Much like Trump vs. Biden, everybody loses. I’m growing increasingly pessimistic about baseball season being completed. I think it will start (or at least there will be a plan for it to start), but I’m worried about the season being completed with the way things are going in many states. I’m worried about the NBA finishing their season and they don’t have to worry about the travel. And I’m really worried about college football.
But that’s not what this blog post is about. It’s about how terrible Rob Manfred is. I don’t get why coronavirus means we have to have all sorts of silly rules if baseball is going to be played this year. Manfred wants to attract new fans. What about the fans that you already have? How does making them angry help the sport? You know what baseball fans like? Baseball without a whole bunch of stupid rules.
Let’s start with the designated hitter. I know, a lot of people like it. I hate it and so do most National League fans. If the American League wants to have that stupid rule, fine, but don’t subject National League fans to it. It’s even sillier than soccer players not being able to use their hands. That’s not a joke, by the way, that’s really how I feel about soccer. I have two perfectly good hands and you’re telling me that I can’t use them even though it’s already impossible to score in soccer? Anyway, months ago they were talking about playing the season in spring training sites with divisions based on spring training geography. So one plan I saw had the Dodgers in a division with the White Sox (they share a spring training facility), Angels, Reds, and Indians. If they did that, I could live with having the DH for the year. You’d have the AL and NL teams all mixed up so I still wouldn’t like the DH, but whatever. But if we’re going to play the games in home stadiums, why does the NL need a DH? I’ve watched a lot of 1980s Dodger games while we don’t have sports. The game was just better then. You didn’t have people constantly striking out or hitting home runs. You had teams stealing bases and hitting and running. But speaking of the DH, game 4 of the 1988 NLCS against the Mets was a classic. It went 12 innings and the Dodgers used every pitcher available except for the next day’s starter (they had a reliever suspended and the next game started about 12 hours after Game 4 ended). The DH just makes things way too easy for the manager. I like a manager having to decide whether to pinch hit for a pitcher when he’s pitching well, but the game is tied or you’re down by a run. I like a manager having to decide how to handle the pitcher’s spot in the lineup in an extra inning game. You might lose a pretty good player because you need to make a double switch. That’s life. The game with the DH is just way too easy for a manager. You have people who say that they don’t want to watch pitchers hit. Yes, most pitchers are bad hitters. But these days you have teams who have eight guys who can hit a ridiculous amount of home runs. Do we really need a ninth guy in the lineup that can hit a ton of home runs? Last year’s Dodgers had 11 guys who hit at least 11 home runs (and another guy who hit 9). Some of them would have hit 20+ if they got enough plate appearances (A.J. Pollack hit 15 in 342 plate appearances, Matt Beaty hit 9 in 268 plate appearances, Will Smith hit 15 in 196 plate appearances, and David Freese hit 11 in 186 plate appearances). There are way too many home runs in the game today, we don’t need a whole bunch more. By the way, the DH would be good for the Dodgers with all of their talent. I don’t care, it’s a stupid rule. For the people who don’t want to watch pitchers hit, I agree that they’re not going to do anything most of the time. But when they do, it’s really cool. My favorite memory from a game that I attended was on Opening Day in 2013. In a scoreless game after seven and a half innings and Clayton Kershaw due to lead off the bottom of the eighth, I expected the Dodgers to pinch hit. They let Kershaw hit, he hit his only career home run (hopefully there won’t be a DH and he’ll hit another one before his career is over), then he finished the shutout in the ninth, and it was awesome. Today’s game has too many home runs, too many strikeouts, too many walks. There’s not enough base stealing and hitting and running. You know what there’s the right amount of as long as pitchers hit? Sacrifice bunting. There was once too much sacrifice bunting in baseball. If your lead off hitter gets on and steals second, your number 2 hitter should not be laying down a sacrifice bunt. Most hitters should not be giving up an out, but I like seeing pitchers executing the sacrifice bunt. My last thought on the DH is that it literally ignores the first rule of baseball. This is what the Major League Baseball rulebook says: “1.01 Baseball is a game between two teams of nine players each, under direction of a manager, played on an enclosed field in accordance with these rules, under jurisdiction of one or more umpires.” It says nine players, not nine players in the field and then eight of those nine plus one other guy hit. If you can’t play in the field, I don’t want to see you hitting.
Let’s talk about extra innings. I don’t know what’s going to happen there, but I’ve heard various ideas that are all bad. There’s talk about starting extra innings with a runner on base. They already do that in the minors. It’s the minors and nobody cares about the results so whatever. But that rule is the college football overtime of baseball rules. In football, you have to earn good field position (or the other team has to make a mistake). You don’t just get good field position for no reason, unless it’s college football and it’s overtime. In baseball, you don’t just get guys on base for no reason. Either you did something good or the other team did something bad. In theory, you could pitch a perfect game for ten innings and lose if a magical runner appears on second base in extra innings. The other team has their lead off hitter sacrifice bunt and their second hitter hits a sacrifice fly and then you don’t score. I’ve heard the possibility of players re-entering games. That’s not baseball. You take a guy out and you have to deal with that. That would be like letting a guy who fouled out of a basketball game back in. It doesn’t work that way. And I’ve heard the possibility of ending games in ties. This isn’t soccer. There are no ties. I’m fine with ties in the NFL because they are so rare. College football used to have too many ties because there was no overtime. Now you can never have a tie because they came up with an incredibly stupid overtime system. There are no more ties in the NHL because of shootouts. Shootouts are exciting, but I like how winning in a shootout is not the same as winning in regulation (winning in three on three overtime is also not the same as winning in regulation). If you’re chasing a team in the standings, you only gain one point on them if you win in overtime or a shootout because the losing team gets a point. So if the rules are different, I like that the result doesn’t mean the same thing. But baseball games should not be decided with silly rules in extra innings.
