Suppose baseball were played by halves or quarters (like how soccer has 45-minute halves, football has 15-minute quarters,) etc. rather than by innings. How would this change strategy? (Pitchers would be required to put the ball into play by a certain time or be penalized for delay of game, like football.)
For clarification, I’m not suggesting that baseball should actually change to become that way. I’m just asking what the ramifications would be.
How would this work? I don’t think it’s even possible without making changes to the game that are so radical that it wouldn’t really be baseball any more.
Pitch Clocks, not timed innings. It would no longer be baseball.
Agreed that it wouldn’t be baseball. I think a more interesting question would be along the lines of “What if you made it more like T20 cricket?” I’m not sure how you’d do that; a maximum pitch count per team maybe?
You mean a rule like this?
8.04 When the bases are unoccupied, the pitcher shall deliver the ball to the batter within 20 seconds after he receives the ball. Each time the pitcher delays the game by violating this rule, the umpire shall call “Ball.” The intent of this rule is to avoid unnecessary delays. The umpire shall insist that the catcher return the ball promptly to the pitcher, and that the pitcher take his position on the rubber promptly. Obvious delay by the pitcher should instantly be penalized by the umpire.
I assume there would still be innings, and teams would switch between batting and fielding after three outs like they do now, but instead of a nine-inning limit, there would be a time limit? It seems to me that the team that was ahead would stall as long as possible while pitching, while the team that was behind would try to rush things.
There is a sport similar to what you describe: Test Match-level cricket. It has both a two inning limit for each team, and more or less a 30-hour limit overall. The difference is, if the time runs out before the innings do, the match is declared a draw, even if one team outscored the other in the first inning. Yes, “playing for a draw” is a strategy.
The visiting team gets all 27 outs in the top of the 1st inning, then the home team gets all 27 of their outs in the bottom of the 1st? The game would, of course, only be one inning long.
I’m not a fan of making changes to baseball, but I fully support placing a 30-hour limit on a game.
What I meant was more like: Time periods of 15-30 minutes each, and the defending team must always get the ball back into play within a certain number of seconds (that is, the pitcher throwing a pitch.) The pitcher doesn’t need to wait for the batter to get ready (any more than a football offense needs to wait for the defense.)
Scores, of course, would be incredibly high.
What if, instead of bases, they had giant hoops placed around the field to hit the ball into?
And we can add defenders with water cannons.
And have one random member of the crowd who has a golden token in his/her pocket. One member of each team hunts the crowdmember down, and when he does he gets 10 runs and the game ends.
There are so many ways to waste time, by both the fielding team as well as the batting team, that the game would become more about clock strategy than anything else. The more you do to combat these, the more the game would change compared to its current form.
ETA: It’s worth pointing out that the way the clock works in soccer is vastly different than how it works in American Football (or basketball or hockey)
That last part would seem to make the game very difficult for the offensive team. They’d need to have a batter ready to go on the field instantly after the previous batter (1) hit the ball (2) strikes out (3) walks. Even worse, they’d need to be there as someone was running home, lest someone throw the ball to the pitcher to throw a strike as soon as the runner hits home.
You might be able to have a minimum time before the pitcher can pitch, which would alleviate some of this. The problem would be establishing when that clock starts. If it’s only when all runners are on base, then the pitcher might pitch when they aren’t actually finished running. Or the runners might conveniently step off the base to give the batter time to arrive.
The only way I could see doing it is creating mini clocks for everything. You have X amount of time to run the bases. You have X amount of time to get the ball back to the pitcher. Over the wall home runs get the longer of these two times. Clocks only start when other clocks end. You’d wind up with a fixed number of at-bats per game.
We could divide players into “high offense” and “low offense.” Low offense players get one pitch per at bat - they either hit it, or it’s ruled a ball/walk or a strike/strikeout. That gets them out of the way quickly so pitchers can concentrate on the high offense hitters in the lineup.
So both teams would just get a predetermined amount of time to score however many runs they could, and the number of outs made in that time would be irrelevant?
I would think everyone would swing for the fences on every pitch, since making an out doesn’t hurt your team, while fouling off 10 pitches in an at-bat does, even if you end up getting on base.