What is MLB’s new “Golden At-Bat” rule

By Lachlan Wellington December 05, 2024 00:34

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MLB Commissioner, Rob Manfred has announced that he and MLB are floating the idea of a new rule in the league called the “Golden At-Bat” Rule.

This rule would basically mean that if a team is down to their final out and are at the bottom of their lineup, they could actually call up a player in their lineup to effectively pinch hit but instead this just promotes a batter already in the lineup to hit earlier.

For example, the New York Mets may be down by a run in the bottom of the ninth and down to their final out but instead of sending up Starling Marte, they could call up Pete Alonso to try and tie or even win the game for them.

On “The Varsity Podcast”, Manfred said back in October that there was already “some buzz” amongst owners about this brand new “Golden At-Bat” idea and that there were some good talks about this new rule during the winter meetings.

Effectively, this rule allows each team one time during a game where they can bring up whoever they want to the plate.

There are several different variations being floated around MLB, according to the Athletic, one includes only being able to use it past the seventh innings or even only in the ninth innings.

While it appears there is some appetite for this rule change with the idea being it would create more excitement and action with power hitters being allowed an extra chance effectively, there are some negatives to this idea. For example, Kevin Winterhalt for Pinstripes Alley said that it feels like trying to manufacture a solution to a problem not really there, baseball generates drama anyway without this, stating baseball does not lack excitement and we do not need to constantly be looking for ways to make it more exciting that feel over the top.

This could potentially be one of the biggest rule changes for quite some time. MLB made several changes to the rules and regulations prior to the start of the 2023 season with larger bases, a pitch timer, limiting field shifts and a “disengagement rule” where pitchers only have three chances to pick off a batter trying to steal were all introduced.

While baseball purists were not too happy with the new rules, in terms of engaging a younger audience and making the game more relevant to today the new rules seemed to work. The average time of a game was decreased down to two hours and 36 minutes- the lowest since 1984. Additionally, there were 3,617 stolen bases in 2024 the most since 1915. MLB also saw their highest attendance since 2017 despite increased ticket prices and costs of matches.

MLB has also been testing another new rule in the Athletic League called the “Double hook rule”. This rule was floated around and tested due to there being a desire amongst baseball figures and fans for starting pitchers to become the faces of the game again- like in the old days of baseball. This rule means that when a starting pitcher is removed from a game, their team loses their designated hitter for the rest of the game. In the Athletic League, the one caveat was that if a starting pitcher makes it to five innings the team does not lose their designated hitter.

If this idea does actually come to fruition in the MLB we likely will not see it for a few years yet with “Golden At-Bats” needing testing at first even before the thought comes to introduce this idea to the majors. The fact that Manfred has mentioned this though does mean there is likely some fuel to the fire that this could be a genuine rule we see introduced but likely not for a few years yet.