A grudging defense of extra-inning rule
A friend I haven’t seen in years texted me Tuesday evening. She had great seats for the Dodgers-Giants game, within spitting distance of the home dugout. Would I be able to come down from the press box and say hi? Absolutely.
I typically respect the freedom of my fully vaccinated droplets and aerosols to venture unrestricted outdoors. Mostly for the psychological comfort of others, I prefer to mask their activity indoors. Tuesday was my first walk inside a full capacity sporting venue.
Most patrons were unmasked, even in the fully enclosed confines of the suite level at Dodger Stadium.
Look, I get it. Covering my face with a mask isn’t my favorite thing in the world. But at some point during the COVID-19 pandemic, a mask mandate became a necessity. Someone in a position of authority needed to adjudicate where the rights of my prevaccinated aerosols ended and yours began. At the all-too-long peak of airborne coronavirus transmission, wearing a mask in public made the most sense for the most people.
The runner-on-secondbase-in-extra-innings rule isn’t my favorite thing either. If you can sympathize with the desire to shed your face mask whenever possible, you can understand the uproar over Major League Baseball’s rule awarding teams a “zombie runner” beginning in the 10th inning. The sooner the rule is gone, the better.
I’ve written about what makes the rule uncomfortable from a record-keeping standpoint. A pitcher can start a fresh inning, face one batter, allow a stolen base and sacrifice fly, and be credited with a loss. I have not written at length about what makes the rule so ugly from an aesthetic standpoint. That’s because the Angels’ 9-3 loss to the Giants in 13 innings had not been played by the time I filed last week’s column.
In case you missed it, here’s what happened:
Shohei Ohtani threw six brilliant innings of one-run ball. Kevin Gausman matched him. The Angels loaded the bases in the 10th inning but couldn’t push across a run, so the score remained tied, 1-1, into the 12th.
Five pitches into the inning, Steven Duggar tagged Steve Cishek for an RBI double. The Giants led, 2-1. In the bottom of the 12th, Juan Lagares singled in the zombie runner (Jose Iglesias), went to third base on a single, and appeared to score the game-winning run on a groundout by Luis Rengifo. Alas, the run was overturned when replay review ostensibly showed Lagares was tagged out. The game remained tied, 2-2. No mercy for the weary.
Finally, with a pitcher playing left field, an outfielder playing catcher, and exhaustion setting in, the Angels imploded. The Giants sent nine batters to the plate in the 13th inning and scored seven runs. There was a basesloaded walk and a basesloaded wild pitch. The game ended nine minutes shy of the 5-hour mark. The triumph of futility was complete.
Early in the pandemicshortened 2020 season, I was fortunate to witness some well-executed extrainning games. The sense of the moment was heightened because the pitching team’s margin for error was so small. But what happens when the hitting team cannot execute within a wide margin for success — not once, not twice, but three times or more? Last Wednesday in Anaheim we got the answer.
The zombie runner is a litmus test for a team’s ability to execute in the most basic clutch situation, where a single scores a run. The league-wide batting average this year is .239, the lowest it’s been in 53 years. Ability to execute is predictably paltry.
The aesthetic problem with the extra-innings rule is not so much the free runner on second base, but how he exposes the challenge modern batters face putting the ball in play for a hit. (Batting average on balls in play is .289 through Tuesday, its lowest point since 1992.) The sooner the rule is gone, the better.
For now, the rule needs to stay.
To watch baseball in 2021 is to grudgingly accept that injuries are robbing you of someone important on every team. When I visited this topic in May, the number of injured list stints had risen 64 percent compared to the same point in 2019. According to Baseball Prospectus, there were 227 players on ILs around the league at the time. Through Wednesday, that number had risen to 264.
It’s impossible to determine cause and effect without comparing the current group of major leaguers to a control group that played 162 regularseason games last year. It is to suppose playing only 60 games last year is affecting the injury rate negatively, but we can’t be sure.
In any event, a rising injury rate suggests that asking players to spend more time on the field this year is unwise. “Free baseball” is hardly without a cost.
The extra-innings rule achieves its goal. It shortens the game. No game has lasted 14 innings or longer this season; there were 46 such games in 2019. The infamous Angels-Giants game was only the fourth 13-inning game this season. Last season featured three, a similar rate.
If placing a runner on second base for three consecutive innings did so little to nudge a run across the board that afternoon, imagine the game without the zombie runner. They might still be playing.
The extra-inning rule is a necessary evil — baseball’s equivalent of a mask mandate to protect against an invisible virus. Strap on your mask and enjoy the ride, or at least tolerate it until next year.