Jim Kaat: Make games 7 innings

[Steve Jeltz]

What are your thoughts on this? I don't think 7 inning games will decrease the pitching specialists and bring back four man rotations like Kaat seems to believe.

http://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/2...-improve-sport

[SamtheBravesFan]

Just no. It's a solution looking for a problem. Not to mention it would piss the union off because it would mean less pitching jobs.

[Steven Gallanter]

Jim Kaat was one of my favorite players and he is one of the few ESPN pundits I have any respect for but this is a loony idea.

[morpheus1776]

Seven innings instead of nine?? Ah no!

[abolishthedh]

While I admit this is a looney idea, the cold fact facing baseball is the challenge of making it appealing to today's generation. Fans younger than 40 or so do not want to commit to seeing a full game from beginning to end. So, they don't buy tickets in the first place, IMO. I don't like bastardizing baseball as we have known it, but we might have to.

For my entire adult life, I have heard some sports fans argue against baseball because it is too slow and long, and now getting longer apparently. It never occurred to them that a football game kicks off at noon, ends around 3:15 PM, includes 60 minutes of football, leaving 2 hours and 15 minutes of downtime. Even allowing for halftime, that leaves a lot of time with nothing happening. Vacuous logic has led to blaming baseball for design flaws and ignoring other sports' design flaws. 7 inning games are not my idea, but it might be better than smaller leagues because some cities couldn't sell tickets.

[SavoyBG]

includes 60 minutes of football,

Nowhere near. The clock runs in between plays most of the time. I think there's something like 15-20 minutes of actual action in a football game.

[SamtheBravesFan]

Nowhere near. The clock runs in between plays most of the time. I think there's something like 15-20 minutes of actual action in a football game.

Indeed. Most of the time spent in a football game is the players milling around for getting ready for a play. That's why football is good for television because they fill in the gaps of inaction with replays.