Running The Numbers on the WBC’s Extra Inning Plan
The World Baseball Classic — which starts tonight! — tweeted out a fun fact about their extra innings procedure. Your mileage may vary:
DID YOU KNOW: In extra innings, from the 13th on, teams will begin with runners on 1st & 2nd base. More fun facts at atmlb.com/12gQBbf
— 2013 WBC (@WBCBaseball) March 1, 2013
This fact’s fun factor can be debated; in a game as based in tradition as baseball, I think many would prefer as little messing with the rules as possible. But with MLB (and foreign professional leagues, most likely) worried about the health of their players, it’s in the WBC’s best interest to avoid 20-inning marathon games, as much as we may want to see them. Does their policy at least succeed in that respect?
The short answer: Yes, it should.
The problem with bases-empty extra innings — at least, in terms of producing marathon games — is roughly 70 percent of normal half-innings result in no scoring. Naturally, when the results are so tilted toward one outcome, ties are likely. Starting with runners on first and second, a wider variety of results opens up. Shutout innings are still a possibility — beware the leadoff triple play! — but the offense is presented with myriad ways of scoring runs, including many without even recording a hit or drawing a walk (a successful sacrifice bunt followed by a sacrifice fly being the most obvious).
Using Tango’s run frequency generator and the offensive statistics from the 2009 World Baseball Classic, I generated this chart of run frequencies we should expect with bases empty and with runners on first and second:
As expected, the frequency line with runners on first and second is much flatter, implying the wider variety of possible outcomes intuition suggests.
How big is the impact? I simulated 10,000 whole innings based on these run frequencies. In 5,228 of the bases empty innings, the end result was a tie (52.28 percent); just 2,119 (21.19 percent) of the innings beginning with runners on first and second resulted in a tie. Although this type of analysis doesn’t account for the change in strategy in the late innings — the home team may play for a tie in certain late inning situations — the difference here appears more than large enough to affirmatively say the WBC’s plan to avoid marathon games should work.
Is it the best option for fans? Personally, I would prefer the traditional rules, but with MLB teams and possibly other professional leagues preferring to keep their pitchers’ arms attached throughout the competition, we’ll just have to live with it.
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Reminds me of when I’d play baseball as a kid with a few friends. Will these runners be actual people or ghost runners?
Who gets on base? The next two hitters? The last two? Pinch runners? Names pulled out of a hat?
Doesn’t the WBC have enough of a credibility problem already?
According to the rules, the previous two batters.
http://web.worldbaseballclassic.com/wbc/2013/about/rules.jsp#rules_extra_innings
If the WBC used ghost runners, I would watch every game just for the spectacle. This has potential.
fuck yes, ghost runners!
*smacks whiffle ball 50 feet* “that’s a double, ghost man on second, let’s see that next pitch bro”
i am drunk.
Since ghost runners are only as fast as the actual runner, perhaps it’s time to let the designated hitter have a shot.
I would have no problem with this change being used for the MLB regular season.
I like that MLB is the only major professional North American league that hasn’t adapted their rules to accelerate breaking a tie. At the very worst, if MLB ever tried this nonsense, I would hope that they do what hockey does: only use their stupid alternate rules for the regular season, but play the game *correctly* in the post season.
This could produce some unusual batting lines. One example would be a player entering as a defensive replacement for one of the last two batters of the previous half inning and then scoring a run without having batted or pinch running.
The pitching lines will be interesting as well – does the pitcher get charged with the runs? Does the team? And most important, would these runners break up a perfect game if the team managed to carry one through twelve innings, but fail to score?
Getting on base without reaching base… there’s a pretty basic sabermetric assumption that goes out the window. They’ll have to add an entry in the Baseball Register along side “Team unearned runs charged as earned to pitcher”.
Make that “being on base” without reaching base/getting on base.
Am I the only one who viscerally hates that graph? Or do teams score half a run about 40% of the time they start a half-inning with no one on?
You’re right. A line plot when no partial runs are possible. Thick. Lines with no meaning. No error bars. Bad formatting. Baseball writers need to take more science classes/ seminars
The graph totally confused me. It seems to say exactly the opposite of what the author claims it says.
in Japan they actually have runners on 1st and 2nd in all extra innings. It’s a draw there when the score is still tied after the 12th inning.
tbh this is pretty exciting to watch.
If they are going to do that, why not just start it after the 9th and just load the bases? The range of outcomes is much different with the extra runner, and the possibility of a tie I think would have to go down, although maybe not significantly. Would the risk involved with base running outweigh the risk of playing another inning in the field and possibly another PA? And there’s no way base running risk outweighs the pitching risk for the other team. It just seems kind of incomplete with what they are aiming to accomplish. Nevertheless, it should make for some interesting situations.
Also, any changes in pitch count limitations if this happens?