Force Out vs Tag Out: When a Fielder Has to Tag a Runner
Force out vs tag out under MLB rules: when touching the base is enough, when a fielder has to tag the runner, and why a run never counts on a third-out force.
By CricketTaken EditorialPublished MLB Rules22 min read
- Force play defined in
- Official Baseball Rules, Definitions
- Merkle's Boner
- September 23, 1908
- Manager challenges introduced
- 2014
- Neighborhood play became reviewable
- 2016
Nobody in the Polo Grounds on September 23, 1908, thought they had just watched an out. The Giants' winning run had crossed the plate in the bottom of the ninth. Then Cubs second baseman Johnny Evers got hold of a ball, stood on second base, and umpire Hank O'Day ruled that Fred Merkle, who had peeled off toward the clubhouse instead of running to second, was out on a force. The run came off the board. Over a century later that is still the cleanest lesson in what a force play is.
Here is the rule in plain terms. A runner is forced when the batter becoming a runner takes away the base he is standing on, so he has to advance. On a force, a fielder holding the ball only has to touch the next base before the runner gets there. Every runner who is not forced has to be tagged — touched with the ball, or with the glove or hand holding it. Under the Official Baseball Rules, which govern Major League Baseball, that difference also decides whether a run counts: no run scores on a play in which the third out is a force out.
Force out vs tag out: the difference in one line
The rulebook's definition of a force play is short. It is a play in which a runner legally loses his right to occupy a base by reason of the batter becoming a runner. Everything else follows from those words.
Two runners cannot share a base. When the batter hits a fair ball and starts for first, he is entitled to first base, and a runner already standing there loses his right to it. That runner must go to second. If second is occupied, its runner loses his right to second and must go to third, and so on down the line. Each of those runners is forced, and for each of them the defense has a shortcut: hold the ball and touch the base he must reach.
A runner who is not displaced has no such obligation. He can stay, he can advance, he can go halfway and come back, and if the defense wants him out it has to put the ball on him.
Why the defense prefers the force
Touching a base is easier than touching a runner. The base does not slide, does not twist away from the glove, and does not reach around the tag with its left hand. That is why infielders take the force at second on a ground ball rather than chase the runner, and why a double play is almost always built on forces: the 6-4-3 double play and the numbers behind it is a force at second followed by a force at first.
| Force out | Tag out | |
|---|---|---|
| What the fielder touches | The base, while holding the ball | The runner, with the ball or the glove or hand holding it |
| Which runners | Only runners displaced by the batter becoming a runner | Any runner off a base, forced or not |
| Batter-runner going to first | Always a force | A tag is also legal |
| Run scoring on the third out | No run counts | A run that crossed the plate first counts |
| Can it disappear mid-play? | Yes, if a following runner is put out | Not applicable |
Reading the bases: who is forced in each situation
The bases are filled from first upward, and a force only exists where the chain is unbroken from home plate. With a runner on first, he is forced. With runners on first and second, both are forced. Bases loaded, all three are forced, and so a fielder can get an out by stepping on any base, home included.
Break the chain and the force stops at the gap. A runner on second with first base empty is not forced, because the batter takes first and nobody needs second. A runner on third with first or second empty is not forced either. On a ground ball to shortstop with runners on second and third and first base open, both runners are free to stay, and the only force on the field is the batter going to first.
| Runners on base | Forced on a ground ball | Not forced |
|---|---|---|
| First | Runner on first | None |
| Second | None | Runner on second |
| First and second | Both runners | None |
| First and third | Runner on first | Runner on third |
| Second and third | None | Both runners |
| Bases loaded | All three runners | None |
The batter-runner is forced in every case, which is why an infielder can retire him by stepping on first base without touching him.
Fly balls create no force
All of this applies to ground balls and to fly balls that drop. A caught fly ball is different: the batter is out the instant the ball is caught, so he never becomes a runner who takes a base away. No runner is forced, and a runner who left his base has to return to it, which is the subject of the companion page on tagging up on a caught fly ball. A runner doubled off first on a line drive is put out by an appeal-style touch of the base, not by a force, and that distinction matters for whether a run counts.
