One, a player is supposed to maintain contact with the ground at all time. In those pics/gifs you can see her foot leaving, then replanting, then the pitch. She's getting an extra foot (plus) towards the plate which translates to not only a reduced reaction time for the batter but also adds roughly five mph to the pitch when it's crossing the plate. In a nutshell, she's replanting while she's supposed to have that back foot on the ground at all times after leaving the rubber. The pitching lane is easy enough. You have to say inside. I've been seeing it all season (when I've watched UF) and noticed it all through the Super's. Now, in the WCWS, it's there all the time.
Didn't watch the game, but from what I've seen in other occasions, the umps will usually let a pitcher get away with that hop as long as the foot is pointed straight down and there appears to be an effort to drag the toe. No excuse for not calling her outside the lane though. The damned chalk lines just make that too easy to call.
It's hard to believe a coach can't say anything to the umps about it. It might not be reviewable but surely a coach could tell the ump to watch out for illegal pitches much the same way as a baseball manager can tell the ump to watch out for the way a pitcher might be balking on certain moves. If a softball pitcher does it on every pitch the ump must be blind and incompetent not to call it.
Thanks to the SECN I'm guessing I've watched at least 25-30 games in the regular season: it's likely more. I've seen it called a dozen times, if not more, throughout the year. How it's evident to me watching it in real time and other umps aren't seeing the same thing? That's a question I can't answer. I ran a quick google search to see what kind of images I could find and those two gifs were some of the examples I found. I saw it last night, switched to the computer just to SnagIt.
That's pushing the envelope, no doubt. It's a Walton them in my eyes. He's got a few of the girls that, out of all of them, are going to get on base each game HBP. Blatant. There are two or three that'll get hit each week. And Duck, all the history / PAC stuff we keep hearing, right? You guys got a 20 year head start on the SEC in this sport. Why hell haven't you trained umps better?
