The stupidest idea in the history of the world (this week)

One of the best books about baseball I’ve read is The Iowa Baseball Confederacy, by WP Kinsella.  Kinsella is more famous for another baseball novel he wrote, a little something called Shoeless Joe  that was adapted into the movie Field of Dreams.  Confederacy is another baseball fantasy about a mythical game between the titular nine and the Chicago Cubs in 1908.  The game is cursed by a native American, and as a result . . . it never ends.

All sorts of weird stuff happens, and at some point both Teddy Roosevelt and Leonardo DaVinci make an appearance.  Like I said, it’s a fantasy.  But the key plot point is an exhibition game ends in a tie, and in extra innings every time the visiting team scores, the home team scores the same number of runs, meaning more extra innings.  The game goes on for days, even weeks.  This must be the stuff of nightmares for Joe Torre.

Torre, one time beloved manager of the New York Yankees, now MLB executive in charge of stupid ideas, hates extra-inning games.  I mean hates them.   Nothing makes him madder than fans paying to see nine innings of baseball and getting 10, 11 or 12.  And he has a plan to stop it.

Baseball will test an idea in the Gulf Coast League and the Cactus League designed to make game last less long.  Once extra innings start, each team will begin with a runner on second base. Because . . . excitement!

My first question is this—who is the runner?  Does the team get to choose?  Is it the player who was supposed to lead off?  Or the batter who made the last out the previous inning?  Does he get credit for hitting a double?  If not, then how did he get on second base?  A number of questions need answering.

Actually, I am getting ahead of myself.  Do too many baseball games last too long?  According to one statistical analysis, roughly 10% of major league games get to the 10th inning. The same source says that the average extra inning game has 2.126 extra innings.  So it’s not like a lot of 15 inning games are being played.

The problem Joe Torre is trying to solve is the “problem” of watching non-pitchers pitch.  "It's not fun to watch when you go through your whole pitching staff and wind up bringing a utility infielder in to pitch.” said Torre.  First, he’s wrong’ it is GREAT when a team gets so desperate they bring in the second baseman with a knuckler to pitch.  Second, if a team runs out of pitchers, maybe the manager shouldn’t have used three pitchers in the seventh inning against the bottom of the order.  And third, last year only 8 games out of 2,428 went 15 innings.

So this is NOT a problem.

But what if it was?  Would starting the inning with a runner on second solve the problem?  According to my copy of The Hidden Game of Baseball by Thorn and Palmer, at the start of an inning a team expects to score .454 runs; with a runner on second and no outs, the expectation rises to 1.068 runs.  So in the top of the 10^th, the visiting team’s chance of scoring increases significantly.

The problem is this: the home team’s expectations rise the exact same amount!  Instead of both team’s failing to score, now they both score one run, and the game goes on.  The only way to make games end faster is to give one team an advantage in scoring.  Giving both teams an edge does nothing to reduce the probability that the game will end sooner.

Look, if we decided this was a problem, there are better ways to resolve it that debasing the game by inventing base runners.  Calling the game a tie after 12 innings would be better than arbitrarily changing the rules after nine innings.  Allowing pitchers to re-enter the game is another option, although there might be some safety problems.

But that assumes there is a problem, which there isn’t.  Less than 10 games a year go to 15 innings, and getting free baseball and watching infielders pitch is GOOD, not bad.

This is unbelievably stupid.  This reminds me of an idea years ago (the 1980’s), when the Yankees were dominating free agency and someone proposed that small market teams could raise revenue to compete by selling advertising space on their uniforms.  That’s a great idea until you realize that the Yankees, the most watched team in the world, would be able to raise more money selling ad space on their uniforms than the Milwaukee Brewers. 

Long games are fun.  Managers should manage their bullpens better.  There aren’t that many long baseball games.  Starting with a runner n second in extra innings won’t make games shorter.

Okay, Mr. Torre, you’re dismissed.  Find another crisis to resolve.