We’re in phase one of Spring Training, the point from when the players report to camp up until the games begin.

It has to be a difficult period for team beat writers.

There really isn’t whole lot going on to report about, other than occasionally having to react to news such as the St Louis Cardinals’ young pitcher Alex Reyes requiring Tommy John elbow surgery.

Most of the time, the word count that needs to be fulfilled drives the reporters around different players seeking a story or two about hopes for the season ahead, littered with stories of new players getting used to their new teammates, new pitches being added to a hurler’s arsenal, or a new batting stance that a hitter helps to propel baseballs, and their playing stock, to new heights.

The Oakland A’s are my chosen team and Jane Lee, the MLB.com A’s reporter, has ticked most of the boxes over the past few days with stories on Jesse Hahn “hoping to find early-2015 form”, pitching prospect A.J. Puk resurrecting his curveball and outfielder Rajai Davis’s return to the Green and Gold.

Long gone are the days, captured in Roger Kahn’s wonderful ‘Boys of Summer’, when beat writers could file a few stories and then have a drink with some of the players.

Nowadays, social media is as much a part of the job as writing the main articles. I doubt many people are interested in watching shaky 30-second footage of pitchers throwing in the bullpen, but all the beat writers post them all the same. It proves that pitchers are indeed in Arizona/Florida, that the respective beat writer is there too and the world is still turning. That’s essentially social media in a nutshell. I don’t know if there is a Twitter account that just has someone posting ‘still alive’ every five minutes, but there probably should be.

Anyway, the main news at this time of year centres around injuries. Alongside the Reyes blow, the key points so far have been:

Adrian Beltre has a strained left calf muscle so will miss the opening round of the World Baseball Classic for the Dominican Republic. Meanwhile Adrian Gonzalez is dealing with inflammation in his right elbow and it seems likely that Mexico’s lead player will have to sit out the Classic.

The Washington National’s Max Scherzer has casted doubt on his availability for Opening Day due to a finger injury, whilst another predicted Opening Day starter, the Baltimore Orioles’ Chris Tillman, will definitely miss that assignment as his ongoing recovery from a shoulder injury means he will have a delayed start to the regular season.

The Atlanta Braves’s Sean Rodriguez is likely out for the season having just undergone shoulder surgery after being involved in a car accident.

However, the early contender for most bizarre injury of 2017 has come from Kansas City’s relief pitcher Brian Flynn who will be out for eight weeks having suffered “a broken rib and three minor vertebrae fractures in his back” after falling through a barn roof. The Baseball Prospectus 2017 profile on Flynn notes that “walks continue to be an issue” for him, making it tempting to suggest he couldn’t hit a barn door with a baseball, but can hit a barn roof with his rear end.

Rob Manfred has shown a willingness to challenge baseball orthodoxy since becoming MLB Commissioner in January 2015.

He has made improving the pace of play a central theme during his two years in the job, to mixed results so far, and over the past week ESPN’s Jayson Stark has reported that Manfred has suggested changes to the strike zone as well as making the intentional walk an automatic award, rather than requiring the pitcher to throw four deliberate balls.

Those two ideas are currently being considered by the Players’ Union, with the intentional walk proposal much more likely to be implemented than the strike zone change; however one further idea is going to be trialled in 2017 that may be a step too far for baseball enthusiasts.

Yahoo! Sports’ Jeff Passan reported this week that MLB are planning to test a new extra-innings rule in the lowest levels of the Minor Leagues this season. This will involve placing runners (or a single runner – the full details are still to be announced) on bases when a game hits extra innings as a way to draw games to an early conclusion. Whilst Joe Torre, MLB’s Chief Baseball Officer, is leading the trial, it seems likely that this is led by Manfred’s ‘pace of play’ mantra and a wider effort to shorten game times.

The extra inning rule is already used in international tournaments. Here there are logical reasons why greatly reducing the chances of a game running 12-13 innings plus can be seen as more necessary. Fields will often be used for multiple games in a day and, with small grounds crews and operational staff compared to Major League set-ups, the impact on the event of a game going deep into extra innings  – let alone the impact on players – is something that is best to avoid.

However, even here there’s an argument that the logistical benefits don’t outweigh the detrimental effect the rule has on the sporting contest. Great Britain lost an extra innings game against Sweden in last year’s European Baseball Championship after they had battled back from a 5-0 deficit. Seeing a tight contest decided by the lottery of runners being placed at first and second base didn’t feel right and I’d think the same if GB had got the better end of the deal on that occasion.

In the Major Leagues, there are enough resources (from players to grounds crew) to absorb the genuine impact of long games. Although us in the UK enjoy a night-game going 5-plus hours and giving us some #BonusBreakfastBaseball, those working at the stadium have every right to be less than delighted by the novelty of a 16-inning game.

Yet that is how the game has always been played. If you’ve already battled through nine innings, a game shouldn’t then be decided by such artificial means.

The real head-scratcher with the plan is why it is deemed necessary. A quick check (i.e. don’t treat the number as complete gospel) on Baseball-Reference Play Index shows there were 55 MLB games that went 12 innings or more in 2016.

The Cleveland Indians and Toronto Blue Jays combined for the longest game of the season. It was a 19-inning contest that was deadlocked at 1-1 from the bottom of the 6th inning until the long scoring drought was ended by Carlos Santana launching a home run off infielder, and very temporary pitcher, Darwin Barney in the top of the nineteenth inning as the Tribe won 2-1.

The game lasted 6 hours 13 minutes.  If that was happening regularly, with games being decided by whose position players could pitch better than the other team’s, then considering changes would be more understandable.

But do we really want to change one of the most fundamental parts of baseball – that there are no draws and you keep playing in the same way until one team wins – just to mess around with barely two percent of games that go 12 innings or longer (based on 2016)?

It seems that they are looking to tackle a problem that isn’t really there.