About 15 years ago a major league committee, chaired by then Commissioner Fay Vincent, redefined a no-hitter and in so doing took no-hitters away from several pitchers. Now a major league committee is in position to give a pitcher a no-hitter. If it happens, it would be a joke. But it wouldn’t be funny. 
CC Sabathia is the pitcher who could benefit from the committee’s decision. Sabathia, the wondrous Milwaukee pitcher, allowed only one hit Sunday in raising his National League record to 9-0 in 11 starts, all of which the Brewers have won.
The Brewers, however, believe the hit that Sabathia allowed was not a hit but an error by the pitcher. Andy LaRoche, leading off the fifth inning, hit a dribbler between the mound and the third base line. Sabathia tried to field the ball with his bare hand and dropped it. It was not clear if LaRoche would have beaten Sabathia’s throw had he fielded the ball cleanly.
Bob Webb, the official scorer in Pittsburgh, ruled the play a hit. He could not be reached Monday for comment, but he is not a novice. He has been an official scorer for 20 years.
For the first time in history this year, scorers can be overruled. For about five years Major League Baseball had a committee that could recommend to a scorer that he should change a ruling, but the decision was his. The process was changed before this season. Now the committee can change a scoring decision by itself.
“A few years ago we put a review process in place,” Phyllis Merhige, a Major League Baseball senior vice president, said Monday. “Clubs could send in any egregious scorers’ calls or what they thought was a misreading of scoring rules. When we rewrote the scoring rules last year, we added a caveat that if the league felt the scorer had made the wrong call we had the power to change it.”
Merhige said that she has been “a little distressed that we get a lot of plays that aren’t egregious,” adding, “This isn’t about disagreeing with the scorer.”
She said she has received “a couple dozen” calls for review this year, and the committee has overturned two or three. The committee, she added, does not review all calls that are submitted.
Merhige declined to identify the members of the committee, but Bob Watson, vice president for on-field operations, acknowledged that he was a member. The others are also major league officials – Frank Robinson, Darryl Hamilton, Joe Garagiola Jr. and Mike Port.
“When everybody gets in, Phyllis will let us know what the protocol is,” Watson said. “I haven’t seen the play. I understand it was in question and I kind of figured we’d do something with it this week. We’ve reviewed 10 or 15 this year.”
The committee was expected to review the play Wednesday after receiving a DVD from the Brewers.
“I haven’t sent it yet,” Mike Vassallo, the Brewers media relations director, said Monday. “When I said I was going to send it, I forgot it was Labor Day. I’ll send it overnight tomorrow and they’ll have it Wednesday.”
It’s highly unlikely that the committee will call the play an error and create a no-hitter for Sabathia. The committee has changed rulings this season but nothing the magnitude of a no-hitter.
“They changed one for us this year,” Vassallo said. It was a June 12 game in Houston, and Prince Fielder dropped a two-out throw at first base. But the scorer called the play a hit, and the runs that subsequently scored were earned.
“The scorer refused to change it despite our argument that the throw beat the runner and he was clearly out,” Vassallo said. “We took it to Major League Baseball and they changed it.”
It’s one thing to change earned runs to unearned runs, although no one who is uninvolved in the game should be able to do that. But it certainly is a different matter to create a no-hitter.
Not only weren’t the committee members at the one-hit game, but they also don’t know what might have happened had Sabathia been charged with an error, He would still have had to get 15 outs to get the no-hitter. What pressure might he have felt as he got closer to getting it? How might that have affected his pitching?
In addition, could the committee members be objective knowing what was riding on its decision? When the members review a play like Fielder’s, they don’t necessarily know the ramifications of their decision. Merhige said she doesn’t explain the circumstances involved, such as earned and unearned runs.
The members, however, will know what is at stake in this decision.
Ned Yost, the Brewers manager, was the most outspoken and vehement critic of the scoring decision. “That’s a stinking no-hitter we all got cheated from,” Yost said after the game. “I feel horrible for CC.”
Sabathia, though, didn’t feel horrible. He said he made a bad play. He should have fielded the ball with his glove hand, not his bare hand, he said.
But by Monday Yost had apparently calmed down. “I talked to Ned today and he said it’s over with,” general manager Doug Melvin said. “I don’t want to come across that we‘re a bunch of crybabies.”
That’s a wise way of looking at it. Sabathia and the Brewers are doing well enough that they don’t need to quibble over a no-hitter. Sabathia has been sensational since the Brewers acquired him from Cleveland, and the Brewers are headed for the playoffs for the first time since 1982.
“We’re just following the appeal process and we’ll accept whatever they rule,” Vassallo said. “We have to send it in. I couldn’t look CC in the eye if we didn’t.”
As awful as it would be if Sabathia emerged from the process with a no-hitter, the timing of the play was unfortunate. Even before the new replay system was called on to determine whether or not a fly ball was a home run, the idea of replay was injected into the Sabathia episode.
An ESPN baseball analyst instantly raised the replay issue, saying if baseball can use replays to determine home runs, why not use them on questionable scoring calls? Commissioner Bud Selig has said that sort of thing will never happen, but just the idea that someone would suggest replay’s use is bad enough.