THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

I don’t know about measuring rain, but I completely agree that every postseason game should be played to completion.

It would be nice if they conducted the playoffs in such a way that the game mattered as much as the television networks.

It seems that all this Fox business about maximizing revenue, to the detriment of all else, is an albatross.

If MLB wants to maintain autonomy on the TV schedule, Fox and TBS will pay them less.  This is not going to happen, because MLB is all about maximizing short-term revenue.

MLBPA needs to be smart about negotiating working conditions for their players.

I don’t see that we need any other rule change other than all games in the post-season must be completed (IOW, no 5 or 7 inning rain shortened games).

That is what Bud was going to do by an “edict” had TB not tied up the game.  That would have generated SOME controversy (and justifiably so, IMO), but not much, I don’t think.

And I am pretty sure that is what they are going to do - officially change the rule for the post-season.

I don’t see why anything else needs to change, other than if you asked 10 different people about how long you have to wait before calling a game and how long you can keep delaying a game, you probably will get 10 different answers.

Having the “amount of precipitation” in the rule?  Are you kidding?  I am pretty comfortable that being a discretionary thing.  As with anything discretionary, there will always be “bad” and “good” discretion, but that does NOT mean that we should get rid of discretion (just ask all the people sitting in federal prison for 10 or 20 years on crack charges).

Wow, I accidentally put MLB in the name section above!

Anyway, Rule 4.12 is worded so needlessly awkwardly, it is a joke.  Who the hell writes these things?  It took me like 10 minutes to figure out that if the visiting team ties or goes ahead after the 5th inning, even if the home team was winning after the last completed inning, it is a suspended game, and I am not even 100% sure about that (I am sure, but not because of reading the rule).  That was the change, BTW, apparently in 1979.  Before that, the score would always revert back to the last full inning (like they do to resolve bets) no matter how many runs the visiting scores in the top of the last inning played, and he game would be official with the home team winning (if they were ahead after the last completed inning).

I am still not sure of what happens when the visiting team ties or goes ahead in the top of the 5th and the home team does not bat in the bottom of the 5th. I think that is a “no game” but I am not sure.  I am not going to go back and read the rule.  I have better things to do.

I think that the rule could have been written twice as clearly with half as many words.

Playing a World Series game with that amount of precipitation and not have the game delayed is exactly what happens when you leave it to discretion.

What I would do is exactly how you handle replays in the NHL and NFL: it has to be clear to reverse the call.  If it’s too close to call, you let the ruling on the field/ice stand.

Same here.  You have the 1cm/hr rule.  Umpire is informed: “We’ve accumulated 1.1 cm in the last 50 minutes.  We want to delay the game.” The umpire has to opt-in to keep the game going, based on his discretion.  And because of that, he subjects himself to second-guessing.  Maybe he does it because he feels the rain subsiding substantially.

But, to have the situation we had last night, with NO CONTROLS in place is a joke.  Maybe people don’t like my 1cm/hr rule.  Whatever.  Figure something out, something where the umpire will have to justify himself.

Reacting to the unknown, but completely foreseeable events, is not the strong suit of Selig, umpires, MLB, or MLBPA.  If we need to treat them like little babies, then sobeit.

Tango - According to the link you gave to the local weather, they didn’t have 1 cm of rain yesterday.  Are you arguing that they should have continued the game?  The players seem to think that play should have been suspended much earlier.

Ouch, I meant 0.1 cm (or 1 mm), not 1 cm.  As of 22:54, there was 0.2 cm, and as of 23:54 there was 0.5 cm.

I fixed the main entry… thanks for pointing that out.

Keep it in inches so I can understand

Saturday I was wondering abou curfews. Jinaz came over and we had to watch reruns of Brad Garrett for 2 hours until the game got started. The game was tied in the bottom of the ninth up until the Phiilies won it at 1:46 am. A regular season game I believe would have been suspended no later than 2.

What is 3 and 3/8 inches plus 2 and 13/16ths inches?
Let’s see, that’s 5 and 19/16ths, or 6 and 3/16ths.

What is 86 mm plus 71 mm?  157mm.

Once you go metric, you never go back.

Not sure if this will help anyone else out, but the way I remember the mm:inch relationship is that the heavy machine round used in WWII by the US and Russia was called the .50 caliber (.50 inches) by the US and 12.7mm by the Russians.  So 1” = 25.4mm (2.54cm).  It doesn’t work for other calibers because they round the numbers off.

I agree with MGL that calling the game should remain discretionary, not based on the amount of precipitation, as different fields can handle a different amount of water, and how much rain fell earlier also plays a part in how much the field can handle.

Does anyone know if the 2008 Official Baseball Rules book available from MLB has more rules than those available in PDF form at the MLB.com site?

Like I said, my process sets guidelines that requires the umpire to override.  He has discretionary power, but it’s like a judge: he has to follow guidelines.

How is that not better than the arbitrary willy-nilly?

In any case, having the rule that requires completion of all suspended games would have saved MLB from embarrassment.

When did fact-checking by sports “reporters” stop?  Thankfully, we have blogs, with actual experts, willing to do actual reporting and education:
http://nyenviro.blogspot.com/2008/10/mlb-drops-ball-blames-meteorologists.html

Bottom line is that it is a bunch of idiots with all different agendas sitting around deciding whether to play a game or not, knowing that the weather is not too good.  We are supposed to expect an optimal decision from that?