The infield fly rule has the same effect before the ball comes down. Once the umpire declares an infield fly, the batter is out whether or not the ball is caught, so the runners are released from any force. The site's explainer on why the infield fly rule exists covers the exploit it was written to stop.
What a legal tag is, and when a dropped ball undoes it
The rulebook defines a tag as a fielder touching a base with his body while holding the ball securely and firmly in his hand or glove, or touching a runner with the ball, or with his hand or glove holding the ball, while holding it securely and firmly. The definition covers both kinds of out, which surprises people. Stepping on second for a force is, in the rulebook's language, tagging the base.
Three practical consequences follow.
The empty glove
The ball has to be in the hand or glove that makes the touch. A second baseman who catches the throw, takes the ball out of his glove to throw to first, and then swipes the empty glove across the runner's helmet has not tagged him. The runner is safe. On replay this is one of the easier calls to overturn, because the camera usually shows clearly which hand held the ball.
Holding on long enough
It is not a tag if the fielder drops the ball simultaneously with the touch or immediately afterward. He has to hold the ball long enough to prove complete control of it. A shortstop who tags a sliding runner and has the ball jarred loose by the slide has not made the out, and neither has a catcher whose glove pops open on contact at the plate.
The rulebook does make an allowance for the double-play pivot. A fielder who has made the tag and then drops the ball while taking it out of his glove to throw has still made the out, provided the umpire judges he had control before the transfer began. The line between "dropped on the transfer" and "never had it" is drawn by the umpire, and since 2014 by the replay official, frame by frame.
What the runner may not do
A runner who deliberately knocks the ball loose with a hand or arm has interfered, and is out. A runner who simply slides hard and the ball comes out is safe. The distinction is intent, and the related rules are on the page about obstruction and interference in baseball.
How a force disappears in the middle of a play
A force lasts only as long as the reason for it. The reason is a following runner who needs the base. Put that following runner out, and the runner ahead of him is no longer forced. He has to be tagged.
The play that teaches this to every young first baseman goes like this. Runner on first, one out, ground ball to the first baseman near the bag. The first baseman steps on first, retiring the batter. Then he throws to second, where the shortstop catches the ball standing on the base. The runner slides in late, and the umpire calls him safe. The shortstop protests that he beat the runner by a stride.
He did. It does not matter. Once the batter was out at first, the runner from first was no longer forced, because there was no longer a batter-runner taking first base from him. The shortstop needed to tag the runner, not the base. Infielders call this a reverse force double play, and they make it work by having the first baseman shout "tag" to the shortstop, or by throwing to second first and then going back to first.
- Ground ball to firstThe first baseman fields it close to the bag with a runner on first.
- Batter retired firstHe steps on first base, and the batter-runner is out.
- Force removedWith no batter-runner coming, the runner from first no longer has to leave his base or reach second.
- Throw to secondThe ball goes to the shortstop covering second base.
- Tag neededTouching second is no longer enough. The shortstop must tag the runner himself.
- Usual resultA late tag, a safe call and one out where the defense expected two.
The sequence on a ground ball fielded by the first baseman with a runner on first. The same logic applies at any base whenever a following runner is put out first.
The order is what matters. Throw to second first, while the batter is still running, and the runner from first is still forced; step on second for the out, throw back to first, and both outs are forces. First base first, second base second, and the second out needs a tag.
When the lead runner is put out first
The force runs only from the back. Retiring a lead runner does not remove the force on anyone behind him. With the bases loaded, a catcher who steps on home for a force and then throws to first still has a force at first, because the batter-runner is always forced. And a throw from home to third would still be a force on the runner coming from second, because the runner from first and the batter are both still pushing him forward.
