Matt of Matt's Bats: A closer look at Anthony Rendon's collision at home plate

During Sunday's Rockies-Nationals game, a lot of people questioned the ruling on the field in the 7th inning when the umpires called Anthony Rendon out at home plate. With Rendon on second and the score tied at 4-4, Ryan Zimmerman hit a single to right field. Rendon tried to score, testing the arm of Carlos Gonzalez. CarGo nailed a perfect throw to catcher Michael McKenry, who applied the tag to Rendon. Home plate umpire Alan Porter called Rendon out. Almost immediately, Nationals manager Matt Williams came out of the dugout and asked Porter and crew chief Jeff Kellogg to review the play. It was obvious that the throw beat Rendon, but Williams wanted to know if McKenry was illegally blocking the plate.

Official Rule 601(i)(2) in the MLB rule book states that "Unless the catcher is in the possession of the ball, the catcher cannot block the pathway of the runner as he is attempting to score." From the view of the 33,157 at Nationals Park, the thousands more watching on MASN and apparently the Nationals clubhouse, it looked like McKenry didn't give a sliding lane to Rendon. That would have violated the rule. But based on the replays, it was very obvious that McKenry acquired the baseball way before Rendon got to the plate. In that case, the catcher can block the plate, and that's what happened. Rendon's only choice was the slam into McKenry to knock the ball loose.

McKenry held onto the ball and Rendon was called out. Because it was a close game, it stinks he was called out, but the umpires got the play right.

Plays at the plate are some of the most exciting plays in baseball. Rule 601(i)(2), which came into effect permanently this year after being an experimental rule in 2014, isn't supposed to take the fun out of the game. It's supposed to protect the players who play it. On May 25, 2011, in a 6-6 game between the Florida Marlins and the San Francisco Giants at AT&T Park, Emilio Bonifacio of the Marlins hit a fly ball to Giants right fielder Nate Schierholtz. Schierholtz caught the ball and chucked it to catcher Buster Posey to try to catch Scott Cousins at the plate. Even though the young Posey couldn't handle the ball, Cousins rammed into Posey, causing him a torn ACL and ending his season. It was a major injury for Posey, who was already the National League Rookie of the Year and a World Series champion. This injury is one of the reasons Major League Baseball made the catcher collision rule. But it is not the only time an excellent young catcher has been injured on a play at the plate. The most famous example comes from the 1970 All-Star Game when Pete Rose slammed into Ray Fosse during the exhibition game. Fosse hurt his shoulder, ending his promising career.

I think that it is good baseball banned collisions and blocking the plate to help prevent injuries to players. But it seems strange that they still allow the runner to make hard collisions if the catcher has the ball. Just because the ball arrives before the catcher, that does not mean the runner should be able to ram into him and hurt him. The rule should require a sliding lane whether or not the ball arrives first, and I think this would make the game safer and also more exciting to watch. No one wants to see a runner at home safe by a mile and no one wants to see bad injuries, but everyone does want to see a slick slide to evade the tag and a close play. Baseball could even give umpires an automatic review like they do with home runs.

This was a big play. Too bad it didn't go the Nats' way, but I think it was the right call.

Ten-year-old Matt blogs about the Nationals at Matt's Bats. Follow him on Twitter: @MattsBats. He shares his views weekly as part of MASNsports.com's initiative of welcoming guest bloggers to our little corner of cyberspace. All opinions expressed are those of the guest bloggers, who are not employed by MASNsports.com but are just as passionate about their baseball as our roster of writers.