Circumstance doesn’t make Brian Snitker right about the Buster Posey rule
Catcher interference can lead to real-life injury, as San Francisco Giants catcher Buster Posey, one of the best players in all of baseball and likely a future Hall of Famer, suffered a broken leg after getting knocked over in a collision with Scott Cousins of the Marlins.
Backstop is the one position on the baseball diamond that is susceptible to such a conflict, as baserunners will often do anything possible to score a run. Unfortunately for the Atlanta Braves, they were on the wrong end of the rule meant to protect catchers on Sunday night against the Philadelphia Phillies.
Dansby Swanson rounded third base and didn’t have a clear lane to home plate, and was therefore tagged out by the Phillies catcher.
Brian Snitker wants the Buster Posey rule removed from MLB
“He was sitting there pretty good, but they’re not calling that anymore. They need to take that off the book and just start blowing up catchers again,” Snitker said postgame.
Sure, it’s frustrating that umpires aren’t making the call when necessary, but the answer to the Braves (and baseball’s) problem isn’t to disband the rule altogether. Home plate collisions are all but extinct at this point. While Posey was (hopefully) the last victim, he was far from the first. Who could forget Pete Rose’s home-plate collision with Ray Fosse?
While this moment in the 1970 All-Star Game is celebrated for its raw history, it by no means should be the norm in a sport that ought to embrace its flare with emerging stars such as Fernando Tatis, Jr., rather than pandering to unnecessary violence involving some of the game’s greatest players. Do we really want to put JT Realmuto, or another star catcher, through something like this?
The easy answer is no, even if it cost the Braves this time around.