Why no run counts when the third out is a force out
Rule 5.08(a) sets out when a run scores, and then lists the exceptions. A run does not score if the runner advances to home base during a play in which the third out is made:
- by the batter-runner before he touches first base;
- by any runner being forced out; or
- by a preceding runner who is declared out because he failed to touch one of the bases.
The force exception is absolute. It makes no difference that the runner from third crossed the plate well before the shortstop stepped on second. If that step on second was the third out, the run never counted.
On a tag play the rule works on timing. With two outs and runners on second and third, a single to right field scores the runner from third easily; if the runner from second is then thrown out at the plate on a tag, the first run counts as long as it crossed before the tag was applied. Umpires and broadcasters call this a time play, and the plate umpire is expected to watch it and signal whether the run beat the out.
| How the third out is made | Does a run that crossed the plate count? |
|---|---|
| Force out at any base | No |
| Batter-runner retired before reaching first | No |
| Runner tagged out after the run scored | Yes |
| Runner doubled off on a caught fly, after the run scored | Yes, unless the runner who scored left early and is appealed |
| Preceding runner out on appeal for missing a base | No |
A walk-off and the force
The force-out rule is why the end of a game with the bases loaded is never quite over until every runner has done his job. A bases-loaded walk-off single in the bottom of the ninth scores the winning run from third, but the rulebook requires the batter to reach first and the runner from third to touch home before the game is complete. That is Merkle's mistake, and the page on what makes a walk-off hit official sets out the rest of the requirements.
Does a tie go to the runner?
Every Little Leaguer has heard it, and the rulebook never says it. There is no rule anywhere in the Official Baseball Rules that addresses a tie at a base.
The wording does lean one way. The batter-runner is out when "he or first base is tagged before he touches first base." Before. On a genuine dead heat the ball did not arrive before he did, so the condition for the out has not been met. The rule on acquiring bases says much the same thing from the other side: a runner acquires the right to an unoccupied base when he touches it before he is out. Read strictly, both put a tie on the runner's side.
Umpires do not like the saying, and they are taught that ties do not exist. The instruction is to judge every play as either the ball beating the runner or the runner beating the ball, because an umpire who is looking for a tie will find one and then hand it to someone. In practice umpires judge by sound and sight together — the pop of the ball in the first baseman's glove against the runner's foot hitting the bag — and call what they hear first.
What replay has done to the argument
Since manager challenges arrived in 2014, high-frame-rate cameras have made the dead heat look more common than umpires pretended. A broadcaster freezing the frame where the ball enters the glove at the same instant the cleat lands on the base will sometimes show something that genuinely looks simultaneous.
The replay standard settles it without needing a tie rule. An on-field call is overturned only when the replay official finds clear and convincing evidence that it was wrong. If the frames show a tie, the evidence is not clear and the call on the field stands, whichever way it went. So a tie, on replay, goes to the umpire. The summary of MLB's replay review rules explains the standard and how the challenge system works.
Overrunning first base and home, but never second or third
The batter-runner may overrun first base. So may any runner crossing home plate. Those are the only two exceptions, and they exist because those are the bases where stopping would cost the runner speed at the moment of the play.
At first base the protection has two conditions. The runner must have touched first, and he must return to it immediately after overrunning. If, after overrunning, he makes an attempt to run toward second, he loses the protection and can be tagged out before he gets back. The old belief that turning left into fair territory makes a runner liable to be tagged is wrong; the test is whether the umpire judges that he attempted to advance, not which way he turned his shoulders.
At home plate there is nothing to return to and nothing beyond it to run toward. Once a runner has touched home, he has scored.
Second and third are different
A runner forced to second who beats the throw has satisfied the force. He reached the base before the fielder could touch it. If his slide carries him past the bag, or his foot pops off it as he stands up, he is now a runner off his base and nothing more. The fielder can tag him and he is out, the same as any runner caught off a base. The force cannot be reinstated; the defense needs a tag.
