The same logic keeps getting used for the ghost runner rule. However, in year three, the only thing that is clear is how desperate MLB is to keep it for good.
MLB is just about of excuses when it comes to the ghost runner rule.
Official rule changes for the 2022 MLB season were recently announced, with the ghost runner in extra innings foremost amongst them. Tweaking the DH rules to ensure Shohei Ohtani never has to leave the lineup was really the only other change that came up that will have a noticeable impact on what fans watch on a baseball field this season. But none of them hold a candle to the fact that, for a third consecutive season, the outcome of any contest that goes to extra innings is being decided by a rule that, in a vacuum, is perhaps the dumbest the league has ever come up with.
Of course, it can’t be viewed in a vacuum, as the reason fans have to put up with it to begin with is entirely on account of external, off the field influences. Primarily, that reason was the COVID-19 pandemic. Less time at the ballpark, and less work on the arms of pitchers that faced a very bizarre offseason that started in February before shutting down until June, were the reasons behind introducing the rule for the short season in 2020. Put more simply, health and safety was the argument.
And so it was again in 2021. There was a normal offseason, but still plenty of questions of what it would be like to pitch, or even play, after doing so little the season before. More importantly though, there was still plenty to worry about as far as COVID-19 was concerned, so meaningful extra inning play was sacrificed once more in the interest of health and safety. Frustrating, but understandable.
Now though? In 2022? This offseason was only awkward because MLB wanted it to be so. They locked out the players. They repeatedly lowballed the players. They also presided over a pretty normal, full length season in 2021. Oh, and the COVID-19 situation? Dramatically improved from where we were a year ago.
Still, health and safety is once again the argument for this rule … too weird and too hurried of an offseason to possibly justify extra innings taking place as they once did. However, the argument is getting increasingly thin. Far too thin to use again next season. Next offseason, MLB and the MLBPA are going to have to make a final ruling on what place this insanely frustrating rule should have in baseball.
Unfortunately, by then it could be too late … and that’s exactly what MLB is counting on.
When this idea first came out, the outrage level was high. Multiple relief pitchers were more than happy to tell you, quite bluntly, what they thought. A huge percentage of fans were incensed. But the outrage cycle only lasts for so long before it fades away. In most instances, a few weeks will do it. By May, you’ll have completely forgotten about the “Slap Heard ‘Round The Oscars.” Sometimes, sure, it could be longer. Eventually though, apathy and attrition always win.
Which is all MLB needs to justify passing forever what has seemed to become their poster child for making pace of play slicker, quicker, and hipper. Because some study, somewhere showed that this might get some new fans to watch. Boost ratings. Ignoring entirely the fact that it is still baseball for the nine innings prior, and that the fans they are going after will only be watching if there isn’t a basketball game on opposite. That’s why this rule exists, ultimately. The hope to get a slight ratings spike for a novelty act, and the revenue that comes with it. This is not about improving the product on the field.
And the longer it hangs around, the more used to it some players and fans will get. They’ll give up the fight. Some players, and especially managers, already have. They’re happy to have one less thing to worry about than the state of the bullpen after a game goes longer than the minimum. At which point, it could well be accepted as permanent.
At the end of the day, though, it’s just a bad rule. What’s more, it strikes at heart of the timeless magic of baseball. Which I know is something I’ve gone on about before, but it really is one of the things I enjoy most about the game. There is no clock. It doesn’t have to end. I watch baseball to get away from how freakishly-Jimmy John-esque fast the rest of the world goes by. Can the game be improved? Sure, but hastening the end of the product isn’t improvement. It lessens it.
So stay angry fans, when that ground out to first and fly ball out to left cost your team a game. Email away at the commissioner’s office. Let them hear it on social media. Start an online petition. Now for mental health reasons, feel free to dismiss it as being just a game when your team loses this way. But don’t dismiss it as just being how the game is played.
Because it wasn’t before, shouldn’t be now, and doesn’t have to be for 2023 and beyond.