The Cheater’s Guide to Baseball Blog

In The Cheater’s Guide to Baseball I have a chapter on “Delaying the Game for Fun and Profit” and today we got to see a real-life example. In Cleveland, conditions were terrible (see these pictures) and the game was first delayed 57 minutes because of the conditions. Then during the game, there were delays of 22 minutes, 17 minutes, and a whole hour and seventeen minutes.

Then, potentially one pitch away from an official game umpire Rick Reed called off the game at 8:41.

Here’s how this ties into the game: the Indians were ahead 4-0, but Paul Byrd had walked the bases loaded. Facing Jose Lopez, he was up 1-2 in the count. All he needed was the out.

Mariner manager Hargrove went out to complain about the conditions. From the Seattle Times blog “Hargrove said plate umpire Alfonso Marquez wasn’t listening to Jose Lopez when the latter complained he couldn’t see.” He argued with the umps as conditions got still worse, and the game was called. Never happened. He was down 4-0 and likely to lose the game, and now, he gets a fresh shot at it. The errors his players committed are wiped off the book.

Now, Hargrove couldn’t have known that arguing would work, but it’s also clear that in that situation, there’s no reason not to: an out and he loses. If he gets tossed and the game forfeited to the Indians, he loses. If he tries and it works, though, he’s saved the team a loss. I’m sure he seized on the slightest pretense to go out and make his argument, and made it as long as he could.

In the book, I argue that any rule short of always suspending will encourage this sort of thing. If there’s such a huge incentive for a team to stall and have a game called, of course they’re going to try it. If they’re just going to restart this game tomorrow, doesn’t it make more sense to start it from the point it was stopped?

There’s obviously a logistical problem - some suspended games are extremely hard to make up, and no solution for those cases is easy. No one wants to see a game that’s meaningful for one team played after game 162 in September, with the other side sending a squad of not-yets and never-beens from the minors, potentially changing a pennant race. But then, how is that significantly different than today, where the Indians might lose tomorrow a game they should have won today, if the end of the season makes that game meaningful in the AL Central standings? Given the quality of teams in that division, it’s entirely possible the finish could be that tight.

If the Indians lose the restart and that keeps them out of the playoffs, will anyone remember today, when Hargrove came out to complain and won his team a new start? Will it finally get us some rules reform on these rules?