first man on 2nd base to start extra innings in MLB history

[andyhdz]

But since it was the A's and Angels no one seems to care. If the Red Sox or Yankees had done it the thread would already be 3 pages deep. Anyways I'm not a traditionalist at all and I believe change is good. I've seen this format in the AAA leagues for a few years even in person but seeing it on the MLB stage I have to admit it was a bit...shocking. After years of being used to extra innings being just that- extra baseball, the new man on 2nd rule made the game feel like it had actually gone into overtime where the traditional rules and strategies go out the window. Sure no one did a sac bunt but the game sure felt differently. In the bottom of the 10th the A's loaded the bases and when Chapman hit that grand slam walkoff it was a bit anti-climatic.

[Westheim]

We've already disliked the heck out of that stupid rule in various threads.

[swoboda]

Saw it live.....out of synch.
Really takes away the value of having a strong bullpen.

[PocketsAintFull]

I haven't decided about it yet, but I suspect it's an advantage to the road team.

Maybe down the road it could be more gradual, so a runner on 1st in the 10th, 2nd in the 11th etc...

[zappa1]

I've decided the day the rule was announced. It stinks. So does the minimum 3 batter rule for pitchers. These are the 2 worst rules so far to date. There are many others they've made, but, these 2 stink the most. And what a sneaky way to get the DH in for National League teams. Come next year, do you think they'll go back to pitchers batting. No they won't. I can smell this one coming and this stinks, too. I'm hating modern baseball more and more and so are a lot of fans as the overall fan attendance goes down year after year. They don't give the fans what they want. They give them what they THINK they want. And when the fans run away, they think it's cause the game is too long. Well then why are fans still leaving? There must be something they don't like. Baseball refuses to fix it.

[TheMaus2]

the problem with baseball isn't the product on field, it's the fact that the MLB doesn't know how to market said product

[low]

Originally Posted by zappa1

I've decided the day the rule was announced. It stinks. So does the minimum 3 batter rule for pitchers. These are the 2 worst rules so far to date.

I agree.

[CBeisbol]

Originally Posted by zappa1

I've decided the day the rule was announced. It stinks. So does the minimum 3 batter rule for pitchers.

At least you had an open mind about it.

The runner on second rule was implemented to shorten games. It does that.

These are the 2 worst rules so far to date. There are many others they've made, but, these 2 stink the most. And what a sneaky way to get the DH in for National League teams. Come next year, do you think they'll go back to pitchers batting. No they won't. I can't smell this one coming and this stinks, too. I'm hating modern baseball more and more and so are a lot of fans as the overall fan attendance goes down year after year. They don't give the fans what they want. They give them what they THINK they want. And when the fans run away, they think it's cause the game is too long. Well then why are fans still leaving? There must be something they don't like. Baseball refuses to fix it.

I'm not sure that yearly attendance is a great way to measure baseball's popularity. Sure attendance numbers are down about 6 million fans per year since their peak in 2012, but subscriptions to MLB.TV have certainly be rising during that time.


If baseball is "dying", maybe it's just dying and not being killed. There are roughly infinity choices people can make for their entertainment. New ones are coming into existence all the time. It would be expected that older ones would start to lose popularity

[ForeverRoyalKC]

I'm completely ignoring this "season." It's like an alternate universe.
I've lived through a strike season. I'll wait til next year.

[Leo_The_Lip]

Zoomed with my brother and talked about this awhile. We couldn't stop laughing at Ohtani not knowing what was going on when he was told to run out to second to start the tenth.

We had not realized that the runner on second is considered to have reached on an error so that the pitcher's ERA is not hurt. But the error is not charged to anyone. So here we have the beginning of another purest atrocity, The Team Error category. Look for this change coming soon to an MLB game near you!

[CBeisbol]

Originally Posted by Leo_The_Lip

Zoomed with my brother and talked about this awhile. We couldn't stop laughing at Ohtani not knowing what was going on when he was told to run out to second to start the tenth.

We had not realized that the runner on second is considered to have reached on an error so that the pitcher's ERA is not hurt. But the error is not charged to anyone. So here we have the beginning of another purest atrocity, The Team Error category. Look for this change coming soon to an MLB game near you!

The team error is awesome!

Or, at least, a decent reflection of reality

Can't wait to see the heads explode when part of a hit goes to a pitcher, and part to a defender

[TheMaus2]

the team error is absurd but it's less absurd than a pitcher getting an earned run because of the extra innings rule I reckon

[CBeisbol]

Originally Posted by TheMaus2

the team error is absurd but it's less absurd than a pitcher getting an earned run because of the extra innings rule I reckon

The team error is less absurd than a pitcher being charged a hit on a pop up that 2 or 3 or 4 or 5 players could have caught. Or charging one of those players an error and letting the others off the hook.

Look at this stupid pitcher giving up a single like the jerk he is

https://youtu.be/i3sK9pupFHU

[zappa1]

[QUOTE=CBeisbol;4675980]At least you had an open mind about it.

"A mind needs to be open for it to work"-------Frank Zappa

[zappa1]

How about the pitcher being charged a run for the guy he DIDN'T put on 2nd base in the 10th inning? Stupid rule. And there is no proof it makes the game shorter. The game could've been over 4 hours long even before extra innings. And extra innings could still go 12, 13, 14 or more innings. Just because you start with a guy at 2nd base doesn't mean it's over.

