"A Jarring And Ugly Solution To A Problem That Barely Exists In The First Place"

Earlier this week, MLB's Joint Competition Committee voted unanimously to ruin the 2023 season by making the extra inning runner rule permanent, further limiting position players from pitching, introducing a pitch clock, banning defensive shifts, restricting pickoff throws, and making the bases bigger.

This idiotic and exasperating clusterfucking comes on the heels of rules limiting mound visits, making intentional walks require zero pitches, tying every manager's hands about how he can use his bullpen, and (I'm not fucking sure about this one) outlawing the fake-to-third-throw-to-first move.

Other than that, it's the same game you've always loved!

Christ, it's so goddamn depressing. After MLB's last-minute announcement that MLBTV subscribers would -- surprise! -- not unable to watch any postseason games (which MLB had promised they would have access to and for which they had already paid). MLB didn't even bother to explain its decision when the Manfred's shit hit the fans. (Hey, you don't like it, go watch the other major leagues!) MLB's silence spoke volumes about how little it cares about the people who support the game.

Jay Jaffe writes about the new rules at FanGraphs (my emphasis):

The 11-member Joint Competition Committee was created as part of last year's Collective Bargaining Agreement. . . . [The] committee gives the players a voice in the form of four player representatives, but they're outnumbered by the six owners on the committee; one umpire is also on the committee as well. . . . Last September, the bloc of players voted unanimously against the banning of shifts and the introduction of the pitch clock, but they were outvoted . . . and both rules will go into effect this season despite their protestations. . . .

In 2022, extra innings plate appearances accounted for 1.32% of all PA, and those against position players made up just 0.37%. The most PA by any player in extras in 2022 was 15, a lead shared by Yandy Díaz and Gleyber Torres, with Aaron Judge, Steven Kwan and José Ramírez next with 14. . . . Judge walked seven times in those 14 PA (six of which were intentional) and Ramírez six times (five intentional). MLB has ripped up up over a century and a half of playing extras under the same rules as the first innings — via Peter Morris' Game of Inches, the first game longer than the regulation nine dates to 1859, 12 years before the founding of the National Association — for this? . . .

[Th]e average extra-innings contest in the three seasons in which the runner-on-second rule has been in place has been 7.7% shorter than such games from 2018 to '19. Furthermore, the frequency of games lasting longer than 11 innings is about one-quarter of what it was in those two pre-pandemic seasons. Amid the invasion of the Manfred Men, we've had just two games go longer than 13 innings, none in 2020 and then one apiece in '21 and '22, compared to 19 in 2018 and 23 in '19. . . .

In the two years before the rule change, teams averaged four games longer than 11 innings per 162-game season. Since the rule was put into place, that's down to one game longer than 11 inning per 162 . . . or one every two months. All told, the rule change amounts to a savings of about 12 innings per team per season, or two innings a month.

MLB is making this stupid fucking rule -- that goes against 150+ years of history -- permanent to save  each team one inning every two weeks!

Jaffe then shows how the rule changes affect strategy and whatnot.

Again, the Manfred Man rule has introduced a whole different ballgame from what we've spent the previous three hours watching. Your mileage may vary as to your feelings on the matter, but to these eyes, it's a jarring and ugly solution to a problem that barely exists in the first place. The players, however, have endorsed this route, and we know managers and executives are on board as well. All of which ought to tell us something about how little they value a given midseason game once nine innings have elapsed: "Win or lose, let's get this over with and go pound that Budweiser." . . .

Limiting the ghastly horror of having a position player pitch an inning to 10-run blowouts will likely  -- according to Jaffe's calculations -- save the average team "a bit more than three innings" per season.

Whoop-de-damn-doo. . . .

Nobody's stats are being distorted to any noticeable degree by this [a concern of players, apparently] . . .

In all, this mostly boils down to much ado about nothing. Taken together, these two rules address what amounted to roughly 2% of all plate appearances in 2022. Somehow, these encounters — most of which occur late at night, after reasonable people have gone to bed — are keeping the commissioner up in the wee hours as he strives to find new places to stick his greasy fingerprints on the game in the name of pace of play. Lucky us.

I'd rather have games end in ties than this extra runner bullshit. Ties after # innings (12?) would be vastly preferred to this garbage. I'd be watching real baseball, at least.

I am truly unable to comprehend why some baseball fans would not be excited by a 16- or 18-inning game. Who sees a tied game in the 20th inning and gets pissed off that it's not over yet?

In recent years, we've seen incontrovertible evidence that morons walk among us. There are a lot of morons out there. But still: How has baseball convinced so many fans that less baseball is better than more?

I received an email about the possible renewal of my MLBTV subscription the other day. If this blog did not exist, would I still renew it? I have not yet come up with a definitive answer.