Buster Posey Collision: Is It Time to Change the Rules to Protect Catchers?

The baseball world has been abuzz for the balance of the week with discussion of the loss of San Francisco Giants catcher Buster Posey for the season after a devastating home-plate collision with Scott Cousins of the Florida Marlins.

The debate has circled around one question: Does Major League Baseball need to change its rules to protect its catchers in much the same manner the National Football League has been changing its rules the last couple of seasons to protect players from concussions resulting from serious hits?

If you ask me, though (and no one ever does), this question is misguided. The real question:

Was the collision between Scott Cousins and Buster Posey within the limits of the rules as they currently exist?

Back to that in a second.

In order to fully appreciate the issues at play here, it is important that we are all talking about the same play, as in: Do we all agree on what happened during the play?

The collision has been variously described as a collision between runner and catcher, in which the catcher was blocking the plate while he awaited the throw and in which the runner attempted to plow through the catcher in order to prevent him from making the play.

I kind of agree with those characterizations.

Emphasis on "kind of."

I have watched the play a few times now, and three things are clear to me:

1) Posey did not have the entire plate blocked.

2) Cousins did not collide with Posey on his way to the plate, but rather veered away from his path to the plate and collided with Posey instead of sliding towards home.

3) Posey's injury was not necessarily a result of the collision.

I have taken the opportunity to take a couple of screen grabs from the video at MLB.com, which is available here.

As to the first point, the first screen grab clearly demonstrates that Cousins is coming down the line hard as Posey is waiting for the throw from Nate Schierholtz.  

At this point, Posey has the plate partially blocked with his left foot, but his body is not in front of the plate. This is technically correct: A catcher is not allowed to block the plate without the ball.

Thus, at this point it is clear that Cousin's had the choice of either coming in head-first and going through Posey's leg to the plate, or sliding around the plate and attempting to reach out and swipe the plate with his hand as he goes by it.

In the second still from the video of the collision, the ball has arrived, and although Posey has not caught it (that's the ball right next to his right foot), it is fair to say that both Posey and Cousins reasonably believe that he has caught it.

Notice, though, that at this point Posey is still not blocking the plate. Indeed, the path to the plate is even less obstructed than it was when Posey was awaiting the throw. Cousin's path to the plate is actually reasonably unobstructed.

But Cousins is not sliding for home. At the point of this still, Cousins has already begun his launch, and he is launching not at the plate, but rather right at Buster Posey.

Let us pause here.

At this point, there may be a need for a rules change, but let us forget about protecting catchers from injuries. Eliminating collisions at the plate would seem to be a wholly unnecessary overreaction to a play which happens in Major League Baseball all the time and usually does not result in injury.

Nevertheless, there may be a need for a rules change if what Cousins did does not violate one of the following rules:

First, hasn't Cousins left the baseline to avoid being tagged?

And second, hasn't Cousins interfered with a fielder attempting to make a play?

Interestingly, the answer to both of those questions is "no," because the baseline rule requires the runner to go three feet outside the baseline to avoid a tag, which Cousins clearly did not do, and the interference rule does not apply because the ball beat the runner home.

In fact, technically—and I do mean technically—all Cousins has done is brace for an inevitable collision.

So, we are faced with the following:

Let's assume for a moment that Posey had cleanly fielded the ball, and at the point captured in the second still above, he is about to tag Cousins.

The policy question we have to ask ourselves is:

Do we want a league in which the runner would be required to attempt to slide around home plate to avoid the tag of the catcher and attempt to swipe-tag home plate, or do we want to allow the runner to attempt to break up the play by barreling into the catcher?

As we can see in this next screen grab, it is clear that Cousins has both attempted to barrel through the catcher, but also gone out of his way to do it.

As you can tell from this photo, Cousins did not go straight in, but went out of his way to hit Posey. Nevertheless, their collision took place directly in front of the plate, meaning that a collision was likely inevitable.

Thus, all Cousins did was initiate the collision rather than having the collision initiated against him.

For my money, I tend to side with the "collisions-are-a-part-of-baseball" crowd.  

At the same time, I am also part of the small crowd of people that believes if you have a catcher who hits like Mike Piazza, Brian McCann, Victor Martinez, Joe Mauer or Buster Posey, you should move him to first base, third base or designated hitter immediately to preserve his bat against the injuries catchers naturally incur.

Of course, none of that matters, because at the end of the day, this was just one of the unfortunate coincidences of baseball. Had the throw arrived a moment sooner, Posey applies the tag with little fanfare; had the throw arrived a moment later, Cousins would have come in cleanly standing up.

As for preventing injuries to catchers, in reality the question of injuries to catchers is not really presented by this play.

As we see in screen-grab No. 4, Posey's injury occurred because he rolled backwards over his own leg.

This was not one of those injuries that usually results from home-plate collisions, like concussions or blurred visions or separated shoulders and the like. This was a freak accident, as unlikely an accident as Kendrys Morales breaking his leg jumping on home plate or Luis Salazar losing an eye after being hit by a batted ball. 

No matter how you change the rules of baseball, you are never going to prevent the freak injuries that occur when a guy rolls his ankle or falls straight backwards over the top of his legs or gets hit by a batted ball.

Which is not to say that these injuries are not tragic—because they are.  

But changing the rules won't change that.