The Golden At-Bat rule could give MLB a new shine. But is it worth it?

Brewers outfielder Christian Yelich — When I asked Yelich about how he felt about three starters re-entering the All-Star Game in the late innings, his face lit up.

“That would be kind of cool,” he said. “I mean, it’s an exhibition game after all, right? So you want to keep it to where it’s a game, but also, if you want to add a wrinkle that makes it more entertaining, or do stuff geared for the fans and keep the entertainment value high, I’m all for it.”

But when I asked if he’d be open to something like the Golden AB in regular-season games — in the vein of Steph Curry having the ball in the last minute of a hoops game — his wheels started spinning.

“I’d have to see it more,” he replied, but didn’t rule anything out.

“Do you think it’s too gimmicky?” I asked.

“No,” he said. “I mean, look, we’re doing stuff to change the game up a little bit and make it exciting. So I’m open to any idea, and you kind of just see how it works out. And if it’s good, it stays. If it’s not, you kind of just keep going.”

I didn’t hear a “no way” in there. On to the next player!

Twins shortstop Carlos Correa — Correa was equally cool with the All-Star Game version.

“You’re onto something right there,” he said. “It’s fun, right? Just put whoever you want in the ninth inning to hit. That would be great. I love it.”

But what about the regular season? He looked directly into my eyeballs, as if he was searching for a window into what kind of trouble I was trying to lure him into.

“My relievers are going to hate me if I say I agree with that one,” he replied, finally. “I can’t agree with that one because the relievers are going to be under really, really high stress all the time, and then the injuries are going to go even higher.”

We went back and forth a couple of times. Then I pointed out that he was down with making the All-Star Game as entertaining as possible. So if we brought this idea to the late innings of real games, wouldn’t that be like LeBron taking the last shot?

“OK, I agree with you,” he said. “But I think you should be able to bring in whatever pitcher you want then.”

“You could do that, too,” I replied, grateful for any meeting of the minds.

“You can’t do that now,” he said.

Actually, you can, I think. But again, that wasn’t a complete shutdown. So since he’d raised a new concern, it was time to ask a relief pitcher about this.

Phillies reliever Matt Strahm — Strahm, like Yelich, is a free thinker who always sees the big picture. Not surprisingly, he agreed instantly that the All-Star Game idea was a good one. That was great to hear, I told him, because a hitter had theorized earlier that relievers would get mad if baseball did that.

“I mean, some of them probably, yeah,” he said. “But as a reliever, you know what the fans are here for. Every time I’m wearing a gray uniform, they all want to see me get taken deep or walked off or whatever. That’s one of the most exciting plays in the game. So I understand it. And I think we can maybe sacrifice that for a game that doesn’t count.”

All right, but what about in a game that does count?

“I wouldn’t like that,” he said, without hesitation. “Nah, that messes with baseball history too much. I don’t like that one. Say you have a guy like Craig Kimbrel, who is going to be chasing 500 saves. Then he’s got to do it at the end of his career against Aaron Judge and Juan Soto for every save? Nah. That’s not right.”

Hey, I told him, if you want to be the best, don’t you have to beat the best? He laughed, but he wasn’t falling for my little trap.

“A hundred percent,” he said. “I agree with that statement, but I don’t agree with that rule.”

Got it. So, relief pitchers: Not all in.

Matt Strahm liked the idea of the Golden At-Bat in the All-Star Game, but not in the regular season. (Kevin Jairaj / Imagn Images)

Dodgers first baseman Freddie Freeman — Almost every time I see Freeman, he knows I have some inspired idea to run by him. So he was ready to poke holes in this one, in that good-natured Freddie Freeman way of his. We began with the All-Star scenario — three stars coming back out of the cornfield to bat in the ninth.

“Well, they’re all All-Stars, you know,” he said. “So I think we all would be OK with whoever goes up in the ninth inning. You just want Shohei and Aaron Judge to hit every single time? I totally understand. I would, too. I’d rather just watch them hit nine times.

