A week ago, Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred told attendees at the Italian American Baseball Foundation gala that the “golden at-bat” rule wouldn’t be instituted in the MLB.
The “golden at-bat” rule would allow a manager to send up any hitter in the lineup at a time of his choosing. And while it’s not going to happen, under Manfred’s leadership, MLB has instituted, among other rule changes, the pitch clock, the extra-innings ghost runner, rules regulating pitcher disengagements that have brought the stolen base back into the game, and a three-batter minimum for relief pitchers.
There are myriad rule books around the baseball world, some of which offer unique twists on the rules we’re familiar with. What unique rules are out there that could be on the horizon?
A Modification to the Three-Batter Minimum – The three-batter minimum rule, which requires MLB relievers to face at least three batters before being taken out of the game, has sped up the game by removing several pitching changes. It’s also curtailed strategy for MLB managers, who now have to consider the next three batters in the lineup when they go to the bullpen, forcing them to keep a pitcher on the mound and taking matchups based upon the pitcher and batter’s dexterity out of play.
But what if the rule was met if the pitcher merely had to stay on the field for three batters?
Say, for example, your favorite team’s manager wants to bring Jim Lefty out of the bullpen to face Carlos Izquierdo, thus getting a lefty-lefty matchup. Lefty would have to face three batters under the current rule. If he only had to stay on the field for three batters, and not necessarily pitch to three batters, it would reopen the possibility of making changes to get matchups while also forcing managers to deeply consider strategy. If Jim Lefty gets Izquierdo out, and the next batter, Jaime Derecho, is a righty, now your team’s manager has a choice: Lefty can stay on the mound and face Derecho, or he can move Lefty to another position on the field and bring in a righty (who would also have to stay out there for three batters) to face him.
Basically, the penalty that the manager would pay for the extra pitching change is that he has to remove a player currently on the field from the game. So now, instead of considering merely the pitcher/batter match-up, a manager has to consider where he’d stick his new pitcher in the field and who would have to come out of the game.
Will it happen? Probably not, but it would create a lot more strategy.
Home Team Chooses the Baseball – Investigative reporting by Business Insider‘s Bradford William Davis and astrophysicist Meredith Wills revealed that different two different types of baseballs were used during the 2021 season. Some games were played with a harder ball, some with a softer ball.
What if the home team got to choose the characteristics of the ball used for each game? I’m not proposing that each team have its own specific ball, but what if there were, say, six different official baseballs with unique characteristics that the home team could choose from each game. All of the six different balls are five ounces and nine inches in circumference, but some are wound tighter with lower seams, some are more loosely wound with higher seams, and so on. The home team could choose which ball it wanted to use before each game based upon, say, the preferences of their starting pitcher as well as the amount of power in their lineup compared to that of their opponent.
Say the Colorado Rockies are hosting a team with three 30-homer guys in the lineup at home. They’d maybe want a slightly softer ball with slightly higher seams that will break more and carry less.
Baseball United’s Moneyball At-Bat Rule – Similar to the proposed “golden at-bat” rule, Baseball United‘s “Moneyball At-Bat” doubles the number of runs scored during an at-bat. So if Carlos Izquierdo hits a solo homer off Jim Lefty during the Moneyball At-Bat, it’s worth two runs rather than one. This came into play in Baseball United’s inaugural event when Pablo Sandoval came to bat with runners on second and third in the fifth inning and hit the first six-run homer in baseball history.
While it’s another intriguing twist, like the Golden At-Bat, I doubt we’ll see the Moneyball At-Bat in MLB either.
Banana Ball’s Time Limit Rule – The Savannah Bananas, the barnstorming team that combines baseball with entertainment, has a number of unique rules for their games, which they call “Banana Ball.”
While most of the unique Banana Ball rules – for example, the batter is out if a fan catches a foul ball on the fly — won’t ever come to MLB, the Bananas do have a time limit of two hours for their games.
This isn’t likely to come to MLB, as the pitch clock and ghost runner rule has sped up games to the point where a time limit likely isn’t necessary. Since the ghost runner rule came into effect, the longest MLB game was played between the Los Angeles Dodgers and San Diego Padres on Aug. 25, 2022. It went 349 minutes, or almost six hours, and lasted 16 innings, with the Dodgers take a 5-3 victory on the road.
Will any of these rules come to MLB? Maybe not, but you can be assured that MLB will be looking at other tweaks to the playing rules.
