The Associated Press reported Tuesday that Major League Baseball will expand its experiment of starting extra innings in certain games with a runner at second base.
Despite the inevitable freakout from baseball purists, there is one big takeaway: None of the games will count toward a team’s regular season or postseason record. The rule went into effect in the low minors last year, beginning in the 10th inning. It will be applied at the same point in spring training games (which are capped at 10 innings, anyway) this upcoming season. And it will go into effect in the 11th inning of the All-Star Game—and only seven contests in the 85-year history of the game have reached.
The immediate concern will be that the league is dabbling with the change when no one is looking, and that it will ease into wider application over time. What could be next? Either side of a regular season doubleheader, for example?
It’s doubtful. Because the league knows that this idea isn’t a fix for its pace-of-play troubles. Take this piece of background reporting from the AP’s story (prominent, in the third paragraph): “Concerned about injuries in games that don’t count, the players’ association isn’t expected to oppose the concept. MLB isn’t considering using the rule in any games that count.”
If only the NFL would shorten its preseason competitions to 10 minutes a quarter, then we’d be really on to something.
It’s obvious and has been said before by fans and sportswriters who cover the game regularly, but it bears repeating: The reason professional baseball is slow is because of what happens between innings one through nine. Fewer than 10 percent of MLB regular-season games go any longer. An extra-innings rule change in the majors wouldn’t be just a Band-Aid—it’d be a Band-Aid on a healthy knee when it’s the elbow that is bleeding.
Baseball brass can be obstinate. But they aren’t this dumb, not in so wide a number that the league and the players union ever would agree to modifying, and ruining, bonus baseball. It adopted unobjectionable, if small-potatoes changes to the flow of play last year that avoided modifying what makes baseball baseball: Skipping the formality of tossing four balls on an intentional walk and sending the batter straight to first base, for example, isn’t a big deal, both in terms of its acceptability and effectiveness. More substantial changes are being discussed and could be in the offing, like a pitch clock and limits on coaching visits to the pitcher’s mound. These are their own controversies.
As for the big one: MLB chief baseball officer Joe Torre said last year that the second-base extra-innings rule in the big leagues is “far down the road, if we ever get there.” It’s probably OK this year still to take him at his word.
