Rule 10.07(f): Changing the rules at the end of the game

From now and for as long as baseball is a thing, the record books will show that on this past Saturday, June 1, Ryan Doumit hit a game-winning, two-run triple, his first three-bagger of the 2013 season (and probably his only; he's hit exactly one in each of his last four seasons), propelling the Twins over the Mariners. For as long as MLB.com decides to keep this highlight up, you'll be able to see what really happened:

Doumit is a lot of things -- designated hitter, backup catcher, really questionable corner outfielder -- but one thing he's not is a fast runner, as professional athletes go. He was not flying, has never flown, around the bases. Had he hit the ball exactly as depicted above with no runners on base and tried to make third, he'd almost certainly have been thrown out by a remarkable, quite likely hilarious margin. That right there is a classic example of what anyone with a passing familiarity with baseball would call a two-base hit. That's a textbook double.

It was scored a triple because of a provision in the official rules with which I'd been completely unfamiliar before this happened, found within Rule 10.07:

GAME ENDING HITS

(f) Subject to the provisions of 10.07 (g), when the batter ends a game with a safe hit which drives in as many runs as are necessary to put his team in the lead, he shall be credited with only as many bases on his hit as are advanced by the runner who scores the winning run, and then only if the batter runs out his hit for as many bases as are advanced by the runner who scores the winning run.

The wording of this rule ("only as many bases") reads like a limitation, and it is one: in a tie game with the winning run on third, it's a single whether you beat out a bunt or knock it off the top of the wall in deepest center. But it has a pretty significant expansion potential, too, and that's what came into play here.

In Doumit's case, he came up with the Twins down by one in the bottom of the ninth, and with Eduardo Escobar on second and Joe Mauer on first. Doumit drove the ball hard into the gap on the "right" side of right-center and to the wall; Mauer, as runners often do on deep doubles, came all the way around to score from first base. Thus, because the runner who scored the winning run had advanced three bases (and it's not shown in the highlight, but we have to assume that Doumit "ran out his hit" all the way to third), Rule 10.07(f) required the official scorer to credit Doumit with a triple. Even though it was obviously a double.

This doesn't come up often, of course, but it makes no sense to me. It changes the scoring rules pretty dramatically, and with respect to a subset of plays that, while very small, contains plays that will always be among the most remembered and discussed of any season. What surprises me most is the total lack of discretion: "he shall be credited." The rules give official scorers leeway in all kinds of other areas, including almost absolute and unfettered discretion on whether or not a play is to be ruled a hit or an error, and yet in this one instance, they take all that discretion away. If Doumit hits a double but a runner scores from first and Doumit makes his way over to third base, that's a triple, end of inquiry.

What's more, this allows for some profoundly silly hypotheticals. As long as the batter (a) executes a safe hit (b) driving in the winning run and (c) advances the same number of bases as the runner who scored does, Rule 10.07(f) dictates the scoring result, no matter (as I read it) what the surrounding facts are. There's no requirement that he get to that base before the winning run scores; it seems unlikely that Doumit got to third before Mauer scored, certainly, and unlikely that that'd happen in most instances, given the baserunner's usual head start. The only absurdity I do think this forecloses is a single-plus-error (for instance) turning into a triple, since I don't think the batter would be considered to "drive in" a runner that an error permitted to score.

With that in mind, here are a few hypotheticals that I think Rule 10.07(f) permits:

1. The Angels are in a tie game against the Rangers in Anaheim, with Mike Trout on second base and Albert Pujols batting. Pujols rips a line drive to left that carries on one bounce to David Murphy. Murphy comes up firing, but Trout had a good read on it, and with his great speed, the game was essentially over at the crack of the bat. Meanwhile, as the desperate throw sails in, Pujols hobbles over to second base and taps it with his toe before heading back to join his teammates' celebration. Pujols has hit a perfectly ordinary single, but must be credited with a double.

2. Alexei Ramirez has reached second with two out in a tie game in the ninth, and the Tigers bring in Phil Coke to face Adam Dunn. It's not exactly his favorite thing, but Jim Leyland feels constrained to put on a rather severe infield shift. Dunn lines a pitch hard up the middle. It hits the rubber or Coke's foot and bounds way up in the air, well over the head of the hard-charging shortstop; the second baseman was out of position thanks to the shift, so the entire infield watches helplessly, then starts to sulk off the field, as Ramirez trots home with the winning run. Before Dunn even reaches first the ball has come to rest, nestled comfortably against the right edge of second base itself. Dunn keeps lumbering on to second, actually stepping over the baseball on his way to touching the base. This, too, is a double.

3. Everth Cabrera represents the Padres' winning run on first base; Carlos Quentin is at the plate. Cabrera is running with the pitch and gets a typically great jump; by the time Quentin makes contact, Cabrera's very close to rounding second. It's a line drive down the right field line, cut off nicely by Yasiel Puig. Quentin would never risk taking second on Puig directly, this is definitely a single, but here Cabrera is burning around third and trying to end the game, so Puig uncorks a throw homeward... just late. Quentin trots toward second as he watches the throw sail over his head; stops and stands on second, starts to celebrate, says a few unsavory things about Zack Greinke's mother; then walks casually over to third, finally tapping the bag just before the grounds crew pulls it out of the ground. That would have to be a triple, wouldn't it? Cabrera advanced three bases, and so, eventually, did Quentin.

I imagine an actual official scorer would have something to say about this, that if that were the way the rules were actually applied, we'd have heard about it by now. But that's the way the rule is written, as I read it, and that's absurd. Sure, there are greater absurdities out there right now (something about Brennan Boesch and an old Sega Genesis?), but this rule is pretty absurd. Why can't the scorer just decide what sort of hit it is?