This story was excerpted from Paul Casella's Phillies Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.
LOS ANGELES -- Fun fact: You don't need to touch home plate to score a run in baseball.
Confused? Read on.
Those who stayed up late on Saturday night to watch the Phillies' 4-3 victory over the Dodgers on the West Coast know this now if they didn't already. For those who did not stay up, here's what you missed:
With one out in the bottom of the seventh and Dodgers outfielder Andy Pages on second base, Mookie Betts lined a base hit to right field. Adolis García fielded the ball and came up firing to the plate, where the ball beat Pages -- but J.T. Realmuto appeared to miss the tag.
The Phillies quickly challenged the play, hoping that Realmuto brushed Pages as he slid past him.
And that's when things got weird.
As the review dragged on, it became evident that while Realmuto may have indeed missed the tag, Pages also missed home plate. However, without any evidence that Pages was tagged or that the Phillies appealed that he missed home plate prior to the review, it was irrelevant whether Pages touched the plate -- he'd be safe either way.
“We still feel like we're not quite sure, because if you're looking at the whole play from replay standpoint: He never touched the plate, how can he be safe, right?” interim manager Don Mattingly said. “But we also talked about, obviously, the rule.”
And herein lies the quirk in said rule: If a runner never touches home plate, he's not automatically out. The opposing team still needs to either A) tag the runner at some point, or B) if the runner is walking back to his bench, any defensive player can touch the plate while holding the ball and appeal to the umpire.
Now, a team cannot challenge the call at the plate and then try to appeal (as the Phillies did on Saturday). However, they can try to appeal and then challenge the call at the plate.
"We have to appeal it first before you can go to replay," Mattingly said. "You can’t just go to replay and say he left early; you have to appeal it first."
So moving forward, will the Phillies essentially just appeal on every close call at the plate before deciding to challenge?
"That is something that we talked about changing the way we do that," Mattingly said the next morning. "If there's a play at the plate and it’s close, just touch the plate and say, ‘He missed home plate,’ and make the umpire say so."
It didn't take long to put into practice. When Max Muncy slid across home plate in the second inning on Sunday afternoon, Realmuto jogged over and tagged him well after he had been called safe -- just in case.
Similarly, Alec Bohm appealed at third base after Freddie Freeman's sacrifice fly in the sixth inning to see if Pages had left third base early.
In both cases, the runner was safe. But it was a clear that sign the Phillies are going to be proactive in making sure what happened Saturday does not happen again.
"If J.T., or whoever the catcher is, just tags the plate right away and appeals, then you have it and they have to look at it," Mattingly said. "So I think the easiest way would be the catcher just touches home plate and appeals it."