Tuesday BP: MLB continues silliness with rules

Happy Valentine’s Day, San Francisco Giants fans. Who’s your valentine this year? Mine’s Brandon Crawford. Oh, you want him to? Sorry, already called him.

Nothing can harsh my baseball mellow right now, because Giants pitchers and catchers report in two days and I’m very excited.

But if something could harsh my mellow, it would be commissioner Rob Manfred and his silly rules.

On Monday it was reported that MLB’s Competition Committee had unanimously voted to make the extra innings rule — dubbed ‘round these parts as the “Manfred Man” — permanent.

You know the rule. The silly, silly rule which my mother, who only vaguely follows baseball, described as “crap ass” when I explained it to her. The one where from the 10th inning onward the sport is all of a sudden a different sport, and everybody gets a free runner at second base. That rule, which they claimed was implemented to speed up games during dangerous covid times (but was really just an easy excuse to introduce it and force it down our throats) is now permanent.

There’s also a new rule that limits when teams can use position players to pitch.

This is also silly. The Giants used position players to pitch a lot last year — eight times, specifically — though I’m not sure if any of those times would have been outlawed by this new rule. Either way, it’s silly. Let managers determine when and how to use their players, ya dorks. That’s kind of the entire point.