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Dustin Pedroia and the Utley Rule

The Manny Machado-Dustin Pedroia incident is now over ten days old, but even in our 24-hour-outrage-culture it remains a topic of concern because Pedroia was forced to miss a handful of games, Matt Barnes did a dumb thing that some people think necessitates more dumb things lest manhood be lost, and the Red Sox started a series against Baltimore last night. The players downplayed the potential for any further brouhaha, nevertheless ESPN made the opening game of the series their Monday Night feature, hoping for fireworks. This nonsense is not going away any time soon. The tenor of those opening sentences should tell you how I feel about this kerfuffle and indicate that I am not interested in re-litigating the situation. So then why am I here spilling internet ink about it? Pedroia’s postgame comments:

“I don’t even know what the rule is. I’ve turned the best double play in the major leagues for 11 years. I don’t need the (expletive) rule, let’s be honest. The rule is irrelevant. The rule is for people with bad footwork, and that’s it.”

The rule is irrelevant. As is typical for him, Pedroia did not mince words. He is not the only player to publicly state his dislike of Rule 6.01(j), better know as the Utley Rule. As one example, take this article titled “Utley Rule has Fundamentally Changed Baseball”; a bold statement from the get-go. In it, Blue Jays’ center fielder Kevin Pillar, third base coach Luis Rivera, and old-school-lovin’ play-by-play man Buck Martinez all speak to how the rule has removed an important part of the game: the baserunners’ ability to physically break up double plays. And by doing so, life has become much easier for middle infielders.

But has it? Has it changed baseball? Or is Pedroia’s assessment of the situation – that the rule has not changed play for those who can appropriately dance around the second base bag – more correct?

Double play data should reveal any impact of the rule. To be clear, I am interested in the grounded-into-double-play rate. So the total number of GIDP out of all plate appearances for which a GIDP was possible (i.e., less than two outs, runner on first). If the Utley Rule really has created an environment in which middle-infielders need not worry about runners bearing down on them, then we should see an uptick in the GIDP%. Here are the data (from Retrosheet and Baseball Prospectus) for the years that Pedroia has been in the league:

Year

GIDP

GIDP Opps.

GIDP%

Change from Previous Season

2007

3983

36097

11.03

2008

3883

35806

10.84

-0.19

2009

3796

35573

10.67

-0.17

2010

3720

34365

10.82

0.15

2011

3523

33885

10.40

-0.42

2012

3614

32977

10.96

0.56

2013

3732

33766

11.05

0.09

2014

3609

33666

10.72

-0.33

2015

3739

33212

11.26

0.54

2016

3719

33962

10.95

-0.31

2017

563

4758

11.83

0.88

As you can see, there is year-to-year variability in GIDP%, but 2016, the first year with the Utley Rule, does not appear to be out of step with the years preceding it. 2017 has the highest rate in recent seasons, but is based on only a month’s worth of games, so temper any grand conclusions until we are deeper into the season. From 2007 to 2015, given the necessary conditions, double plays were turned 10.86 percent of the time, which is less often than in 2016 after the rule was implemented. But the higher 2016 rate is only a smidge higher and works out to each team turning an average of one extra double play over the course of the year. That is basically a nothing change, and crediting it entirely to the change in the rules is a difficult case to make.

Perhaps considering any plate appearance where a double-play was possible takes too wide a view of the possible impact of the rule, and it is more appropriate to only focus on double-play situations where the batter ended his plate appearance by hitting the ball on the ground; the necessary beginning of a potential GIDP. Here are those data:

Season

GIDP

GIDP Opps.

GIDP%

Change from Previous Season

2007

3983

12984

30.68

2008

3883

12771

30.40

-0.28

2009

3796

12403

30.61

0.21

2010

3720

12252

30.36

-0.25

2011

3523

12342

28.54

-1.82

2012

3614

12113

29.84

1.30

2013

3732

12055

30.96

1.12

2014

3609

12034

29.99

-0.97

2015

3739

12075

30.96

0.97

2016

3719

11808

31.50

0.54

2017 is not included because the Retrosheet play-by-play data are not yet available, and they are necessary for me to isolate the batted ball outcomes. Similar year-to-year variability is present, but now we see that the 2016 season had the highest rate. However, note that the increase from 2015 was half (or less than half) of the change seen across seasons in each of the prior five seasons. Applying the 2007-2015 rate (30.26) to the 2016 opportunities means on average each team gained five double plays. Is that enough of a change to make a big deal about it? Perhaps, but given the existent variation in the year-to-year GIDP rate I am not comfortable attributing the 2016 increase to the new sliding rule.

These data show, to me anyway, that statements about how the Utley Rule was going to dramatically change (or ruin) the game was empty rhetoric. Rather, it seems as though the combination of the Utley Rule and stricter enforcement of middle infielders needing to be on-the-second-base-bag rather than in-the-neighbourhood of the bag has kept the game right where we left it. In retrospect, this should not have been difficult to anticipate. The lamentations for losing the opportunity to blow up the infielder and stay out of double plays was likely just a result of a fairly typical error of memory. People were probably preferentially recalling the slides that worked to disrupt the second-baseman or shortstop despite those almost certainly being fewer in number than instances where the infielder handled (or avoided) the contact and still spun two. Confirmation bias is a powerful thing.

This analysis raises the question: if the rule has no effect on play, then why bother having it at all? Well, safety. The primary intention of the rule is to protect middle infielders from violent plays. The fact that the rule can do that while simultaneously not having an effect on the rate of double-plays is really a best-case scenario. The game goes on as we know (and love) it, and infielders are safer from injury on plays around the bag because they are better able to predict where the runner will be sliding. With all that said, of course boneheaded plays, like Machado’s careless slide, will still happen. But as a result of the rule the collisions that result from these momentary errors in judgment should be tame relative to what they could have been just a few years ago. That is undoubtedly a good thing.

Photo by Evan Habeeb – USA TODAY Sports

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