Rob Manfred walks back golden at-bat rule idea after widespread criticism

Everyone who hated MLB commissioner Rob Manfred's "golden at-bat" idea (i.e. baseball fans who read the news this week) can apparently rest easy.

Manfred poured cold water on the idea Thursday, just a few days after his comments in support of the idea started circulating, per MLB.com. Speaking at an event at the Italian American Baseball Foundation in New York, he made clear the idea is nowhere close to becoming a reality.

From MLB.com:

"For people who are concerned about that kind of change, I'd make a couple of points," Manfred said. "No. 1: It has come out that I have spoken publicly about this kind of change a few years ago, that I was not particularly in favor of it, and that remains the case. But more importantly: To go from the conversation stage to this actually showing up in Major League Baseball is a very, very long road. If you don't like the idea, I wouldn't be that concerned about it right now."

The debate about the golden at-bat began Monday, when The Athletic's Jayson Stark drew attention to comments Manfred made on an episode of "The Varsity" podcast with John Ourand in October. The comments were made in passing during a 37-minute conversation and drew little notice at the time, when the MLB postseason was still ongoing.

However, presented this week, the idea got plenty of attention. Here's what Manfred said:

"There are a variety of things that are being talked about out there," Manfred said of discussions around rule changes. "One of them — there was a little buzz around it at an owners' meeting — was the idea of a golden at-bat — that is putting your best player out there out of order at a particular point in the game. That rule and things like that are in the conversation-only stage."

Essentially, Manfred was suggesting a system in which the Los Angeles Dodgers could swap out one of their weaker hitters for Shohei Ohtani in a key at-bat late in the game, while still keeping Ohtani in his usual spot in the batting order.

Manfred has discussed a number of rule changes during his tenure as commissioner and instituted quite a few, mostly with success. Among the changes to be added are the pitch clock, the three-batter minimum for relievers, the limits on pick-off attempts, the extra-inning ghost runner, limits on defensive shifts.

Some of those ideas were controversial, but had their supporters inside and outside the game. This one, however, saw an almost universally negative response. Stark talked to a number of players who were against it, such as Freddie Freeman:

"No, no, no," Freeman told Stark. "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."

Fans on social media were similarly critical, such as in this Reddit thread. Essentially, fans didn't like the idea of making a change purely to add drama, especially in a sport where tradition is vital to the game's fabric.

Manfred insisted the idea was little more than the germ of an idea, while wanting other leaders in the sport to continue brainstorming ideas to improve the game. From ESPN:

"It was a very preliminary conversation which did create some buzz," Manfred reiterated on Thursday. "I do encourage the owners to have conversations about the game."