The Run Rule – and the Golden Rule

[Ken Krause]

Most of us are taught the Golden Rule as children: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. So you have to wonder what goes through some coaches’ heads when their team is clearly going to run rule their opponents but they decide to keep their foot on the offensive accelerator anyway. […]

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[The Man In Blue]

Another great article.

I have never understood why certain schools insist on bringing their varsity team to a game they know is not going to be competitive. Play your JV team, they need the reps.

The school I teach at recently got beat 37-0. We are not even close to being mildly competitive. We are a large school that can barely field a team. You know that coming to the game, so why don't you just bring your JV to play us? They will still whip us.

 

[MoJo]

Pool play and tournaments is time to run up the score. Tiebreakers matter, momentum matters, and hit the mercy rule asap & take an extra break.

When teams are lopsided at single and double headers, that is time to give non-starters playing time. Pitchers NEED the mound time. Everything else is a gimmick. Maybe a LBR violation is ok after that...if you are going to go through the line up twice in an inning.

 

[MoJo]

Pool play and tournaments is time to run up the score. Tiebreakers matter, momentum matters, and hit the mercy rule asap & take an extra break.

When teams are lopsided at single and double headers, that is time to give non-starters playing time. Pitchers NEED the mound time. Everything else is a gimmick. Maybe a LBR violation is ok after that...if you are going to go through the line up twice in an inning.

Some of those "ideas" in the article are just ridiculous. To the point of unsportsmanlike and "travesty of the game".

Heard that being called against a team in the past.

 

[Dabears17]

Some of those "ideas" in the article are just ridiculous. To the point of unsportsmanlike and "travesty of the game".

Heard that being called against a team in the past.

Which do you disagree with? Only one I disagree with is the gently running into fielders.

When I was coaching a 10u fall ball team, I had a coach give me outs by leaving his runner at 1B with 2nd and getting D3K’s with 1B occupied.

 

[_MIA_]

Best ones are the ones which are not as obvious. Not stealing, not taking extra bases, etc eg the ones which fall under the “unwritten rule” category in baseball. Unfortunately those often are not enough to stop the bleeding in which case the coach of the losing team needs to re-evaluate how they are scheduling (and yes I realize that in school ball you sometimes have no choice..)

As a player I would be more embarrassed that a team had to show us some mercy and everybody watching knows it than I would about getting our teeth kicked in. That may be a “male thing” though..

 

[LEsoftballdad]

The rules in HS by me are ridiculous. As recently pointed out to me by the @The Man In Blue , NY uses USA softball rules, not NFHS. Where they differ is in the mercy rules. In their infinite wisdom, they decided we need to play a minimum of 5 innings and be ahead by 12 runs for the rule to kick in. USA states 15 after 3, 12 after 4, and 10 after 5.

Despite our best efforts, some teams just can't get outs, so we wind up stepping off the bases. All games like that do are pad stats for the weak players. I feel really bad for those players. I know most are just there to have fun, but getting run ruled every game can't be fun.

 

[GIMNEPIWO]

I never liked "leaving early" to make intentional outs. I've been on the losing end where it was done and had the upper hand where it could have been done ... I do not see any situation that either team benefits from doing this. It especially sticks it in the face of the losing team which is counter productive to what the intended purpose should be; ending the humiliation. I would go so far as to say it is border line USC.

 

[Orange Socks]

DD2 played her final HS game last night. Her team has not won a single conference game all season and I believe all games ended in run rule defeats. Last night's opponent run ruled them earlier in the season and by the 3rd inning the score was 8-0. I was working concession and thought the game would end pretty soon. I was wrong. They kept them scoreless for the next 4 innings and all of sudden the girls learned to hit in the 6th and 7th innings. They scored 16 runs!!! Winning 16-8. Those girls needed to score every single one of those runs because they are used to giving up a 10 spot in an inning. Just looking at the score you might think it was a lopsided win. The other team won the first 3 innings while we won the last 2 innings. I know it's not 37-0.

DD2's team was run ruled 18-0 in 2.5 innings while only sending 6 batters to the plate this season. How is that good for anyone? We spent more time driving back and forth than the length of the game. 1 hour. How is that any good for anyone on the field? I despise the other coach for many other reasons than the score. Why not let both teams get reps? Pull up a JV pitcher for more reps? It's all about stats that's why.

DD had a TB teammate that never got to pitch for her HS team, because the coach made Makinzy Herzog pitch just about every single inning of her HS career. There has got to be teams your 2nd an 3rd pitchers can get reps. Lots of HS coaches do this. Are they insecure with their team's abilities? This does not prepare your team for a deep post season run. In Texas teams will typically play best 2 out of 3 over 2 days. Pitchers usually pitch 2 games a week. Tues and Friday. They are not used to pitching 2 days in a row. And the 2nd pitchers are not conditioned to pitch at all because they got 10 innings all season. Seen lots of talented teams implode in post season for this reason. Coaches were to busy patting themselves on the back for run ruling all the inferior teams to realize the bigger picture.

 

[The Man In Blue]

Regarding stepping off ... I can understand the position @pattar relates to and the position @GIMNEPIWO provides, but I think there is value in doing this for both teams.

NOBODY is getting anything out of a game like that. As the team that is up, I have the health and safety of my team to look out for. If it is 90 degrees out at 10:00 in the morning already and we may have three more games to play today ... I'm sorry you stepped too far out of your rec league, but I am getting my team off the field as fast as possible. As the team that is down, thank you for allowing me to save my pitching, get my girls off the field safely, and allowing us to begin the mental healing so we can move on.

This is where softball has an advantage over baseball. I had a V/JV double-header today ... 38 degrees and snowing. It was ridiculous. The visiting team put in their entire bench in the second inning of the varsity game. The home team kids started finding ways to entertain themselves, most of which had nothing to do with baseball. Why were we still doing this? We finally get done (5 innings, just under 2 hours), switch out and come back trying to talk the coaches into just playing 3 innings of JV. No, no, they want to go a full game.

Another almost 2 hours later and we pulled the plug in the 3rd inning when NOBODY was even paying attention to what was going on. The coach came out to make a pitching change and asked, "Who wants to pitch?"

Sorry, but I fully believe in stepping off and, more importantly, believe teams do not do it often enough or soon enough.