when do you stop playing baseball?

[greymule]

Six runs is not such a lead that you don't stop trying however you can to score. Twelve, fifteen runs—another story.

However, when you're way ahead, it is not rolling up the score simply to keep getting hits. It's bush to steal, though—to use strategic gambles to try to push more runs across.

In MLB, if a team had a 10-run lead, no one would consider it running up the score if somebody hit a home run to make it 11. But even in the dog-eat-dog pros, if a team tried a double steal to push another run across, somebody's going to be thrown at the next inning.

To use a football analogy, if you put in your subs and your guy runs 80 yards for a touchdown while you're playing conservative ball, that's not running up the score. Throwing long bombs is different.