SLAUGHTER Rule added to Baseball Classic

[MikeO]

To make it even a bigger joke, the WORLD BASEBALL CLASSIC has added a "SLAUGHTER RULE" to the games.

Something to the effect of up by 10 runs after 4 innings, they call it a day like a softball beer league!! The reason the rule was added was because of the addition of "South Africa" to the "Classic"

 

[Ray Finkle]

Here's a link to the rules of the WBC:

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/worldclassic2006/news/story?id=2307635

The mercy or slaughter rule is if a team is up by 10 runs after the 7th inning or if a team is up by 15 runs after the 5th inning.

There are also rules on the number of pitches a pitcher can throw to try and avoid injuries. Anyway check out the link on all the rules.

 

[MikeO]

This "classic" is a joke.

They need to move these games to NOVEMBER and let the players play them for real!

Also, how can Italy have a team with no real Italians on it??? They are just Italian-Americans on the Italy team! Makes no sense!

 

[Ray Finkle]

Agreed. Even November is a bad time for the classic. Most players, especially pitchers have been shut down for at least a month to 2 months and it would be very difficult for them to just jump right into pitching normally again.

The best time would be July/August however that would interfere with the regular season and everyone would go BS about the season being stopped for a WC series especially since teams will be in the middle of the playoff race.

I will be shocked if the WBC continues past 2009, with major league players.

 

[Prime Time]

World Baseball Classic is a joke. Wanna-be Olympics.

 

[RWhitney014]

They were hoping for the WBC to be the World Cup of baseball, but there is always that huge problem of the MLB being such a powerful and spanning league. Still, we have to remember that not just the U.S. has the problem. Japan and Korea both have summer leagues, and all the Latin/Caribbean countries have winter leagues. It's just not going to work out well schedule-wise until baseball becomes a non-everyday sport and until players actually play in the games. It's a catch-22...you need tradition for it to be a big deal, but players won't play because it's meaningless and has no tradition.

I was all for the idea at first...now I'm just hoping no Marlin gets hurt.

 

[Prime Time]

They were hoping for the WBC to be the World Cup of baseball, but there is always that huge problem of the MLB being such a powerful and spanning league. Still, we have to remember that not just the U.S. has the problem. Japan and Korea both have summer leagues, and all the Latin/Caribbean countries have winter leagues. It's just not going to work out well schedule-wise until baseball becomes a non-everyday sport and until players actually play in the games. It's a catch-22...you need tradition for it to be a big deal, but players won't play because it's meaningless and has no tradition.

I was all for the idea at first...now I'm just hoping no Marlin gets hurt.

Which Marlins are participatin'? Damn I really haven't read much into this WBC..

 

[RWhitney014]

Which Marlins are participatin'? Damn I really haven't read much into this WBC..

Cabrera, Willis, Petit, I think. Although Petit was considering pulling out.

 

[Prime Time]

I am expectin' Cabs to shine...more so then Willis.

 

[phunwin]

This "classic" is a joke.

They need to move these games to NOVEMBER and let the players play them for real!

Also, how can Italy have a team with no real Italians on it??? They are just Italian-Americans on the Italy team! Makes no sense!

A lot of international competitions have liberal rules about heritage and who can play for the team. The World Cup is like that; I remember one team (Jamaica, maybe?) was searching the globe for guys who had national heritage but who were born and grew up in other countries.

Dumb as it is, without that rule, the Classic would effectively be restricted to the USA, Canada, DR, Japan, S. Korea, Mexico, Venezuela, Cuba, and Puerto Rico; no one else would have the natural-born talent to field a competitive squad. I'm not against limiting it to those countries, mind you (they appear to be the only ones that give a damn about baseball), but if the goal is a global competition, you need to make allowances like that.