“Look, I like your idea, Jayson. But I’m gonna fight against that, because they’re all All-Stars, and I wouldn’t mind anybody hitting.”

I knew where this was going next, but I went there anyway. How about the regular season, I asked.

“No, no, no,” he said. “I’m old school, you know, even as a young guy. I like baseball. I’m a baseball purist. So I’m gonna go no.”

 “Let me play devil’s advocate here,” I told him. “Steph Curry always has the ball at the end of the game in basketball, right? Why doesn’t that work in baseball?”

“I get it,” he said. “I would rather watch Shohei hit 20 times a game. It would be really good for the Dodgers if he did that too.”

 “So as long as it’s Shohei, you’re fine with it?” I kidded him.

“No, I’m good with Mookie,” he said. “I’m good with Will Smith. I’m good with pretty much our whole team. Look, as long as it doesn’t mean anything — like the All-Star Game now is just for fun — you can do whatever you want.”

“But what about the actual game?” I asked.

“Let’s just play six innings and do a Home Run Derby for the last three,” he bantered, playfully.

“No, let’s not do that,” I said.

“Why?” he said, laughing. “So you don’t like my ideas, but I’ve got to like all of yours?”

We were having such a good time at this point, it almost didn’t matter how this wound up. But then, in a shocking twist, it turned out I’d worn him down.

“Oh, I don’t care,” he said, finally. “You know me. Whatever the rules are, just tell me, and I’ll abide by them.”

That’s the spirit. So the verdict from the players: Not in, but not 100 percent out. So it’s time to survey another important demographic …

Are front offices ready for the Golden At-Bat?

This was not what you’d call a scientific poll. It was more like a mission to find somebody — anybody — inside an MLB front office who even knew what a Golden At-Bat was. Turns out that was a short list.

But I found one exec who loves this idea and one who hates it. They were each granted anonymity so they could speak freely about prospective rule changes, always a sensitive topic for people at their level.

Not a fan of the Golden AB — The club official who is skeptical wanted to make it clear he’s not one of those old-school execs who hates every new rule. The last wave of rule changes — pitch clock, stolen-base incentives, etc. — were great, he said.

“With the other rule changes … you’re trying to create the best version of baseball,” he said. “But with this rule, the Golden At-Bat, it’s like you’re trying to create a different sport. You’re trying to create something else that’s kind of like baseball, but not really.”

I gave him a rundown of every possible selling point for the Golden AB. He wasn’t budging.

“I understand the value of Mike Trout versus Shohei Ohtani to decide the WBC,” he replied, “and if we can create that every day, you have a reason for people to tune in. Yes, that’s great. It’s just not baseball.

“It is fundamentally changing the character of the sport and the batting order, which is a huge function of how the sport lives. Just to change that, to try to make the eighth or ninth inning more interesting, I don’t know. That one is hard for me, in ways that changing the infield shift rules and other things are not. Those rules are about returning the game to the way it was meant to be played. That is not this. This is like the opposite of that.”

I laid out the potential upside one more time. No dice.

“It’s not for me,” he said. “I feel like it’s (Savannah) Banana Ball-type stuff, as opposed to how baseball should be played.”

Big fan of the Golden AB — So how many people, in front offices across North America, think the way that last exec thinks? I’d guess most of them — and who’s to say they’re wrong? But for the other side of this argument, let’s listen to an official of a different team who has come to recognize that his sport needs to serve its audience — or, even more importantly, its future audience.

“The world is changing,” this official said. “Look at the way entertainment is consumed now. Look who you’re competing with. Today’s fans have grown up on their phones. … They’re used to getting exactly what they want, what they like, what they find engaging and compelling — and they want it now. And they want to watch it for a few minutes and move on. So the Golden At-Bat accomplishes all those things.”

But there’s also an important baseball reason, he went on. At a time when the league batting average and on-base rates have sunk to levels we haven’t seen in half a century, the sport should be thinking outside the box to find ways to create not just more drama but also more runs.

