If you play a sport professionally and make 1.5 million dollars to do it as Luis Torrens does, you are obligated to know the damn rules. Torrens, if he knew them, forgot one of them in the play above that occurred yesterday in the Mets’ game against the Atlanta Braves.
You see, baseball players can not use their equipment or uniforms to affect the movements of a baseball. One’s bare hand, sure; one’s foot even. A player’s glove, of course, is used to catch the ball. But not equipment or parts of the uniform. A player can’t legally catch a ball in his hat, for example. Players have thrown their gloves at home run balls to deflect them back on the field, and a special rule forbids even that.
With runners on second and third, a pitch in the dirt from Mets starter Paul Blackburn forced Torrens to slide to block the ball from rolling away and allowing the runners to advance. But as he hustled over to the ball, the catcher used his mask to stop it from rolling further before grabbing it with his glove. The umpires declared that Torrens had violated MLB Rule 5.06(b)(3)(E), declaring that it is illegal when “a fielder deliberately touches a pitched ball with his cap, mask or any part of his uniform detached from its proper place on his person.” The Braves runner on third was awarded home plate, scoring an unearned run, and the runner of second advanced to third base.
Ethics Alarms 
As a track and field official I encourage both coaches and athletes to do the basic officials courses so that they know the rules. I find that most athletes know most of the basic rules but occasionally a rule that rarely comes into play will trip them up and they may end up having a throw or jump disallowed or being disqualified in race. Also it can be handy to have extra qualified officials about when numbers are short.
In fairness maybe he knew the rule and made a mistake. Like a lawyer asking an improper question at trial; many times it is just a mental error in the heat of the moment, not a lack of knowledge about what a proper question is.
I’m a Met fan so I guess I need to give him the benefit of the doubt.
Isn’t this kind of like a soccer player touching the ball with their hands? As Dan said, you might know the rule and just have a mental mistake (with me, I can call it a senior moment, but hopefully that doesn’t apply to a MLB player).
Or, say, catcher’s interference (or is it called interference with the catcher?). Most of the time that is very inadvertent, at least I assume the batter is not trying to hit the catcher with hit bat. But it’s still penalized.
So, I will cut him a little slack. If he does it again, though — the Mets need to fine him.