SBN Reacts: Fans don’t approve of MLB’s new extra-inning rules

Welcome to SB Nation Reacts (formerly known as SB Nation Fanpulse), a survey of fans across MLB. Each week, we send 30 polls to plugged in fans from each team. Royals fans, sign up HERE to join SBN Reacts.

This has been a unique and challenging season, and baseball has been forced to adapt to extenuating circumstances. One of those changes has been a new extra inning rule to keep games from going on too long and depleting their pitching staffs. For just this year, any game that goes into extra innings will have each inning begin with an automatic runner at second base. The Royals took advantage of this rule by scoring in the top of the tenth on a sacrifice bunt and sacrifice fly to beat the Indians a few weeks ago.

However, a majority of our SBN Reacts respondents don’t like the new rule, with only 41 percent approving of it.

Many of those that like the rule change don’t want to see it extended beyond this season though, with only 27 percent saying they want to see the rule here to stay.

Another rule change to protecting pitching staffs is to limit double-headers to two seven-inning games, the way college baseball operates. Only 42 percent of SBN Reacts respondents approve of this rule.

We also asked fans how many games are needed for playoff contention.

Remember, you can sign up to participate in SBN Reacts surveys at this link! Surveys will go out each week and only take a few minutes to complete. Check back next week for more SBN Reacts results!