ARMAGEDDON CHESS AND “ARMAGEDDON BASEBALL”. I refer to the proposed change in baseball’s rules for extra innings as “Armageddon Baseball” because it resembles Armageddon Chess, which I posted on here. The major similarity is that a rule has been proposed that is inconsistent with how the game has been played for over a hundred years. (In an Armageddon chess game, Black would win the championship if he can hold White to a draw).
The difference between Armageddon Chess and Armageddon Baseball is that there is a strong perceived need in chess for the strange rule that Black can win by drawing. The rule would be used only after a long series of draws by the players. Armageddon Baseball is a strange solution to a problem that doesn’t exist. Extra inning baseball games are exciting, and the longer they go, the more exciting they become, the more they are discussed afterwards, and the more they are remembered.
Joe Torre says: “It’s not fun to watch when you go through your whole pitching staff and wind up bringing a utility infielder in to pitch.” There are lots of solutions to the problem of having to use a position player to pitch, including bringing in the next day’s scheduled starter or using up fewer pitchers on one or two batters.
And some fans, like me, get a kick out of a position player pitching.
Given how many arms teams tend to have stashed in AAA, it’s not that hard to call up players as needed the next day in a true crisis, and given that most bullpens are now 7-8 pitchers deep, it shouldn’t be something you can’t handle.
Something I didn’t like about Robin Ventura was how aggressively he would call for relievers to face one batter in late, tie games, greatly increasing the odds he’d be stuck asking a pitcher to go 3-4 innings because he burned all his options already. Particularly risky for a team with a bad offense, as was the case with the Ventura White Sox.