This is why runners slide into second and third instead of running through, and why the pop-up slide, where a runner slides and springs up on the base in one motion, is coached so carefully.
The slide that pops off the base, and the 2025 abandonment change
Before 2014, a runner who slid into second, came off the base for a fraction of a second, and was tagged in that moment was usually called safe. The umpire could not see the separation, the fielder rarely held the tag on long enough to make it obvious, and nobody thought to argue.
Replay changed it. With a camera at ground level and slow motion, the separation became visible, and a fielder who kept his glove on the runner through the slide could win an out on a frame where the runner's hand lifted off the bag. Middle infielders learned to hold tags. Runners learned to hug the base on the way up. The out is correct under the rule. It is also a little absurd, because the runner was not trying to advance, and a whole category of out now exists that did not exist when only the human eye was judging.
Running straight through the bag
A neighboring problem is the runner who does not slide at all. A runner who reaches second or third standing up and keeps running past it toward the outfield has, in substance, left the base with no intention of returning. The rules have always allowed an umpire to call a runner out for abandoning his effort to run the bases, but that judgment was not something replay could make.
For 2025, MLB extended what replay officials may consider so that a runner who runs straight through second or third and makes no attempt to stay on the base can be called out for abandonment on review, even when the overrun was not what the challenge was about. The change is narrow and its exact language sits in the replay regulations rather than the rulebook, so the season's edition of the regulations is the place to check how it is applied.
The neighborhood play and its end in 2016
For most of the 20th century, a shortstop or second baseman turning a double play did not actually have to touch second base. He had to be near it. If he caught the throw in the vicinity of the bag, in a motion that took him across it and out of the path of the incoming runner, the umpire would call the force at second. This was the "neighborhood play," and it existed because the rules allowed runners to slide hard into the pivot man, and umpires judged it fairer to give the fielder some room than to see him spiked.
It was never in the rulebook. It was an understanding.
When replay expanded in 2014, the neighborhood play was deliberately kept out of review, because the league knew a camera would show the fielder's foot short of the base on nearly every one. Then came the slide rule for 2016, which required a runner to slide at the base rather than at the fielder. With the pivot man protected by rule, the reason for the courtesy had gone. The league made the neighborhood play reviewable the same year, and the fielder now has to touch second with the ball in his possession like anyone else on a force.
| Year | Change at second base |
|---|---|
| Before 2014 | Neighborhood play allowed by umpire custom; no review |
| 2014 | Replay challenges introduced; neighborhood play excluded from review |
| 2016 | Bona fide slide rule adopted; neighborhood play made reviewable |
| 2024 | Umpires instructed to enforce obstruction on infielders blocking a base without the ball |
The effect on double plays is visible in how pivot men work. They take the throw with a foot on the bag and then come off it, rather than crossing near it, and they rely on the slide rule rather than a quick exit for their safety.
Two runners on one base: who is out
Two runners can end up on the same base, usually after a runner from second hesitates and the runner from first does not. Rule 5.06(a)(2) settles who owns it.
The general rule: the base belongs to the runner who was there first, the preceding runner. If both runners are standing on the base and both are tagged, the following runner is out, and the preceding runner stays.
The exception is the force. If the preceding runner was forced to advance — the batter's hit pushed the runner from first to second, which pushed the runner on second to third — then he no longer had a right to the base he started on. He belonged at the next base. If both are on his original base and both are tagged, the preceding runner is out, because he was the one who had no right to be there.
Getting the sequence right
Umpires watch for the order of the tags as well as the ownership. A fielder who tags the runner with the right to the base first has tagged a safe runner, and the umpire says so. If the fielder then tags the other runner, that runner is out. A fielder who tags both at once relies on the umpire to sort out which of the two touches mattered. And a runner who wrongly assumes he is the one out, and steps off the base to walk to the dugout, can then be tagged and put out too. The defense keeps the ball until an umpire has said who is out.
