Imagine having the choice to see Ronald Acuña Jr. having the bat in his hands for every big late at-bat with the game on the line. Sounds like a golden idea, right? Maybe, maybe not!
By now, I’d imagine that you’ve all heard about or read Jayson Stark’s article over on The Athletic about the “buzz” surrounding the idea that Major League Baseball may adopt the “Golden At-Bat” rule at some point in the future. So what exactly is the Golden At-Bat? I’ll let Stark explain it to you (and I highly recommend that you read the entire article if you have a subscription, which I also encourage):
What if a team could choose one at-bat in every game to send its best hitter to the plate even if it wasn’t that guy’s turn to hit? That’s the Golden At-Bat concept in a nutshell.
Say there are two outs in the 10th inning in October. The Yankees and Guardians are tied. Does this ring a bell at all? But in this alternate October universe, it’s not Juan Soto who is due up. It’s, say, Oswaldo Cabrera. Except the Yankees say: No, no, no. We’re going to use our Golden AB here … and send up Soto. Then home run magic happens.
How would this rule be worded? Sorry. That’s a mystery nobody can answer yet. The truth is, baseball hasn’t settled on those details. And MLB officials declined to speak with The Athletic about any possible future rule changes. But lots of variations have been tossed around. Here are some that I’ve heard.
• Each team gets to pick one at-bat — at any point in the game, but only once — to play its Golden AB card. So would it save that card for The Juan Soto Moment? Or would it play it in the second inning, with the bases loaded and a chance to blow up a game? Strategy alert!
• Or there’s this option: Each team gets one Golden AB per game — except only in the seventh inning or later.
• Or there’s the variation I’d vote for — where only a team that is trailing (or tied) in the ninth or later gets to use a Golden AB. I’m a fan of less is more, and two Golden ABs every game (one per team) might be overkill.
• There’s also this potential wrinkle: The Royals use their Golden AB to let Bobby Witt Jr. lead off the ninth. He makes an out. But who’s batting second? Whaddaya know, it’s Witt’s turn in the lineup. So here he comes again. Yes, that could be a thing.
So what variation will actually end up happening (if any of them do)? We have many golden miles to travel before we can answer that.
Again, the article is very interesting and it’s worth a read, if only so you can get a bunch of varied opinions from it. I especially enjoyed the part where Stark talked to our old friend Freddie Freeman about it and Freeman essentially engaged in slippery slope tactics before Stark eventually wore him down and Freeman admitted that he’d simply adjust to the rule if it was implemented.
The surprising part is that there weren’t a ton of people within baseball who were adamantly against the concept, which is a bit shocking since you’d expect a rule this radical to receive a lot of knee-jerk reactions in a negative fashion since it’s baseball and I’d imagine that we all have experience with observing how baseball’s culture reacts to radical change. With that being said, the people who are against it are hardline against and the people who are for it are intrigued at best and tepid at worst in their support, so there’s that.
As far as my personal take on this goes, I believe there’s a happy medium to be found here. The happy medium being that I’d enjoy seeing it in the All-Star Game. The whole point of the All-Star Game is to see the best and most popular players in baseball duking it out for league supremacy and while I’d imagine their respective teams wouldn’t want to see their players taking any more chances than necessary, I’d love to see Shohei Ohtani get back up off the bench after being substituted to take on, say, Mason Miller in a save opportunity with the All-Star Game on the line. It’d be fun and ultimately that’s what the All-Star Game is about.
Now, would I want to see this in an actual competitive environment during the regular season and the postseason? Nope, no thanks. I’m not a hardline traditionalist and I have to give credit where credit is due to Rob Manfred when it comes to the major rule changes baseball implemented ahead of the 2023 season. They were successful and have helped make baseball a better viewing experience, in my opinion. With that being said, this would be messing with the game too much.
In his article, Stark made the obvious comparison to other sports — for instance, everybody watching the NFL knows that Patrick Mahomes is going to have the ball in his hands when the game’s on the line. If you’re watching the NBA, you know LeBron James is going to get the ball at the end of a close game. Even in soccer, if there’s a late penalty kick (or penalty kicks to decide the contest) then you know Lionel Messi is going to take at least one kick. In other sports, it’s a near certainty that star players will be involved in close, tight games. There’s no guarantee of that in baseball.
That’s also the beauty of baseball — it’s the ultimate team sport. You can’t just throw your best starting pitcher out there every day and have him dominate. You can throw your best reliever out there for two days in a row but you’re rolling the dice if you make it three days in a row. The lineup itself is proof that it’s a team game — while it’s a shame that Mike Trout had to toil in the metaphorical wilderness despite being baseball’s best player for years at a time, it’s still a good thing that no one player can dominate the sport. Yeah, Shohei Ohtani is trying his hardest to do it but even he had to join up with an actual good team before he could even make the Postseason, much less win a World Series.
The other sports place a premium on individual talent winning out and while individual talent is still very important in baseball, you still need all nine guys and your pitcher to be clicking if you want to win at this game. I feel like the Golden At-Bat would take away some of the team aspect of this sport and once you do that then you’re really messing with the game in a negative way. I love seeing Ronald Acuña Jr. do his thing at the plate but I’m not watching baseball just to see him constantly dominate. I’m watching because it is genuinely wonderful whenever you have a moment like Nick Markakis hitting a walk-off homer to win a game on Opening Day. It’s wonderful because I was at the ballpark and thinking “Welp, looking like this comeback is going to have to get finished off in extras because there’s no way Markakis is going deep here. No freaking shot.” Then guess what happened:
That’s what makes baseball such a great sport. Everybody gets a shot to be great at any given moment. If a less-than-star caliber player becomes a supernova for a moment, that’s not an accident or anything like that — it’s part of the design of the game. As long as stuff like this is possible, it makes baseball the uniquely great sport that it is. The Golden At-Bat rule would mess with that and as a result, I’m not really in favor of it.
Maybe I’m just turning into an old curmudgeon, though. What do y’all think? Would you be in favor of this? Are you against it? Do you not care as long as it helps the Atlanta Braves win games? Let’s hear it.