FSU vs. SF - Sara Nevins - Illegal pitch feast!

[ms244]

I am watching the game between SFU and SF and through 5 innings Sara Nevins has 9 illegal pitch calls against her. I really don't want to start another debate about leaping vs. non-leaping and if it is an advantage. I am just surprised that they are calling so many IP's now during the tournament. You know that Nevins has been doing this the whole season. She didn't just start doing this this weekend. So why call it now and not last week, or last month? For me that is the biggest complaint that I have about the whole IP situation. If it is illegal today, then it was illegal last week, right? Why not call it all season? Candrea made headlines a few years ago when he asked the same question during a press conference when his pitcher was called for an IP several times in one game but not the game before.

 

[JJsqueeze]

Its ridiculous. They need to officiate it consistently or change the rule.

 

[RubberBiscuit]

My question is "who are the officiating crews held responsible to?"

This group, that an umpire gets their marching orders from for the year, are those that need to be shown the door for their complete ignorance and/or incompetence.

I still hold onto a thread of hope that the doggone skipping advantage of replanting can once an for all be banished from the sport. I wonder if the umpiring squad would do just fine if they had any management guidance at all on the topic. Obviously they are not getting it.

 

[marriard]

They have been calling it a lot against Nevins all year but apparently not enough for her to make changes and stop doing it. She gets it called so often you could see it didn't even bother her when it happened.

The real question is why they ONLY called 9 illegal pitches against her. If they called it every time she was illegal they should have called it at least 40 times in this game. In this game apparently they were only going to call it illegal if no one was on base.

 

[chinamigarden]

It's the story at the WCWS every year. Some pitcher gets a ton of IPs called. Her coach who has been watching her do it all year acts surprised and then blames the officials. The coaches have eyes but they pretend they didn't know. Silly

 

[wichita]

Funny thing is watching the sun devils game last night and Escobedo pitches illegally every single pitch. If they're not going to call it consistently throughout the WCWS then get rid of the rule.

 

[GOINGDEEP]

I do love this sport, but the pitching rules either need to be enforced or changed. You can't have pitcher A, who plays by the rules, competing against pitcher B, who is "basically" cheating by mechanics. As someone who came from a sport where the mechanics had to be taught and engaged 100% legal........or else, fastpitch really let's me down by their lack of policing their pitchers. It is NOT FAIR to those who "master the art" of legal effective pitching.

 

[marriard]

I do love this sport, but the pitching rules either need to be enforced or changed. You can't have pitcher A, who plays by the rules, competing against pitcher B, who is "basically" cheating by mechanics. As someone who came from a sport where the mechanics had to be taught and engaged 100% legal........or else, fastpitch really let's me down by their lack of policing their pitchers. It is NOT FAIR to those who "master the art" of legal effective pitching.

The rule is broken and it continues to sadden me that the various ABC orgs - especially ASA - are not willing to sit down and do something about it.

I see there being two decent and easily implemented choices:

- Go to the ISA/Pro rule , which is basically go ahead and leap, but you can't replant (which has its own issues because replanting becomes the next issue). Eventually I suspect this will also cause the rubber to move back if there truly is an advantage to leaping.
- Reduce the penalty for an illegal pitch to a 'ball' or result of play to allow the umpires to call it is all situations. Right now the baserunners also advancing makes the penalty extremely harsh which makes umpires loath to call it with runners on (see the USF/FSU game today for a perfect example).

It took my DD a long time to make sure she is legal and like Goingdeep - going up against pitchers who haven't made the effort to be legal is BS.

 

[RubberBiscuit]

Warning to you "participation trophy" "everybody's a victim" folks out there on my very opinionated commentary to follow:

Just got done watching this game - originally didn't care who won but now thrilled that FL State won.

Two years ago I saw Nevens as a freshman and blood shot out of my eyes with her crow-hopping. YES CROW HOPPING numb-skull Kathy Smith who made some ridiculous speech around the 6th inning that "it definitely is not crow-hopping" - what an idiot she is proving to be.

Back when she was a freshman I sort of aligned with feeling a little sorry for Nevens thinking she was just caught up in a very poor rules situation allowed in softball by some other idiots. I thought "well after that difficult freshman experience they're gonna try something to iron out her crow-hopping"....

Then skim past last year as S FL dropped out early enough that I didn't have to tolerate seeing her cheating.

But now after seeing Nevens not only having done NOTHING about the crow-hopping but also add frequent not starting from the rubber, or leaping, or even finishing outside the circle I now have ZERO sympathy for the cheater-extraordinaire. In fact it almost seems that she added those other ills just to further push the envelope. I also now have complete disgust in the cheesy idiot coach from S FL and his grandstanding defense of the wrong-doing.

In my book Nevens never existed as a pitcher and I am hoping and praying for a very early exit for S FL from here.

 

[Greenmonsters]

Call the game by the rulebook and move on. If you can train a 6-month old puppy, you can train a prima donna