Relief Pitching

This question has come up again and again, ever since Adam and Eve first played Kardball with the beasts of the field, and also with the fowl, and with the creatures that creep upon the Earth: "Can the Pitcher please get some different cards, because these cards STINK!"

Baseball geeks have suggested some kind of relief pitching rule as well, to make it more like real baseball.

We have resisted introducing this kind of rule, because we feel it starts to make the game more complicated (which puts some people off), and it feels kind of arbitrary. Moreover, the rules permit a team to send a different player to the mound for every full inning (and almost every team rotates pitchers like this), which means if one guy is having an "off night," it might ruin an inning, but it doesn't destroy your whole game.

However, to address this issue, we have created a page on Kardball.com that deals with House Rules. You should be able to create a Relief Pitching rule for your own venue if you want to, right?  As long as your house rule does not conflict with an Official Rule, of course. And what might such a rule look like?

One Possibility

Once during a game, and only once, a team may switch pitchers in the middle of their half-inning on defense.  To do this, a Fielder chooses three cards from his own and/or other fielders' hands and takes over as the Pitcher.  The starting Pitcher takes his three cards and becomes a Fielder for the rest of that half-inning.  This seems baseball-like.

Other Possible Wordings

Maybe the Pitcher stays the same, but just swaps out his cards for any three cards from the Fielders' hands.

Maybe the Pitcher just dumps his three cards and draws three new cards from the draw pile. This seems poker-like.

Maybe the Pitcher should dump his cards, take over the hand from a Fielder, and the Fielder draws three new cards to pitch with.  Not bad, but leaves more to chance, and less to strategy.

Oh yeah?  Relieve This!

If you come up with a good relief pitching rule that's fun, fair and easy to enforce, please share. But if you find yourself making constraints on it like ... "rule can only be invoked in the seventh inning or later" ... or "starting pitcher has to pitch to at least three batters before being relieved" ... or "starting pitcher must buy the next beer" ... then you're overthinking it!