Atlanta Braves 2 Out Magic: Could that Dynamic Part of Baseball Change?

Here is how it works:

"“When the game is 0-0 or tied, baseball is played exactly as it is today—three outs per side. But when the at-bat club has or takes a lead, it gets two outs instead of three. For example: Your team is in a scoreless contest. Then your slugger hits a home run to go up 1-0. Now your inning ends at two outs. Not three. As long as you keep a lead, your at-bat innings are two outs. That’s it. Tie game, three outs a side. Get the lead, play with two outs. If you take the lead with two outs, the lead stays, but the inning ends.” – Jason Gay, Wall Street Journal"

Hey, while we’re at it, can we go ahead and start hitters with a 1-1 count and you’re out on a second fouled ball? Oh, and if you hit more than 2 homers in a game, it’s an out for the team.

What’s that you say? You don’t have any more position players? Oh, that’s too bad. Guess you’ll have to take an out when that spot comes up in the order.

Look, this isn’t a bash on Gay here, he actually writes a nice piece, these aren’t his ideas, after all. However, he does seems to champion it though. He even goes as far to include sabermetric-like evidence from the two academics. Apparently studies were done on over 50 years of baseball encompassing entire seasons, even post-seasons.

Uh, that’s a lot of research.

According to that research, the average margin of victory went “from 3.21 runs to 2.15 runs”. What about time shaved off of games? They covered that too.

"Meanwhile, there was a dramatic reduction in the length of game. Because fewer outs are necessary, outs-per-nine-innings dropped from 52.5 to 45.9—a drop that Brams and Isaksen believe shaves 24 minutes off a nine-inning baseball game."

No kidding? Really, that’s fascinating. No, seriously, Captain Obvious:  who would have thought that if YOU ELIMINATE OUTS YOU WOULD DROP IN OUTS-PER-NINE YOU’LL SAVE TIME!!!

Mind-boggling.

This line really struck a chord with me, though.

"The Baseball Haves were not so advantaged over the Have-Nots."

The baseball … WHAT?!

OK. Wait just a galldurn minute here. Are we seriously taking the “everyone gets a trophy” stance here? Did we just seriously crossover to the “this isn’t fair” territory? So what, the losing team is losing so we’re going to pity them? They’re going to cry and take their ball and go home to cry to mommy? This is BASEBALL!

I was raised constantly being told “Tough! Life isn’t fair, so get over it”. I know it sounds horribly cliche, and it is, but it’s also true. If you didn’t like something, then DANGIT, you did something about it. If you were losing, you played better. You’re supposed to learn from losing.

OK. I think I’m done with this part of the rant. Maybe …