Gary’s Q&A

Listener question & Gary’s response · Transcript passage

Glenn Folau asks I was watching an MLB game on YT, and there was an infield “fly”, and the team in the field purposefully let the ball drop. It created all sorts of confusion, not only were the players confused, it appears that the umpires and commentators were confused. The runner on third strolled across the home plate, only to be called back to third, and then subsequently awarded the run, which understandably caused a brouhaha between the manager and his players and the umpire. Could you shed some light on this most confusing of rules?

Glen, you are not alone in being confused by the infield fly rule. Most baseball fans don’t really understand it. The premise behind it is simple. Runners on base can’t leave the base until a ball is caught. They have to wait until the ball is caught, and then they run.

If a ball is caught in the outfield, the base runner might have time to advance a base. However, if the ball is a fly ball in the infield, an infielder has an incentive to drop the ball rather than catch it. The runner has to assume that the infielder will catch it, but if he doesn’t catch it, they can actually get a double or maybe even a triple play because the runners are forced to advance.

The infield fly rule takes care of this. If there is an infield fly, the umpire can declare an infield fly, in which case the batter is automatically out. It is equivalent to the ball being caught, and it doesn’t give the infielder the option of dropping the ball on purpose. When the infield fly rule is evoked, the runners are not forced to advance. This is uncommon, but not rare. There are about 2,400 major league baseball games played each year, and it is estimated that the infield fly rule is evoked about 300 times per season on average.