With two outs and two on in the second inning of a scoreless second game of last year’s American League Championship Series, a popup sailed skyward.
Had pitcher Luis Severino adhered to tradition, to baseball dogma, he would have deferred to his defense, capitulated specifically to his catcher and let this precious potential out in a postseason game fall safely into the glove of an expert after being called off. Instead, the Yankees right-hander made the catch himself.
With that, he had ended the inning but broken an unwritten rule that pitchers aren’t supposed to field pop flies.
“To me,” Severino said later, “that [unwritten rule] is stupid.”
Apparently, he’s not alone in that assertion, because the rate of pitchers catching popups is popping.
