(Disclaimer: I don’t follow baseball, so a lot of rules are unfamiliar to me)
The 2002 All Star game was the infamous tie game that spurred Selig to make the game “count” by awarding the winner home field advantage in the World Series, but there’s a few things that went on in that game that I couldn’t piece together from the descriptions.
First, how is the manager for each side decided? I know in the NBA, the All Star game coaches is the coach of the highest seeded team from each conference, with the exception that a coach can’t do it two years in a row.
Second, I keep hearing that the managers “ran out of pitchers”. I know in the NBA, the coaches can use a player as much or as little as he wants. Some Eastern Conference coach ended up using some players for a really short amount of time a few years ago, I remember the player and his team weren’t so happy about that. With the differences in baseball to basketball, and how most pitchers wouldn’t pitch a whole game, couldn’t they just keep the last pitcher in that 2002 game on the mound until the game was won? So what if he didn’t have additional pitchers? Does each pitcher have to pitch only a specific number of innings?
Last, and this ties into #2 above, suppose I was an evil manager. Couldn’t I take a pitcher I don’t like and make him throw all 9 innings and try to wear him out that way?
In MLB, the managers are the managers of the previous year’s league champions. If that manager has been fired or retired, it’s the manager of the runner up team. Paul Richards, who never managed a first place team, managed two All-Star games (when there were two each year), having finished second in 1960. Casey Stengel was fired after the season, so Richards was the choice.
In basketball, there’s free substitution: you can put a player in and out of a game as much as you want (as long as he hasn’t fouled out). In baseball, once a player leaves the game, he can’t come back. Since it’s an exhibition game, no manager is going to ruin a pitcher’s arm (it has happened) by pitching him more innings than he’s able.
But it is possible then to have left those guys in the game? It was just a manager’s decision on both sides to not continue the game since there were no much substitute pitchers?
Looking at the wiki of the game, there were 9 pitchers in the AL and 12 in the NL. The game went 11 innings. While I don’t know how many innings the last guy threw, pitchers routinely go at least 2/3rds of a game. The managers really didn’t want to keep going a few more innings? Totally guessing here, but the last pitcher on both sides probably started in the 9th inning. That means they pitched a maximum of 3 innings. That seems like half a night’s work for most of them at least
IIRC, there’s a 2-inning limit for the starter, and 1 inning for relievers, but a previously-used pitcher can come back in if the last one on the roster has to leave due to injury.
Not necessarily. Last year’s NL All Star team was managed by Tony La Russa, who retired after winning the World Series in 2011.
Starting pitchers routinely go at least 2/3rds of a game, but they only pitch in every 5th game. Many of the pitchers in the All-Star Game have pitched more recently before, or are scheduled to pitch sooner afterward, than that.
Relief pitchers commonly don’t pitch more than an inning or so in any one game, except in cases where the starting pitcher had to leave the game early due to injury or ineffectiveness.
Also note that, whether the game “counts” or not, it is fundamentally an exhibition game, and fans want to see all the players on the roster—or at least as many of them as possible—make it into the game.
The opposite can be true - there have been times that a manager declined to use one of his own team’s pitchers in the game, bringing accusations that he was unfairly trying to rest him at the other teams’ expense.
That’s what created the player shortage in the first place. Even in a high-scoring game you wouldn’t see a manager run through the entire pitching staff in 11 innings.
I’m not sure if there’s an official limit, but traditionally pitchers only go one or two innings. That’s partially to give everyone a chance to participate.
In the box score, both team used 11 pitchers, and that last two had gone two innings.
But the key point is that this was an exhibition game. It had no bearing on the standings or anything else; the point is to showcase the stars. For an exhibition game, you do not want to do anything to injure any of the players.
Selig and MLB saw the whole thing as an exhibition, so ending it in a tie was the obvious solution. The fans had seen some baseball, had seen all the stars, and had a good night at the ballpark. Keeping the pitchers further in the game risked injury for nothing. They miscalculated in thinking the fans also saw it as an exhibition; they want a result.
They had done the same thing in 1961, when the game ended after nine innings (due to rain, IIRC – both teams had plenty of pitchers available). No one complained.
I thought in the old days it used to be a 3 inning limit. What makes them run through the staff is when they use a pitcher for one batter. I think they want us to see how smart they are by really overplaying the lefty-righty matchups.
I’d be in favor of limiting the game to 9 innings, regardless of the score. If the game ends in a tie, then have the two managers meet at home plate for a coin toss to determine the World Series home field advantage.
That way, the manager knows exactly how long the game is going to last and they can manage the rosters accordingly.
Isn’t there also a rule where the team can reinsert a catcher if they’re down to the last catcher on the roster and he gets injured? I’d certainly hate to see a position player have to play catcher in an exhibition game.
My recollection is that the starting pitchers used to go 3 innings up until the late 1980s, except for when the starter was ineffective or when it he was taken out for a pinch hitter for strategic reasons.
It was the starting lineup that had to stay for three innings, the idea being they should all get a chance to bat. Pitchers didn’t have a set rule (I can findcases in the 60s where the starter only went two innings, but wasn’t particularly ineffective).
Since its an exhibition game, they just need to tweak the rules a little bit. Allow pitchers who left the game to come back into the game. They should have a pitching order like they do with batters, and just go back to the top of the rotation if there are extra innings
That doesn’t work, either. Once a pitcher’s arm is “warmed up” from throwing a lot of pitches (they all throw more pitches than you see in the game, since they warm up before coming into the game), you either keep him in or he’s done for the night. A pitcher whose arm has “cooled down” after he’s finished pitching is in danger of injury if he tries to pitch again later. If you listen to/watch games, this is something the announcers bring up whenever there is a long delay in the game (rain, etc.), or when the pitcher’s team’s batters have a run of good luck that results in the pitcher sitting for a long time between innings. It’s not uncommon, after a delay, for the manager to take the starter out of the game and bring in a reliever. If the arm “cools down”, it’s just too risky to put the pitcher back out there. If not for the injury risk, just the fact that the pitcher is not going to be as effective as he would have been without the “cooldown”.
ETA: As far as leaving pitchers in the All-Star Game too long, I’ve gotten the impression that it’s a matter of professional courtesy that the manager doesn’t put other team’s players at risk.