14 minutes ago, hogan873 said:

Maybe adopt a rule like the Frontier League has for extra innings. The 10th inning is played normally, but if no one wins, they go to sudden death. The home team chooses to bat or play defense. A runner starts at 1st base. If the offense scores, they win. If the defense gets three outs with no runs scored, they win.

That's unique

14 minutes ago, hogan873 said:

Maybe adopt a rule like the Frontier League has for extra innings. The 10th inning is played normally, but if no one wins, they go to sudden death. The home team chooses to bat or play defense. A runner starts at 1st base. If the offense scores, they win. If the defense gets three outs with no runs scored, they win.

Very interesting concept, Hogan. Also, I've been meaning to ask a more general question, so if you don't mind I'll just toss it out there while I'm thinking about it... and again, I need to do "full disclosure" because I'm related to Sam A., and thus "a little" biased... 🙂 but, in his second at-bat in last night's game, Sam hit a sharp grounder that looked like it was going to be a single through the first base side, but the first baseman made a great play on it, and tossed to the pitcher (who ran over to cover first) for the put-out, as Sam made a head-first dive into first base. Steve Stone, with a noticeably frustrated tone in his voice, said (essentially), "I wish Sam wouldn't do that. It's not going to get him there any faster." Now, while I get where Steve is coming from, I thought that Sam was anticipating that if the throw were to be high and pull the pitcher off the base, or simply be off-line to one side or the other, so that the pitcher would need to try touching Sam with a "swipe-tag," Sam opted for the head-first slide in order to keep himself low to the ground and thus out of range of the swipe-tag. Do I raise a valid point, or am I just an overly-defensive great-uncle? Or maybe a little bit of both? 😊

In defense of Kaspar's idea, there is something very good about the "good point" in football (soccer). Genuinely think both Monday and Tuesday should have been draws.

17 minutes ago, Bill The Boy said:

Very interesting concept, Hogan. Also, I've been meaning to ask a more general question, so if you don't mind I'll just toss it out there while I'm thinking about it... and again, I need to do "full disclosure" because I'm related to Sam A., and thus "a little" biased... 🙂 but, in his second at-bat in last night's game, Sam hit a sharp grounder that looked like it was going to be a single through the first base side, but the first baseman made a great play on it, and tossed to the pitcher (who ran over to cover first) for the put-out, as Sam made a head-first dive into first base. Steve Stone, with a noticeably frustrated tone in his voice, said (essentially), "I wish Sam wouldn't do that. It's not going to get him there any faster." Now, while I get where Steve is coming from, I thought that Sam was anticipating that if the throw were to be high and pull the pitcher off the base, or simply be off-line to one side or the other, so that the pitcher would need to try touching Sam with a "swipe-tag," Sam opted for the head-first slide in order to keep himself low to the ground and thus out of range of the swipe-tag. Do I raise a valid point, or am I just an overly-defensive great-uncle? Or maybe a little bit of both? 😊

Diving into first slows you down and increases the chances for injury. It’s just not a recommended play even to avoid a swipe tag

Even more entertaining, select a combative fan from each team and have them slug it out on the pitcher's mound with the winners team declared victorious.

How about this? Starting pitchers much pitch at least seven innings unless he becomes injured. This way pitchers would have to start actually start pitching again and not trying to throw at maximum velocity every pitch. You might actually return some artistry to the craft. It would be more action in the game because more balls would be put in play. There’s nothing exciting about 1/3 of the outs in a game being strikeouts. Also with the increased velocity with the same dimensions that have existed for 100 years, why not move the mound back a couple of feet?

Another rule I'd like to see is if both managers think an umpire is doing a horrible job they can throw the umpire out of the game.

Another rule I'd like to see instead of a ghost runner on second, put three ghost runners on base and let's end the game a lot sooner.

Get rid of the infield fly rule, which could make things very interesting.

At the end of nine innings, do a rock, scissors, paper thing. Or maybe even a spelling bee.

18 minutes ago, Kyyle23 said:

Diving into first slows you down and increases the chances for injury. It’s just not a recommended play even to avoid a swipe tag

Fair enough, Kyyle.

Also, to add a little physicality to the game while the team is batting, they can have a player standing anywhere in the infield and one standing anywhere in the outfield with the ability to physically interfere with a defender, trying to feel the ball.

5 hours ago, Thesieve300 said:

Also, to add a little physicality to the game while the team is batting, they can have a player standing anywhere in the infield and one standing anywhere in the outfield with the ability to physically interfere with a defender, trying to feel the ball.

I hope text can describe how awesome/awful this game was when I was HS. Picture a basketball court. The main court lane is painted green. Then picture the side court that runs through the main court perpendicularly. Our physical education teacher created “green lane basketball.” We’d play side court to side court basket for 2 points like normal basketball, but if you scored at the main court basket (green lane) it was 3 points. One caveat…there were no fouls when in the green lane.

On 8/18/2026 at 9:18 AM, Lip Man 1 said:

If the 'ghost runner' is so good for the game why isn't it used in post season play?

