re: 3rd Base coach for Royals should have waved him home...

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The point is that if even Gordon had been a 2-to-1 underdog to score, he should have tried.

These decisions can be counterintuitive. Sometimes a strategy that’s successful less than 50 percent of the time — like splitting eights in blackjack — is still the right move because the alternative is even worse. In this case, the alternative involved trying to score against Bumgarner with your catcher at the plate and two outs, and then having to prevail in extra innings.

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Yeah, but the odds were probably way worse than 2:1. Brandon Crawford was about 150-175 feet away when Gordon is hitting third base. Any MLB player would have been toast. You cannot just assume that 2:1 was the case.

Think about this: a throw from third base to first base is 127 feet. A typical third base is able to field a ground and throw it over to first to get the runner by quite a bit in most cases. Yeah, the throw is longer, but Crawford already has it in his glove. Plus, Crawford has an accurate arm from all accounts.

The third base coach would have had to resign before he made it to the dugout. (Of course, there is too much conservatism in game decisions in sports, but that is a whole other tangent).

I guess the craziest thing that would have happened is that Gordon probably would have tried to truck Posey and the Royals would have lost on the Buster Posey rule with Buster Posey at the plate.

The implications of a home plate collision would have been absurd with the new rule. Game 7 of the World Series with two outs and the bottom of the ninth and the tying run coming home decided by Rule 7.13 would have been insane. If Gordon ran over Posey and lowered his shoulder when Posey had possession of the ball and dropped it, then Gordon still would have been called out. The umpire would have been murdered on live television.

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Rule 7.13: Baseball announced -- effective this year -- that a runner "may not deviate from his direct pathway to the plate in order to initiate contact with the catcher." Similarly, catchers are not allowed to block the plate unless they are in possession of the ball. If the runner violates the protocol, he's out. If the catcher errs, the runner is safe.

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The third base coach made the right decision in my mind. Either way, it was a thrilling play to the end of a great Series.

You are right. In my scenario, I was saying Posey was already there with the ball in Gordon's path and waiting for him.