WHY NOT PLAY THE GAME UNDER PROTEST? In the July 24 game between the Twins and the Angels, in the ninth inning the Angels were clinging to a one run lead. The Twins had runners on first and second with nobody out. Darin McGilvra on Yahoo tells here what happened next: The batter hit a popup in the infield. The Angel pitcher let the popup drop and was able to start a double play because the runners were frozen, waiting for the ball to be caught. The umpires did not invoke the infield fly rule. Mike Berardino of the Saint Paul Pioneer Press has the umpires’ explanation here for why they did not: “For an infield fly, we look for if the ball has arc and if the fielder can catch it with ordinary effort and if the fielder gets comfortably underneath,” said crew chief Ted Barrett, who was working third base. “That one definitely had enough arc, but the fielder has to get comfortably underneath the ball to catch it. That’s the criteria that wasn’t met.”
The umpires’ understanding of the rules seems wrong. Certainly the Twins thought so. Why didn’t Minnesota play the game under protest and appeal to the league office? (See baseball rule 4.19, quoted here).