Batting in the Wrong Place
of the Order
Commish's Note: In
the USA Today-Post.com game Saturday, the Bucketheads made substitutions
in the seventh inning. One of them was re-inserting Jim Brady
into the lineup, batting ninth. One pitch into his at-bat, USA
Today pointed out that Brady was batting out of order, that he
had originally been batting in the No. 7 slot. So "Ask the
Ump" addresses:
Hold your hat! What we have is an illegal substitution, not batting out of order. Since the opposing manager had protested the illegal substitution, the penalty should have been ejection of Mr. Brady. The person Brady substituted for would have been ordered to bat in the No. 9 slot.
If any other re-entered players were put in the batting order other than their original batting positions they, too, would be subject to ejection when and if protested.
This
instance is quite different from a batting-out-of-order call.
Here's an example of batting out of order:
Team A has a batter, Mary, who grabs a bat, jumps into the box and takes a pitch. Team B claims batting out of order has occurred. Assuming the infraction has occurred, you must determine who is the batter out of order.
If it is Mary who is out of order, the penalty is simply the proper batter is sent to bat and they assume the count Mary had at the time of the appeal.
On the other hand, if the batter who preceded Mary's at-bat was the batter who was out of order, no appeal may be honored since the appeal is nullified once a pitch legal or illegal has been made to the next batter. Thus no penalty is imposed.
When a team is certain that a misapplication of the rules has occurred they may protest before a pitch, legal or illegal, is made or before all infielders have left fair territory or before the umpire(s) has left the field of play.
As for illegal substitution, which is the case with Brady, this is a protestable offense.
The umpire may not have known the rule on batting out of order or may well have been avoiding tipping the manager off on what was the real offense. Everyone acknowledges Brady was re-entered into the ninth spot in the lineup and he was originally batting seventh spot. So batting out of order is not the issue. What was improper was the illegal substitution of Brady.
And in the MMSL, his ejection would have been an automatic two-game suspension.