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American Legion Rule Changes


lawump
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In addition to making some tweaks to the pitch-count rule and minimum days of rest for pitchers, the American Legion has announced that it is going to 7-inning games (for Senior Legion...junio legion already had 7-inning games) beginning in 2018.  

This is kind of a historic moment...as far as I know...as Legion was the last national youth baseball entity to holdout and maintain the traditional 9-inning game length.  

To be honest, I knew this was coming.  When rain forced officials to shorten most games in the 2017 World Series this past August to 7-innings, the buzz was floating through the Legion officials about, "how much better the pace of play was," and "how much easier it was to manage the pitch count restrictions," etc.  I think once the non-baseball Legionnaires saw for themselves that the "their game" would not be ruined by 7-inning games (but, in fact, made better), I knew it was only a matter of time before they changed this rule. 

On a personal note, I can now add to my resume that I umpired the very last regularly scheduled 9-inning game in 92-year history of Legion baseball.

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1 hour ago, lawump said:

 

On a personal note, I can now add to my resume that I umpired the very last regularly scheduled 9-inning game in 92-year history of Legion baseball.

That actually is a kind of cool designation...

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9 hours ago, lawump said:

On a personal note, I can now add to my resume that I umpired the very last regularly scheduled 9-inning game in 92-year history of Legion baseball.

And from that recent realistic tournament photograph that was finally provided, you were obviously in the first regularly scheduled 9-inning game in the 92-year history of Legion baseball. Well you know what they say, 92 is the new 50.

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I also have some mixed feelings about the 7 inning games.  It is nice to have a 9 inning game with two good teams playing - a 7 inning game can feel pretty short and a mistake or two can really bury you.  On the other hand, trying to run a tournament where you're playing four 9 inning games in one day can get long, especially if there are any delays whatsoever.  Those loser-out games between teams with no pitching left can be pretty brutal having to go 9 innings as well.  Overall I think the change is a good one.  It will also allow some of the teams from smaller towns to have a little more of a chance as the pitching demands won't be quite so great.  Having to play four or five 9 inning games in 4 or 5 days really wears down a pitching staff.  

With the pitch count, am I right that if you throw more than 80 pitches on a Wednesday you can't throw at all until Monday?  I'm all for protecting arms but that seems a little much to me.  

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On 10/13/2017 at 8:37 AM, noumpere said:

"The game is so much better when we only have to see lawump for seven innings."  ;)

But, since he seems like a nice guy of outstanding character, if he can keep the POG like he did in game 6 of the tournament, I would gladly be willing to watch him a full 9 innings all year long.

Now, let's see when they go to 5 inning games somewhere, which would give pitchers a great chance to get complete game victories not only in Legion, but in many more organizations that play baseball.

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  • 2 months later...

As I said earlier, we've played seven innings in league play for as long as I can recall--thankfully! Even with seven inning games, pitch counts and rest days create havoc, as no one has enough quality (or even semi-quality) pitching when the schedule backs up because of weather or other postponements. Nine innings would only exacerbate the problem.

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12 hours ago, LRZ said:

As I said earlier, we've played seven innings in league play for as long as I can recall--thankfully! Even with seven inning games, pitch counts and rest days create havoc, as no one has enough quality (or even semi-quality) pitching when the schedule backs up because of weather or other postponements. Nine innings would only exacerbate the problem.

Would opening up roster sizes to 20-25 help? 

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9 hours ago, Matt said:

I'd be willing to bet that if there are arms out there that want to play, they're already on the roster.

I know when I coached Legion... with 18 guys, if you couldn’t play another position it was difficult for me to keep a P.O. 

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