Posted on 10/29/2025 2:23:35 AM PDT by WhiteHatBobby0701
Sacrifice bunts have mostly disappeared from baseball for one simple reason: analytics.
Run millions of baseball game situations through a computer, and you'll find that with the exception of a late-inning scenario where the home team is playing for a single run, giving up an out to score a run is almost never a good trade-off.
You can theoretically put an infinite number of runners on base and score an infinite number of runs even with two outs in the ninth inning ... but once you give up one of your 27 outs, you can never get it back.
Exactly.
True. But that’s also part of the fun. Post season is a different game. Different thinking. AZ won a Series because they understood that better than the Yankees (we’ll pull the Big Unit now to bring him in relief in game 7). And the repercussions of these monster games are part of what makes playoff series a great concept. We can see it here, Dodgers are a great starting pitching team, Jays are a great hitting team. Because hitters recover faster than pitchers that game could lose the series for the Dodgers.
We’re already seeing similar “tie game” rules in high school baseball.
Arizona Canyon Athletic Association (private schools) has both the high school pitch count and tie game rule so teams do not run out of pitchers.
Source: https://azcaa.com/sports/baseball
The limit starts at 70 (5th grade), and goes to 80 (7th), 90 (8th), 95 (9th/10th), and 105 (11th/125h). Up to 8th grade, the games are six innings with a 90 minute time limit. At 9th grade, the limit goes up to 120 minutes. Past the time limit, the game is automatically a tie.
Fox would love to sell advertising to an eighth World Series game if there is a 12-inning tie.
That’s high school, they’re supposed to have other things to do. This is the pros, pros play until sunrise if necessary. Epic overtime is awesome, anybody that doesn’t see that doesn’t get sports.
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