“Hitting is so hard,” he said. “So why would we not want to give more plate appearances to the best hitters? Something like the Golden At-Bat gives one of your highest-leverage appearances in a game to one of your most talented hitters. I like it. I think that’s another small thing you can do to help offense.”

Excellent point — but not one that impressed the next guy we surveyed …

Joe Maddon: Not a fan

Joe Maddon: “Who are we trying to serve with this? And what is the purpose of the whole thing? I don’t quite understand that.” (Darren Yamashita / Imagn Images)

So what would managers think of the Golden AB?

It would be one more pivotal chess move that would get dropped on their game board every night. So would they enjoy the strategic component of it? Or do they already have enough on their plates, their lineup cards and their spreadsheets?

I went looking for the most candid response possible. So I chose a former manager, not a current manager, because he could speak more openly. But I also wanted an innovator and someone not far removed from the dugout. So I called the ex-manager of the Rays, Cubs and Angels, Joe Maddon. Turns out this was one innovation he wanted no part of.

“You’re starting to play this game with a joystick, and not human beings,” he said, pithily.

That sounded like a vote for humans over joysticks. But just so it was clear, Maddon kept laying out his issues with this rule. Let’s sum up three of them.

This isn’t basketball — So LeBron has the ball at the end of every basketball game — and there were 120 Dodgers games this year in which Ohtani didn’t get a swing in the ninth inning? That’s not a good enough reason, Maddon said, to mess with such a fundamental part of baseball.

“That’s just how that game’s built,” he said. “Our game is not built that way. Why do we want to bastardize our game and make it like everybody else?”

I decided again to play devil’s advocate. Wasn’t Trout versus Ohtani awesome baseball theater? Of course, Maddon said. So if the sport, with this rule, could create the ability to have more moments like that, what’s the downside?

“The more we see things, the less impact they have.” Maddon said. “The Trout-Ohtani thing was outstanding because you rarely see it. You don’t see Halley’s Comet every night.”

It’s anti-“team” — As I was outlining the reasoning behind the Golden AB, I could hear Maddon scribbling on a sheet of paper.

“As you were explaining that,” he said, “I wrote down the word ‘team.’ What is that anymore?”

As a manager, Maddon said he was constantly concerned about keeping his entire roster connected, not just his stars. So if one of those stars was going to bat every night in place of the same group of non-stars, there’s danger in that.

“There’s no way you can convince me that you’re going to take this (non-star) part of the team and kind of make them moot in tough situations,” he said. “After all, when a team succeeds in those circumstances (and the non-stars come through), it really builds a lot within the group.”

I asked if he would find it more palatable if the league tried it out in the All-Star Game.

“They could do whatever they want,” he said. “I don’t care. To me, it’s not interesting at all, not even a little bit. I find nothing interesting about it. I find it totally counter to the team concept in the game, everything you preach on a daily basis.”

It’s pseudo-strategy — Lots of changes in baseball were good and important, Maddon said. The pitch clock. The wild card. Lowering the mound in the 1960s.

“Those were needs — things the game needed,” he said. “Needs that were implemented to make the game more watchable. But needs should never impact strategy (so significantly).”

“Don’t ever confuse the word ‘change’ with the word ‘progress,’” he said later. “Change does not necessarily equal progress. Change could be regress. And in this situation, it may be totally regressive, because the game no longer becomes the game when you start messing with strategy on that level.”

Then he asked this:

“Who are we trying to serve with this? And what is the purpose of the whole thing? I don’t quite understand that.”

I’m glad he posed those questions. It’s an important aspect of this. So let’s spin off that thought and ask a question of our own:

This is interesting — but are we sure it’s worth it?

“We should not be afraid of doing something that is entertainment-based, but also competitive-based,” David Samson said. “Aaron Judge is not going to hit a home run every at-bat.” (Robert Deutsch / Imagn Images)

Earlier in this discussion, I posed a question I knew the answer to: Who could possibly complain? Ha. We’ve learned exactly who could possibly complain. Managers. Club officials. Players. And, of course, fans. That isn’t the entire population of the planet. But it sure covers every possible voting bloc.

