Any good scandal in Major League Baseball — take your pick, there have been plenty — starts with a handful of teams and/or players cheating or at least bending the rules.
MLB needs to take away control of 'rainouts' from home teams
Baseball's rule book says the home team is the "sole judge" in making a decision on postponements before a game starts. If teams keep bending the rule to their advantage, MLB should intervene.
June 30, 2021 at 7:30AM
Performance-enhancing drugs? Players didn't decide as one big group to start bulking up. The masses likely saw the impact on the few, and an epidemic was born.
Cheating to steal signs, like the Astros were famously caught doing? Surely teams saw the benefit and figured, if Houston is winning and getting away with it, why shouldn't we.
Doctoring up the baseball with more than just stuff to get a better grip? Same story.
I don't have evidence that we just witnessed another incarnation of this over the last few days, but those who follow the game even more closely than I do are in agreement: the Twins' weather postponement on Saturday at Target Field, followed by Monday's postponement of Monday's Twins game at Chicago, were both at least fishy.
Former Twins beat writer turned columnist La Velle E. Neal III used the term "flimsy evidence" to describe the Twins' "rainout" on Saturday and argued that both the Twins and two days later the White Sox used the threat of rain as a means to call of games and get a day of much-needed rest.
As I noted on Tuesday's Daily Delivery podcast, this is problematic on a number of levels. It's disrespectful to fans who show up thinking a game at least might be played. It manipulates the rules in an unfair way. And even if the concern about rain is genuine, it is part of a larger societal ill that places too much emphasis on the slim chances of bad things happening instead of trying and adjusting.
But there's also an easy fix to this particular baseball problem.
If you're wondering why teams can simply call off games, well, it's the rule. From MLB's official 2021 rule book, 4.04 under weather and field conditions:
The home team shall be the sole judge as to whether a game shall not be started because of unsuitable weather conditions or the unfit condition of the playing field, except for the second game of a conventional or split doubleheader.
That control ends as soon as lineup cards are submitted. Then it becomes the discretion of the umpires.
So how about this: Put MLB, in consultation with the umpires, in charge of whether or not to start a game. Someone at the league office can see the same radar the Twins or White Sox see. Take it out of the home team's control and eliminate these shenanigans.
Otherwise, this will keep happening with more frequency. Kevin Costner's "Crash" Davis character in "Bull Durham" got his weary minor league team a weather postponement by drunkenly and intentionally turning on sprinklers. Home teams don't even need that. They just need some images on the radar showing what might happen as a plausible reason to call off a game.
They should be able to act in good faith, but you could say the same thing about PEDs, stealing signs and doctoring up baseballs.
Sometimes the only way to stop people from bending rules is to take away the opportunity, which is what MLB should do with weather postponements.
When he was hired after the disastrous 2016 season to reshape the Twins, Derek Falvey brought a reputation for identifying and developing pitching talent. It took a while, but the pipeline we were promised is now materializing.
