Torre backs latest idea to speed up baseball
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To hear Joe Torre tell it, Major League Baseball is plagued by a plethora of bullpendraining, fan-shedding, 15-inning slogs that end after midnight with some poor position player comically lobbing 75-mph meatballs over the plate. That, at least, was the reasoning Torre, the sport’s chief baseball officer, gave Yahoo! Sports this week to support the experimental new rule MLB will implement in the low minor leagues this season, with each extra half-inning beginning with a runner on second base. “It’s not fun when you go through your whole pitching staff and wind up bringing a utility infielder in to pitch,” Torre said. But the facts don’t back that up — which is just one reason, and only the most superficial of them, why MLB’s latest idea to speed up the game is a misguided one. In 2016, there were 185 extra-inning games out of a total of 2,428 games played, or 7.6 per cent. Of those 185, nearly two-thirds (122) ended in 10 or 11 innings, and just eight (4.3 per cent) lasted 15 innings or longer. And only one of those 185 extra-inning games — the 19-inning marathon in Toronto between the Indians and Blue Jays on July 1 — ended with a position player on the mound. So this was by no means a massive problem that was crying out for an aggressive solution. Besides, plenty of hardcore baseball fans — including the dedicated operators of the Twitter account “Pos Players Pitching” (@70mphfastball) — who love the occasional spectacle of a backup shortstop on the mound, reliving his high school glory days as an all-county hurler. The 19-inning game in Toronto actually featured two Blue Jays position players — Ryan Goins and Darwin Barney — called on to pitch, and the Indians’ 2-1 victory, with Barney surrendering the go-ahead run in the top of the 19th, stood as one of the most memorable games of the season and served as a precursor to the dominance the Indians’ bullpen displayed in its march to the World Series a few months later. Yes, baseball games are too long, and the sport’s efforts to address pace-of-play are laudable and necessary. But there are plenty of ways to make a more significant impact — by limiting mound visits, for example, or enforcing current rules regarding hitters stepping out of the batter’s box — than by toying with extra-inning rules. It’s not even clear that starting each extra half-inning with a runner on second would have the desired effect of ending games more quickly. Here’s the thing: It’s not the 18-inning, fivehour marathons that are turning off fans. It’s the four-hour, nine-inning games with 15 pitching changes and the ball actually in play for maybe five minutes total. Thankfully, this extra-innings trial likely won’t make its way to the big leagues any time soon, if ever. Over the years, as other sports have made fundamental rule changes that altered the nature of how points are scored — the 3point shot in basketball, the overtime changes in hockey, the constant tinkering in football with the extra-point — baseball could look on with smug satisfaction that the nature of its game, and how runs have been scored, has remained virtually unchanged for more than a century. It’s one of the game’s greatest appeals: a .300 average or a 2.00 ERA means more or less the same thing today as it did in Babe Ruth’s era. Shortstops have been throwing out fast baserunners by a half-step since your greatgrandfather was attending games. Games forever have been played without a clock, and with one guiding principal: It isn’t over until the final out is secured. Do you really want to mess with that nearperfect equilibrium over a rule that would, at best, affect just a handful of games a year? There’s a reason baseball hasn’t made a fundamental rule change since 1973, when the American League adopted the designated hitter, causing an awkward split between the leagues that was never fixed. More than 40 years later, we’re still arguing about that one.