[CBeisbol]

Originally Posted by zappa1

How about the pitcher being charged a run for the guy he DIDN'T put on 2nd base in the 10th inning?

Aren't those unearned runs?

And runs being charged to pitchers makes no sense anyway, since teams give up runs

And there is no proof it makes the game shorter. The game could've been over 4 hours long even before extra innings. And extra innings could still go 12, 13, 14 or more innings. Just because you start with a guy at 2nd base doesn't mean it's over.

We have two years’ worth of data from the minors to work with, and per MiLB, the results are notable. Over the last two seasons, just 43 total games went more than three extra innings, compared to 345 in 2016 and ‘17 combined. And as Baseball America’s JJ Cooper notes, nearly three-quarters of all extra-innings minor league games last year and the year before ended in the 10th, as opposed to just under half in the two seasons prior. And nearly all of them — 93% — finished in the 10th or 11th, representing a 20% increase.

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/so-just-...-rule-give-us/

[Syd Thrift]

It's pretty hilarious sometimes how reflexively reactionary baseball fans can be. The 3 batter rule in particular was designed to *roll back* some of the stuff we've seen over the past 30 years, particularly the annoying move where teams bring in a left-handed relief pitcher, sometimes only to pitch to 1 or 2 batters before being pulled (along with the mandatory 8 pitches, the TV timeout, and the inevitable time-wasting by the manager as they work to bring in a new guy who isn't quite ready or whatever.

But no, it's different and therefore it's bad.

To me, the biggest issues with baseball now are a. the game is too static, and b. games take too damn long. There was a time when a ballgame lasted 90 minutes. In the summer, maybe you took an afternoon off, you went down to the park, you took in a game, and you still had the rest of the night to do something, just the same nowadays as if you go to see a matinee of a movie, perhaps. Over time games have slowly gotten longer and longer and now they're literally twice that long.

And for me, at least, to make matters worse, the vast majority of the game consists of watching the pitcher and batter stand around and call time-outs on each other while we wait for the game to progress. The *vast* amount of time they take now - and it didn't used to be this way either; this is a phenomenon that began in the 90s - just kills so much of the momentum that the game might have, and then even when something does happen on the field, more than half the time it doesn't even involve a fielder having to make a play on something. It's not surprising at all to me that the game is really, really beginning to skew towards older fans - they're the people who aren't bored out of their minds watching it.

We need *more* changes like these, not less. The 3 batter rule in particular was a good start, and, really, anything that will make extra inning games take less long is a bonus as well.

[zappa1]

No matter how much data you have, you still can't predict how long a game will go. You can have 20 years of data and it proves nothing as to what will happen next. You need a crystal ball for that. You still don't know what will happen. Why don't you try that fuzzy math? You keep trying to prove how your numbers tell you everything and they tell me squat. Nothing. They tell me the past. That was yesterday, and yesterday's gone.


And the 3 batter rule already cost Don Mattingly and the Marlins a game in just the 2nd game of the year because he couldn't change pitchers. Dum dum rule # 2.

[cephasjames]

Originally Posted by Syd Thrift

(along with the mandatory 8 pitches, the TV timeout, and the inevitable time-wasting by the manager as they work to bring in a new guy who isn't quite ready or whatever.

I've been saying for years (maybe not hear) that anyone coming from the bullpen should be 100% ready to go when called from the pen (unless the current pitcher is injured and needs to be replaced unexpectedly) because they've been told to get warmed up. Therefore there is no need for them to warm up on the mound. Which also means there is no need for a commercial break. If a commercila "must" be shown then do picture in picture as the reliever walks to the mound.

Originally Posted by Syd Thrift

But no, it's different and therefore it's bad.

100% hyperbolic and unhelpful.

Originally Posted by Syd Thrift

the vast majority of the game consists of watching the pitcher and batter stand around and call time-outs on each other while we wait for the game to progress.

I believe that this is what slows games down more than anything and the 3 batter rule doesn't really address any of this. Almost all of the "time wasters" you describe happen between pitches. A 3 batter minimum rule doesn't speed any of those things up. It just eliminates a small fraction of wasted time (as described earlier in this post). What really needs to happen is for the time in between pitches to be sped up. That generally falls on the batters throughout the game and on pitchers later in the game as leverage situations become higher.

The biggest negative of the 3 batter rule is when it is clear after one batter that the pitcher really sucks but he still has to pitch to two more batters.

Speed up the time it takes to change pitchers and the time in between at-bats and the 3 batter rule is unneccesary.

[Syd Thrift]

I looked at the data and the biggest issue I see with the 3 batter rule is that it won’t really make a huge difference: LOOGYs are becoming unfashionable, and the real issue is teams sending out their starter for 5 innings and then using relievers for an inning apiece from then on out, every single game. 538 noted that the correlation between relief pitcher use and K rate is really high and their solution, while a lot more radical, makes a lot of sense as well:

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features...lan-to-fix-it/

The biggest issue I see is how to prevent teams from just using a “shadow roster” of an extra 3-4 relief pitchers that they just shuttle in whenever they want to. The current roster rules make it so you have to burn option years to do this, but I wonder if it would be enough. Otherwise, this should at least impact the single biggest issue with the game, the high K rates, at least to some extent without forcing bigger changes (lowering the mound or increasing the size of the baseball while making it wound slightly looser).