Baseball: Star breaks unwritten rule by hitting a home run off 3-0 pitch
A baseball star found himself under attack for the cardinal sin of hitting a home run — but the backlash to the backlash has arrived.
MLB
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San Diego Padres star shortstop Fernando Tatis Jr caused quite the stir when he drilled a home run off Rangers pitcher Juan Nicasio in Tuesday’s 14-4 Padres win.
Tatis broke an unwritten baseball rule which frowns upon swinging at a pitch when bases are loaded late in a game where your team has a big lead by adding four runs to the Padres score with a grand slam hit.
Rangers manager Chris Woodward said his team was annoyed that Tatis would be swinging with three runners on base and a seven-run lead — and even Padres skipper Jayce Tingler admonished his player.
But baseball’s “unwritten rules” are getting slammed on social media in the wake of the incident.
“Fernando Tatis keep playing hard and playing great, it’s a pleasure to watch you play, love your success and the Padres rise to be a winner,” Hall of Fame right fielder Reggie Jackson wrote. “Keep leading the way. It ain’t easy to hit home runs. Keep bringing energy you have to the game, we need players like you.”
“So you take a pitch … now you’re 3-1. Then the pitcher comes back with a great set up pitch … 3-2. Now you’re ready to ground-out into a double play. Everyone should hit 3-0. Grand Slams are a huge stat,” Reds legend Johnny Bench wrote on Twitter.
“Swinging in a 3-0 count should not be against any rules, no matter the score,” Red Sox pitcher Colin McHugh wrote on Twitter. “Before a game I would always look to see what percentage a guy swings 3-0. If it’s over 20 per cent, it means I can’t just groove one. The guys who will never ‘give you a pitch’ at the plate are the toughest at bats.
“In this data driven baseball age, there’s nowhere to hide. If you have a tendency, it’s gonna be exploited. Swinging 3-0, to me, is the same as swinging first pitch of an at bat. If you do it enough times, a pitcher can’t game plan as well against you.”
“I’m old enough that I grew up in a game that a lot of older guys had all the power and they would tell you how to act, what to do, and you did what they told you to do because that’s how it was,” former Mets pitcher Ron Darling said on MLB Network in defence of Tatis. “Unwritten rules only work if everyone knows the unwritten rules. By their very definition, nobody knows an unwritten rule, so what you have now is you’re trying to make a decision that a 3-0 count in a seven-run game is off limits. I’m just not with that at all.”
“Hey @tatis_jr listen up,” Reds pitcher Trevor Bauer wrote on Twitter. “1) Keep swinging 3-0 if you want to, no matter what the game situation is, 2) Keep hitting homers, no matter what the situation is, 3) Keep bringing energy and flash to baseball and making it fun, 4) The only thing you did wrong was apologise. Stop that.”
Tatis apologised afterwards, saying he missed a sign from the sidelines before belting the first grand slam of his career.
“A lot of guys talk about unwritten rules of baseball, but you’re in the heat of the moment, you’re gonna try to get your pitch as a hitter and he didn’t miss,” Padres pitcher Zach Davies told reporters after the game.
“So you can’t really fault him for that, in my opinion. Some guys feel differently, but everybody has their own opinion on it.”
— New York Post
Originally published as Baseball: Star breaks unwritten rule by hitting a home run off 3-0 pitch