Major League Baseball will begin testing an extra-innings rule change in the minor leagues this season, reports Yahoo! Sports Jeff Passan.

Aligning with international baseball rules, each team will begin extra innings with a runner on second base. The MLB will test the rule out in the Gulf Coast and Arizona Leagues, both rookie-level leagues, this summer.

“Let’s see what it looks like,” Joe Torre, MLB’s Chief Baseball Officer, told Passan. “It’s not fun to watch when you go through your whole pitching staff and wind up bringing a utility infielder in to pitch. As much as it’s nice to talk about being at an 18-inning game, it takes time. It’s baseball. I’m just trying to get back to that, where this is the game that people come to watch. It doesn’t mean you’re going to score. You’re just trying to play baseball.”

The logic behind the implementation is twofold: Ideally, extra-innings games would become shorter and that would then alleviate taxation on pitchers' arms.

“What really initiated it is sitting in the dugout in the 15th inning and realizing everybody is going to the plate trying to hit a home run and everyone is trying to end the game themselves,” Torre said. “I don’t know what inning is the right inning. Maybe the 11th or 12th inning. But there are a number of reasons.”

Even if the rule would prove to be popular in the minors, it could take years for the MLB to adopt it if it were to do so at all.