Fool's gold: Baseball doesn't need the golden at-bat

Major League Baseball faces a structural challenge when it comes to marketing its stars that other North American pro sports leagues don't face. The obstacle? It's more democratic when it comes to the distribution of playing time.

A star NBA player can theoretically take every shot. NFL quarterbacks handle the football on virtually every offensive snap. The best NHL players get the lion's share of ice time.

But in baseball, the best hitters have to wait their turn like everyone else. Ace pitchers are tied to operating in five-man rotations during the regular season. The best bullpen arms can't pitch every day.

Opportunity is spread more evenly, so the influence of star power is relatively limited.

It is through that lens in which we can understand some of the appeal behind the so-called "golden at-bat." MLB commissioner Rob Manfred shared the idea when he appeared on "The Varsity" podcast with Puck's John Ourand in October, and it was revisited this week by Jayson Stark of the Athletic.

"There are a variety of (rule changes) that are being talked about," Manfred told Ourand. "One of them - there was a little buzz around it at an owners' meeting - was the idea of a golden at-bat."

Such a rule would allow a team to send any hitter to the plate at a key moment, even if it's not his turn.

Stark reported that variations of the rule are being discussed, such as limiting a golden at-bat to trailing teams or later innings, and how many would be allowed.

For now, it's just an idea. Time will tell if a consensus forms among decision-makers.

Some will reason that if an NBA team can give the ball to its best scorer and create an isolation opportunity with the final seconds melting off the clock, why not try something like that in baseball?

Now, I want to make it clear I am for MLB experimenting. I was in favor of the pitch clock. There was too much time being wasted by both pitchers and hitters, not only between pitches but often between plate appearances. The declining pace of play had become a problem. And there's evidence it was the right decision. Attendance improved in the two years after adding the clock following a nearly two-decade decline at the turnstiles.

But MLB still needs to reach more fans and create new ones. The league ceded its place atop the North American sporting hierarchy to the NFL a long time ago, and the NBA's recent national TV deals dwarf baseball's. MLB should try different things.

But it shouldn't try the golden at-bat.

There are different kinds of rule changes. Some seek to address issues negatively impacting the sport, like the slowing pace of play in MLB. The NBA has had a shot clock since the 1950s, and college basketball finally added one in 1985. MLB enlarged the size of the bases two years ago as well.

And then there are rule changes that fundamentally change the nature of the game. Those should only be considered in the case of an existential crisis. Baseball hit such a point in 1968 when, after years of offensive decline, it lowered the height of the mound by two inches for the 1969 season.

A golden at-bat would radically change how the game is played, how pitchers work through lineups, and how teams construct their lineups to maximize their best bats.

There would be fewer moments for the Bucky Dents of the world.

While there have been rule changes that dictate where or how players can perform on the field, from raising and lowering mounds to banning infield shifts, those are uniform changes that affect all teams equally, or nearly equally, and were not meant to change the fundamentals of the game. If anything, the shift ban and pitch clock were implemented to create a game more like the one that was played for most of its history.

The golden at-bat would also increase the imbalance between large- and small-budget clubs.

Juan Soto is likely to land a record deal in terms of inflation-adjusted dollars this winter. Imagine what he would earn in a world with a golden at-bat? That Soto can only bat once every nine plate appearances is one of the few parity-drivers in the game.

A slippery slope is also created when legislation is added to the baseball rule book. What stops the golden at-bat from becoming multiple golden at-bats during the course of a game?

Moreover, baseball is rooted in its historical numbers, more than any other sport. Milestones like 500 home runs in a career, or 60 in a season, are benchmarks. If Aaron Judge could bat an additional 150 times per season - and often with runners on base - we would enter a new era of trying to contextualize player performance against the game's history.

We must also consider that no one was asking for this. Fans were not clamoring for such a change.

Yes, MLB is ultimately an entertainment product. But if the sport wants to make real change, if it wants to attract new fans and bring back old ones, it must confront larger issues - like the financial gulf between the haves and have-nots - rather than resort to gimmicks.

Travis Sawchik is theScore's senior baseball writer.