How umpires explained the Ernie Clement-Gunnar Henderson play in Blue Jays-Orioles game

TORONTO — After a critical call from umpire Nic Lentz that divided Orioles and Blue Jays fans on social media and left players in Baltimore’s clubhouse Sunday shaking their heads, Lentz and crew chief Hunter Wendelstedt addressed what transpired near second base in the sixth inning.

With runners on the corners and one out, Toronto catcher Brandon Valenzuela hit a chopper up the middle, toward second base. Shortstop Gunnar Henderson ranged over to field it, then began moving toward Blue Jays infielder Ernie Clement, who began the play at first.

Clement altered his path toward second to avoid Henderson. The Orioles thought Clement moved far enough out of his original basepath to be called out (the basepath is 6 feet wide, with 3 feet on each side of the runner, and it begins at a tag attempt, which leaves room for interpretation).

Rule 5.09(b)(1) of Major League Baseball’s rule book states that, “so long as the umpire determines that a play is being made on the runner and an attempt to tag is occurring, i.e. the fielder is moving to tag the runner, no physical tag attempt is required to call a runner out for leaving the basepath.”

The rule makes the key distinction that “a runner’s base path is established when the tag attempt occurs and is a straight line from the runner to the base he is attempting to reach safely.”

The next question, then, is when Henderson’s tag attempt occurred. Common sense might suggest that, as Henderson is running at Clement, before reaching out his arms, he is making a tag attempt.

He is running at the player, after all. What else is Henderson doing? And even then, did Clement take the most direct path to second, give or take 3 feet on either side? That is a close-cut thing.

The umpires disagreed that Henderson was making a tag attempt by running at Clement, before reaching out his arms.

Interestingly, the umpires stated after the game that Clement reestablished a new path to allow Henderson to field the ball and make a play toward first. Thus, he remained inside the new basepath.

“The runner has the right to establish his basepath, and so Clement had established his basepath to avoid the fielder from potential interference,” Lentz told a pool reporter. “Even though Henderson reached out for a tag, Clement’s basepath was already established out there, going to the second base, so therefore it was not out of the baseline.”

Lentz said Clement created that new basepath “to avoid the fielder from fielding the ball, and so once he was out there, that makes it his established basepath.”

And Wendelstedt, the crew chief, chimed in: “It actually is a very gentlemanly thing to do. He was getting out of the way to allow the fielder to make the play towards first base. It just so happened that, you know, then they tried to spin it to get two, but his [Clement’s] basepath was already established, and it was not trying to get out of that.”

Reviewing the video footage casts doubt on that explanation. If the umpires deemed Henderson hadn’t made a tag attempt, thus allowing Clement to shift his path, that would be one thing. But they said Clement was moving to allow Henderson to field the ball.

From the video of that play, it appears Clement doesn’t alter his path to second base until after Henderson fields the ball.

The explanation, in part, differs from what manager Craig Albernaz was told on the field.

“Explanation was that the runner established a baseline outside of his running path,” Albernaz said. “So it’s similar to when a ground ball to first base, runner on first base and the guy’s running to second base and you veer off to kind of deflect the throw, so you have leeway there. And then, also, umpire said Gunnar’s tag attempt wasn’t a good enough attempt.”

Albernaz said it’s not clear how they judged Henderson’s tag attempt not to be good enough. As Henderson said, “I’m not going to go chase him to right field when I’m trying to turn a double play there.”

“There’s no rule about how far you have to extend your arm to tag somebody,” Albernaz noted.

The explanation Albernaz received indicates, at least in part, that Lentz didn’t think Henderson made a real effort to tag Clement.

After the game, the umpires said the consideration had everything to do with Clement moving out of the way so Henderson could field the ball.

“Not to get so confusing, but the way that we teach it, to dumb it down, when the ball was hit, if Clement was headed toward second base and ended up in the outfield, his basepath is established from the outfield with a direct line to second base,” Wendelstedt said near the end of his interview.

“That’s kind of how we dumb it down when we’re teaching to students about how to use judgment and figuring out where the basepath is. That’s the two distinctions. One is when the tag is occurring, and one is, you have to vacate any area for the fielder to field the ball, and that’s what he did. He was vacating an area to let the fielder field it, and then the fielder just tried to, you know, was hoping and praying, throwing up the Hail Mary to try and get two out of it.”

However, Henderson had already fielded the ball by the time Clement altered his route to second base. Was he making a tag attempt by running toward him?

It all becomes a judgment call. And the judgment went against the Orioles.

“Dumbing it down, had he run right out into the outfield towards second, it would have been established from that point with a direct line with 3 feet on either side to second base,” Wendelstedt said.