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The Weekly is a column on the Brewers. 'On' may do heavier lifting on some weeks than others.
This tweet resurfaced when MLB and the MLBPA agreed to return to the extra innings ghost runner -- or as I and others prefer to call it, the Manfred man -- in 2022. We thought the new CBA put this silliness to bed. We were wrong.
Also, this tweet marks the first time I've seen the acronym XIPR in reference to the Manfred man. Is that pronounced 'zipper'? Is that supposed to make us feel good, like BACON?
It shouldn't surprise anyone that data types like Tango and analytics-minded members of management like Craig Counsell would come out in favor of something like this. Data scientists and metrics wonks need clearly-defined parameters in order to operate. A tie game after nine innings enters a kind of foyer into infinity. Forcing the issue by artificially dropping a runner into scoring position helps establish finitude which is seen as necessary toward understanding.
And Counsell is right to note -- as Tango underscores by virtue of retweet -- that the game changes and rules, too, change. He rightly also notes that it's a kind of perverse non-reward for a staff pitcher/s or fourth or fifth outfielder who performs admirably that night to be sent down to Triple-A before daybreak.
But all of this, willfully or otherwise, ignores the plain realities of cause and effect: that issues with pace of play, skyrocketing three true outcomes and a product that is perceived to be flawed and anachronistic (incidentally, a perception largely perpetuated by the strange bedfellows of those who are stakeholders in the game and those who are its detractors) are byproducts of the sabermetric revolution. As such, they are engaging in a form of begging the question.
More to the point, they painted themselves into a corner and choose to blame the room.
Those marathon games didn't just start happening in a vacuum. Launch angle wasn't just a thing that appeared ex nihilo. It wasn't players that created the opaque and impossible-to-negotiate video replay process. These new rules aren't the result of Willson Contreras heading to the mound 624 times a game, which is why we now have the mound visits rule. The game grows and evolves, yes, but that fact alone does not justify rule changes, especially rule changes that paper over the bugs that have come with baseball-by-algorithm.
It's the same kind of buck-passing we see from executives over failing businesses, or from former presidents in need of a new personal jet.
If it isn't right that players get shuttled from the minors to the majors because of overuse, then the league and the players need to address the size of rosters. If games are too-often taking too long or needing extra innings -- the Brewers shared the National League lead for extra innings games in 2021 (19) with the Los Angeles Dodgers and San Francisco Giants -- plopping a runner on second addresses the problem in the same way that breaking the window solves the problem of being too warm inside a car. The actual issue is with the approach to the game, one that prizes dingers over doubles, refuses to let pitchers pitch and doesn't generally view sacrifice flies and stealing bases as a risk-reward proposition even worth considering. For everything they get right -- #neverbunt, for instance -- they miss on so much more.
Progress has a way of feigning ease; convenient new inventions bait the tease.
Yes, Craig, it's OK to change rules. Yes, the game must grow and adapt. But change to the game needs to be clearly proportional and contextual to on-field antecedent. And in the case of the Manfred man, there is literally none.
Change for change's sake is never for the better. There are plenty of ways to converse about and address pace of play, but persistent extra innings games underscore a different, disquieting fact: that this new era of elevating data science and analytics has not improved the game, but made it more dystopic, in which case, baseball remains as quintessentially American as ever.
Brent Sirvio is a columnist for Brewer Fanatic.
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