Joe Maddon is wrong about home-plate collisions

Joe Maddon is supposed to be baseball’s cool dad, the one who shows up at the frat house barbecue and tosses beers around. He’s just like one of the guys, ha ha, there goes ol’ Joe. He’s going to shift his players over here! He’s going to shift them over there! He’s going to make his players wear onesies! Wacky ol’ Joe even showed up to his introductory press conference looking like the CEO of a company that sells organic chickpea snacks.

And, to be fair, it is nice to have a little variety in the managerial ranks. While it’s not unusual to have a cerebral manager — really, it might be the default — Maddon most definitely does stand out. It’s easy to dive into the backlash to the fawning praise, maybe even somewhat nourishing, but the sport is just a little more colorful with him in it.

There’s a dark underbelly to this image, however. While Maddon would love to rank IPAs with you at a Foo Fighters concert, he can also be a classic, old-timey, baseball dingus who believes in The Way Things Used To Be. If you’re not caught up on recent events, here’s a primer:

It really wasn’t a huge deal. Rizzo is the Jim Thome of his generation, someone who spends more time ranking his favorite Halloween candies than thinking about ways he can be mean to other people, and I’m willing to believe his slide was an instinctual move fueled by adrenaline and immediacy.

But Maddon keeps doubling down. In an interview with 670 The Score on Tuesday, he intimated that this wouldn’t have been a problem if Buster Posey wasn’t a weenie who was out of position when a runner shattered his ankle.

“I’m really confused by why (catchers getting maimed) gained so much attention, except for the fact that Buster Posey got hurt a couple years ago. If it was a third-string catcher for the Atlanta Braves who got hurt three years ago, this wouldn’t even be in existence.

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“It was all precipitated by one play that happened several years ago that to me was just bad technique on the part of the catcher, so that’s where I get really flustered by this conversation, because to me it should not even exist.”

These quotes were designed in a lab to make me itch. There are (at least) two things wrong with Maddon’s opinion.

First, it isn’t the damned Buster Posey Rule. That is not how it happened. That’s not how the rule changed.

The winter after Posey was injured, here was a headline:

Buster Posey’s injury can’t persuade Joe Torre to consider rule changes to safeguard catchers

In the article, we’re treated with the news that not only were the rules going to remain the same, but that Torre declined to bring the matter to the rules committee. It wasn’t that baseball deliberated about a new rule and then declined. It wasn’t even brought up. Total nonstarter.

Then the 2012 season came and went, and Posey won the MVP. His career wasn’t ruined. The urgency wasn’t the same. The momentum for a rule change had stalled.

In the 2013 American League Championship Series, though, Alex Avila was blown up at home plate and removed from the game. Here was a headline after that play:

Avila’s collision a signal for change

Avila’s dad was an assistant GM for the Tigers, and while there’s no indication that made a difference with the new rule, it certainly didn’t hurt to have someone in a front office realize just how silly and self-defeating the old ways were.

More important than the paternal connection, though, was the stage. It was the ALCS, with two teams trying to get to the World Series after roughly 200 games (exhibition included) of struggle. Both teams clawed, scraped, and shivved to get where they were. Both of them were so incredibly close.

And then one of those teams had to face the idea that they would be without their catcher, their field general, because of a silly, reckless, codified play that made no sense in the context of the sport. To traverse the slippery mountain pass of a baseball season, only to lose a player because someone pushed the football button in the middle of a freak play, was unconscionable.

Posey’s injury had a great deal to do with the eventual rule, for sure. But it was just a brick in a larger wall. Eventually people realized it was absurd to keep running into that wall, head first. The setting of Avila’s injury crystallized an argument that was already clear, and it was a fresh data point to discuss that offseason.

Now that we’ve got the history lesson out of the way, here’s the other thing that bothers me about Maddon’s opinions when it comes to home-plate collisions: They’re dumb. Incredibly dumb. I’ve been on this beat for years, and my side won. We have occupied the dummies, and we have kicked them out of power. It’s over. There are occasional “wussification” grenades thrown in our direction, but nothing we can’t handle. Or mute.

The home-plate collision used to be the only time in a baseball game when it was acceptable for a runner to attempt to get the ball out of a fielder’s mitt. It wasn’t any different than this:

That’s the same thing as a home-plate collision, aesthetically. The only difference is that Bronson Arroyo’s career wasn’t in jeopardy because of that play.

And because it was such a dumb baseball play to begin with, at no point in any of the hundreds of baseball games that I’ve watched since the new rule passed have I thought, “Ugh, that play would have been so much cooler under the old rules.” And I’ll bet that, even if they would never admit it, very few of the collision proponents actually think about the old rules when a run scores on a close play at the plate now. The run scores in a baseball context. You’re happy/sad in a baseball context. As in, ugh, that pitcher missed his pitch. Or, wow, that right fielder has a cannon.

Making the catcher drop the ball because of a weak-side blitz should be the last thing that crosses your mind, and that’s because it was always the worst skit on your favorite album. It never made sense as a baseball play. It was something that would have been invented if Vince McMahon tried an XFL-style league to compete with MLB, and it was a shame it was ever allowed. It took more than a century to get it out, but the game is unquestionably better without it.

Unquestionably better. And while I understand that Maddon wants to protect his players, and that’s what he’s mostly concerned about, his opinions on the way things used to be are bad. When a hitter gets a single with a runner on second, and that runner is quick enough to touch home plate before he’s tagged, it’s a beautiful, normal, wonderful baseball play.

Anything else is another sport entirely, and just because something is the way it used to be, doesn’t make it better. It’s a shame that manager who’s supposed to be so forward-thinking can’t dig himself out of the past.