Merkle's Boner: September 23, 1908
The Giants and the Cubs were locked in a National League pennant race with Pittsburgh in the last weeks of the 1908 season, and every game between the leaders was being watched as a possible decider. At the Polo Grounds, in the bottom of the ninth, with the score 1-1 and two out, Moose McCormick was on third base and 19-year-old Fred Merkle was on first. Al Bridwell lined a single into center field. McCormick ran home with what everyone in the ballpark took to be the winning run.
Merkle, as players commonly did then when a game ended, did not run all the way to second. With fans pouring onto the field, he turned off and headed toward the clubhouse. Johnny Evers saw it. He called for the ball from center field, and in the confusion that followed — Giants pitcher Joe McGinnity is reported to have wrestled the ball away and thrown it into the crowd — Evers ended up standing on second base with a ball in his hand. Whether it was the game ball has been disputed ever since.
- Two out, ninth inningScore 1-1, McCormick on third, Merkle on first, Giants batting.
- The singleBridwell singles to center; McCormick crosses the plate.
- The force still liveMerkle, forced to second because the batter took first, turns toward the clubhouse without touching it.
- The touchEvers gets a ball and touches second base.
- The rulingUmpire Hank O'Day calls Merkle out on the force; the third out was a force, so the run does not count.
- The aftermathWith the crowd on the field and darkness coming, the game ends in a tie; it is replayed on October 8 and the Cubs win the pennant.
The sequence as umpire Hank O'Day and the National League ruled it in 1908. Accounts of who held which ball in the crowd differ.
O'Day was right, and he had a reason to be ready. Less than three weeks earlier, on September 4 in Pittsburgh, a Pirates runner named Warren Gill had done the same thing in a game against the Cubs. Evers had appealed then too. O'Day had not seen the play and let the run stand, and the Cubs' protest went nowhere, but O'Day is reported to have accepted afterward that Evers had the rule right. Nineteen days later he enforced it.
The game was declared a tie. National League president Harry Pulliam upheld the umpire. The Cubs and Giants finished level, the tie game was replayed on October 8, the Cubs won it 4-2, and they went on to win the World Series against Detroit. Merkle played well for many years afterward and the name never left him.
The baseball point outlasts the folklore. A force remains alive until the forced runner touches the base he is forced to. The run that scored on Bridwell's single was erased because the third out was a force out, the exact rule set out above. Every game-ending hit with a runner on first still carries the same obligation, which is why modern players run all the way to second before celebrating, even when the crowd is already on its feet.
Rundowns and retreats: forced runners can still be forced out
A forced runner caught between bases is still forced. Runner on first, ground ball to shortstop, and the runner from first stops halfway, thinking the ball might be caught on a line. He then retreats toward first. The force has not gone anywhere, because the batter-runner is still on his way to first and still needs it. The shortstop can step on second and the retreating runner is out, without anyone touching him.
He can even get back to first. Touching first does not save him. He has no right to first while the batter-runner is coming, so standing on it is no protection, and the defense still gets him by touching second. The only thing that removes the force is the batter-runner being put out first, which takes the play back to the reverse force described earlier.
Running an unforced runner back
A runner who is not forced is a different problem, and defenses handle it with a rule of thumb that coaches repeat at every level: run him back toward the base he came from. A runner caught between second and third on a ground ball with first base empty is not forced. If the rundown chases him toward third and he escapes, he has gained a base. If it chases him toward second and he escapes, he is where he started.
The other reason is the trail runner. While the rundown is going on, any runner behind is trying to advance. Pushing the lead runner back toward the base the trail runner wants creates the possibility of two runners on one base, at which point the ownership rule from Rule 5.06 gives the defense another out. Defenses try to finish a rundown in as few throws as possible, because each extra throw is another chance for an error, but the direction matters even in a short one.
Scorers record either kind of out by the numbers of the fielders involved, and many add their own mark for a force. The guide to scorecard symbols and how to keep score covers the conventions. The baseball section holds the rest of the rules in this series.