The World Baseball Classic tiebreaker rules are dumb, just ask Mexico and Venezuela

Runs allowed per defensive inning shouldn't be used instead of run differential

Through the first round of pool play in the World Baseball Classic (full schedule, scores, standings), we ended up with one tiebreaker and it comes in controversial fashion. Mexico was eliminated after having a worse runs scored per defensive inning than Venezuela and Italy. Here’s how they stack up. 

Venezuela: 1-2 record, 20 runs scored, 30 runs allowed, 27 defensive innings played 
Italy: 1-2 record, 23 runs scored, 29 runs allowed, 28 innings played
Mexico: 1-2 record, 24 runs scored, 28 runs allowed, 25 defensive innings played 

Only games against each other are used, so we can throw out all the Puerto Rico innings. Still, the crux of the matter here happened in the Mexico-Italy game. 

Mexico’s defensive innings looks low because against Italy they gave up five runs for a walkoff loss and didn’t finish a defensive inning. They did not record an out in that inning. The five runs counted, but the inning does not. That skewed the statistic and was the cause of Mexico to file a protest. 

Mexico were the hosts for first-round play, but did not come away happy with the result.  Getty Images

It was denied and I get it. It’s not technically a defensive inning until three outs are recorded but the runs do count because, well, they counted in the game. 

We could argue until we’re blue in the face about this. Mexico shouldn’t have blown that game, first of all. Secondly, they shouldn’t have given up so many runs to Venezuela Sunday night once they had the lead. We can say those things, sure, or we can say that counting those runs but not the inning isn’t fair. After all, if Mexico doesn’t get credit for playing defense in the inning, how should it be dinged for allowing the runs? 

The bottom line, though, is that this tiebreaker is really dumb. 

Why does it have to be complicated? Just make the first tiebreaker run differential. After all, the true measure of what team played better is how many runs it scored vs. how many it allowed. Mexico only scored four fewer runs than it allowed, Italy was negative-six while Venezuela was negative-10. Venezuela got trucked by Puerto Rico so badly that it was mercy-ruled -- which, it could be argued, helped on the runs per inning calculation. 

Under run differential, you don’t have scenarios where making a mockery of the game would help one’s cause. 

For example, Mexico should have allowed Venezuela to score twice on Sunday night and send the game to extra innings. Then the Mexico attempt would be to hold Venezuela to zero runs while scoring at least three of their own, in order to move the runs-per-defensive-inning attempt. Things could get ridiculous here with teams calculating out how many runs they can allow in order to move to extras and then how long they’d need to prolong the game with zeroes to get the figure back to a lower number. 

You would never get that in run differential, because it’s never good to allow runs. Isn’t that where we need to be? Scoring runs is good, giving up runs is bad. It doesn’t matter how or when. Just score and don’t allow. Period. 

Many think the World Baseball Classic is dumb. I don’t, but the tiebreaker rule is entirely dumb and it just jobbed Mexico.