I guess the concern is the length of the game. Extra innings is not the problem. Yes, extra innings games are longer. But you know what baseball fans like? More baseball. The Dodgers beating the Red Sox in 18 innings in the World Series was awesome. Yeah, it’s rough if you go to a game on a Tuesday night and you have to leave in the 11th inning because you have work the next day. But when you can watch a ridiculously long extra innings game, it’s awesome (fortunately that World Series game was on a Friday night). I remember the Mets and Cardinals playing 20 innings on a Saturday afternoon in 2010 and it was awesome (that was kind of the ideal for me as a fan because I could just root for the game not to end whereas I wanted the Dodgers to win that World Series game as quickly as possible).
Games that won’t end are wonderful. My favorite college basketball game ever was Notre Dame beating Louisville in five overtimes in 2013. I’ve made a schedule of classic sports to watch on YouTube until we get live sports back. That game is number one on the list of games that I want to watch, but can’t find on YouTube. Actually, it’s number 2. Number 1 would be the Dodgers winning Game 7 of the 1955 World Series (the radio broadcast is available, but the TV broadcast with Vin Scully and Mel Allen does not appear to be). Number 3 would be Notre Dame over Stanford in football in 2012. I watched the Celtics beat the Suns in triple overtime in Game 5 of the 1976 NBA Finals. Soon I’m going to watch that 18-inning World Series game. Right now I’m watching the Isner-Mahut Wimbledon match and definitely not paying full attention as I write this. It was June 22-24, 2010. The YouTube video of the whole match is 11:21:54. I’m trying to watch it over the course of three days for the anniversary. And yes, I’m upset with Wimbledon for going to the fifth set tiebreak last year. I’m definitely not a huge hockey fan, but I’m in if it’s overtime in the playoffs (which of course can go on forever unlike regular season games).
But back to baseball. I said extra innings is not the problem. The problem is that nine-inning games shouldn’t take three and a half to four hours. How about we try reducing the time between innings? How about we reduce the amount of time walk up songs play and the next hitter just gets into the box? How about a pitch clock? For a long time, I was against the pitch clock. But I’ve been to minor league games where it’s used and I don’t really notice it so whatever. Here’s what I want as a TV viewer: I don’t want any acknowledgement of a pitch clock unless the umpire is charging a ball because the pitch clock ran out. I don’t want the clock on the screen and I don’t want to hear about it unless I have to. After a while, pitchers would just be used to it and it wouldn’t come into play anymore anyway. There are ways to shorten the nine-inning games. Once it gets to extra innings, I want any game that doesn’t involve the Dodgers to go on for 15+ innings.
And then there’s expanded playoffs. Major League Baseball is worried about the season going too deep into the fall with the possibility of the coronavirus coming back. You know how you can make the season end a little earlier? By not having an extra round of playoffs. I don’t want expanded playoffs, but I came up with a format that I could live with. I don’t know what the format would be, but they’re talking about eight teams in each league making the playoffs. If we look at last year’s NL standings, there was a 22 game gap between the 1 seed (Dodgers) and the 8 seed (Cubs). The gap was bigger in the AL, but the 1 seed was the Astros and they’re cheaters. The gap between the 2 seed (Braves) and the 7 seed (Diamondbacks) was 12 games. The gap between the 3 seed (I’m using the Cardinals because they won their division, but the Nationals had a better record) and the 6 seed (Mets) was five games. We play 162 games for a reason. If the Dodgers could be 22 games better than the Cubs and then lose three out of five against them and be done is silly. The Cubs were over .500, but the Rangers would have been the 8 seed in the AL with 78 wins. Yes, you get 8 seeds below .500 in the NBA, but the 8 seed wins so rarely that I’m fine with it. But in baseball, the 8 seed would win three out of five or four out of seven much more frequently than that happens in the NBA. Good teams have a bad week from time to time and mediocre teams have a good week. If they did best of five and the Cubs swept the Dodgers (if you could play it 100 times, that probably would be the outcome a few times, whereas the 8 seed in the NBA is probably never sweeping the 1 seed), the Dodgers would have been 106-59 and the Cubs would have been 87-78 after 165 games and the Cubs are moving on. If you’re the eighth best team in your league, you don’t deserve to be in the playoffs. But if it’s going to happen, I came up with a format that I can live with.
My idea is based on every seed being important. You get an advantage for every spot you can move up. If you win your division, you don’t have to play a road game in the first round. For the 4/5 matchup, it’s two out of three and the 5 seed is home for game one and the 4 seed is home for games 2 and 3. If you’re the 3 seed, you get two home games to win one. The 6 seed has to beat you in both games to move on. If you’re the 2 seed, you get three home games to win one. And if you’re the 1 seed, you get four home games to win one. That would make it extremely unlikely that the 8 seed is getting past the first round. If the Dodgers couldn’t beat the Cubs once in four games at home, then I’m fine with them not moving on. But if they just play best of five with the Cubs getting home games when the Dodgers were 22 games better and the Dodgers lose, that’s just silly.
Anyway, it’s the fifth set of this Isner-Mahut match and I still have more than seven hours to watch. I probably missed some other bad ideas that Manfred has, but I covered the ones that bother me the most (or at least the ones that I’m aware of right now, there might be other terrible ideas I haven’t heard about). Manfred is terrible. I just want baseball back without a whole bunch of stupid rules. Besides the stupid rules, I’m not too optimistic that they’ll be able to finish the season. It might be more realistic to play all the games in the Major League and minor league stadiums in the Northeast/Midwest for safety reasons, but I don’t think that’s been considered. I hope the next commissioner undoes whatever damage that Manfred has done, but I’m worried that there won’t be any turning back.
