The latest baseball scoring question

Here's what came up in the office the other day.

Batter hits sharp grounder in the hole between first and second. Second baseman flat-out dives for the ball, picks it cleanly. He then gets up, sets his feet and throws the ball in the dirt.

Hit or error? The rule of thumb is that if a play requires extraordinary effort, it's a hit. But the guy messed up in the easy part of the play.

What say you?

 

An E in my book.

 

Hit. He made an extraordinary play just to stop the ball.

 

Hit. It's entirely plausible that the effort required in diving for the ball and popping back up caused him to rush the throw or be off-balance.

 

If he had time to get up and set his feet, then he should have made an accurate throw. E4 in my scorebook.

 

Depends on where the runner is relative to the bag when he makes the throw. If the runner's at all close, it's a hit for the reasons the_lorax mentions. If he's practically jogging and only halfway there, then it's an error because it's not a bang-bang play anymore.

 

I guess it would also depend on how far the second baseman had to stretch for the ball. Merely diving to stop it wouldn't make it a spectacular effort worthy of scoring a hit because of a bad throw. But if he really had to run and lunge to get it, then, yeah, a hit. Although the way you laid out this example, Jim Thome must be running to first base.

 

It's two separate actions, he messed up part two despite the fact part one was spectacular. The throw wasn't the part that require extraordinary effort, but was the part he messed up and if a non-errant throw would have got the runner I'd call it an error.

 

E-4. I'm ruthless.

 

I thought this one would be up for grabs. It was the same way in the office here.

 

If he didn't have to hurry the throw, I say E4, regardless of the effort it took to make the stab.

 

It's an error. This happens all the time, more with shortstops than second basemen, but they making an outstanding diving play, then throw the ball away.

It's an error because a good throw would have produced an out.