[IBL] A rule for discussion

[Doug Palmer]

IBL’ers,



Had a series of events in this weeks BAL/POR series that bordered on the
ridiculous and turned what was an exciting, back and forth matchup into a
farce.  And I would like to throw a proposal out there for consideration.

In G2 of the series, George (POR) had an inordinate amount of bad luck with
injuries as he had 2 pitchers go down with injuries within the first 3
innings.  Not the “roll when he’s pulled” variety but rather, “roll now and
check”.  That, in and of itself, is bad luck but we’ve all been there.  The
game went back and forth and eventually went to extra innings.  During the
course of the game, I used up relievers as did George.  Although the score
was 4-4 heading into extras, there were a lot of men left of base and usage
was becoming an issue.  Then the game went 17 innings.  8 pitchers used by
POR and 5 used by BAL.  Most all of the pitchers used had eaten up their
usage so that they would be unavailable the next game.  Now, for me, you
could chalk it up to not having enough long men or maybe not carrying
enough pitchers (I carry 11) but that’s not the case with George (he also
carries 11 but had more long men it seemed).  He got screwed by the rapid
fire injuries combined with the extra innings.  I got burned by losing a
reliever in G1 due to a blowout (so I went into the rest of the series down
1 pitcher) and then burned by having 2 pitching slots occupied by starters
that couldn’t pitch due to being tired.  But that’s not the craziness!

The bull&^%$$ comes in G3.  Due to the 17 inning affair, I went into G3
with only 2 pitchers available.  George only had 4.  Would that EVER happen
in a real game?  That a team would go into a game with only 2 or 4 pitchers
capable of pitching?  Of course not.  Oh, and the kicker to all of this,
with 2 outs in the top of the 9th, BAL tied it with a grand slam which sent
the game to extras.  Yeah.  2 pitchers available and extra innings.  Better
still, POR ran out of players.  An exhausted pitcher had to play left field.
And had the game gone another inning, POR would have had to forfeit as he
had no bench players (to pitch) and would have been out of available
pitchers.  I was 1 inning away from losing my reliever and having to use an
outfielder as a pitcher.  But this was ridiculous.  It lost it’s cuteness
and became outright frustrating that the rules are such.  And not only did
it affect this series, now we’re both screwed (to varying degrees) for the
next series.

We referred to the constitution and 3.5 outlines that you can replace
injured players, but that’s only to create a legal lineup (luckily Sean was
around last night and watched our game).  NOT to address losing your
pitching staff.  What I would like to consider and would like to start a
discussion about would be to add a rule into the constitution which would
allow a team to make emergency call ups if, at the beginning of a game,
they have 4 or fewer available pitchers (to reach a situation where they‘d
have no more than 5).  It would not be mandatory, but it would give the
owner the option to make emergency call ups.  The players deactivated would
be subject to the 2 week rule, just like it is now, so an owner may not
want to bring up a total of 5, but would have that option.  But it would
prevent a situation like the one that happened last night.  It would ONLY
affect pitchers as we already have a rule (3.5 in the constitution) that
affects positional players.

What should have been a good and fun series with late inning heroics and
come from behind victories instead left a sour taste in my mouth (I won’t
speak for George here, but I didn’t get the sense that he was having fun
there, losing players left and right).

Thoughts?  Decent idea?  Or is it one of those things that happens so
infrequently, that we don’t need to bother?
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