Eliminate the shift---- first off, not sure how this would be enforced. Could turn baseball into a human pinball farce with 20-30 run games every night
Limiting pitching changes---- wearing out of arms, and what if the last pitcher is legitimately injured? OR the rules say an injured pitcher can be replaced and an injury is faked?
What other proposed changes to baseball make you raise an eyebrow? A DH in the NL? A shorter regular season?
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The DH will eventually come to the National League.
I’d be in favor of a slightly shorter regular season. Obviously, the spring weather in most of the country is going to be quite variable, but being able to start a little later and have a couple more off days that can be used for make up games would be nice, eliminating some of the day/night doubleheaders. But, no team wants to give up the extra money from 162 games, plus they’d have to compensate their broadcasters as well.
I don’t necessarily want it enacted, but it wouldn’t be difficult to make an enforce a rule. You could, for example, require teams to have two infielders of the left of 2nd and two to the right. I’m not even sure it would increase offense for that matter. One of the results of the shift is that defensive range is less important, so teams are able to play players who would traditionally be corner infielders and say 2nd.
The proposals I really don’t like are ones along the lines of eliminating divisions and just having the top x teams in each league make the playoffs. They are trying to be more “fair” but would eliminated most pennant races.
One strike and you’re out.
Putting hitters and pitchers on a clock, eliminating all the timeouts at the plate could make the game move faster, but I think it will end up with less hitting, most of the time is wasted by hitters trying to break up the pitchers pattern and make him second guess. Pitchers will adapt to the timing more easily and hitters will swing and miss more often. OTOH if the pitcher is limited enough and balk rules clarified and enforced then we may see more steals if runners feel safer leading off.
Random new ball each play. 1 in 10 have a nitroglycerin core.
Doesn’t seem like the backfire is unintentional.
Putting pitchers on a pitch clock sounds good, sure, there may be less hitting as mentioned above but that’s OK. One way or another the game will progress faster.
I would also like to change the rules so that when you have 2 strikes, and the batter tips the ball foul with his bat, that’s still Strike Three anyway. No more of these “Pitcher has thrown 12 consecutive pitches and batter is still there, fouling each time” situations. But it might rob the game of some drama.
Good Lord! Think of the impact on the legal system! :eek:
Replace the pitcher with a modified howitzer.
You want MORE strikeouts? Seriously?
It would be up to the league to monitor how often certain pitchers are getting “injured” and determine if they’re fake. It would be pretty low for a manager to constantly tell his pitchers to fake being injured just to do some lefty/righty BS.
My take: Each pitcher must finish the inning they’ve started unless they’ve given up 5+ runs or is injured. Done and done.
Build a gigantic dome on the moon and play the World Series there. Less gravity=more homers. But less gravity means also less traction for the fielders and they can’t get to as many balls that stay in the park. Runners also have less traction so the infielders could play deep and if they can get to a ball, they can throw the runner out easily. Pitchers would have less vertical drop on their pitches, batters can track them better. How will baseball play in 1/6 g? The world would tune in to watch. Of course a meteor could smash the dome and kill everyone, so there’s that.
I watched a few AAA games with a pitch clock. I didn’t notice it at all at the time, but I sure noticed it when it was gone! I’d absolutely support its adoption in MLB. I’m a little surprised they didn’t follow through on it.
My take on pitching changes is a little less extreme than Sir T-Cups, but I’d like to see a rule where a pitcher had to stay in until:
[ol]
[li]He had faced three batters;[/li][li]He had given up a run; or[/li][li]Been injured. All substitutions for this condition mean a trip to the 10-day DL.[/li][/ol]
I don’t much care about the shift.
The DH is a spawn of Satan on his worst day, but fighting it is like trying to drown the ocean.
A pitch clock can’t happen soon enough. DH in the NL, please no…
An idea I’ve kicked around to shorten games is analogous to a follow-on in cricket. Basically if a team is winning after 8 innings by (or 7.5 if they’re the home team), say 5 runs or more, they could require the other team to bat again. Basically pass on their last at-bat to try to get the other team out first. Then if they other team tied or took the lead the previously-leading team could take their final at-bat (or 2 if they were the home team) to attempt to re-tie or win outright. This would cut a half-inning off most blowouts, and would totally screw up some stats and rob us of the joy of watching position players pitch from time to time. Still might be worth it…
This could be easily enforced by saying you must have two infielders on each side of the infield at the time contact is made.
Then you go to the DL.
Problem with this is you can’t get insurance runs or wear down the losing teams arms. Any manager that took this option and lost would get fired.
Good points and sadly this is my #1 pet peeve when watching a game: there’s runners on base, it’s 2 outs, bottom of the ninth, 3-2, the pitcher steps on the rubber, the batter is in the box . . . . And the batter calls time and steps out to adjust his batting helmet.
My rule would be once the rubber is touched and the batter is in the box, the pitch gets thrown, no matter what. But you give good perspective on why this could backfire.
There’s always George Carlin’s idea of random land mines in the outfield.