Roy Hobbs Umpire Association

RHUA News

MLB rule on visits to the mound

Most baseball fans following Major League Baseball are aware of a new rule this year limiting visits to the mound to 6 a game.

Ostensibly, this rule was adopted to speed up the game by slowing down the number of non-manager visits to the mound. The Jury is still out.

Roy Hobbs uses the Official Rules of Baseball as its baseline before addendums, and now that visits officially have been limited, what are we going to do.

  1. Business as usual on visits to the mound.
  2. Umpires will be asked to record the number of visits by catchers and infielders for review going forward.
  3. Umpires will be asked to suspend the time-limit clock if it becomes obvious that the winning team is stalling toward time limit in late innings.
  4. We will review our position on the visit limitation following the 2019 World Series.
  • Marc Landals, UIC / Tom Giffen

 

July

Marc Landals named UIC

Marc Landals has accepted the position of Umpire-in-Chief for the Roy Hobbs Umpires Association and the Roy Hobbs World Series.

He succeeds Tim McGoldrick who becomes full-time RHWS umpire assignor. He was combo UIC and acting Assignor in 2018.

Matt Stanfield will be the 2019 assistant UIC with focus on playoff assignments, 3-man crew mechanics and evaluation.

Landals, 50, recently joined Roy Hobbs as a part-time employee. He is assuming the role of RHUA/RHWS Umpire coordinator. He has 31 years umpiring experience and 10 RHWS under his belt, with one previous year as a division UIC. Along with 30 years Ohio high school experience and several state assignments, he was president of Summit Umpires Association for 4 years.

As part of his Hobbs/umpire duties, Landals will supervise the updated “You Make the Call” feature on the revamped RHUA page on royhobbs.com. Going forward, the rules page there will include rules interpretations as needed.