Also, there appears to be a compelling agenda to get a game (baseball/football) in, no matter what.  Given that they actually played 5 1/2 innings without anyone getting killed, was trying to play the game really such a bad idea?  Could someone have really determined with much or even any certainty before the game started that the game was likely not going to be able to be completed?

One of the problems here with the media, including the bloggers, is that they are starting with the premise that MLB and/or Bud did something “wrong?” That is because there is more of a story if they do.  If they start with the premise of, “Let’s see what happened?” maybe they would have gotten it more right.

All over the Net, there are headlines and stories about Bud’s “decision.” Did they even bother to realize that in the end Bud made NO decision.  The decision to continue or not continue play during the game is up to the umpires (and perhaps the home team - I don’t know).  And once the game was stopped, the rules stated that it was to be completed. No decision by Bud.  None, whatsoever.  He was GOING TO make a decision, apparently, that if TB had not scored, that he was going to allow the game to be completed (the rules would have given a win to PHI), and probably a good one at that.

Now, maybe people who were in charge of the decisions to stop or start the game after it began consulted with Bud, but I don’t think we know that.  As far as starting the game in the first place, they do that ALL the time.  When the weather is in doubt, they almost always start the game and see what happens. It is a lot easier to start a WS game and hope that it can continue than have to deal with the logistical nightmare of a canceled WS game.

It is a near certainty that that chief umpire won’t do anything like this, without consulting Selig.

And yes, according to that blogger, it was clear that the game would not be completed.

What seems to be the situation is that Selig is lying by quoting some unnamed weather people, when you have other named weather people who are saying that whatever Selig is saying is full of sh!t, that prior to the game, what happened during the game was wholly expected.

An expectation of 0.1in between 8 and 12 is 2.54mm.  Seeing that I figured that a game should be delayed based on 1mm in the previous 60 minutes, it sure seems possible that you’ll get 1mm in 60 minutes of that 2.54 of 240 minutes.  The bad luck is that it rained even harder than expected (5.8mm in those 4 hours).

But, if you are playing a World Series, and you figure that the limit is 1mm in any 60 minute period, and you expect 2.54mm in a 240 time period, then you don’t play.

MGL - Selig was quoted as saying in an interview that he made the decision before the game started that if play was suspended during the game that it would be played to completion at a later time no matter what the score was and that he informed both teams of that decision before play was begun.

Peter, yes, I just said that.

He was GOING TO make a decision, apparently, that if TB had not scored, that he was going to allow the game to be completed (the rules would have given a win to PHI), and probably a good one at that.

In the end, though, he made NO decision.

...he informed both teams of that decision before play was begun.

Also, I don’t know why, but Maddon lied about this in his post-game interview.  A reporter specifically asked him if he knew that the game would not have been over had they not tied it up in the 6th.  He said, “I wasn’t sure.  My only concern was to score runs.”

If Selig had a meeting with both managers, which he said he did, then Maddon is a blatant liar, for some reason.

My other concern is why did they have to let ALL the fans be clueless when it looked like they were not going to complete the game?  Why did he not tell the media to tell the fans that the game was going to be completed no matter what?  That would have been the 100% decent thing to do, of for nothing else, for the value of full disclosure (in any area of life, if there is any question as to whether honesty/full disclosure is correct or not, you choose it, bar none!).

Tango, if they knew that the game was not going to be completed, pretty much, then, yes, you have to ask who and why let it start, knowing full well that it was going to be finished no matter what?  Again, the only explanation is that decisions were made by a bunch of idiots sitting around a table.

And yes, Selig lied once again. Which is the main reason I HATE him.  Anyone who lies any chance they get to look good (not admit a mistake) or for some other lame reason (like JP Riccardi claiming that he lies all the time about the health of his players or something like that), is an ***hole in my book.  My parents taught me to always tell the truth, and I take that advice very literally and seriously.  Telling the truth should be the default position and you better have a darn good reason to override that position.  And most of the time when a person THINKS that they have a good reason, they DON’T. It may be a self-serving good one, but rarely a good one for the “good of the masses.”

Selig said that during meetings with the umpires and upper management of both teams earlier in the series when rain threatened Game 3—which was delayed an hour and 31 minutes and played to its conclusion with the Phillies winning, 5-4—he made it clear that every game eventually would be played to its conclusion no matter what the weather conditions.

“Yes, as the Commissioner said we had a discussion and the judgment if there was to be a rain delay, it certainly would be the judgment of the Commissioner,” said Phillies general manager Pat Gillick. “And I think both of us, both [Rays president] Andrew [Silverman] and myself, we wanted to make sure that if this game was to be played, we wanted it to play to the conclusion.”

MGL - I have not seen an account that quotes Selig as saying that he had a meeting with both managers.  In the above quoted account (from MLB.com) his discussions seem to be limited to umpires and team management.  You are throwing around accusations of people being liars when there is still much confusion about who said what to whom and when.  I think I hate Selig as much as you do, but in this case it may have been others who failed to disseminate the decision adequately. And I disagree with you whether Selig made a decision or not.  I believe that Selig stating that he would interpret the rule on suspending a game in such a way that every game would be played a minimum of 8 and 1/2 innings was a decision in the same way that the Supreme Court’s interpretation of an imprecise law is considered a decision.