Taking advantage of the extra innings rule. #CarryTheFreight I #ThisIsMyCrew pic.twitter.com/BU3Ev0bAut
— Milwaukee Brewers (@Brewers) August 16, 2020
I had to look it up.
Major League Baseball’s new extra-innings rule, in which a baserunner is automatically placed at second base with no outs to start every half-inning, is probably the most material change to the way the game is played since the adoption of the designated hitter. And considering the DH has been around in the American League since 1973 and still generates, um, spirited debate, I think it’s safe to say we’re not likely to see baseball fans ever come to 100% agreement on whether the freebie runner is a good idea.
But it’s definitely a good idea for this shortened 2020 season, for reasons I’ll get into in a moment. And having seen the rule in action a handful of times already, I’m willing to go so far as to say -- with all apologies to the purest of purists -- it might be a good idea for future seasons, too.
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50 comments:
You can tell baseball has problems since they've been trying to produce less of it per game for decades.
I wish they'd added the little league mercy rule- any team up by 10 or more at the end of an inning after the 5th goes to Burger King...
What are the odds an opinion piece on th MLB web site would be in favor of the new rule, by a “reporter” no less. Personally? I couldn’t care less. Sports as we knew them are dead so no reason to get reattached emotionally.
rehajm said...I wish they'd added the little league mercy rule
Comebacks are rare, but they do happen. And when your team pulls it off, you remember it for decades.
It reminds me of when we used to play 3 on 3 sandlot, or sometimes with uneven teams or one kid played on both teams. These games had some funny rules, this sounds like our “ghost runner” rule. If the guy on base was up again, he called a ghost runner in his place so he could have his “ups". You could also assign somebody to take your ups if you wanted. If you had a ghost runner on second, and you hit a single, he would then be on third and somebody would call out “Ghost runner on third!” Any fly ball to right field was an automatic out, same with any ball hit into a swimming pool or the “pricker bush” or any lost ball in general. We hated losing the ball. Breaking a neighbor’s window simply ended the game, we had no rule for that one except run, as if every mom in the neighborhood didn’t know exactly who we were.
I used to think the 3-on-3 overtime rule in hockey was an affront to the dignity of the game. But it turns out to produce incredibly exciting moments. The sport is better for it.
How about, they have the pitcher kneel on the pitcher's mound. Especially for any POC hitter.
Haven't checked, but I bet this rule change isn't flying in Japan.
If they want to make the game more intense, they should simply remove third base, and make the baseball diamond a triangle.
Or better yet, remove second and third base. Turn it into something like cricket. They could track the stats for knocking over the pitcher -- runs, hits, errors, and sacks.
Football's problem is guys getting hurt. Baseball's problem is fans getting bored. But the ultimate problem is who is going to pay off the stadium bonds. In 30 years, the only game left will be basketball.
Tim Maguire said... “Comebacks are rare, but they do happen. And when your team pulls it off, you remember it for decades.“
Exactly. I remember a Braves game in Atlanta in 1966, their first season in town. Late in the season, just before school started, a lot of my family - parents, aunts, uncles, cousins - went to a weekday day game against the Phillies. The Phillies got out to an 8-0 lead in the top of the 1st. The Braves proceeded to chip away inning after inning until they went into the bottom of the 9th tied 8-8. The late, great Eddie Matthews, struggling in what was to be his last season with the Braves, was sent in to pinch hit with a runner in scoring position and blooped a single to send the run home. The whole stadium went wild. Never have forgotten that game.
Speaking as a lifelong baseball avid fan, I like the rule. The games were getting too long for a number of reasons, and this even-handedly shortens them.
I still regard the DH as an abomination. It is perfect for one instance: the All-Star Game.
Grrr... Eamus catuli!
With the COVID-depleted rosters, MLB could go back to the way we used to play 4-on-4 softball: Invisible runners, batting team supplies the catcher, pick which side (left or right field) you can hit the ball.
Who'd have thought a year ago we'd be seeing the demise of major sports, and the collapse of major cities, all from a wave of TDS-induced media-generated hysteria?
Baseball fans are dying and not being replaced by the young. These rule changes won't bring more fans in. I'm terrible at predictions but it looks to me that baseball is suffering most among the major sports leagues from the covid lockdown rules.
RIP MLB.
I'll tell you what's an abomination: those Brewer uniforms. But at least their not as bad as the Packers' uniforms.
Let’s just give all the players a World Series ring at the beginning of each season. And stop any inning where a team scores more than three runs. There is a lot to be done to make the game more fair. Plus it lasts too long.
I guess this shows how little attention I've given to baseball as the years have gone by. True- it would help if the team I grew up with (Tigers) didn't lose 100 per year (which they will not do this year), and it probably didn't help that I lived in Atlanta for over 20 years and could never get into the National League teams. Don't know what it was, but I could not get into the Braves.
