Man on Second

Fans don’t seem to like the new minor league rule that will start extra innings with a man on second base:

Al Sicard of Saco was none too happy to hear that extra innings at Portland Sea Dogs games this season will begin with a runner placed on second base.

“Why stop there?” asked Sicard, 60, a self-described baseball purist. “If you want to speed up the games, why not take the best player on each team and let them hit home runs until someone wins?”

Other fans in southern Maine had a similar take on Minor League Baseball’s announcement Wednesday of changes designed to enhance the pace of play. Among them are curbing the number of trips to the pitcher’s mound by coaches and players, and reducing the pitch clock to 15 seconds with no runners on base.

But the rule change involving extra innings really struck a nerve with fans.

“It’s just a bad idea. It sounds really bizarre to me,” said Caleb Mason, 62, of Cape Elizabeth. “Those other rules, about pitch clocks and mound visits, affect the subtleties of the game. But there’s nothing subtle about this.”

The worry is that this will be brought to the major leagues.

I don’t see it that way. This rule will be used like the minor league pitch clock, as leverage to get MLB players to speed up the game. Note that MLB could have implemented the pitch clock this season, but chose reach a negotiated set of rule changes with the players. Those changes also give the players to keep the pitch clock out of the majors by playing faster this year.

Should the negotiated agreement fail to speed up the game, I suspect MLB will use the leverage of the extra-inning change to negotiate in the pitch clock. MLB appears to be inside the MLBPA’s OODA loop, as Rob Manfred keeps getting what he wants. At some point, the players should have demanded more money to play faster, but they keep missing that opportunity.

from baseballmusings.com http://ift.tt/2FKoG9o