Welcome to The Commish, a new series of posts where I will fix baseball.
I gave baseball ten innings last night and then had enough. I don’t need to stay up until all hours of the night watching these things. Nobody does. So I present to you two scenarios for baseball to eliminate extra innings without resorting to nonsense like starting the inning with a runner on second. These are both very simple and smart. Ready?
IDEA #1: TIES
Just have a tie. The Nippon League does it. In my proposal play 9, maybe 10, and then the game is over.
Some of you stress about the standings. The season often ends with teams only playing 161 games because of a rain out. Life goes on. Here’s the 2016 NL Central….add up the Pirates and Cubs totals…
Now imagine another column that said T and had a 1 under it. Its fine.
Some of you worry about pennant race tiebreakers. I refer you to 1972. The season started late because of a strike/lockout/something, and the deal was that everyone would just play whatever amount of games they had left on their schedule….
Wow the Bosox got hosed. They played one fewer game and missed the playoffs. Hosed.
But let’s pretend that the Red Sox were 85-70-1 because some game against the Angels was a tie.
It’s fine. Just have ties.
IDEA #2: The visiting team wins after 9 innings if the score is tied
So you don’t like ties and you like drama.
Here’s a scenario. Giants at Mets. Bottom of the 9th, the score is 1-1.
If the Mets score just one run they win the game! There is no 10th inning. So the Giants will bring in their closer and act like they have a 2-1 lead.
The Mets know there is no tomorrow so they play good old fashioned SMALL BALL and try to get that one run. The Mets have to play like the score is 2-1.
It has everything you want….with the drama of do or die.
The more I think about this idea the more I like it. Baseball should add this tomorrow.