But I had no idea baseball was doing this. To me it smells of desperation. And maybe baseball needs some of that. It's dying with the young (and some of us upper middle aged). It's probably more popular in the Dominican Republic and Venezuela than it is here in the US (as a percentage of population).
I'll possibly tune into baseball when they get into the playoffs. But probably not. It'll be football season by then.
I used to think the 3-on-3 overtime rule in hockey was an affront to the dignity of the game. But it turns out to produce incredibly exciting moments. The sport is better for it.
After sitting through five OTs during a recent match-up in the Stanley Cup playoffs, I'm in favor of some kind of remedy, at least using the shoot-out as in the regular season. Those players were dragging!
"I bet this rule change isn't flying in Japan."
Japan just plays through I think 12 innings, then calls it a tie.
The rule isn't really about shortening games. The really long games are so rare that they have little impact on average game time.
Teams now choose bizarre combinations of players for their rosters: a minimal number of non-pitchers, a handful of starting pitchers, and then a legion of interchangeable relief pitchers who can throw very hard for one inning. These guys get set into ridiculously specific roles, such as pitching the 8th inning when the team is behind.
Long extra inning games play havoc with this. A fifteen-inning game will usually exhaust a modern bullpen, so that one or young pitchers get sent to the minors for a time, to be replaced by a couple clones from the minor leagues. There are costs associated with this, so they've decided to wipe out the long extra-inning game but preserve the role of the "eighth inning when we're behind guy."
The Free Spot in the middle of the Bingo card.
"Turn it into something like cricket.”
Nothing is foul, the defenders not allowed to wear gloves, the bat a mile wide, the pitcher can’t bend his elbow, if the 'runner' touches the base with his bat he’s safe, you could get get teams scoring a hundred runs in an inning! Or hitting for “a century” as they call it in cricket. Or those people who want that kind of stuff could just watch cricket, which for some reason I can never find on the satellite.
Before this hit, I had noticed that the only people in bars looking at baseball if it was on the TV had grey hair.
Meanwhile yesterday I was watching guys play videogames on TV.
Mountain Man- Matthews is the only player to have played for the Boston, Milwaukee, and Atlanta Braves.
Pathetic ramblings from an old guy:
I’m a huge Twins fan, have been for almost. 60 years, and I have not been able to muster much interest in Covid-ball. But, there may be some good things that come out of this pandemic-panic.
Too lazy to look this up, but the 60s and 70s, while baseball took up a lot of column inches in our newspapers, attendance was way less- one million fans was considered the make or break point. The Twins, who were a very good, if underachieving, club drew something like 10 million fans in the 60s, which I believe let the AL for that decade. The Dodgers were an outlier, in that they regularly drew over 2 million fans. Up into the 1990s in most places going to the game could be a spur of the moment decision (I realize it still is in some towns) and you didn’t have to consult a loan officer to finance your trip to the yard. And, I’d argue, most people in the park were actually watching the game.
And yet in those days there were occasionally thumb suckers in the sporting press about the end of baseball; too slow, can’t compete with football, etc..
I wouldn’t mind a scaling back- where a big crowd would be 20k, and player salaries were more, oh, I dunno, reasonable.
As for the new rules, I like the “pitchers have to pitch to at least three batters or the end of the inning“ rule. Does that apply to the pitcher who starts the inning? Although I think a better solution might be roster limits for pitchers. There were a few years where Earl Waver regularly used only 8 or 9 pitchers.
The “put a runner on second in bonus panels” rule seems to be the wrong solution to the problem of game length. The issue is not extra- innings games, it’s the length of regular games- interminable pauses between pitches, throwing to first 7 million times during an at bat, endless pitching changes - see above, the fact that way fewer balls are put in play, (three true outcomes baseball) and related to that, the average number of pitches per AB. It used to be fun to watch a Rod Carew foul off a bunch of pitches, but, to watch a team like the Yankees, where everyone seemingly has 20 pitch at bats (I exaggerate slightly for effect) is really tedious. I don’t have a solution to that one, though. These changes in the game were brought about by the sabermetric revolution of the 80s and 90s, which for me, increased my understanding and enjoyment of the game in the short term, but may have made the game unwatchable in the long term. Although, as Bill James has argued, managers, both field and general, are paid to win games, and are ( and this is true of all sports) indifferent to hostile to the entertainment value of the game.
However, memo to the MLB: if you’re losing guys like me, you have a big problem.
Now set up a tee-ball. That pitching slows down the game.
MLB Rule Change (2030), "To entice more fans to the stadiums MLB announced today that for the upcoming season T-Ball will be used."
They use this rule in kids' rec league ball because the field usually has games scheduled back-to-back. I wonder how the players feel about reverting to kiddie rules.
This year the DH is being used for ALL teams, not just the AL.
