Martinez no fan of controversial home plate call

Jays broadcaster and former catcher says umpires got it right, but ‘rule is a terrible rule’

Blue Jays broadcaster Buck Martinez is of two minds when it comes to the controversial play at the plate that decided Sunday’s 3-2 win over the Minnesota Twins after a review.

He agrees that the final call was correct, but hates the rule.

“Strictly by interpreting the letter of the rule, the umpires got it right,” Martinez, who recently returned to the Jays booth after a bout with cancer, said Monday.

In the 10th inning Sunday at Target Field, Jays baserunner Whit Merrifield tried to score from third on a fly ball. The throw beat him to the plate, and Twins catcher Gary Sánchez tagged him for what would have been the third out. But the Jays challenged, claiming Sanchez had illegally blocked the plate. After a review, the call on the field was overturned and Merrifield was ruled safe for what would prove to be the winning run.

It’s the illegal part that Martinez, a former big-league catcher, has problems with.

“They have taken … whether or not the team wins or loses off the field and they’ve put it in the replay room, which is terrible,” said Martinez, who famously suffered a broken leg while tagging out Seattle’s Phil Bradley at the plate as the Jays’ catcher in 1985. The rules were different then.

After Sunday’s game, Merrifield said the replay crew got it right, while Jays manager John Schneider admitted he was “a little bit” surprised.

“Obviously it was a big point in the game,” said Merrifield, “and you don’t want it to come down to a rules decision, but the rules are there for a reason.”

The reason was a series of collisions that resulted in injuries over a three-year span, starting with one in May of 2011 that knocked out Giants all-star catcher Buster Posey for the rest of the season.

On Feb. 24, 2014, baseball changed rule 7:13 to state that a runner can’t go out of his way to make contact with the catcher, in hopes of jarring the ball loose, and a catcher can’t block the runner’s path to the plate without possession of the ball.

“The rule is a terrible rule,” Martinez said. “(It) eliminates the talented catchers from saving runs. It eliminates the Pat Borderses of the world, the Buck Martinezes of the world, from saving runs. And you eliminate the outcome of the game (being) determined on the field, and that’s wrong.”

Rocco Baldelli, manager of the AL Central-leading Twins, couldn’t agree more on Sunday, calling the ruling “one of the most chickens--things I’ve ever seen on a baseball field done to a team.”

Martinez compared Sunday’s play to the way he used to cover the plate, including the day he suffered that broken leg at Seattle’s Kingdome.

“I would set up on the upper righthand corner of the first base side of home plate,” he recalled.

“And I would put my heels on that corner so I could feel where home plate was, and never have to look back to find where it was. So the baserunner has the rest of the plate to slide to (and) now I know he’s going to slide to the outside of home plate ...

“When I caught the ball, I’d take one step all the way across the plate into foul territory, drop to one knee and block the plate. And sometimes I’d do that before I caught the ball. If the throw was online, it was going to come, I’d take a chance that I could catch it on the hop — after I made contact with the runner — and that for me is a legal play.”

Added Martinez: “When they’re talking about protecting the players, it’s a professional sport. Players get injured. The goal of the game is to win games; it’s not to preserve your players so no one gets hurt. That’s the beauty of the position. You could sacrifice your body and that had value. For a catcher like me, it was like hitting a home run.”

His return to the booth in late July after cancer treatments was a feel-good moment, as the Jays and fans saluted him at the Rogers Centre.

“I’m doing fine,” Martinez said. “I’m only doing home games in August, and I will get back into playby-play in September. And hopefully we’ll get into the playoffs and I’ll be able to do that.”