Visits: 5
BOSTON — Boston’s designated hitter, J.D. Martinez, stepped back from home plate, lifted his head toward the sky and rolled his eyes in exasperation. It was the eighth inning of Game 1 of the American League Championship Series against Houston, and Martinez had just been called out for a swinging strike three, even though he insisted he had successfully checked his swing.
A video replay demonstrated exactly what Martinez did and didn’t do. But that does not mean everyone agreed that what he did constituted a real swing. And “everyone” in this instance includes fellow players, managers, broadcasters and fans, some of whom may be relying on the definition of a swing that they learned in their childhood.
No wonder, then, that the checked swing is one of the more ambiguous elements of baseball, even though it occurs over and over and could even have a bearing on this year’s World Series. Ten players could look at the same play — the one involving Martinez, for instance — and come away split on whether the batter actually swung.
It is all very subjective. Or as the veteran umpire Joe West put it: “The hitters never think they swing, and the pitchers always think they swing.’’
The Major League Baseball rule book does address swings, although the guidance it offers is limited. In the “Definitions and Terms” section, it states that a strike occurs when the pitch “is struck at by the batter and is missed.” But it does not say how far the bat must go to be called a swing.
That is left to the judgment of the umpires on the field, and only them, since there is no recourse to instant replay in this matter. And the umpires are making judgments based on swings that occur in a relative blink of an eye.
So when is a swing a swing, and thus a strike, and when is it a checked swing?
A.J. Hinch, the manager of the Houston Astros, said that when he looks at replays of truncated swings, he almost always thinks it qualifies as a full swing, and not a checked one.
“It’s break the wrist,’’ he elaborated. “It’s break the plane of the plate with the bat. Did the bat head come forward?’’
Martinez, in turn, offered his own interpretation. “Did the bat break the plane of the plate?’’ he said. “Was there intent to hit the ball? To me, if the head of the bat gets in front of the wrists, then you swung.”
His teammate, Andrew Benintendi, weighed in, too: “I always thought it was, if you break your wrists and the barrel goes out in front of the knob, if the barrel breaks your hands.’’
Back to West. “You have to determine whether he offered at the pitch,’’ he said, in reference to the batter. “Or did he actually hold the bat up.”
West’s use of the word “offer” was hardly arbitrary. It comes directly from Rule 5.01(c), which states: “The pitcher shall deliver the pitch to the batter who may elect to strike the ball, or who may not offer at it, as he chooses.’’
“Exactly,” West said. “That’s why it’s so difficult. It’s subjective. Each swing is different, each checked swing is different.”
West has been umpiring in the major leagues since 1976 and has ruled on thousands of checked swings. He was behind the plate in 2014 when Yasiel Puig of the Los Angeles Dodgers actually broke his bat in two in an attempt to check his swing. West called it a strike. As he said, each swing is different.
Bobby Valentine, who played, coached and managed in Major League Baseball and in Japan for a combined 33 years, says the checked-swing rule is too confusing. His solution? Make every attempt to check a swing a ball and eliminate the squabbles.
“It’s the most argued call in baseball,” Valentine said. “A strike should be when you make a full swing and everything else is a ball. It will add offense to the game, which we need, anyway.”
Clearly, Valentine was not a pitcher.
Because the call is so hard to make, the home-plate umpire routinely asks for help on checked swings from one of the base umpires — the first-base umpire for right-handed hitters, the third-base umpire for left-handed hitters. It is the rare call in baseball where it is a matter of course for an umpire to ask for help.
If a home-plate umpire does not initially call a checked swing a strike, the catcher and pitcher can ask for an appeal to the base umpires, and it is almost always granted. But batters are not allowed to appeal if the home-plate umpire, from the outset, calls a checked swing a strike. The section on appeals in the rule book states: “Appeals on a half swing may be made only on the call of ball.”
In April 2015, Minnesota Twins outfielder Torii Hunter was infuriated when West called him out on an attempted checked swing that ended the game. Hunter begged West to appeal to the first-base umpire, to no avail, of course.
Martinez knows how Hunter felt, which is why he wants the umpires to be allowed to check with the base umpires when a batter asks them.
“Why can’t they ask for help?” Martinez said. “No one has ever been mad at an umpire asking the first-base umpire for help. No one.”
Martinez also said home-plate umpires should never, on their own, make third-strike calls on checked swings. They have enough to do, he said, focusing on whether a 92 miles-per-hour slider clipped the strike zone.
Ron Darling, a former major league pitcher who is now a broadcast analyst, said he canvassed half a dozen umpires on the checked-swing rule so he would know what to say when it comes up during games, as it always does. The umpires, he said, all came back with the same definition as West: a batter must “offer” at the pitch.
“It’s ambiguous, and it leaves plenty of room for debate,” Darling said.
Debate that a player can even have with himself. Jason Varitek, the former Red Sox catcher who is now a special assistant with the club, said that when he was batting he naturally thought he successfully held up on his checked swings. But when he was catching, he thought those same attempted checked swings by the opposing player were always a strike.
“It definitely lies in the eyes of the beholder,” he said.