MLB Is Considering Starting Extra Innings With A Runner At Second, Plans On Testing It In The Minors This Season
(Yahoo Sports) — Major League Baseball plans on testing a rule change in the lowest levels of the minor leagues this season that automatically would place a runner on second base at the start of extra innings, a distinct break from the game’s orthodoxy that nonetheless has wide-ranging support at the highest levels of the league, sources familiar with the plan told Yahoo Sports.
A derivation of the rule has been used in international baseball for nearly a decade and will be implemented in the World Baseball Classic this spring. MLB’s desire to test it in the rookie-level Gulf Coast League and Arizona League this summer is part of an effort to understand its wide in-game consequences – and whether its implementation at higher levels, and even the major leagues, may be warranted.
While the specifics of the rule are not final, the current plan is to start with a runner on second base in the 10th and every inning thereafter. As baseball grapples with ways to increase action in a game with a record-low rate of balls in play, changing its extra-innings rules emerged as a solution with multiple potential benefits.
What. The. Fuck. Is. This. I’m all for creative ideas that will create more action in the game during a time when action is down, but this idea is fucking ASININE. I’m by no means a “baseball purist”, but is there really an epidemic of extra inning games where they would have to alter the game entirely with some hokey, gimmicky rule?
I used the Dave Roberts clip above from the 2004 ALCS, which was actually in the ninth inning, but what if it was in the tenth? What photo has Roberts autographed ever since? Is it the photo of him scoring the tying run, or is it the photo of him stealing second base? It was the steal, and we’re planning on taking moments like that away just to save a little time in the unlikely event that a game goes to extra innings? Extra innings are some of the most exciting moments in baseball.
Fans enjoy watching games that go into extra innings — that’s a fact. Ken Rosenthal said on MLB Network this morning that ratings actually PEAK during extra innings. The whole point of implementing these new pace of play rules and ideas is to attract more fans, no? So, why would you do something that’s going to take away a part of the game that fans clearly enjoy. Baseball fans like when weird baseball happens — weird baseball as in, on rare occasion, games lasting until weird hours of the night, position players having to come in to pitch, the high drama that mounts with each inning that passes, etc. I understand that there are travel concerns, and it’s problematic to have teams playing baseball until 1 AM on a travel day, but that’s why they literally get paid MILLIONS of dollars. Deal with it. It’s part of the job that they are extremely well compensated for.
By the way, I’m all for this rule change at the minor league level. It’s only at the major league level that I oppose something like this. The minor leagues aren’t for winning and losing; they’re for development. Those games shouldn’t be lasting more than 10 innings, kind of like how spring training games work. But this is the major fucking leagues. I’ll be damned if a pennant is decided by some fucking Little League rule where the game-winning run scores by a runner from second base that my $15 million closer didn’t put there.