Before the start of the season, White Sox manager Rick Renteria made it known that he was not a fan of the new extra-inning rule of baseball, the one that starts every extra inning with a runner on second base.
He speaks without experiencing it. Now that he has passed it on, he has some more reason not to like it.
“Same thing,” he said after Sunday’s stinger of a loss to the Cleveland Indians, asking how he felt about the rule after seeing it cost his team a game.
The White Sox may point to several reasons why they ran out of the Guaranteed Rate Field that hurt Sunday night. They had a seven run after seven innings, Lucas Giolito divided Shane Bieber into a phenomenal pitching matchup, and it didn’t stop. They managed just six hits a night compared to 16 strikeouts, half of those coming in the last four innings of the game. And Jimmy Cordero gave up two runs in the top of the 10th, when the Indians started with just one rule-gifted runner in scoring position, not two. It is that extra that proved the difference in the final score.
But Cordero – who followed Evan Marshall and Alex Colomé, the two highest-ranked Renteria relievers now on Aaron Bummer’s injured list, from the bullpen – did not have to do much to see a tie game a two-run deficit turned. He gave up only one hit to the outside field, the other base button he gave up an infield single, on which Yoán Moncada could not make a play. One piece of hard contact, and that was enough to make it a two-run inning.
That’s baseball, of course. Whether this new extra-inning rule is or not is up for debate.
The Indians started with José Ramírez on second base, and that’s where he stayed after Francisco Lindor escaped. Carlos Santana unleashed a swerving effort from the right that the visitors’ keeper did well to tip wide. If he had made the play, it would have been an astonishing one. In fact, he might not have gotten the out, even if he could make a throw. Instead, it was running forward 90 feet away, and it scored directly on a squeeze play. Yasmani Grandal, playing first base, made a flip to James McCann at home, but Ramírez flew down the baseline. Maybe no play would have beaten him at home.
A fly out, an infield hit and a bunt. And Cordero was lost.
The inning went on with the choice of a fielder who put a runner to third, and that run came home when Mike Freeman put a base goal in the outfield, the first ball that got into the inning there. The White Sox came up with their own run in the bottom of the inning, their free runner also scoring. But a 45-minute delay in the rain caught every momentum that was aroused by the Indians trying to field and invade a field, and once the field was escaped by The Sodfather & Co., a new Cleveland pitcher completed the South Siders.
“Yes, that was a sad loss,” Giolito said. “You see that weird extra-innings thing comes into play here. And then a strange rain delay. It was a very strange last inning for sure, to say the least. It’s a shame we did not get out on top.”
Some love the zaniness of the new extra-inning rule, which is compared to how overtime works in college football, typically an entertaining setup. Sure, it does what it was meant to: put an end to games. Without the added time of the rain delay on Sunday, the 10th inning might not have been exactly fast, but it would have wound faster than 11 innings than 12 or 13. And that’s the idea.
It also seems, though, just like the penalty for pitchers. Cordero does not have to do much of anything to become saddle with a few decisive plays. For the most part, he did his job as he would. And a few more runes and an extra resident loss.
“It’s one of those things that it’s set up to do exactly what it did, I think,” Renteria said. “You have to deal with it. We just have to be efficient and effective.”
McCann went a step further in his discussion of why he did not like this rule, pointing to an often unintended consequence that could detract from the advantage of the home field directly from the baseball rulebook.
“I’m not a big fan of it,” McCann said. “The reason for me is that the game changes a lot of a lot. And it, in my opinion, actually gives the team the advantage a lot of time, because in a colorful ball game in the ninth, the home team uses them closer. The team does not use them closer in a tied game.
“So if you give the team that type of an advantage, it takes away from the whole goal of having the advantage of the home field and getting the ultimate at-bat and keeping you closer.”
Not a bad point, and that’s obviously what happened to the White Sox on Sunday night. Renteria called Colomé, his closer, by coming to the top of the ninth and maintaining a tie of 3-all, and Colomé did. The Indians, waiting for a lead before calling Brad Hand, did just that, bringing them closer only after scoring twice in the 10th. Well, Hand was not very effective – pitching in a watery environment seems tricky – but that’s something unique to this game, with McCann’s argument still applying when they speak generally.
Whether this rule will continue beyond the unusual 2020 season remains to be seen. In a season where Major League Baseball is trying to limit the amount of time players spend around other people, it’s a perfectly ridiculous move. In a normal season, maybe not so much. But baseball seemed to work to bring this to the big leagues before the COVID-19 pandemic was a thing, test drive it in the minor last season.
Renteria and McCann have both allowed themselves “old school” at times, and that was part of Renteria’s explanation for his dislike of this idea before the season began. But you don’t have to be “old school” to notice how bad it needs to happen for a game to swing in one direction or another and how microscopic the margin of error is for pitchers in such a setup.
It may not have been the only reason the White Sox lost Sunday, but it certainly did not help.
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