Perverse incentives and sports rules

Many sports rules are about eliminating perverse incentives--to keep a team from intentionally doing something contrary to the game's ordinary expectations, where doing so offers an unexpected benefit. That is the basic idea behind the Infield Fly Rule and its cousin the dropped-third-strike rule.

Watch replays of the bizarre ground-rule double that denies the Rays a run in Sunday night's Game 3 loss to the Red Sox (the Sox clinched in four on Monday night). The ball hit the top of the right-field wall and back into the field, bounced off the right-fielder and back into the stands. The umpires correctly ruled it a ground-rule double; two rules discuss a fair ball deflecting off a fielder and out of play. The right-fielder did not intentionally knock the ball into the stands, which would have triggered a different rule. At the same time, he did not try that hard to keep it from going into the stands. Watching the replay, he reaches out to grab the ball as it is heading over the wall, then seems to pull his glove back. It may be that his body was against the wall and he could not reach further without going over.

Back to perverse incentives: Perverse incentives to do what--Intentionally knock the ball into the stands or to not try too hard to keep the ball in play. The rules address the former. But they do not address the latter, which can work to a team's advantage. While this play was unusual (few stadiums have 6' outfield fences), the incentive is not. This happens a fair bit at Wrigley Field; a ball that sticks in the ivy on the outfield fence is governed by the same rule and we often see players ease up on a ball that is clearly going into the plants or where the ball and player reach the wall at the same time. There may be nothing the rules can do. It is hard enough to determine player intent. It would be impossible to determine that a player did not try hard enough to prevent something unintentional from happening. There is some talk that baseball should change the rule to award two bases from where the runners are when the ball leaves the field, which is the rule if the player intentionally deflects the ball into the stands. Baseball might be able to carve out deflections from balls traveling on their own. But umpires like clear rules, so the push to change it may not get very far.

Finally, a lawyering lesson. On Sunday, Rays manager Kevin Cash argued that the runner should have been allowed to score, given how the ball was hit, that he was running on the pitch, and that he would have scored had the ball remained in play. But it was pointed out that in a 2019 regular-season game against the Blue Jays, a Rays outfield lost control of a ball and the ball went into the stands; Cash argued that it was a ground-rule double and that the baserunner, who would have scored on the play, had to return to third. You argue the interpretation that works for your client.