Maybe it's not that good after all? 😉

If you insist on trying to limit long extra inning games, do what they do in Japan. A tie game is declared after so many innings are played.

Because there aren't 162 playoff games spread across 3 time zones. I'm not a huge fan of manfred ball, but I get why they implemented it.

ABS is perfect as it is. Maybe given on additional challenge after the 7th if a team is out, that would help the umps stay more consistent throughout.

16 minutes ago, chitownsportsfan said:

Because there aren't 162 playoff games spread across 3 time zones. I'm not a huge fan of manfred ball, but I get why they implemented it.

ABS is perfect as it is. Maybe given on additional challenge after the 7th if a team is out, that would help the umps stay more consistent throughout.

So it's OK to have different rules at different parts of the season?

Interesting.

Sorry I have to disagree.

I'd like the ABS better if they were judging every pitch thrown and not just when challenged.

Anything that limits the damage incompetent umpires like Bucknor do is absolutely good for the game.

7 hours ago, Thesieve300 said:

At the end of nine innings, do a rock, scissors, paper thing. Or maybe even a spelling bee.

Ghost runner can start at 3rd as long as he is wearing the mascot costume of one of the participating teams.

On 8/18/2026 at 2:45 PM, fathom said:

So much has changed anyways, they might as well get all the calls correct. These guys throw too hard to expect umps to do a great job. As I said earlier, nearly 1000 missed calls in games last week is crazy.

How can we be certain what we see on the screen is 100% accurate?

Does anybody else think it's silly that you need to use the last batter to start at 2nd? Why not let you choose from the last 2-3 batters? There is no chance they'll be up to bat while being on base. If you want to make sure they get to warm up in the batters box, then let the team choose from the last 2 batters. Then you won't get stuck with Grandal on 2nd while the other team has PCA.

8 hours ago, Colome's Hat said:

In defense of Kaspar's idea, there is something very good about the "good point" in football (soccer). Genuinely think both Monday and Tuesday should have been draws.

What did Len suggest? I think a system with ties is way better personally. This new way is too gimmicky. Plus it's unfair if the other team gets a speedster on 2nd and your team gets a catcher or something.

2 hours ago, chitownsportsfan said:

Because there aren't 162 playoff games spread across 3 time zones. I'm not a huge fan of manfred ball, but I get why they implemented it.

ABS is perfect as it is. Maybe given on additional challenge after the 7th if a team is out, that would help the umps stay more consistent throughout.

I mean, the obvious solution is to use ABS to make every call. The challenge system is stupid.

10 hours ago, wegner said:

Extra division in each league and less wild cards?

That works. I like that better than two divisions and more wildcards.

1 hour ago, soxrwhite said:

How can we be certain what we see on the screen is 100% accurate?

It's a 2D zone so it's not perfect, but it's certainly better than the human judgement. It is the midpoint so it perhaps misses some late breakers.

On 8/18/2026 at 3:20 PM, chw42 said:

Umps will still make the strike calls. It just takes their judgement away. I don't know why umps wouldn't want that. It takes so much pressure off them. And it's honestly not fair to expect humans to read if a pitch is 0.1 inches out of the zone.

I don't think it puts added pressure on umps to call strikes within 1/10th of an inch. I think ABS is an added strategy dimension like time outs in football.

The ABS zone isn't even the actual zone. The real zone is a 3-D space, and ABS is a 2-D snapshot. They're not even measuring the same thing. A ball shown to be 0.1 inch outside may have caught the back corner, and just shows how balls on a lot of these people really are.

11 hours ago, hogan873 said:

Maybe adopt a rule like the Frontier League has for extra innings. The 10th inning is played normally, but if no one wins, they go to sudden death. The home team chooses to bat or play defense. A runner starts at 1st base. If the offense scores, they win. If the defense gets three outs with no runs scored, they win.

Is there ever a scenario where the home team doesn't choose to pitch and what is their win rate%?

ABS is better than I thought it would be but it should be moderated not expanded. Pitches that are "balls" by a millimeter or several shouldn't be overturned. Those are good pitches. Pitches within a certain range can be challenged and overturned while pitches that are called clearly wrong could be automatically overturned.

I think ABS in general gives too big an advantage to the batter. I don't think we're going to be seeing high strikes for very much longer. That's probably by design.

4 minutes ago, nrockway said:

Is there ever a scenario where the home team doesn't choose to pitch and what is their win rate%?

ABS is better than I thought it would be but it should be moderated not expanded. Pitches that are "balls" by a millimeter or several shouldn't be overturned. Those are good pitches. Pitches within a certain range can be challenged and overturned while pitches that are called clearly wrong could be automatically overturned.

I think ABS in general gives too big an advantage to the batter. I don't think we're going to be seeing high strikes for very much longer. That's probably by design.

This is crazy talk. We just got fucked over by bad calls from an ump. There's no reason to keep the human element and associated errors in the game. It will be a glorious day when every pitch is called with ABS.