The best protection is to turn down the trough eject power to the lowest setting so it gently ejects the ball into the shooter lane. After that you could put a cliffy in and if you don't want to mess with that you could also put a piece of mylar down. If you turn down the trough eject power though I don't think you will even have anything to worry about.

Yes Sir there sure is. I'm not at home right now so I can't tell you how to get to that setting but it's definitely there. It's called Trough eject power and you can take it down to like 175 I believe it is and it shoots the ball out nice and soft into the shooter lane. It's probably under GB settings I would think.