Manfred: Runner on 2nd in extras rule might stick round

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PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Starting further innings with a runner on second base, the rule adopted by Major League Baseball as a approach to shorten video games throughout the pandemic, is likely to be sticking round.

“Both fans and players like it. The clubs like it. Seems like it has legs to me,” Commissioner Rob Manfred mentioned Monday night time after asserting Game 3 of the World Series between Houston and Philadelphia had been postponed by rain.

Home groups went 113-103 in extra-inning video games this yr and are 262-263 in extras because the runner on second rule began in 2020, based on the Elias Sports Bureau. Home groups have been 312-294 in extra-inning video games from 2017-19, Elias mentioned.

“It makes you play a different game at home than you do on the road,” Houston Astros supervisor Dusty Baker mentioned. “At home you can bunt, you can play for that one run. On the road, one run doesn’t mean that much. It can mean something, but basically they have an opportunity to tie it up, so you can go back and forth, back and forth. So you probably play for not the big inning but probably a crooked number on the road, where at home you get the last at-bat and that could be the game.”

Baseball has not used the rule throughout the postseason. Cleveland beat Tampa Bay 1-0 in 15 innings within the clinching Game 2 of their best-of-three American League wild-card sequence this yr, and Houston defeated Seattle 1-0 in 18 innings to comb their best-of-five AL Division Series.

Philadelphia supervisor Rob Thomson mentioned fashionable bullpen use brought on him to favor the rule.

“You’re not going to get in a 17-, 18-inning game. The chances are slim. So that helps you with roster juggling and things like that,” he mentioned. “You’re really stringent on pitch counts for your starters and typically they’re lower now than they were even 10 years ago.

“So when you get into one of those 17-, 18-inning games, you’re going through pretty much everybody out of your bullpen, and then you’ve got to start making player moves. And when guys have to be down 15 days and you just sent down three or four of your pitchers, you can’t bring ’em back, then guys are coming off the roster to fill in, and you don’t want that.”

There have been 216 extra-inning video games within the third season of the pandemic rule of putting an automated runner on second base in every further body, down from 233 final yr and 78 throughout the shortened 2020 season. The longest recreation this yr was Cleveland’s 7-6, 15-inning win over Minnesota within the second recreation of a doubleheader on Sept. 17. That was one inning shy of the longest within the three seasons of the rule, the Los Angeles Dodgers’ 16-inning win at San Diego on Aug. 25, 2021.

Extending the rule change requires an settlement with the gamers’ affiliation.

“That’s a decision for the players to make,” union head Tony Clark mentioned Friday earlier than the Series opener. “That’ll be one of the things that we’ve got to talk to the guys about.”

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