Brenna Alyssa Photography

Here’s When Replay Can be Used to Review a Runner Leaving Early

Prior to the 2024 season, the NCAA Softball Rules Committee ratified the ability to use replay review to determine whether a runner left a base early. Less than a year later, that rule has already been modified.

In its first year of use, the expanded rule was frequently used to negate game-changing plays – if a player was found via video review to have left a base early, it negated whatever play occurred thereafter, whether a walk-off home run, bases-loaded walk, or anything in between.

This summer, the Rules Committee modified and clarified the still-new rule and added specific situations when video replay cannot be used to review whether a runner left a base early.

Under the revised and now-active rule, a video review challenge is not allowed if any of the following occur:

• A home run
• Hit by pitch
• Ground rule double
• Foul ball
• Lead off
• When a runner is forced to advance due to:
  • A blocked ball base award
  • Walk
  • Catcher obstruction with the batter

In short, the revisions to the rule eliminate the ability to review a runner leaving early when the outcome of the play would not have been affected by a potential leaving-early violation. As previously written, if a runner left a base early and the batter hit a home run on the same pitch, the runner leaving early could go to replay review and, if proven, the home run and any scoring transpiring from it would be nullified.

That’s no longer the case thanks to the new tweaks to the rule. Those modifications are already in place and will be active for the 2025 season.

Leaving early is still reviewable in any situation where it’s called on the field by an umpire or where a runner successfully advances a base on the play. In those cases, the penalty remains the same with no modification: the delinquent runner is out, all other runners – including the batter – return to their previous bases, and any result of the play is negated.