Even the most buttery smooth baseball announcer can’t quite churn out the name for a new type of baserunner in Major League Baseball.

The placed runner is the official name for the runner in scoring position at second base who appears at the start of extra innings play. Before this rule no runners appeared at the start of extra innings—the equivalent of overtime in baseball.

Placed runners became the rule as part of the MLB’s effort to speed up America’s Pastime. In 2023, the placed runner rule joined other turbo baseball ideas like the bomb-defuser energy of the pitch clock and a limit on where a shortstop could stand. (Not on second base. Because the second baseman was already there.)

And while the games are brisker than ever, there is still room to polish these rules. Hearing the MLB struggle with the verbiage for the placed runner concept is troubling to me, as baseball has a storied history of delightful names. Pinch hitter? That’s a hitter that helps in a pinch. Seventh inning stretch? Literal and figurative wordplay masterpiece. Big Dumper??? 

Therefore I have a few proposed terms to help the MLB rebrand that pesky placed, ghost, automatic, designated runner in the event of that pesky extra baseball.

Juicer

You may think, “Wow! Incorporating rules like a truncating pitch clock and a bonus runner kind of makes today’s baseball feel like it’s on steroids.”

However, 

Major League Baseball continues to wrestle with its actual extensive steroid legacy. This scandal grabbed the most headlines during the memorable home run summer of 1998. But performance enhancing drugs and their stain on a pro’s legacy continue to affect MLB players today. 

Case in point: Barry Bonds failed to convince voting members of the media that he belongs in the Hall of Fame in 2024, but was cheered at the San Francisco Giants’ 2025 home opener and an Oracle Park statue is in the works. A man questioned in court about his steroid-inflated cranium in 2007 drew hours-long lines for a recent home game giveaway … of a Barry Bonds bobblehead.

So while the steroid-tainted legacy of at least one former MLB player awkwardly plays out in real life, there’s another battle where it really matters: online. 

Imagine: you hear the announcer remind you that there’s a juice runner on second base. At first, you’re confused. You check to see if you have mistakenly tuned in to the Enhanced Games. You immediately reach for your phone to search/ask Chat GPT to tell you what this means. While you are swept away by this cheeky and whimsical baserunner, your online activity sweeps away “MLB juice” search results.

If you think recapturing a corporation’s SEO after a scandal would be beneath the MLB, what about Taylor Swift or Disney? An Internet conspiracy theory claims the entire blockbuster Disney Frozen franchise was a way to obliterate the SEO for “Walt Disney frozen”, repeated queries from Disney fans to discover if that theme park guy was truly obsessed with preserving his body via cryonic freezing like Austin Powers. It may be the perfect time for the MLB to harness that sweet, sweet SEO for Juicer too. 

Parlay Runner Sponsored by DraftKings™

Have you heard about sports betting? Of course you have.

The term “parlay” means adding a variable to your bet. When you play a parlay, you get another opportunity to win. However, every variable must come true in order to win at all.

For example: you can bet on the Philadelphia Phillies to win and play a parlay for the New York Yankees to also win. The only way you make money is if both teams win.

To me, this also describes the purpose of the placed runner. The MLB desired to play the odds of delivering a merciful overtime experience by tossing another opportunity to win on top of the original opportunity (the guy with the baseball bat).

To me, the most appropriate way to celebrate the acceleration of baseball is by connecting it to the inoperable brake pedal that is the sports gambling world.

Booster Shot

The MLB website describes/blames the COVID-19 pandemic for the invention of the placed runner. Under the guise of health and safety protocols, various sports adjusted their rules in 2020. For example, international professional soccer allowed for more player substitutions and Australian football shortened the overall time of gameplay to 16 minutes per match quarter from the pre-pandemic 20 minute quarters.

In the U.S., Major League Baseball added the automatic runner at second base during extra innings play in 2020. The idea is an opportunity to score immediately would ostensibly reduce virus exposure during baseball’s overtime, which, unlike basketball or football, does not have a clock-based time limit to determine the winner. This rule carried over into the 2021 and 2022 seasons and was enshrined as an official rule in 2023.

As the possibility that a reasonable memorial to the 1.2 million American deaths to COVID-19 is laughably abstract, naming this America’s Pastime pandemic product the Booster Shot may be the only way this country manages to honor the dead.

As Major League baseball is currently rounding second into the later half of the 2025 season, the second birthday for the placed-automatic-designated runner. Therefore, I ask the league to consider a standardized, relevant or maybe even meaningful name for the person already standing on second base as they pass by.