The 2010 National League Rookie of the Year race came down to two players, the San Francisco Giants Buster Posey and the Atlanta Braves Jason Heyward, with Posey nosing out Heyward after the Giants eliminated the Braves in last year’s playoffs en route to a World Series title. Last week however, while Heyward missed several games following a pair of MRIs on his right shoulder, Posey was lost for the season when the Florida Marlins’ Scott Cousins collided with the Giants catcher in an extra innings contest. Posey suffered a fractured left fibula and three torn ligaments in his left ankle following the brutal collision at the plate, which has been declared all across baseball as “clean.”
Despite both participants doing their jobs with the catcher blocking the plate and the baserunner traveling through the catcher to reach the plate, Posey’s agent Jeff Berry is now calling for some sort of rule change to be put in place to protect catchers. Braves All-Star catcher Brian McCann hinted before a recent game against the Cincinnati Reds that there was nothing Posey could have done differently in that situation. “The same thing would have happened to me,” said McCann speaking on the matter in dugout before batting practice.
Braves backup catcher David Ross also would not criticize Posey, crediting him for doing the best job he could to save the game for his team. “It is so hard, plays at the plate especially from rightfield, where (that play) was coming from,” Ross said. “You’re blind, you can’t see the runner and you’re just trying to catch the ball first. He’s doing the best job he can trying to catch the ball and make the tag on the runner.”
Ross was quick to say as well that he believed the play at the plate involving Posey and Cousins was clean. “It is unfortunate that his leg got caught beneath him and he got hit like that,” Ross said. “You hate to see a good player like him, a guy that’s in the middle of their lineup go down like that. My heart goes out to Buster.”
Having just won the NL Rookie of the Year race last year, Posey is the highest-profiled catcher to suffer a recent major injury but at least four other catchers have sustained crushing injuries during collisions at the plate in the last two seasons. Last year Carlos Santana, a promising backstop for Cleveland, was lost in an eerily similar play.
Does Berry have a point? Should catchers be protected? Ross isn’t sure how it can be done or even if it should be done. “It’s part of the territory,” said Ross. “We come up knowing that you can get run over at any time and that’s kind of what’s the norm for us.”
Ross wasn’t sure any way to protect the catchers, short of a no-contact rule. “That gives us (the catchers) a big advantage, taking away the plate.” Ross thinks that a no-contact rule would potentially be a touchy subject, leaving what is and isn’t clean to the umpire’s discretion. “Obviously everybody likes to be protected, nobody wants to end (his) career getting hit at the plate and something bad happen like that,” said Ross. “This game is risky; there’s no way to avoid some risk that you can have.”
Plays at the plate are always exciting for the fans, but they are also so very dangerous for the players involved. It is a shame that players like Posey and Santana have suffered injuries over the last two years, but there are also plenty of games that do not have collisions at the plate. As Ross said, it is part of the territory and the catchers do have padding on in an attempt to protect themselves. It will be interesting to see if Major League Baseball kneejerks into a new rule or if catchers themselves adjust in an effort to avoid injury. Fans of the National Pastime will certainly be on the edge of their seats the next time a bang-bang play at the plate develops, holding their collective breaths that both players stand up after the play.
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