Timed Game: "One More Inning"
 

I think this may have been discussed here in the past, but I'd like to share something we tried last weekend.

In an adult co-ed not-very-high-level-of-play one-day tournament in England last weekend, we deviated from our normal method of calling no new innings at 50 minutes and dropping a game dead at 55 minutes. Instead I asked the umpires (in agreement with managers at the start of the tourney) to announce at 40 minutes there will be one more inning played (i.e. at 40 if we were in bottom three, we'd play until end of 4 unless of course home was ahead in mid 4. If it was top 4 we'd play until 5).

I have heard that this can then minimise the stalling/delaying/stepping on home plate intentionally tactics that I for one have seen used ad nauseam at tourneys in the past. We ended up with all games finished between 50 and 60 minutes and only one ending in a tie (which would have been a tie anyway had we played 50/55).

Does anyone have any experience doing such a system and what were your feelings on it?

My old local Little League used a similar system. We used to go with no-new-inning after 1:45, but as the clock got close to that time, the home team would inevitably stall if they were ahead. We then changed it to one-more-inning after 1:35, and that disincentivized the winning team from doing anything as we approached the time mark. The only drawback with that is that it resulted in longer games on occasion, where the one-more inning may start at, say, 1:50, and we would approach 2:00 or longer before the game ended. But for the most part, it made things much more manageable, and stopped the shenanigans.

The "time plus one inning" is a great concept to avoid all the BS that coaches have turned into strategies. Must be why ASA has chosen to decline to accept such proposed rule changes over the years.

Mike, did someone hack your account? :D

Nope, have been a proponent of this method since the first time it was introduced. ;)

I'm confused. Why wouldn't coaches just play against the 40 minute limit to get the extra two innings or to prevent one extra inning?

Well, you could go to "time plus 2 innings"! :D

In a way we do. Our Rec leagues have a 5 run/inning limit until the last inning-then the limit is off. Thus we have to announce what inning is going to be the " designated last" on as the time is running out so they know the limit is off.