That's a fair take Bruce. Maybe you can plant the bug somewhere.
And you are entitled to that opinion, but as a visitor if you have an opportunity to walk a game off in your opponent’s home stadium why would you turn that opportunity down? Now granted it probably shouldn’t come to that, but sometimes that can be the difference in a win and a loss. The way things are right now, the only way to get a walk-off win is to be the home team.
Yes but baseball is also meant to be about series and multiple games against the same opponent. I understand the desire to play more teams, but that brings things like luck of the draw in on the equation. I am as much of a traditionalist as anyone but home and home series is a tradition that the SEC has lost.
Yeah, before we start tweaking the game, I think there's improvements we could make to the format. It would involve college and MLB working together to have everything aligned maybe with the 4th and/or All-Star Weekend. I agree, total void of sports in July and August, you literally have MLB dog days and golf.
Ha, I'll have to disagree with you here, at least with pitching. There's no development going on in college. Literally all the meaningful reps take place in the summer leagues because that's their purpose - not just to win games. Similar to MiLB. So they let guys get their feet wet and work through issues. And dudes on the bench in college also get reps.
No. The regular season should end in close proximity to the semester. People graduate. Students go home. Crowds disappear. Postseason games are a different story.
Why is batting second an advantage? Why is being able to “walk off” an advantage?
It has nothing to do with feeling warm and fuzzy. It has to do with introducing just a tiny modicum of equity into a league that, due to expansion, already has significant inequity in schedule difficulty. The NCAA already does this in the super-regional format which is a best of three series with one team playing on the road and one at home. The only logic for not doing this is 'tradition'. Well, there are many traditional rules in baseball that have been changed such as the automatic walk, mercy rule, pitch clock, designated hitter, metal bats, safety base, and the list could go on.
Ever notice in OT in college football the team that wins the toss always chooses to play defense first? Same concept.
Knowing what you have to get to win is helpful. Strategy is different for the home team with that knowledge.
College Baseball needs the Big Ten to grow into the 2nd best conference and have programs like Ohio State and Michigan caring and spending money like most SEC schools do. Pushing the season back a few weeks is a small compromise to make to help facilitate that.
The downside to home and home is you never played 5 of the other 9 teams in the conference. Ever. If you did home-and-home now, you'd miss 10 teams completely. Meaning the luck of the draw would be MUCH bigger than it is with the current scheduling format. I do think for baseball, and maybe for most if not all sports, the SEC should go back to divisions. In baseball you'd play the other 7 in your division + 3 in the other division on a rotating basis.
I agree about the downside and understand why it is like it is. I am just wondering if you give the visiting team one "home" game, like in the super regionals already, would that give a tiny bit towards evening the advantages out? Both teams get the the home strategy for at least the first two games.
I would argue that the 53% metric proves it’s of no benefit. I think psychology could easily account for that small increment, suggesting statistics imply there’s no measurable benefit to batting last.
a .530 winning percentage is 29-26 in 55 games. Where 1 game can be the difference, 53% is significant.
Sure. My point is that that could be due to fans and field familiarity, not batting last. We’d have to look at data for neutral site games.