Stupid rule, this year, ok, try it out to see how stupid it is. But being a Cub fan, and now seeing every team in the city win something..........Im good to go. In the old, old days, the batter got to call whether he wanted the pitch high or low. That was the last good rule change.
The only problems with baseball is pitchers don’t throw strikes and most batters are swinging for the fences all the time.
I am not sure good or bad - depends on how thinking evolves -
is this not a nudge toward colorblind + affirmative action -
will colorblind prevail or base (leg) up prevail in the debate debate
According to Bill Bryson (and Baseball Reference.com backs him up on this), in the 1920's games took an hour or hour and a half to play, simply because batters and pitchers didn't mess around. They didn't take 5 minutes to consider what pitch they were going to throw next, didn't step out of the box after every pitch to wander about, adjust batting gloves, pull at their jerseys, gaze at the sky.
Brett Suter, the Brewers relief pitcher, is a rarity today because he works so fast.You know that half inning will zip by quickly when you see him on the mound. Batters normally try to slow him down by calling time and stepping out of the box. A few seasons back, when the Crew played the Yankees, Aaron Judge refused to step out of the box. And that at-bat was treated like a marvel by MLB. (Suter struck Judge out.) Wow, look at that, old-time baseball!
In the '20's, everyone in MLB pitched that fast. And nobody stepped out of the box.
As for the guy put on 2nd in extra innings - I thought I'd hate it. I don't. I bet pitchers do though.
I haven't watched baseball for years. I just don't care about it.
Other sports evolved, including Socc
soccer and football, to deal with ties at the end of regulation, and baseball, which has the worst reputation for going on too long, needs to evolve too.
Right, exiled. And far too many pitching changes. There should be one starter, one relief and a closer, at the most.
How is the baseball sports betting in Vegas doing so far? I'd bet the money taken in bets is waaaaay down compared to previous seasons.
In the '20's, everyone in MLB pitched that fast. And nobody stepped out of the box.
Not even so long ago. Remember Mark "The Bird" Fidrych? Even with his antics, he would get through complete games in 1:45 or 1:50. You can look it up.
Baseball won't lose me, but they do need to limit times between pitches, not allow batters to call time out to adjust their jock straps. But another thing that's had an effect is all the strikeouts. I don't know the data, but I suspect Ks average 5-6 pitches, and they're less interesting than balls in play. Plus the higher pitch counts mean more pitching changes.
I just don't care about professional sports any more, and increasingly not about college sports either.
The rule would be better if the teams started with one out.
"his year the DH is being used for ALL teams, not just the AL.”
So baseball is now a thing of the past. Too bad. It had a nice run.
Best hockey game I ever watched was a three overtime Stanley Cup final between my beloved Panthers and the Avalanche. Roy vs VanBeesbruck. Two goaltenders standing on their heads. Amazing. Of course I would have loved to have seen some of those Edmonton games starring The Great One, but I wasn’t a hockey fan then.
I have opted out of caring for a game that I loved for sixty years. Was in Phoenix for spring training when they shut the season down...They should have kept it shut down.
The DH, the runner on 2nd, the cardboard cutouts, the kowtowing to BLM, the fragility of players and their egos...
I think I'll find some hillside where i can smoke a cigar and watch an amateur baseball or softball game and pretend.
Haven't watched a single pitch of a single inning this season. And this coming from a Dodger fan since 1974.
They can take their kneeling, their BLM bullshit and all their other virtue signaling and shove it.
I'm done.
What does it say about a culture when "pure" is something to be scorned?
If I have to pick one rule or the other, the DH will go.
Multiple-OT playoff hockey is awesome. Hockey to the death!
Wisconsin played Cornell in a 3-OT playoff game on the way to their 2006 national championship. That game had players crawling off the ice for shift changes. Hockey till you drop. Let up for one second and your season is over. Have never seen a more exciting game ever.
Regular season, they should just end it in a tie. Shoot-outs are an abomination.
"in the 1920's games took an hour or hour and a half to play, simply because batters and pitchers didn't mess around."
2 balls for a walk. 2 strikes for an out. Foul balls with 1 strike - out. No messing around because each pitch matters. You'd even get complete games, which hardly ever happen anymore.
"in the 1920's games took an hour or hour and a half to play, simply because batters and pitchers didn't mess around."
2 balls for a walk. 2 strikes for an out. Foul balls with 1 strike - out. No messing around because each pitch matters. You'd even get complete games, which hardly ever happen anymore.
Regular season, they should just end it in a tie. Shoot-outs are an abomination.
I lost interest in hockey when they started giving one point in the standings to the losing team in OT (but still two points for the winners). It's like a participation trophy.
NL DH rule. The apocalypse.
UMASS- Maine , Hockey East finals 2003. 3OT Fuckin‘ Jimmy Howard!
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