I Sneaky Love How Petty The Orioles Official Scorekeeper Is

ESPN- BALTIMORE -- Chad Smith's first major league win came courtesy of a rarely applied official scoring rule.

Smith pitched the final two innings of the Athletics' 8-4 victory over Baltimore on Wednesday night, holding the Orioles scoreless and allowing only one hit. He entered in the bottom of the eighth, after the A's had scored three runs in the top of the inning to take a 7-4 advantage.

That meant reliever Jeurys Familia -- who pitched the bottom of the seventh and was in the game when Oakland took the lead for good -- could have been the pitcher of record. But the official scorer chose not to give Familia the win because he was deemed to have had a short, ineffective outing.

Okay so for those not in the know, this is how it works with official scoring in baseball. A lot of times a pitcher is still technically in the game aka the finished the bottom of an inning and their team comes to bat with the game tied, takes the lead, then ends the inning and a new pitcher goes out for the next inning. The pitcher who exited is on the hook for the win. That's what we thought would be the case here. 

Now Familia managed to get out of the 7th inning but if you look at what he did on the mound no one would ever send the tape to Cooperstown. In fact, it was a pretty shitty outing all things considered. 

Familia came on with one out in the seventh, a man on first and Oakland up 4-2. After a passed ball, pinch-hitter Cedric Mullins rolled an RBI single to right, and after a groundout moved Mullins to second, Adley Rutschman hit an RBI single to tie the score.

So if you are still following along. Familia had a passed ball, gave up two hits for two runs which tied the game, and managed to get two outs … One of those outings that was rather shitty. Yet according to the rules, because the A's had a great inning in the Top of the 8th … Familia was now on the hook to inherit the Win (if the A's held on to win, which they did.) No harm no foul, sometimes you get a weird stat… who cares right ? 

Well …. apparently the official scorekeeper took GREAT displeasure with Familia being able to inherit the win after a shitty outing and pulled out a rarely used scorekeeper rule to take the win away from him and instead credit it to Chad Smith.

According to Rule 9.17 (c): "The official scorer shall not credit as the winning pitcher a relief pitcher who is ineffective in a brief appearance, when at least one succeeding relief pitcher pitches effectively in helping his team maintain its lead. In such a case, the official scorer shall credit as the winning pitcher the succeeding relief pitcher who was most effective, in the judgment of the official scorer."

I ABSOLUTELY LOVE THIS MOVE. 

It's hilarious that the scorekeeper probably waited 15-20 years of his career to pull out this little known rule and decided to flex his big ass balls on the scorekeeper community by deciding who gets the win and who doesn't on a loophole of being "ineffective". I fucking love it…. LOVE it. 

Listen this guy has scorebooks up to the ceiling in his house for 20 years back when he used to go to games and keep score, then he finally got a job as an official scorer and he LIVES for it. LIVES for it. So when the chance came to use something he learned in one of his meetings or scorekeeper camps you know he was going to put it into play. Love it. 

On the flip side, Familia was probably livid in the locker room looking at the box score and saw he didn't get the win because his team won. It's like people at award shows pretending to be happy for someone else winning an Oscar while on the inside it's eating them alive. What's he supposed to do be irate in front of his teammate Chad Smith, or be upset the team won ? Especially when they will likely win 40-50 games this year ? Can't do it… even if it eats him up inside he has to put on a happy face. 

The real crux here is that scorekeepers having the power and enforcing bizarre weird rules is a hilarious scene to me, and you know this guy is a legend in the scorekeeper game now. The guy in Cincy, and Detroit and Seattle are all talking about Phil the Scorekeeper form Baltimore who had the balls to put rule 9.17 c into place like he landed on the moon. I fucking love it.