The Major League Baseball season commenced with little fanfare. I guess when each team plays 162 games, there is no reason (or no way) to generate early excitement. Except by resorting to trivia questions. Here’s one: name any of the three players to accomplish all of the following in the same season: finish in the top ten in the majors in batting average, on-base percentage, home runs, and stolen bases and win a gold glove.
Hint – it didn’t happen before 1950.
Baseball is trying two things this year that cause traditionalists to cringe. The first will only occur at the lowest level of professional baseball: the Gulf Coast League and the Arizona League. Both are rookie-level leagues that play a limited schedule, fewer than 60 games. These two leagues will experiment with a concept designed to shorten extra-inning games.
A normal MLB game lasts nine innings and approximately three hours, but games can last much longer. A game tied after nine innings continues until one team is ahead after a complete inning. Last year, MLB teams played an average of 12 extra-inning games, with most ending within an inning or two. But some last deep into the night, as many as 15 or 18 innings. To diehard baseball fans, that is wondrous extra baseball. But even diehard fans have to work and the stands at most stadiums suggest that fans would rather the game conclude after nine innings than after 13. (To non-fans, even rain-shortened five-inning games are too long, let alone the longest professional game ever which lasted 33 innings.)
The experiment involves placing a runner on second base at the beginning of each extra inning for each team. There has been much weeping and gnashing of teeth among traditionalists. I’m not sure whether I like the rule, but I’m glad that MLB is willing to experiment. Let’s face it, relatively few people enjoy the extra-long games, least of all the players who likely have a game the next day.
The tweak significantly changes the run expectancy. A normal inning starts with no runners and no outs and on average yields .461 runs. With a runner on second and no outs, teams average 1.068 runs. This approximate doubling of run expectancy will almost certainly result in fewer long extra-inning games. For now, it’s just an experiment at the rookie level. Still, it has been tried at the youth level for years and has also been used in the World Baseball Classic, where runners are placed on first and second starting in the 11th inning. The baseball gods have not yet) exacted retribution.
The other rule change is occurring at the major league level, with, I would suggest, less fanfare than associated with the beginning of the season. The intentional walk is one of the least interesting parts of a typical baseball game; that it’s of dubious strategic value is beside the point. Last year, teams averaged 31 intentional walks, roughly one every five games. The overwhelming majority consisted of four high and wide pitches and then a batter jogging to first base.
Very occasionally something outside the routine happens. For instance, Miguel Cabrera once hit a single on a pitch that wasn’t quite far enough outside. In his career, Cabrera now has one hit in 223 intentional walk attempts. Every once in a while a team pretends it’s going to intentionally walk someone and then throws a strike, though that’s probably even more rare than a Cabrera hit during an intentional walk. The general point is that, in the vast majority of intentional walks, nothing happens. So the rule now is that a manager can signal for an intentional walk and the batter will immediately go to first base without requiring the pitcher to throw four unnecessary and uneventful pitches.
This rule has been used at the youth and high school level for decades. Nobody thinks they aren’t playing baseball because of it. It is efficient, it is simple, and it is not earth-shattering. Still, the traditionalists roar, invoking as they so often do a parade of “what will they do next” scenarios.
Trivia answer – Willie Mays 1957, Joe Morgan 1976, and Matt Kemp 2011. (Credit to Bill James for asking the question and providing the answer. His website billjamesonline.com is outstanding.)
The game has been tweaked again and again since the beginning when batters could request a high or low pitch, when players didn’t use gloves, when catching a batted ball after only one bounce was an out. The number of pitches that constitute a walk changed frequently in the early years, peaking at nine before mercifully sinking to the current four. Deep into the 20th century, the home team manager could still decide whether to bat first or last before the league established a rule and settled the matter in the 1950s.
Few changes have made the game materially worse, though nine balls for a walk must have been brutal. Most rule changes have improved the game, perhaps only incrementally, but better is better. Let’s give the rules a chance – as long as they don’t try that putting a runner on second thing during the playoffs or World Series. By the way, the playoffs started in 1969, almost 100 years after the first professional baseball game was played. Imagine baseball without playoffs, even purists aren’t pushing for that.
Change is good! Maybe in the next few years we won’t have to see 60 year old managers wearing full uniforms.
It is a little goofy. No other coaches wear uniforms — basketball, football, and hockey coaches wear suits and ties (in the main) with the occasional hoodie here and there. Cornelius McGillicuddy wore a suit while he managed the Philadelphia A’s (over 7,000 games), though not early in his managerial career when he was a player manager. As far as I know, nothing in the rules requires a manager to wear a uniform.
p.s. Cornelius McGillicuddy is more commonly known as Connie Mack.