Home plate umpire Vic Carapazza gestures to restart the pitch timer following a timeout from batter Tyler Soderstrom, of the Sacramento Athletics, while catcher Liam Hicks, of the Miami Marlins, calls the next pitch.

A Plate Appearance Continues

A plate appearance starts with at least one runner on base. Something happens, and then the plate appearance continues, but now the bases are empty. What could have happened? Well, a few things:

• A runner attempts a steal, and is thrown out
• A runner is on third, and scores on a wild pitch
• A runner is on base somewhere, and is picked off
• A runner is on base somewhere, and scores when the defense throws the ball away during a pickoff

These all boil down to one idea: there's a single runner on base, and that runner either scores or gets put out in the middle of a plate appearance. Either way, as long as the inning is still going (which is to say, as long as the runner didn't manage to cause the third out), the plate appearance will continue, but things will re-start slightly differently from where they were a pitch ago.

For a start, with no one on, the pitch timer will revert to a length of 15 seconds. The batter must be in the batter’s box and ready to swing with at least 8 seconds left on the clock. If not, the umpire calls an automatic strike. Similarly, the pitcher must start their pitching motion before the clock runs out.

Meanwhile, if the starting pitcher is still on the mound, they will usually transition from pitching out of the stretch to pitching out of the windup. Relief pitchers typically only pitch from the stretch, so there likely won't be a change if a reliever is on the mound.