Passed ball - Definition and Overview

In baseball, a catcher shall be charged with a passed ball when he fails to hold or to control a legally pitched ball which should have been held or controlled with ordinary effort, thereby permitting a runner or runners to advance.

A closely related statistic is the wild pitch. As with many baseball statistics, whether a pitch that gets away from a catcher is a passed ball or wild pitch is at the discretion of the official scorer. If a pitch bounces before reaching the catcher, thereby enabling a runner (or the batter, on strike three) to advance, it will most often be a wild pitch and not a passed ball.