MLB to look at changing extra innings

Experiment puts runner on second at start of every inning after the 9th.

It’s a tie game after nine innings, and we’re heading to the top of the 10th. First man up is Mike Trout, and, as always, there’s a man on second. Wait, what? In an effort to shorten extra-inning games, baseball plans to experiment this summer with giving teams a runner on second at the start of every inning from the 10th on, Yahoo Sports reported. The trial will take place in two rookie leagues, and the rule will also be used this spring in the World Baseball Classic. Should the new rule prove popular and effective, it could someday move to the major leagues.

Putting a runner on second for extra innings has been used in some softball leagues, including in international play. Typically, the runner is whoever made the last out in the previous inning. But the rule would be a sharp departure for baseball, which tends to change only incrementally and slowly.

Baseball purists, and there are many of them, were predictably outraged, while others saw an opportunity for mirth.

The change should be effective in increasing scoring in extra innings. Statisticians have shown teams score about half a run per inning. But when there’s a runner on second and no one out, that increases to 1.1 runs. In all, teams score in about 27 percent of innings, but they do so 61 percent of the time when there’s a runner on second and no one out.

“Let’s see what it looks like,” Joe Torre, the majors’ chief baseball officer, told Yahoo. “It’s not fun to watch when you go through your whole pitching staff and wind up bringing a utility infielder in to pitch. As much as it’s nice to talk about being at an 18-inning game, it takes time.”

Speeding up the pace of play has been a preoccupation of baseball in recent years as games have crept longer and longer. A nine-inning playoff game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Washington Nationals lasted 4 hours 32 minutes last fall. Baseball has tinkered with rules about leaving the batter’s box and has also been experimenting with time limits on pitchers in the minor leagues.

Still, extra-inning games are not always the cause. About 8 percent of games go into extra innings, and most of those do not stretch deep into the night. Last season, 43 percent of extra-inning games were over after the 10th, and only 16 percent of them went 13 or more.

The 18-inning games that Torre spoke of are even rarer. Of 12,147 regular season games the past five seasons, only 22 went 18 or more.

Traditionally, overtimes in sports have had the same rules as regulation time. But in 2015, the National Hockey League started playing overtime with three skaters on a side instead of five, and college football has for two decades started teams close to the end zone for overtime play.

There may be unintended consequences from baseball’s new experiment. Strategically, with a man on second and no one out, some managers may be tempted to have their first hitter bunt, then hope for a sacrifice fly. More bunting may not be what baseball had in mind for the new rule.