what would be an unannounced or unreported substitution that is legalized.
This is when a sub legally enters the game without the manager needing to come up to you and tell you that they're making a substitution. And this is very common with pinch hitters, but it's also why you see a pitching change in the MLB. The coach doesn't normally go talk to the umpire. The umpire can easily tell the change.
It's the guy running onto the field [00:03:00] from the bullpen coming in for the guy going off of the field. Not rocket science. Doesn't need to be talked over. That's an unannounced substitution. And pretty much every level of baseball. You may have one illegal substitution in your entire career, and that usually only happens because you mess up a rule around designated hitters or extra hitters.
Instead, almost always, when a substitution question comes up, it's normally focused on an unannounced substitution. And the answer will usually be whatever happened is legal and there was nothing illegal about it. It was simply an unannounced substitution. And it's worth noting that a lot of coaches don't really know these rules.
And so, they're going to incorrectly come to you thinking they're going to get an illegal substitution by a pinch hitter and get an out. But instead, the answer most of the time is going to be Coach, it's an unannounced substitute. He became legal whenever he stepped into the box. [00:04:00] Now, the major question we have here in this play that I'm talking about is when does an unannounced pitcher become the pitcher of record?
And this can vary from level to level. In NFHS rules, rule 3 states that an unreported substitution hasn't happened until the ball is live and the pitcher takes their place on the pitcher's plate. This is different from the NCAA rules where Rule 5 5G doesn't mention the ball being put into play. It only says that the substitution occurs when the pitcher engages the pitcher's plate.
And, this is similar to the same rule in the official baseball rules, rule 5. 10J2, which states that an unannounced substitution occurs when the pitcher takes his place on the pitcher's plate, with no reference to the ball being put in play. And finally, the fourth rule set I'll cover with you is Little League rules, which, rule 3.
08, states that an unannounced substitution occurs when a pitcher [00:05:00] takes a position on the pitcher's plate, with And, throws one warm up pitch to the catcher. It's important to note that league policies at some levels may supersede these rules, but won't necessarily apply to your games. Also in many of these rules, a pitcher action clock may still apply, limiting the number of warm up pitches.
Now, with this being a Sunbelt Summer League game, we applied rules similar to the NCAA, which meant the original substitute wasn't considered to have entered the game. This allowed the coach to make the change without burning the first pitcher's eligibility. Now, this would have been the same in all rule sets, but if he had engaged the rubber and not thrown a pitch, then he would be committed to pitch in both OBR and NCAA rules, and would However, he wouldn't have needed to do so in Little League or NFHS.
That said, in the final way this could have gone down, after throwing his first warm up pitch, he would [00:06:00] then be an official substitute at every level except the NFHS. Remember, in high school rules, unannounced substitution does not occur until a ball is put into play. Now, understanding these nuances around different rulesets is crucial for umpires.
It allows us to make the correct call in these unusual situations, and explains why the same scenario might be handled differently depending on the level of play. You also need to know that a coach you're running into this situation with probably is not very familiar with the ruleset they're playing by, and on top of that, they probably only know the rules from MLB because that's what they watch on TV.
Which, I'm going to guess, you're probably not an MLB umpire, so those rules aren't likely to apply here. And without overcomplicating this, note that there are MLB specific rules that are not in OBR. This would include something like PA announcements signifying an official substitution. That's something that might occur in [00:07:00] MLB baseball, but obviously not going to be the case at youth levels.
So before closing this out, in our scenario, it was the right call that He was allowed to come out of the game, and it did not count as a burned substitution. That pitcher was still technically available to come into the game. Now, that being said, I had the offensive team complaining that they wanted to make sure that pitcher was burned, even though he never engaged the rubber, but just by the fact that he came on the field.
Now, I could have gotten into a long discussion with them about what the rule was, and how it was not an unreported substitution, because I never crossed it out, because I was never given an official substitution. And he never became an unofficial substitute because he never engaged the rubber. But that would have gone a lot of back and forth.
So instead of going over there and engaging with their questions about was he going to be burned and they wanted to make sure he was burned. Instead I went over to the coach of the defensive team and I had a pretty good guess that the guy was actually not eligible to pitch just [00:08:00] by pitch count. So I asked him, hey did that guy come out because he didn't have enough pitches?
Is he going to be able to come into the game later? What are your thoughts there? And the coach straight up told me, he said, he's not eligible to pitch. He's out of pitches. I ain't getting in trouble for pitching somebody that shouldn't be on the mound. And so that was easy enough because he's a PO. I know he's not coming into this game.
The coach just told me. So getting that answer, I simply told the offensive coaches that the pitcher wasn't coming into the game and he wasn't going to, and this was just a little trick of how reading a situation and trying to limit rules discussions with coaches. Can make a game run a lot smoother.
Instead of going over and arguing with the offense, I confirmed the defense absolutely would not use this pitcher, and just told the offense that was the case. So, closing this out, I thought that was just a really interesting rule to go over. It's one of the ones I get the most questions about, and one of the ones that I'm most frustrated that umpires really [00:09:00] struggle with.
So, the big takeaway is that a lot of substitutions are going to be legal, they're just going to be unannounced substitutions. And very, very likely, if you ever have a substitution in one of your games that one of the coaches is complaining was illegal, more often than not, it's just an unannounced substitution.
They think that's illegal, because they think they need to go up and tell you. But they really don't. In fact, why there's usually a lot of pressure, especially in like, a collegiate summer league, is because the league wants to make sure they're getting the right stats on the batters, so they want to make sure that they give the umpire notice of a new batter, so that the statistician makes sure to get that that new batter is coming off the bat.
But ultimately, with that being in place, It's still not an illegal substitution. Him going in there is simply an unannounced substitution. So that's it for today. Let me know if you have any feedback on whether or not you would agree with those rulings, and if there's [00:10:00] anything you'd like to be talked about in the next episode, feel free to leave it in the comments.
As always, thanks so much for watching, and I look forward to seeing you on the field.
