Hence, the conventional wisdom in baseball: "Play for the tie at home and the win on the road." If the visiting team comes to bat in the top of the ninth inning trailing by a run, they should play out the inning in a way that maximizes their odds of scoring more than one run -- since they may never get a chance to bat again if they tie the game and the home teams wins the game in the bottom of the inning. Conversely ... If the home team comes to bat in the bottom of the ninth inning trailing by a run, they should play out the inning in a way that maximizes their odds of scoring that one run even if it means sacrificing their odds of scoring more than one run. They can afford to play it safe this way because if they tie the game they always have the comfort of knowing that they'll bat again in extra innings.
It's interesting how these sports work. From what I can tell, baseball and hockey are the only major sports where the home team has an advantage like this written into the rules of the game. In hockey, the home team always has the "last change" of players on the ice for every faceoff.
We agree (within the limits of the fact that I know next to nothing about hockey), but altho an edge for the home team which is an ineluctable part of the game (home team bats last, somebody has to bat last) is OK, it does seem like there ought to be a way to ameliorate the pinch hitter issue.But if you allowed the visiting pitcher to pitch the bottom of the inning in which he had been pinch hit for, then if he didn’t finish the inning whoever replaced him would be the one who was, retroactively, pinch hit for. But, IMHO that might work. Looks to me like it would be better than the current NL system - and, IMHO, better than the AL system as well.
It is a corruption of the spirit of the rules that there should be players whose ability or inability to bat doesn’t matter, and equally so that there should be players whose ability or inability to play defense doesn’t matter.