Sounds great, but the issue MLB has that the other sports don't is the enormous tie to the record books. If they push the mound back to 62 feet, or ban the shift, or lower the 5-inning requirement for a pitching win, the game might be better off but many of the historical records would become obsolete. That still might be the way to go for the future of the game, but I think it's a huge fear for MLB.

_________________

Don't you think that horse has already left the barn after the steroid era, the small ballpark era, and now constantly *especially* fucking with the baseballs?

I mean, that game in the corn is probably the greatest regular season game of all time. But any real observer knows that those home runs at the end were with bullshit rocket balls. That wasn't real. As a Sox fan I wish I could say it was.

And here's another issue I have (particularly as a Sox fan). The Sox built a team designed to slug other teams into submission, defense be damned. They assembled the team over a period of years when a certain type of ball was in use. Then suddenly, now that the team is complete and ready to really compete, they switch to a dead ball that benefits other teams. It's fucked up.

The ball should be sacred.

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

I completely understand trying to cap extra innings. If they were so great and exciting you wouldn’t have 75% of the fans in the stadium leave by the 10th inning. They don’t even need to do market research, the people who paid money to watch the game are letting you exactly what they think of it. Maybe the runner on 2nd is dumb, but it’s something.

There are a lot of fans that leave in the 7th or 8th inning as well.

_________________

Yeah, that should tell you something.

Is the game shitty or are those fans shitty?

Capping extra innings is one thing. Have a brilliantly played and pitched 1-1 game end up getting decided by ghost runners in the 10th is ridiculous.

_________________

just make it a 5 inning game. Solves like 3 or 4 issues at once

There you go. It's 95% of the reason. Bullpen is a sweatshop as it is.

120 game schedule.

Less work for LUNA SECURITIE ??

_________________

_________________

Fans got to go to work or school the next day. It's unreasonable to link fans leaving during extra innings to questions about the quality of the product. Not saying you are but I personally wouldn't make a correlation between lack of fan interest or whatever in extra innings to the question of whether extra innings are good for the game and whatnot.

For me at the end of the day a viable game stands on the strength of its own rules. The more outcomes are determined by teams sticking to the confines of the rules then the more legit the game is. This base runner rule is an abomination because it fucks with the core of the game. RBIs are earned through skill, strength, and baseball luck, they're not gifted by rules. If you're concerned about wiping out your bullpen or whatever then hire managers and acquire players who are gonna win the game for you during the nine innings. Extra innings is part of the game. The artificial insertion of a runner on second during extra innings is not the game.

_________________
Successful calls:

Kyrie Irving will never win anything as a team's alpha: check
T.rubisky is a bust: check
Ben Simmons is a liability: check
The Fields Cult is dumb: double check

2013 CSFMB ROY

I'd say ghost runners is like #13 on the list of problems with the sensibilities of MLB.

Along those lines, what if they decided to break a 9-inning tie using a stat within the game, such as most hits? It would add an extra element of strategy within the nine innings without changing the rules for extra innings (and not even having extra innings). Regular season only, of course. And maybe resort to that only after a normal 10th and 11th.

_________________

It just shows how deep the problems are because they created a problem on top of a problem. What is MLB? The government?

The last year of traditional extra innings, ~1.5% of games played went into a 13th inning. Teams weren’t chewing through their pens because of extras - they were doing it because they used 5 guys to get 6 outs.

The three out rule was a sensible response. The ghost runner in the 10th was candyass bullshit.

_________________

I listened to the radio broadcast of the Tigers’ games a few times when they played the White Sox. They talk quite a bit about Miguel Cabrera and how he learned as a youth to go the other way. He sports a .310 career average. Contrast with a supposedly good hitter like Rizzo who can only go the other way by bunting. Why the hell would we reward a guy like Rizzo who cannot learn to use the whole field by banning the shift?

The messing with baseballs is a joke, but that also happened early in MLB’s life (i.e. dead ball era). They messed with the mound height too. So the game has never been static.

But minimum batter rules for relievers and guy on second in extras are dumb changes. The way the game is played now with high strike out totals, swing for the fences, low batting averages, pulling starters, it all sucks. No rule changes are going to help with that crap. I love the game. But I understand why large portions of America do not.

There are some things I really like- the art of pitching is awesome with so many types of pitches and crazy movement, the international flavor of the game with Latin Americans and Japanese adding a lot to the talent pool, and some very nice stadiums.

_________________
Hawaii (fuck) You

But again, they use as an example one of the greatest hitters in the history of baseball. I’m not sure the takeaway should be “if this guy can do it, why can’t [____]?”

_________________

This is my point. A brilliantly pitched game being decided by an undeserved run scoring (potentially without ever getting a hit) is a terrible ending. A 7-7 game being ended by some ridiculous automatic runner is also bullshit. I dont watch a lot of baseball games these days but when I do and it goes to extra innings and its unnecessarily gimmicky rules, i check out.

Speaking of one of the greatest hitters, what would Ted Williams have hit without a shift…500?

_________________

Yaz just beat the shift, proving you don’t need to be an all time great to do it. Hell, you don’t even have to be competent.

_________________

My point was hitting the other way is about practice and approach. In Rizzo’s case, they shift on him and yet he stands on top of the plate. That makes it more likely he will pull anything in the zone. Obviously he does not care about going the other way.

Plenty of lesser players go the other way. Now take talented players, and they should be able to adjust to beat the shift. But most modern players only care about launch angles and home runs.

_________________
Hawaii (fuck) You

Had some very heated disagreements about ghost runners playing neighborhood whiffle ball back in the day.

Most thought the ghost runners could only advance as many bases as the hitter, so if you hit a single, the ghost runner could not score from second, while others would say the ghost runner would obviously score from second on a single, endless debates during the limited roster, pitcher's hand out games where we had a pitcher, and one or two fielders depending on who showed up, of course anything to hit to right field was an automatic out because we were all right handed hitters, but we basically spent hours and hours playing either whiffle ball or tennis ball baseball all summer long.

Dos Equis wanted to use this, but couldn't figure out a way to put all of this text on a billboard ad.

_________________