Anyone who hated MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred’s “golden strike” idea (that is, 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 began circulating, according to MLB.com. Speaking at an event at the Italian American Baseball Foundation in New York, he made it clear that the idea is a long way from becoming a reality.
From MLB.com:
“For people who are concerned about these types of changes, I want to make a few points,” Manfred said. “No. 1: It turns out that having publicly talked about these kinds of changes a few years ago, I wasn’t particularly in favor of them, and that remains the case. But more importantly, getting from the conversation phase to actually showing this in Major League Baseball is a very, very long road. If you don’t like the idea, I wouldn’t worry too much about it at this point.”
The debate over the golden strike 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 attracted little attention at the time, when the MLB postseason was still underway.
However, when the idea was presented this week, it received a lot of attention. This is what Manfred said:
“There’s a variety of things being talked about,” Manfred said of discussions about rule changes. “One of them – there was some fuss about it at an owners meeting – was the idea of a golden strike – where your best player is sidelined at some point in the game. Those kinds of things are in the conversation-only stage.”
Essentially, Manfred suggested a system in which the Los Angeles Dodgers could swap 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 implemented quite a few, mostly with success. Among the changes to be added are the pitch clock, three-batter minimum for relievers, pickoff attempt limits, extra-inning ghost runner and defensive shift limits.
Some of those ideas were controversial, but had their supporters inside and outside the game. However, this received an almost universally negative response. Stark spoke to some players who were against it, such as Freddie Freeman:
“No, no, no,” Freeman told Stark. “I’m old-fashioned, you know, even as a young guy. I like baseball. I’m a baseball purist. So I’m going no.”
Fans on social media were also critical, such as in this Reddit thread. Essentially, the fans didn’t like the idea of making a change merely to add drama, especially in a sport where tradition is essential to the structure of the game.
Manfred insisted the idea was just 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 that created some excitement,” Manfred reiterated on Thursday. “I encourage the owners to have conversations about the game.”
