As SEC commissioner Greg Sankey met with ESPN’s broadcasters during the SEC Tournament championship game between LSU and Tennessee, a play developed that highlighted one of the recent changes to the rules by the conference.
Tennessee’s Billy Amick hit a ball into play that forced a throw to first. The throw was wild, skying over the first baseman, and Amick ran through the base to reach safely.
LSU challenged the call, arguing that Amick had failed to hit the green bag to the right of the normal white first base bag, a newly implemented feature by the SEC for the tournament. It’s a safety measure designed to cut down on potential contact between runners and first basemen.
Amick was ruled safe by the umpires, but it sparked a discussion in the booth.
“We’ve had a lot of conversations with our coaches,” Greg Sankey said. “When you do something new it’s a question mark over everybody’s head. And then every one of these coaches has had someone injured in a collision at first base. Or in this tournament, you guys have been calling games where somebody’s outside the lane.”
The rule has been mostly a positive, without controversy this week. Sankey says it “should” be adopted more broadly in college baseball because of the success.
“It should have been adopted in college softball years ago, just because of the numbers and the tightness there,” Sankey said. “But I think it can help both softball and baseball if everyone would move to it universally.”
Greg Sankey explained the safety issue at first has been there for a long time.
“Summer college baseball, way back in the mid-80s I had it happen to me,” he said. “Beautiful bunt, laid it down and caught the ball in the back and I was outside the lane. So it very clearly puts you in the lane, avoids the collision. We haven’t had those collisions this week, and I think it’s been a good experiment.”
ESPN analyst Kyle Peterson was also a fan.
“I really like this. I know there’s purists going crazy about it, from a safety standpoint,” he said. “But the other is that swing and bunt play or something that the runner’s lane and everything else, just takes it entirely out of play. I know it doesn’t look the way that we’re used to having it look. The idea of it, to me, makes a ton of sense.”
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