Simulating The New Extra-Inning Rule

The shortened 60-game schedule starts July 23rd, but with a few new rules. On the financial side of things, player salaries will be pro-rated for the shortened season. A player contracted to earn $1,000,000 with have that salary multiplied by (60/162) — dropping his 2020 earnings to about $370,000.

On the field, the first change you'll see is that the National League will be using the Designated Hitter this year. Major League Baseball claims this is a temporary change, but I'm skeptical.

The second change only affects extra inning games, where every half-inning after the 9th will start with a runner on second base. The traditionalist in me hates this rule, but I have to admit that it will have the desired effect: the average length of an extra-inning game will drop from 11.1 innings to 10.4 innings — with roughly 2/3rds of extra-inning games ending after just one extra frame.

I used Baseball Mogul 2020 to simulate 10 seasons with this new rule and 10 seasons without it.

The length of the average game dropped from 9.18 innings to 9.11 innings. This doesn't seem like much of a difference, but the rule change significantly reduces the number of games that go deep into extra innings. A team has about 15 extra-inning games in a typical 162-game season. Without this new rule, more than 25% of extra-inning games last 12 or more innings. With this rule, only 7% reach the 12th inning — and games of 14 or more innings are virtually unheard of (less than 0.03% of the total).

All of these rules changes are now included in the current version of Baseball Mogul. If you already own Baseball Mogul 2020, you can download the newest patch here.

Otherwise, you can buy Baseball Mogul 2020 for 50% off using the coupon code "2020".