When Giants or Mets get hurt, rules change and its making baseball worse

(Note: The original version of this article mistakenly attributed to a rule change to protecting the Dodgers, probably because nobody likes Chase Utley. But it was actually the Mets Ruben Tejada who was injured on the play that was named after Utley. The more important still stands, in my opinion, that big teams getting rule changes is hurting the game of baseball.  And the question remains, what happens when some of the unintended consequences of these changes end up affecting playoff series?)

When Giants and Mets get hurt, rules change.

Everyone else gets hurt. It’s baseball. Everyone is always a little bit hurt.

But there are literally a different set of rules when members of the New York Mets or San Francisco Giants get hurt. Or, at least, there are a different set of rules after Dodgers or Giants get hurt.

We’re always talking about how the Rockies have to contend with the powerhouses in the NL West, but rarely talk about how the league treats those teams a little bit different. Or has been lately.

It famously happened after Buster Posey missed a big chunk of time after a nasty collision at home plate. Even though countless teams have lost catchers in similar situations over the years, a new era was born; the respond-to-outrage-and-placate-the-big-successful-playoff/moneymaker-teams era.

We saw the most recent ridiculous example of this new era in yesterday’s 2-1 Rockies win over the Dodgers. In the fifth inning, the Rockies found themselves with runners at first and second and DJ LeMahieu hit a groundball to third. Trail runner Charlie Blackmon slid into second, deliberately trying to break up the double play (which used to be a good thing) and seemed to have succeeded. But after an extended review, the play was ruled interference meaning that not only were both LeMahieu and Blackmon called out, but Freeland had to return to second. Had Blackmon laid down and rolled over in the dirt, showing no effort at all, the double play would have been turned but Freeland would have advanced to third and scored on a Carlos Gonzalez infield hit instead of ending up stranded in a tie game.

What used to be a good play that you coached aggressive, smart players to make, has now become a rally-killing, three-base erasing catastrophe. And why? Because of outrage over an incident involving Chase Utley in which he became approximately the 47,000th middle infielder to take a hard slide to break up the double play.

Either way, we had to change an institution older than most colleges in order to protect grown men in a physical and therefore potentially dangerous game thereby necessitating the kind of absurd outcome we witnessed yesterday.

And a player who has been taught for over 20 years to do one thing — the right thing … the team thing — is now the villain when just a few years ago the same play would have been a rally starter instead of a rally killer.

How many important series might have played out differently if such a dramatic swing had been in effect? We’re talking about a game where a blown 1-1 call can swing a whole game. Taking a first-and-third, one out situation, and turning it into man-on-second, two outs, can be devastating.

How many other teams would like to have had a rule change in order to protect their important players at key times? The answer is all of them.

And for those who say this is an overreaction to an odd but by-the-book ruling in a relatively meaningless (in the grand scheme of things) game, you can bet that if yesterday’s nonsense in the fourth inning cost the Mets (or still honestly the Dodgers) or the Giants a playoff series … there would be a rule change.