Far East-DODS
 

Recently, myself and several other umpires had the pleasure to take part in the Far East baseball tourney. Which is the final high school conference championship for the military base schools here in Japan and Korea. There were some great plays and some not so great plays, however IMHO, they did something rather unorthodox during the round robin seeding play. The tourney officials required the teams to play the bottom half of the final inning regardless that the home team was already winning. Their reasoning was bc of the tie-breaker, offensive runs scored, and that each team needed/deserved the same number of at bats.

I've been involved with baseball, playing, coaching, or umping, for +25 years and I was the least expierenced/youngest. None of us could recall I tourney where they did this, nor could we talk them out of playing the last half inning.

Has anyone else come across this before? And how did you handle it?

Sounds hokey to me. Little League uses runs allowed as a criterion for tie-breaking purposes during tournament play. But they don't require teams to play the full six or seven innings to burden the visiting team to continue playing a game they've already lost.

In your tournament, if weather caused a game to end early but a winner could be determined, did they require the teams to continue playing later to finish out the full seven innings?

Strange. Were you made aware of the policy before you signed on to work the games?

LL uses runs allowed per defensive inning played to adjust for that.

There's no perfect answer of course and even the LL adjustment Rich mentions can lead to some (attempted) "gaming" of the system

One can imagine the defensive effort put forth in the bottom of the 9th by a team that has already been eliminated in the tournament....
Dive for that ball? I don't think so.
Johnny just walked in 4 runs? Let's just leave him out there.
Hustle to keep that gapper from rolling to the wall? Yeah right.

Someone need to read "the game is over when..."

Also, if every team has played as home team the same number of times, they have all had the same opportunity as each other.

It was hokey. And I did not know about this rule beforehand. However, it was for the 5 - division 2 schools here in Japan. The round robin play only consisted of 4 innings of play, semi finals 5, and final game 7. They shortened the game lengths to save on pitching, because quite frankly, each team maybe had 1 JV level pitcher and a couple had a varsity level pitcher as well. The tourney was great and a lot of fun. I'm glad I was able to help out and will def return. As I said, these are small military base high schools here in the Far East and we were able to forget about the completely goofy offensive runs tie breaker rule. Not to mention the their reasoning for the ORTB contradicted shortening the games to save on pitching. Lol. Hopefully, next year we are able to talk them out of it.

MLB does it in the RBI tournaments.

They don't. (Feel free to check their box scores on a game where the home team won - visiting pitchers pitched 4 innings instead of 5 ... example: http://www.gamechanger.io/game-520a2...src=scoreboard )

How? If a team doesn't play defense for an inning, it's not counted for or against them.

Three pool games. team A gives up 3 runs in games 1 and 2 (6 innings each).

Knows it needs to get runs / inning to .33 to make the tournament part.

Ahead 9-0 going into bottom of 5. If they score a run, the game is over and runs / inning is 6/17 which is too high. So, they intentionally make an out so they can play the 6th and try to hold the other team scoreless.

Heck, maybe Team B does NOT want team A in the tournament, so they intentionally give up a run.

There is no easy method for running tournaments IF you guarentee team A a certain number of games.

yeah I have done tournaments in which the HT even if leading would bat PROVIDED there was enough time left.

You didn't say if there were time limits.

The best method is single elimination similiar to HS sectionals / states. You keep advancing as long as you win. Yeah their is still some luck involved by which team you draw but then you do not have to worry about runs scored or given up just winning each game even if it was shortened due to the Mercy rule or weather.

Pete Booth

I'm not too bothered about that, but that is a possible gaming....

Let me clarify. Having umpired two WS and three regionals, I can tell you they do in conjunction with the time limit. If it is the last scheduled inning, they treat it like (almost) every other ruleset. If an inning hits the time limit, it always has to be played out, regardless if the home team is winning.