It’s so easy to poke holes in an idea like the Golden AB. Here’s another one: Wouldn’t it throw all of baseball history out of whack?

Depending on which version of the Golden AB you chose, it could get Judge an extra 120 at-bats a year — many of them with lots of runners on base. So if he hit 82 homers and drove in 170 runs some year, are there enough asterisks in the world to slap on the record books? Maybe not.

But is that really going to be how this goes? Baseball could make sure it doesn’t just by limiting the Golden AB to only the ninth inning and only when a team is trailing. Voila! That problem is solved. Then it’s a much more limited number of at-bats. And what’s the problem?

“We should not be afraid of doing something that is entertainment-based, but also competitive-based,” Samson said. “Aaron Judge is not going to hit a home run every at-bat. Could he hit one every three at-bats? I don’t think so, because then he’d hit 200 home runs a year. So just by giving him the Golden At-Bat every ninth inning, the Yankees are not going to win 150 games. And of course, he’s not going to hit a home run every time.”

But what about the box scores? Wouldn’t this wreak havoc with the box scores? How would they deal with this: Bryce Harper batted in the three-hole and the seven-hole in this game? And he hit a home run from both of them? Wouldn’t that break every computer in America?

I asked that question of Tom Thress, the president of Retrosheet, which has a database of box scores dating back more than a century. He didn’t sound worried.

“Back in the day,” he said, “there used to be the occasional ‘courtesy runner’ — usually after a batter was hit by a pitch — where someone pinch-ran for the player but the player was allowed to return to the field in the next inning. … The parallel here is that sometimes the ‘courtesy runner’ was a guy who was already in the game.”

If you click on Retrosheet, you’ll notice that those courtesy runners did not crash their site. It’s still up and running, despite that affront to the rules and norms of baseball. So if the Golden AB becomes one of those rules and norms, everyone will figure that out, too, he predicted.

And how about the unraveling of the team concept that Maddon was highly agitated about? It’s an issue. But even Maddon conceded it could be dealt with by adopting the Golden AB in the minor leagues first.

“You’d just say, ‘Listen, you want to win, right? You’re part of the team, so if this guy gets this at-bat for you, the team has a better chance to win again,’” Maddon said. “That could be so brainwashed in the minor leagues. I could totally see that happening. That would be part of it, where you convince young players of that.”

So for every problem, there’s a possible solution — if you want to seek one. The question everyone has to answer is: Is it worth it?

“That’s the whole thing,” Maddon said. “What is worth it? What are they trying to accomplish? What is the end game right here? How is it going to benefit the game now and in the future? That’s where you have to convince me, because I don’t see it.”

He’s living proof that the Golden AB is not for everyone. But for the people in the sport who are warming to it rapidly, it’s worth fighting for.

“Those of us who love the game, we all have the same goal,” Samson said. “We’re looking for viral moments. Some people say: ‘Let’s just let it happen — and if it never happens, it never happens.’ But if you could create it, it’s not clickbait, because that is too insulting a word to put to this. If you can, it’s creating a memory — which is what we’re in the business of, is creating memories and entertaining people.

“And if you can do it in a way that is only helpful,” he said, “there is zero downside.”

Well … what about all those people who see all downside and no upside? We should listen to their voices, too. So it might take a while to sort all that out. Which means I don’t know if you’ll ever see the Golden AB come to a big-league game — unless it’s the All-Star Game. I also don’t know who’s right or wrong in this debate.

I just know the commissioner of baseball threw this out there for all of us to ponder. So we’re pondering. And even the people who hate it are already pondering how they’d react if it actually happens someday.

“I can say now I think that’s a terrible idea,” said the skeptical exec quoted earlier. “But then, if they put it in play, I’m like everyone else. I’d say: ‘OK, how do we use it to take the most advantage of it?’”

(Top image: Dan Goldfarb / The Athletic. Photo of Vladimir Guerrero Jr.: Mark Blinch / Getty Images)