I am totally with Dominic (and, I suspect, against Rich, who has gone Marxist on us when it comes to baseball rules) that MLB does not need an automatic runner in extra innings. The fact that this heresy is being limited to the regular season (like hockey’s 3-on-3-plus-goalie and, if necessary, shootout, and football’s ten-minute overtime that can end in a tie) is proof positive that it is not the way the game is meant to be. When the games are truly important, the sport reverts to regular rules. I am sympathetic to arguments that the game is too long, but if you’re still hanging in with a baseball game in the tenth inning, you are a true fan and not someone the ineffable Rob Manfred needs to worry about.
I don’t expect to like any of the new rules (except the bigger bases – I’ve been arguing for years that first base needs to be wider to avoid some of the horrific injuries we’ve seen over the years when runner, fielders, and ball all arrive at the same time). But I would accept the new rules, even the automatic runner, if I could cancel the thing I most despise about what Manfred’s handiwork: the new plan to have every team play every other team, in both leagues.
There is no point in having divisional play if MLB is going to water it down as it has. As a Met fan, I enjoyed the novelty of the Subway Series (Mets vs. Yankees) at first. But it also ushered in other inter-league series every year about which few people care (or have you been dreaming of Tigers/Diamondbacks or Angels/Pirates, etc.?).
Adding more of these pointless series first destroyed great intra-league rivalries (the Mets, for example, had great rivalries with the Cubs, Cardinals, and Pirates – and we used to see the West Coast teams a couple of times a year – when there were no divisions, or only two, in each league; now interdivision teams play each other only twice a year (once home, once away). And now Manfred is doing to intra-division what he did to inter-division. The intra-division games are the best rivalries in the sport, and they are also largely determinative for purposes of the playoffs (in terms of qualifying and seeding).
Why do we need fewer Yankees/Red Sox games — series that draw intense interest and have great consequence? So the Yankees can play the Brewers, and the Red Sox can play the Marlins? Who cares?
Between the MLB suits, the woke messaging, and the gambling, I . . . I . . . I — well, let’s just say I love this game, and they are just killing it.