ties are so un-baseball. There's no limit on how long you play. At least the Manfred Man gives both sides a shot at scoring, preserving the balance of an inning, and you play until a win. The Manfred Man is an offense boost, but there's been lots of offense boosts like the DH and tinkering with zone and the mound.
Artificially-produced base runners may be more “un-baseball“ then just admitting in the modern game during the sport’s regular season of unparalleled length that there is going to be a limit to play based on preservation of assets as it were. Games get stopped because of the weather and curfew plenty of times without those in attendance seeing a winner that night.
They could call it in the 12th during the regular season without anyone who doesn’t deserve to be on base be there. Not that I’m advocating for that particularly, but in terms of the realm of “un-baseball”, they don’t seem to actively trample on the long-established concept of the game versus just stopping play.
If an extra runner is going to trade on the concept of being exciting while fundamentally changing the game, go all the way and put a trained – – or untrained – – kangaroo on second base. That would get on social media and keep people interested in the game like nobody’s business. My personal preference to make this the most watched sport is have each team try to ride a bull out of the ballpark cart pen before the tenth inning. Those that stay on for eight seconds get to finish the game.
