The Real Problem With Unwritten Rules

About that La Russa/Mercedes incident...

It has been interesting to watch the fallout from last week’s Yermín Mercedes/Tony La Russa/Minnesota Twins incident. It was encouraging how few people took La Russa’s side—a real sign of how out of favor the outdated “unwritten rules” of baseball have become. But, as is the case with so many things right now, even as people come to reject the old status quo, they are reluctant to accept the changes necessary to replace it.

First, though, a quick recap of what went down for anyone who missed it or lost track: Last Monday, the Chicago White Sox were blowing out the Minnesota Twins, 15-4 in the ninth inning. Rather than use any of his relievers in such a lopsided game, Twins manager Rocco Baldelli brought in Willians Astudillo, a utility infielder, to get the last outs of the game. Astudillo fell behind 3-0 on Mercedes and lobbed a 47-mph pitch over the plate, at which point Mercedes launched a 429-foot home run to center field.

Following the game, White Sox manager Tony La Russa blasted Mercedes for swinging at the pitch (he’d given Mercedes the take sign), even calling him “clueless” for violating the unwritten rule that hitters don’t swing at 3-0 pitches when they have a big lead. La Russa said, “He made a mistake. There will be a consequence that he’s going to have to endure within our family. It won’t happen again.” Then the next day, when Twins reliever Tyler Duffey threw behind Mercedes in retaliation, La Russa said, “I don't have a problem with how the Twins handled it,” essentially endorsing an opponent throwing at one of his best players.

The response from most people in the baseball community, whether it was current players, former players, or people in the media, was exasperation. People are tired of seeing young stars forced to apologize for rules that no longer make sense. We just went through this with Fernando Tatis, Jr. Perhaps the sentiment about La Russa’s handling of the situation best summed up by CC Sabathia: “That’s just fucking stupid. It’s stupid. Period. I’m sorry. That shit is terrible. He shouldn’t be fucking managing that team.”

That feeling was so universal that I wasn’t even going to write anything about the incident. But it occurred to me that most of the criticism of the “unwritten rules” focuses on the “rules” part. Namely, people keep pointing out that this rule is dumb. It perhaps made sense at a time when swinging at 3-0 pitches was rare, or when bullpens were less frequently used. But now it doesn’t make sense. As Mercedes’ teammate said Tim Anderson said, “The game wasn’t over,” so why should Mercedes stop competing? Plus, in this case, calls from La Russa to have “respect for the game, or respect for your opponent” ring a little hollow because the Twins were using a position player on the mound. They were already putting a competitive advantage over “respect” for their opponent—it’s worth noting that the Twins beat the White Sox in the next game by one run, after getting five shutout innings from their suspiciously well-rested bullpen.

But this explanation is still unsatisfying. For one, there’s something odd about people implying that Mercedes hitting a home run off an infielder in a game his team was winning by 11 is some kind of heroic act that fans love. Do we really want more meaningless home runs that do little but extend already long games and pad individual stats? Which gets at the second issue with people’s criticisms of the rule: It’s pretty obvious why a rule like this would exist. Sportsmanship obviously has some value. More practically, it’s just a good idea for baseball to move these blowouts along in a timely fashion. This particular rule is not really a good way to accomplish either of these goals, but it should be obvious why some sort of rule addressing these problems might exist.

Which brings us to the REAL problem with “unwritten rules”—the “unwritten” part. The problem with rules you don’t write down is that they end up becoming slippery and subjective. In this case, the rule is that you shouldn’t swing 3-0 when a game is no longer close. But what does “close” mean? Eleven runs certainly qualifies, but what about eight? Five? Should we factor in how good the opponents’ offense is? And should the rule still hold if a utility infielder is on the mound?

When rules are unwritten, there’s no objective way to enforce them, so they become subject to all kinds of personal interpretations that are bound to be influenced by other things. The fact that the manager involved was Tony La Russa—who is famous for playing favorites among his players—is part of why this struck people as so “fucking stupid.” La Russa is known to have problems with rookies like Mercedes, and so it struck people as obvious that La Russa’s reaction was, at least in part, motivated by his personal feelings about Mercedes (not to mention that Mercedes is from the Dominican Republic and La Russa’s history on racial issues is, um, not great). It’s hard to believe he would have reacted the same way if the offender was someone La Russa liked more.

And since we have no actual rule to check La Russa’s behavior against, we can’t say for sure if his reaction is based on the rule itself, or a personal grudge. Even if his reaction WAS purely based on a love of sportsmanship, the fact that there is no objectively verifiable rule makes that unknowable. And so players who might already be suspicious of a 76-year old who hasn’t managed in a decade and who said he didn’t have a problem with other pitchers throwing at them—those playersare likely to wonder if this rule is just a pretense for La Russa to call out his young team.

One of the big things that workers tend to fight for when they organize is objective standards for evaluation. In other words, THEY WANT THE RULES WRITTEN DOWN. Once they are written down, you can decide if they are good or bad. Do they accomplish what they are supposed to? Are the penalties proportional? Etc. But the important thing is that they get written down.

All of the focus on this issue has been on the rule itself, but it’s easy enough to just get rid of the rule. Given how unpopular La Russa’s reaction was, it seems like this particular rule is on its way out. But the more important fight is to explicitly regulate the kind of control a manager can exert over players. Because when you don’t write your rules down, your boss gets to make them up.