Image via B/R Walk Off
Here’s a scene that may be coming to an MLB stadium near you in the not-too-distant future.
It’s the bottom of the ninth at Yankee Stadium. The Yankees are down by a run. There are two outs and the bases are empty. The next hitter is Trent Grisham.
But then, suddenly…Bah gawd! It’s Aaron Judge’s music!
This situation could only play out now if Judge came off the bench to pinch-hit. But there’s a potential new rule in the ether right now, and MLB commissioner Rob Manfred calls it the “Golden At-Bat.”
“There are a variety of [rule changes] that are being talked about out there,” Manfred said in October on The Varsity podcast with John Ourand. “One of them—there was a little buzz around it at an owners’ meeting—was the idea of a Golden At-Bat.”
Under this rule, a team would have one opportunity per game to send any hitter up in any situation. Basically, it’s a pinch-hitter version of a Get Out of Jail Free card.
This isn’t quite clickbait, which implies an intent to merely get attention. What we have here is meant to provoke a reaction.
Let’s call it take-bait. And hoo boy, is this one a doozy.
The Golden At-Bat Is Bananas
If the Golden At-Bat sounds familiar, it’s probably because you’ve heard of the Savannah Bananas and how they play baseball.
For anyone who’s not familiar, the Bananas are an independent team with a unique style of play known, naturally, as “Banana Ball.” There are 11 special rules, culminating in the Golden Batter Rule.
It is just what it sounds like, and it’s certainly part of what makes the exhibition team special. Its brand is maximum fun by any means necessary, and there’s clearly a market for it.
However, let’s be real. The Bananas’ product is not baseball. It’s a baseball-themed carnival and, therefore, not something you’d ever expect to be emulated by Major League Baseball.
That Manfred is nonetheless publicly talking about the Golden At-Bat implies the league is serious about the idea. And the reasoning sounds a lot like the distant rumble of the Four Influencers of the Apocalypse.
“The world is changing. Look at the way entertainment is consumed now. Look who you’re competing with. Today’s fans have grown up on their phones…They’re used to getting exactly what they want, what they like, what they find engaging and compelling—and they want it now. And they want to watch it for a few minutes and move on. So the Golden At-Bat accomplishes all those things.”
It’s one thing for MLB to want capital-C Content and hope it happens organically. But it seems what MLB really wants is mass production for mass consumption: Bite-sized morsels for social media addicts who subsist on whatever their scrolls provide.
This end simply can’t be achieved without introducing an inorganic ingredient. As such, the Golden At-Bat would be for baseball what Yellow Dye No. 5 is for Twinkies.
Then again, it wasn’t even two years ago that MLB swung for the fences with the pitch clock, bigger bases and the ban on shifts. It’s hard to argue with the results. Games have gotten more fun and more people are showing up and tuning in.
Clearly, MLB is in an era of fruitful experimentation. The Golden At-Bat idea deserves its day in court just on this account, no?
And then there’s the possibility that maybe—just maybe—it could be good for baseball.
A Better Way to Think of the Golden At-Bat
To be fair, it’s not like Big Hitters vs. Big Moments never happen.
In the last two postseasons alone, we’ve been treated to Corey Seager and Adolis Garcia’s tag-team act, Pete Alonso’s game-tying homer, Juan Soto’s ALCS winner and, of course, Freddie Freeman’s endlessly replayable walk-off grand slam.
For me, though, these aren’t the moments that come to mind when I ponder the implications of the Golden At-Bat. My twisted mind instead goes to Michael Martinez.
He isn’t exactly top of mind for the average baseball fan. He played in only 294 games. He hit .194 with six home runs. He last played in a major league game in 2017.
Martinez has a claim to fame, though: He made the last out in Game 7 of the 2016 World Series.
Alas, both the series and the game deserved a more dramatic finish. That should have been Francisco Lindor or José Ramírez in the box for Cleveland. Even Rajai Davis would have been acceptable, given what he’d done earlier.
As Stark floated, the ideal outcome for the Golden At-Bat is more matchups like the famed showdown between Shohei Ohtani and Mike Trout in the 2023 World Baseball Classic. The downside, of course, is that scarcity is part of what makes moments like those memorable.
Yet if the tradeoff involves fewer “Michael Martinez up with the World Series on the line” moments, I’m for it. Even with diminished specialness, more Ohtani vs. Trout showdowns are preferable to at-bats with minimal chance of a memorable outcome.
Besides, there’s a way to implement the Golden At-Bat rule so it won’t be abused.
A Modest Proposal for Golden At-Bat Rules
The new rules for 2023 were not devised one evening and put into effect the next morning. They were tested in thousands of minor league games before getting called to The Show.
So it would have to be with the Golden At-Bat, but what about the parameters of the rule? What would a fair version of it look like?
Behold, a three-part pitch for the perfect rule…
Sure, a manager could use his Golden At-Bat in the sixth inning with the bases loaded and the opposing starter running on fumes. But even if that would be a good strategy, it’s not exactly what MLB has in mind for the rule.
Only allow the Golden At-Bat in the seventh inning or later. If baseball has a version of a high-stakes-only table, this is it.
Stark’s article raised the possibility of Bobby Witt Jr. leading off an inning for the Kansas City Royals and then taking the next at-bat via the Golden At-Bat. Interesting.
But once again, that’s probably not what MLB would have in mind.
Apropos, there could be a buffer between a player’s turn in the lineup and when he’s eligible for the Golden At-Bat. Three sounds good, as it would prevent a scenario in which a hitter leads off and then bats again with the bases loaded.
It’s simple: After a hitter takes the Golden At-Bat, he’s done for the rest of the game.
This would force managers to really think about when to use it. Maybe Los Angeles Dodgers manager Dave Roberts doesn’t use Ohtani with the tying runs on and nobody out in the ninth. Instead, the right spot for Ohtani would be with the tying runs on and two out.
In that situation, it’s tie or die. Roberts would have to put all his chips on tie.
Before we go, it’s worth acknowledging that the initial reaction to the Golden At-Bat idea seems universally negative.
It’s not something anyone asked for, so go figure that nobody wants to support it. And unlike MLB’s trial balloon for a six-inning minimum for starting pitchers, the Golden At-Bat feels like a solution in search of a problem.
It wouldn’t be surprising if the idea died on the vine. Even if it doesn’t, don’t expect the Golden At-Bat to come to MLB in 2025.
Case in point, it took nearly a decade for Manfred’s musing on a pitch clock to become reality. Perhaps it wouldn’t take that long to work out the kinks for a Golden At-Bat rule, but it’s hard to imagine it being implemented any sooner than the late 2020s. And even that is assuming more people warm to the idea.
To this end, probably the best hope for the Golden At-Bat is the notion that people don’t know what they want until they have it.
The new rules that took effect in 2023 were radical changes, but a survey by Seton Hall found that all three had approval from most MLB fans by May…just two months into their debut season. And save for a small minority of ornery purists, the new rules seem beloved by all now.
As long as MLB gets it right, there may come a day when it can also look on the Golden At-Bat as a hard-won victory.
