How sacrosanct is maintaining a rigid batting order?
Recently, MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred talked about a potential earth-shattering move to how baseball is played.
“There are a variety of (rule change ideas) that are being talked about out there,” Manfred said. “One of them — there was a little buzz around it at an owners’ meeting — was the idea of a Golden At-Bat.”
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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.
Source: Jayson Stark, The Athletic
To me, this isn’t a necessary fix, like the introduction of the pitch clock. In fact, it’s not something that appeals very much to me at all. But, if nothing else, it’s interesting. One of the appeals of the game for me was the inherent trade off that occurred when asking all players to participate in all aspects of the game. But that ship has sailed with the universal DH.
If it’s okay not to ask pitchers to hit, why shouldn’t it be okay to stack the deck so your best hitter can come to bat at the biggest moment? Again, this is something that interests me more in a theoretical sense - much more so than as an actual rule change.
Stark suggested trying it in an All-Star game.
As for me, I’m much-more interested to see the automated strike zone being implemented as soon as possible. My interest is much-more geared to fixing actual problems rather than make-believe ones.
I mean, I just have SO many questions (lol).
First off, TL;DR: I don’t care for the idea. Like, at all.
Though someone on Baseball Night in NY said, many of us were against things like ghost runners, pitch clocks, caps on mound visits and universal DH. Fair; but at least pitch clocks and mound visits addressed a need at a base level to keep the game moving. The other stuff like IBB, and just signaling was good didn’t waste pitches etc.
So on some level, it may address a need, like I equate it more like flags in football. Let’s say there’s an automatic first down when a team is fourth and goal, and it keeps the play running. Someone asked if Shohei Ohtani is on 2B, and then they use the golden at-bat. Theoretically you’d want Ohtani up if he’s your best bat, right? So how does that work? Does he get a pinch runner? Does he now bat in that spot if he stays in the game? It seems sort of asinine to me. Plus there’s like no guarantee he’ll come through! Even Willie Mays struck out with the bases loaded in Jerry Koosman’s first game.
Can’t script baseball. And you can’t script Ohtani being a hero when he’s already on base ready to score a run.
I have come to embrace a number of changes made in the last 2-3 years with some exceptions like the number of step offs by a pitcher and the facing three batter rule. This one sounds like a softball league adaptation to let your best hitter hit when you feel the need. I’d pass on this one although getting Lindor more ABs in a game is appealing until you realize that you’d have to face all teams best hitters more the usually. Or if they convey this to pitching, maybe the player who came out in the fifth could come back to face a batter in the 9th if the match up worked best.
At some point the statistics that we have always admired will become less important, like wins and complete games by pitchers which was always the mark of excellence and the fact that 300 wins and 500 HR have become outdated stats meaning entry into the HOF will be watered down to todays game instead of being held to the solid standards that stood for 100 years.