[youngump]

Originally Posted by Tru_in_Blu

We're having a negotiation w/ one of our leagues about game fees.

When ASA went to a 1-1 count for slow pitch games, this particular league decided that this would shorten the game too much, so they decided to play 9 inning games. At that point, we did not change the game fee.

Less than 16% of the scheduled games are played as triple-headers on 1 field which basically invokes 1:30 minute time limit per game w/ a hard stop @ 11 PM.

Half the games are double-headers with the first game not allowing a new inning after 1:45, so there is somewhat of a time limit on those. The second games of these DHs currently don't have a hard stop time.

And about a third of games scheduled are played on fields w/o lights, so are either played to completion, called due to darkness, or have the 15-run rule invoked after 7 innings.

We've maintained that the extra 2 innings have caused games to run longer (than 7 innings w/ a 0-0 count), but currently don't have hard data to support that. We'll probably monitor it for a while to get some information.

There are large disparities in the level of play within both of 2 divisions. Two decent teams or 2 poor teams may have competitive games, but upper level against bad teams still need to play to 7 innings to invoke the run rule.

Anyone out there have similar situations or experiences? Any ideas on how to balance things out?

Thanx.

I don't have any experience to offer for the problem you're trying to solve. But I wonder if you aren't trying to solve the wrong problem. You're trying to figure out if you "should" charge more for these games based on whether they are longer. But it's not obvious to me that this is the right metric. The 9 inning 1-1 count game presumably features a lot more at bats and this being slow pitch many of those involve putting the ball in play. I could imagine that even if it were shorter the umpire has to work harder to do the game. If you're pricing based on "should" and not "can" then I'd think effort would make more sense.