Imagine a scenario where the Boston Red Sox have signed Juan Soto this offseason.
Got that pictured in your head? Good.
Now, imagine it’s the bottom of the ninth inning, and the game is on the line with the Red Sox trailing by a run. Wilyer Abreu is up, Masataka Yoshida is on deck and Connor Wong would be next. Soto is unavailable because he batted in the previous inning — or maybe he is actually available.
Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred had floated an insane, out-of-the-box “Golden at-bat” rule proposal that would allow managers to have one chance to basically bring up whoever they want to the plate, according to The Athletic’s Jayson Stark.
That means Red Sox manager Alex Cora could send Soto or even Rafael Devers to the plate in place of one of the three batters due in the inning without disrupting the rest of the lineup.
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According to the report by Stark, several variations are being floated around, including using it only past the seventh inning, only by the team that is trailing, or only in the ninth.
Nonetheless, it would arguably be the most significant rule change the game has seen in years and would go against the way baseball has been played since its very beginning.
Even with the introduction of the designated hitter, it’s still nine men batting in order with the opportunity of a pinch hitter replacing one at-bat. If a team’s weakest hitter comes up with the game on the line, so be it. Maybe, just maybe, that batter comes through — it’s not like it hasn’t happened in the history of the game.
