There’s a saying in most sports when they go to overtime, it’s free! In most sports the rules are altered a little – NFL does a modified sudden death, hockey does 5 minutes then a shootout, basketball only does a 5 minute period. For over 100 years though baseball has just extended the inning until the result is decided. No special rules, no need for for a graphic on the tv and the commentators explaining what happens next. When a baseball game when to extra innings it truly was free baseball, and it was great. The same exact game, just extended slightly. Apparently that was just too simple, too much of a good thing. Now though, it’s terrible.
Last season Major League Baseball’s commissioner Rob Manfred made one of the worst changes in his long line of terrible rule changes. He took advantage of a condensed season to completely alter how baseball is played. For over 100 years every inning in baseball was the same – three outs to an inning and, most importantly, no one on base to start the inning. In 2020 that changed by adding the runner on 2nd if a game is tied beyond 9 innings. This was done with the guise that games were lasting too long, that they needed to finish games as much as possible during a season with a tight schedule. Players went along with the rule change, the logic even made sense for 2020 – no one wants a 15 inning game in a season where you have roughly 6 days off in two and a half months. Really though, the rule change only applied to a small percentage of games, so it essentially does nothing to speed up most games. For some idiotic reason though, the rule was carried over to this year. After two months last year and another month this year for a sample size, one thing is for sure, it doesn’t seem to speed up the game.
Any baseball fan I talk to seems to hate this rule change, so I’m surprised when I keep hearing commentators say they like the rule change. Some even go as far to say they changed their opinion on it after last season. I’m having a hard time buying it. They claim it makes the game more exciting, more dramatic, and because they work in the TV business any drama is good drama no matter the cost. It’s an argument that doesn’t make sense. If they want more drama then why not have the runner on second every inning. But their most important argument they site is that it speeds up the game – based on the games I’ve seen I don’t think so.
Admittedly, I haven’t been able to find the stats to show how long each inning takes on average – I can only find total game time. But the main stat you hear every time this rule comes up is how many more games finish in the 10th inning or the 11th inning compared to before this rule. It’s an arbitrary measurement. An inning isn’t like a period, a quarter, or a half in other sports, there’s no clock counting down. The closes thing to it is an end in curling and even that is completely different. An inning in baseball is an achievement marker. You get 3 outs to score as much as you can. An inning can last five minutes or it could last a half hour. Because of that you can’t use it as a benchmark for a measurement of time. But, the clever marketers that they are at MLB headquarters they convince you that these extra inning games are just as fast as any other inning.
With everyone looking at how long baseball games are today compared to 10, 20, or 30 years ago the main change is in the number of strikeouts. The strikeout rate in 2020 compared to 1980 has gone up something like 20%. As a result the average game has increased 30 minutes. I bring this up because pitchers, especially relief pitchers, go for strikeouts – they go for strikeouts even more when they’re in high pressure situations. That drama the commentators talk about is a high pressure situation. It makes the time between pitches increase, they’re focusing more on hitting the edge of the strike zone or getting a batter to chase. Trying to hit that perfect spot means that there’s going to be more balls called and more foul balls. This means that there’s more pitches. All these little things slow the game way down. If an average game is 3 hours that means the average inning is 20 minutes – 10 minutes on the top of the inning, 10 minutes on the bottom of the inning. Since I can’t find any stats on this, I’m going to have to pull out the stopwatch the next time I watch, but the games I’ve seen seem to be closer to 15-20 minutes per half inning once it gets to extras. Take that math and apply it to extras a 12 inning game with this rule change is the same as a 14 inning game without the runner on second. Anytime a game isn’t done in the 10th it’s a slower game than it would have been without the rule change – I’ll have to double check, but I believe something like 90% of all extra inning games were done by the 12th before the rule change.
I haven’t really heard why the Player’s Union agreed to keep the runner on 2nd rule for 2021 but hopefully they force it out next year. MLB has pulled a fast one on us by convincing us that an inning is a measure of time, so hopefully the folks at baseball reference or any other baseball stats group can go back and give us an inning by inning time before and after this rule change. I’m not convinced this is any faster. From a baseball purist perspective it also changes the strategy on the game that just isn’t baseball. If a pitcher gives up a double right away it’s the pitcher’s fault and they have to work around it. Unfortunately the last player from the previous inning – a guy the pitcher just beat – gets rewarded for their failure by starting on 2nd the next inning. It makes no sense. I like the drama of the hitters actually having to win the game. The drama this rule change creates is fake, it’s manufactured by people in suits thinking only about drama and not about the good of the game. Having broadcasters and journalists tell me this rule is great is like that co-worker you tolerate telling you about a show you just have to watch, makes me hate it and want to turn off the game as soon as it goes to extra innings. Free baseball used to be like getting a free beer – more of a good thing. Now I guess free things just aren’t worth it.