(AUDACY) Former American League Cy Young award winner CC Sabathia recently went on an expletive-laced rant on the most recent episode of his podcast regarding White Sox manager Tony La Russa's failure to support rookie slugger Yermin Mercedes after he homered on a 3-0 pitch late in a blowout win against the Twins.
Sabathia, who was among those who believe La Russa has handled the situation poorly, did make an interesting, perhaps half-hearted suggestion in his rant.
"If you're going to put a f****** position player in there to pitch, guess what?" Sabathia said. "If he's gonna lob s*** over the plate, we gon' f****** tee off. Put a 10-run rule up there cuz'. If ya'll don't wanna see people get embarrassed and you don't wanna see position players pitch and people swing on 3-0 counts and all that s***, then make it a 10-run rule. Then the f****** game would be over and you don't have these stupid ass unwritten rules."
On Monday, Mercedes homered off Twins catcher/infielder Willians Astudillo, who was pitching as his team trailed 15-4 in the ninth inning. Mercedes swung on a 3-0 pitch that was lobbed at 47 mph, hitting a 429-foot home run.
La Russa, 76, referred to the decision by Mercedes as "a big mistake," explaining that the decision to swing was unsportsmanlike and disrespected the game. On Tuesday, Mercedes had a ball thrown behind him by Twins reliever Tyler Duffey, a development that La Russa didn't have an issue with, saying "it wasn't obvious" that he was attempting to hit or scare Mercedes. The umpires disagreed, as Duffey was ejected.
But this raises a larger issue: When, if ever, should a team take its foot off the gas?
Mercedes is a 28-year-old rookie who leads MLB with a .358 batting average entering play Friday and is a legitimate All-Star candidate. When you add in that he can become a free agent after the season, Mercedes should be as motivated as ever not to give a single at-bat away.
But even if it had been someone more accomplished, such as White Sox star shortstop Tim Anderson, should he have had to take a meatball that would allow him to pad his stats? And if that expectation is made for the team that's ahead, does the one who is behind also have to stop trying offensively? After all, the Twins added their fourth run on an RBI single in the bottom of the eighth.
One solution would be to put in a rule that if you're down by 10 or more runs after seven innings, the game ends. That may feel a bit like Little League, but so does telling players that they can't attempt to pad their stats late in blowouts because it might hurt the feelings of their opponents.
If you left it up to a team to decide whether to forfeit after seven innings, most would never give up. That would create a field day for sports talk radio. But if teams know that the game will automatically end if they are down by 10 runs or more after seven innings, there would be some finality to it.
There will be those who suggest a mercy rule is anti-competitive and that they'd like to see the game go nine innings for the off chance that trailing team makes a comeback. The reality, though, is that the last time a team erased a 10-run deficit or larger was in June 2016, when the Seattle Mariners came back from down 12-2 to defeat the San Diego Padres, 16-13. It feels safe to assume that less than 1% of teams that go down by 10 runs come back and win the game. Most that do have cut the deficit to below 10 runs by the end of the seventh inning.
From here, there's a novelty to seeing position players pitch. If the game's going to be ugly, might as well make it ridiculous. But as long as the game goes on, you can't expect the team batting to stop trying, especially if you've kind of already turned the game into a joke by having a non-pitcher on the mound.
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