Error or Earned Run?

Question

There seems to be great disagreement about whether Starlin Castro made an error in the 5th inning of the Cubs-Athletics game on July 2, 2013.

The AP recap of the game reads: "The Cubs collapsed on defense in the bottom half behind Carlos Villanueva, who allowed two unearned runs in 3 1-3 innings of relief. Running back and to his right on Adam Rosales' short fly, shortstop Castro collided with Soriano in left field and the ball dropped. Coco Crisp followed with a tying, two-run single."

Yahoo's box score shows that Castro made an error and that the two runs were unearned. However their season stats for Villanueva count the runs as earned (and an extra hit). Their play-by-play says that Castro made the error.

ESPN's box score shows no error and two earned runs. Their play-by-play says it was a double, not an error.

MLB.com's box score, amazingly, shows that the Cubs had an error (at the top, in the "9-inning view" with Runs/Hits/Errors), but in the details below makes no mention of an error. It shows 2 earned runs.

I have been a huge baseball fan for 25+ years and have never seen anything like this. What's official? What really happened?

Answer 1

From the looks of it, this was initially recorded as an error by the official scorer, but was reviewed and changed to a hit at a later date.

• Baseball Reference has it recorded as a hit. This would be in my opinion the second most authoritative source after MLB's official records.

Lets see if we can find some corroborating evidence to this theory. (changes like this can be made mid-game or after the game by the scorer, or be protested by either team later).

Fox Sports has a scoring correction tracker that supports this:

Jul 10 12:00a   C. Villanueva (ChC - SP, RP)  Jul 2 10:05p  Hits Allowed changed from 2 to 3
Jul 10 12:00a   C. Villanueva(ChC - SP, RP)   Jul 2 10:05p  Doubles Allowed changed from 0 to 1
Jul 10 12:00a   C. Villanueva(ChC - SP, RP)   Jul 2 10:05p  Earned Runs Allowed Changed from 0 to 2
Jul 10 12:00a   E. Sogard(Oak - 3B, 2B)       Jul 2 10:05p  Hits changed from 0 to 1
Jul 10 12:00a   E. Sogard(Oak - 3B, 2B)       Jul 2 10:05p  Doubles changed from 0 to 1
Jul 10 12:00a   S. Castro(ChC - SS)           Jul 2 10:05p  Errors changed from 1 to 0

Looks clear to me that there was a scoring change after the fact and that not all sources you've looked at update to reflect changes in official scoring.