[culturestate]

> in order for a baseball game to be considered valid, both teams must play 5 innings ... if one team is behind and knows there's a high chance of rain later in the day, the pitcher can begin drawing out the length of innings by intentionally giving up hits.

There are two bigger strategic wrinkles here:

1. Both teams only need to complete five innings (which is stipulated in the rulebook as making 15 outs, because baseball) if the visitors have the lead. If the home team has the lead after the visitors make 15 outs, then it's considered a complete game with only 4.5 innings played.

2. The batter can refuse to take first base, even in the event of a walk, and be called out instead. In the past you could game this, but with the pitch clock and limits on pitcher substitutions and mound visits, there's now a hard upper bound on how long an inning could be intentionally drawn out.

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I'm actually more interested in how the teams might go about this without the umpires noticing, because the umpire crew chief has complete authority over the game. Once they realize what's happening they can just tell both teams to knock it off and, at their own discretion, suspend the game anyway.