That has always been OPI since the rule was written in 1910.
MLB: Return baseball to the way it was before 1997 when interleague play was started, and remove every rule change made since that time. The game wasn’t broken and didn’t need being fixed.
MLB: Let the batter steal first base. Wild pitch? Go for it, li’l buddy! Run like the wind!
No, the giant flaw is that the NFL product on the field would be unwatchable. Specialists are a good thing. Sonia allowing free substitution. These make the game more dynamic and allow for elite level playmaking from specialized players.
MLB. Intentional Walks.
Terrible, terrible rule. There are star players - and we don’t let them play. I was watching a game on the interweb a few years ago, and it got to a close finish - bottom of the 9th, scores either level or one run in it, Mike Trout coming up to bat - and they deliberately walked him - 'to ‘take the bat out of his hand’.
I get that defences in sports try and limit the effectiveness of offensive players - but they do that by playing the game. If the star player is good enough, he can still play effectively. But not in baseball. It would be like in the last round of the Masters, with Tiger Woods being in contention, and the opposition players agreeing ‘We’ll give him a 68, to take the clubs out of his hand’, and Tiger goes in sits in the clubhouse for 4 hours.
If the good hitter is up in the bottom of the 9th, guess what - you have to pitch to him. That’s what the game should come down to.
So - new rules. If you pitch to a player and give up four walks before you have thrown at least 2 strikes or fouls, it’s ‘Intentional’. And an Intentional walk costs you 2 bases - ie, the batter moves to 2nd base. All players who are already on base move up one base - even if there are empty bases behind them. (If a player is on first, he moves to 3rd. If a player is on 2nd, he moves to third. Player on 3rd moves to home.First and second occupied - they go to 3rd and home. etc).
Yep - big change. But I HATE intentional walks. They go against what sport should be.
Baseball is a discrete situational game. Every play the players, spectators and audience know precisely the game situation and can test their expertise as to the optimum play versus the one actually played. Indeed, they revell in it. Alas, most situations are near identical. Lone batter, no runners on base, batter swinging for the back fence 'cause that’s the percentage play. So as an improbably wild and impertinent suggestion:
At the start of the 2nd and subsequent innings, the baserunners resume the positions they were when the prior innings ended. If a teams first innings was ended with loaded bases, they start the second innings with loaded bases.
I don’t know whether it would fix any flaw … but it would make for a more interesting game for the spectators.
Make that ‘before 1994 when the wild card was introduced’ and I’d be right with you. I miss the drama of the pennant race, when two teams in the same division played the same opponents the same number of times, and if Team A won 104 games and team B won ‘only’ 103*, then Team A goes on and Team B goes home. It could be painful if your team was on the losing side of that, as mine often was. But the stakes made the whole thing so riveting. Now two teams are only in that situation if they’re both worse than the wild card teams, so it would be more like Team A wins 86 and Team B wins 85.
A simpler change would be to adopt the Canadian Football rules on kicking. No opposing player is allowed within 5 yards of the kick returner until the returner touches the ball. So anyone fast enough to get down field before the ball is caught has to stop themselves from crossing the 5-yard zone, and so they have to slow down enough any hit won’t be so hard, while at the same time giving the returner a bit of time to set themselves to take or avoid the hit. Quite often you’ll see guys stopping, or actually moving a bit backwards, just before the catch, so as to avoid a “No yards” penalty on a kick.
Speaking of “playing the game.” My biggest peeve about the NFL (college too I suppose but it’s less common) is when the offense goes out and pretends they’re going to run a play for the sole purpose of trying to get the other team to commit an offsides penalty. I have no problem trying to get them to go offsides via hard count or whatever, if they’re actually going to run the play eventually. When they go out, fuck around, no penalty, and then they call time out or take the delay of game and punt, it strikes me as very poor sportsmanship. If your only goal is to get the other side to commit a penalty, you’re not playing the game.
That’s “gamesmanship” or, if you’re not feeling charitable, “rules lawyering”. Anything that has rules has loopholes that can be exploited. And there will eventually be someone who decides to exploit that hole. If the exploit is allowed, it becomes part of the game.
In football, the “Victory Formation” has become the standard for end-of-game play by the leading team who has possession in the last minute or so of the game. They go out with no intention of moving the ball forward, and actually lose a yard or two on each play, with the intent of deliberately running out the clock. Is that “playing the game”?
That’s analogous, but for some reason doesn’t bug me in the same way. I guess because they’re not simply trying to get their opponent to screw up. Run a play or don’t run a play, either way is fine. But if your only hope of getting a first down is a defensive penalty, you’re not doing it right.
And thus, your mileage may vary. I don’t mind trying to pull an offside, because it relies on the defensive players playing the game poorly. Any NFL-level player should know what’s up, and be careful not to fall for it.
But the victory formation? To me, it feels like, “Screw you guys, I’m taking my ball and going home”. It’s become so standard that defensive players often get shit for actually trying for a sack against the team on offense, “Because they should know better” or something. Screw that, if I can force a fumble with almost a minute left in the game, that could change everything. Why should I get hassled just because I’m not willing to just surrender?
MLB: Do away with the appeal process as it relates to a runner missing a base.
If he missed a base and then advanced to the next base, just call him out.
mmm
I assume you mean ‘four balls’, rather than ‘four walks’?
So, under this rule, if the first batter of the game walks on four pitches, he’s awarded second base? Surely you’ve seen a number of games in which the pitcher doesn’t have his ‘good stuff’ at the beginning of the game? Or a situation where the pitcher suddenly can’t locate the plate and throws nothing but balls to a batter or two?
It’s called strategy.
Not all scorers think, interpret, and assign alike, so you are introducing what I feel is an unacceptable variable. As it is, the scorer’s decision to assign either a hit or an error to a given at bat proves my point. I’ve seen dropped balls ruled hits instead of errors when, in fact, my brother made tougher catches when he played in the Babe Ruth League.
We need standardization, not interpretation. Accepting the fact that different umpires have different strike zones is absurd when balls and strikes can now be called correctly by computers.
They lost. “Trying for a sack” is BS, and they all know it. The time to get a sack was 3 minutes ago when the outcome was still up in the air.
They’re just frustrated and want to take out their frustration by hitting someone who isn’t expecting to be hit, secure in the knowledge that the other guy won’t get a chance to hit back.
If the score is close enough that you can come back to win with 3 minutes on the clock, you can almost certainly still come back with one minute on the clock. Every team out there has had at least one possession that scored in less than a minute with a big break-away play. Unless the difference in the score is more than a single major score, anything could happen.
Deliberately running out the clock is gaming the system, just as much as is trying to pull an offside penalty. Some people accept both, some accept one or the other. My point is, like it or not, it’s now an accepted part of the game.
Hell, I don’t like the victory formation on a personal level, but were I out there as a quarterback, I’d still play it, because we’ve also seen examples where they didn’t play it, and ended up losing due to those break-away plays I mentioned earlier.
If you had possession, which you don’t.
The victory formation is a little bookkeeping after the game is over. Like if baseball required the home team to bat in the 9th inning while they had a lead. Sure, you could get up there to take your swings and jack up your stats, but that’s likely to get ugly. You probably just get the guys up there, bat on shoulder, to tick off the box, end the game, and go home.
But in baseball, there is no mechanism for the defending team to score a run. You can’t catch a flyball and then sprint around the bases, or something.
In football, though, turnovers are built into the game. A forced fumble, or a turnover on downs due to a sack would put the ball back in the defender’s hands, and possibly result in a score, maybe leading to a win.
Seriously. The Phillies have had some pitchers that would have led the league in intentional walks under these rules, and not deliberately.