Tristan Huyett | staff writer

In 2022, Major League Baseball took a swing for the fences. The league’s Competition Committee announced several rule changes that were scheduled to go into effect for the 2023 season. They included the implementation of a pitch clock, limiting pitcher disengagements to two per batter and limiting batter timeouts to one per at bat.

While some baseball purists were skeptical, the league’s big swing turned out to be a home run as the rule changes proved to be a major success. The 2024 season marked the second under the new rules, and in that time the MLB has seen its largest growth in over a decade.

According to an October press release, the 2023 and 2024 seasons marked the first two seasons with back-to-back attendance increases since the 2011-12 seasons. The 2024 season also marked the highest total attendance leaguewide since 2017. With the league gearing up for 2025, Commissioner Rob Manfred has begun openly flirting with potential new rule changes.

One of the rules Manfred has openly discussed is the “Golden At-Bat” rule, which would allow a team to send a player up to bat even if it is not their turn in the batting order.

To put it plainly, the “Golden At-Bat” rule is bananas.

That is not an exaggeration, as the rule stems from the “Golden Batter” rule created by the Savannah Bananas, an exhibition team best described as the Harlem Globetrotters of baseball. The Bananas introduced the rule to add an element of excitement and drama to their games called “Banana Ball.”

In Savannah, the rule allows for a batter to pinch-hit at any moment even if they are not listed on the roster, which allows for fun moments such as recently in Philadelphia when former Phillie Ryan Howard made a surprise appearance at Citizens Bank Park when the Bananas toured there.

While the Golden Batter rule is perfect for the product the Bananas are trying to produce, the magic of those kind of moments simply cannot be replicated in the MLB. Instead, the implementation of a rule like this would take away from the game instead of adding to it.

While the exact nature of how a “Golden At-Bat” would look in the Major Leagues has not officially been ironed out, there is a consensus on what it might look like.

Say Aaron Judge is up to bat for the Yankees in the bottom of the eighth inning and he strikes out to end the inning.

When the bottom of the ninth begins, the Yankees could enact the “Golden At-Bat” and send Judge back to the plate despite his official spot in the batting order being eight hitters away.

When any baseball fan thinks of the 2011 playoffs and the eventual champion St. Louis Cardinals, they think of one player. That player is not either of future Hall of Famers in Albert Pujols or Yadier Molina, or any other decorated Redbirds such as Lance Berkman or Matt Holliday; instead, it is David Freese, who up to 2011 had played in only 184 games and had only 15 career home runs. But thanks to Freese’s heroics in the playoffs, including a triple walk-off home run in Game 6 of the World Series to keep the Cardinals alive, he became a St. Louis legend.

Suppose there had been a “Golden At-Bat” rule in 2011. It is a near certainty that Cardinals manager Tony La Russa would have sent Pujols to the plate in favor of Freese in clutch situations during that series, erasing Freese’s heroics that etched his name in baseball history.

Given the success of rule changes like the pitch clock, despite initial pushback from fans, one could argue that detractors to the “Golden At-Bat” rule are afraid of change and stuck in the ways of the past. However, the “Golden At-Bat” rule would not just eliminate, or at least minimize, the need for teamwide contributions. It would also shake up the fabric of the game in a way that is too extreme and open the door for even more elaborate and downright childish rule changes in the future.

If the league implements this rule and sees a ratings boost despite compromising the spirit of the sport, there is no telling what else they may do. In 2022, the league announced that if the All-Star Game were to be tied after nine innings, instead of playing extra innings, the game would be decided via home run derby.

While this is admittedly a fun idea for a game with zero consequences like the All-Star Game, it should never see the light of day in the regular season. Rules like this and the “Golden At-Bat” would turn baseball into far too gimmicky a sport to be taken seriously.

There are rules, however, that MLB could implement that would make the game exciting without jeopardizing its integrity. A challenge system for balls and strikes, for instance, would allow batters a chance to get a call by the umpire reversed and keep them up at bat with the risk of getting it wrong and losing their team’s challenge.

This adds a level of suspense and excitement in waiting for the result of the challenge, but does not completely change the fabric of the sport, as the league already has a challenge system in place for other calls.

But by adding a “Golden At-Bat,” the league would hypothetically be opening the door for baseball to become reliant on cheap gimmicks and offense only, instead of doing what it can to make all aspects of the sport exciting for fans while also being fair to pitchers and position players who wouldn’t be considered for “Golden At-Bat” consideration.

So while there are things that can be done and changed, Manfred and company need to leave the golden gimmicks to the Bananas.