Interesting conversation created by Ryan Howard on a radio show today. He proposed that if a team was down 10 runs after 7, mercy rule the game. Saves pitching, saves pegged batters for going against unwritten rules, etc.

No stats have been given yet, but if the number of times a team has come from 10 down after 7 is less than 0.62% (1 game out of a 162 game season), I think I'd be for it in the regular season. It's not like football where when up or down a ton you empty the bench to get time for backups. Most MLB backups are utility guys seeing time already. They stop serving beer after the 7th, full gate has already been accrued. Seems like a decent idea to me.

Once playoffs start, let it go 9 as it's gamesmanship to rough up a bullpen as much as possible in a 5 or 7 game series.

Your take?

MuckRaker96 said:

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Baseball is neutered itself enough. What do you tell the batters that fall a hit or a homer short of an incentive clause who miss potential arrays during the year so the other team doesn't get its feelings hurt? Blowouts are when you put your rooks in or let struggling pitchers see live hitting tovwork out the kinks.

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In an answer to the first part, I'm sure a CBA if this idea would ever come to fruition would provide remedies for that. Such as averaging out probable at bats and giving added hits/hrs for those missed opportunities based on yearly percentages.

As to second point, I feel those guys already are getting reps in 5-9 point deficits. A 10 point deficit in that situation has to be pretty rare. At most 5-10 times a season for the worst team.

It's an interesting thought.

I wonder how many games in a season would meet this criteria.

-Obviously not a perfect method to use, but a quick look shows that there have been 13 games where a team won by 10 or more runs this season. It looks like that's around 3.7% of the games if I'm doing the math correctly. Or 6 times per team over the course of an entire season.

Seven Costanza said:

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It's an interesting thought.

I wonder how many games in a season would meet this criteria.

-Obviously not a perfect method to use, but a quick look shows that there have been 13 games where a team won by 10 or more runs this season. It looks like that's around 3.7% of the games if I'm doing the math correctly. Or 6 times per team over the course of an entire season.

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To meet the criteria of the giant comeback this rule would not allow, a game would have to end with both teams scoring double digit runs. So far this year, that has happened 3 times. Of those 3, one team made a 5 run comeback to force extras and ended up losing.

I was just trying to judge approximately how often we would see the mercy rule used, not how often we would see a comeback.

Man, OP really brings an "interesting discussion". In OP he admits to having zero data or research, and when pushed, he says he is sure the owners and players would just agree that everyone close to paycheck milestone gets lollipops and kittens with a big bowl of rainbows. What could go wrong?

This season? I wouldn't be against it.

In a normal season? Nah. Baseball is built upon historical records. Outlier games or not, you should mess with it as little as possible.

Not sure how the networks would go for it either -- obviously nobody enjoys watching the late innings of a blowout, but I'd wonder how significant the dip of viewership is for a bad team that is down 3-4 runs late and a bad team that is down 8+ runs late. I think there's a lot of people who tune into their baseball team just to watch baseball, good or bad.

Proposition Joe said:

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This season? I wouldn't be against it.

In a normal season? Nah. Baseball is built upon historical records. Outlier games or not, you should mess with it as little as possible.

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This is the correct answer, in my opinion. I'm not for the rule, personally, but this year is such an outlier. Add in all the injuries and there's just no need to play a 17-5 game the last two innings. Like someone else questioned, though, how many of those actually happen?

Nope. Part of strategy is managing bullpen workload, even in blowouts.