With the talk of most likely an already shortened season, MLB has discussed having more double headers to make up for any lost games. As I talked about in previous articles, MLB would most likely expand rosters to allow for clubs to carry more pitchers to keep up with all of the innings they would be playing. The one downfall to playing more double headers is the chance that these games may head into extra innings. With an already jam packed schedule to get in as many games in as possible, most teams just can’t afford to be playing any extra inning games for this season.
I thought Justin Turner had an interesting take to solve extra inning games in a possible 2020 MLB season. MLB was already expanding its active roster to 26 men, but they could possibly extend that to 30 for this modified season. They would in turn allow a possible total of 16 pitchers, where six or seven of those would be starting pitchers, that would leave either ten or eleven bullpen arms. The one factor you have to consider is the fact that we may not know how much time starting pitchers would get to build back up their arms. They may only be able to throw four or five innings early on in the season, that leaves nine or ten bullpen guys trying to cover a possible 15 inning game. This is the exact reason why in normal season you’ll have long relief guys to go in just in case your starters don’t last that long, but with multiple double headers being played those long relief guys now become your 6th and 7th starters. If an extra inning game is before a double header or the first game of the series you’re going to have a depleted staff for rest of the week.
Justin Turner’s solution would be an NHL style home run derby shootout. Turner suggested a one round six man home run derby, three guys to a side, with five outs or ten swings each. Team with the most home runs wins the game. This would all happen after the 10th inning to ensure each team has a chance to win the game with one extra inning. If no team would come out on top, they would move to their home run derby style shootout. Again Turner states that this would be for this year and this year only. With such an unprecedented situation, you need an unprecedented solution. MLB has already been flirting with the idea to end extra inning games in a more timely manner. In the World Baseball Classic they tried a new approach to ending extra inning games quicker. After the 10th inning, teams would would start with a runner on first and second every inning until one team won. Last year, MLB decided to try starting a runner on second in the All-Star game to avoid heading into long extra innings.
Again these are just ideas being thrown around to try and help the MLB and its players get in as many entertaining games as possible. I think the idea of a sudden death home run derby would be extremely interesting to see and there’s no better time to implement it then in a modified 2020 season. Would baseball traditionalists love the idea of doing it? Absolutely not. To them, the game is sacred and doesn’t need to be altered, but Turner’s idea does make a lot of sense to help the players from being burnt out from such an accelerated season. The more time that’s postponed, the more likely it is that MLB would add multiple double headers to their schedule and I’m sure most players would be into the idea trying a new solution to avoid playing 15 inning games before double headers. I don’t believe this would head into the postseason, by the time teams have made it there, starting pitchers would have been fully built up to throw for longer than five innings. There would have to be no change to that format as you would let them play as if it were any other postseason, just as in the NHL postseason there are no penalty shootouts.
The Washed Up Athlete 