Who knows if it’ll ever happen. But, according to commissioner Rob Manfred himself, as detailed by Jayson Stark earlier this week, baseball is at least considering a Golden At-Bat rule. The idea is that a team could have a designated player who they could use once in a game outside of the normal batting order. Bases loaded in the eighth inning? Let’s put in our best hitter instead of the backup shortstop who happens to be hitting there right now.
And that’s the assumption, that teams would just use their best hitter in the Golden At-Bat, and use them with the game on the line. But, aside from how hard it is to get everyone on board with a definition of what actually is the “best,” there’s the fact that we’re talking about specific situations here.
Consider Seiya Suzuki, maybe: Sum up the year, and he was the best hitter on the Chicago Cubs, 35 percent better than league average with the stick. But he also struck out nearly 28 percent of the time and saw a big part of his value come from his walks. What if there’s one out, a guy on third, it’s the bottom of your lineup, and just sticking in a guy that could take a walk doesn’t help much? What if you need contact most of all, and Nico Hoerner (and his 10 percent strikeout rate) is instead the better choice?
There’s so much we don’t know about the rule yet. Would teams have to designate their Golden At-Bat Guy before the game? Would this be a late-innings only thing? Would both teams get to use it, or just the trailing team? Those things will need to be determined, eventually, if this happens. And maybe we’ll get to see it play out, low stakes style, in the All-Star Game as Stark surmises.
But in the meantime, forgive us if our mind wanders to wondering: Who might take those Golden ABs? Would there be any surprises?
Tommy Edman, Los Angeles Dodgers
Shut up. This is stupid. On a team with Mookie Betts, Shohei Ohtani, and Freddie Freeman, you’re going to put Edman out there with the game on the line? Shut up.
Here’s why it’s maybe not the stupidest thing you’ve ever heard, just one of them. Clutch. Edman is clutch, that’s something we saw this postseason, but it’s also something that we’ve seen over the last six seasons. If you define clutch as FanGraphs does, as basically how much better a player does in a high-leverage moment than they themselves would do in a low-leverage moment, there is no player more clutch than Edman since 2019 started.
| Player | Clutch |
|---|---|
 Tommy Edman |
5.04
|
 Joc Pederson |
4.35
|
|
Alex Verdugo |
3.99
|
|
Carlos Santana |
3.88
|
 Ryan McMahon |
3.76
|
 Andrés Giménez |
3.75
|
 Adam Frazier |
3.46
|
 Alec Bohm |
3.41
|
|
Ramón Laureano |
3.29
|
 Corbin Carroll |
3.15
|
It helps that he’s a switch hitter who normally makes contact at above-average rates, too — if the other team could change pitchers you may not want to put in a lefty like Joc Pederson just to see the other team go to the bullpen and neutralize your weapon. But this is only a good idea if clutch is a sticky stat, and as you can see from the rest of this list, and the fact that there’s basically no year-to-year stickiness when it comes to clutch, yeah, this is probably a dumb idea most of the time. All of the time, though?
Luis Arraez, San Diego Padres
It might be surprising to go to Arraez on a team that could send Fernando Tatis Jr., Manny Machado, or even Jackson Merrill to the plate, but this is a situational play. There are games where any contact at all wins the game. It happens all the time.
If last year’s Padres were about to send David Peralta to the plate, they’d be sending someone who missed a quarter of the time they swung at the ball. Compared to Arraez, who made contact 95 percent of the time this year, that’s a massive difference. In fact, the probability that Arraez took three swings and made contact at least once (85 percent) is almost exactly twice as high as the same for Peralta (42.5 percent). Over the past couple seasons, Arraez has averaged a whiff every other game, and showed the best contact in the game. He was made for this rule.
Nathaniel Lowe, Texas Rangers
Seriously? You’ve got Corey freakin’ Seager on your team, one of the 10 or 15 best hitters in baseball over the last three years, and you’re going to send Lowe to the plate? He’s got a league-average strikeout rate, league-average power and hasn’t been clutch. What could possibly be the reason to send Lowe up to the plate over Seager?
Splits.
Say you need something more than a single, and a lefty is on the mound. You could send Adolis García or Marcus Semien to the plate, but the other team gets a choice in this matter, too. If they put a righty on the mound, they reduce the effectiveness of the righty you’ve sent up. Lowe has a “see the ball” type of approach that seems to work against lefties and righties. In fact, among qualified hitters, he has one of the smallest splits between his work against lefties and righties in the game over the last three seasons.
| Name | vR wRC+ | vL wRC+ | abs Diff |
|---|---|---|---|
 Yordan Alvarez |
174
|
174
|
0
|
|
Julio Rodríguez |
130
|
130
|
0
|
|
Ty France |
109
|
108
|
1
|
 Jonathan India |
101
|
102
|
1
|
|
Pete Alonso |
128
|
129
|
1
|
 J.P. Crawford |
112
|
114
|
2
|
 Aaron Judge |
203
|
201
|
2
|
|
Andrés Giménez |
106
|
103
|
3
|
 Andrew Vaughn |
105
|
102
|
3
|
|
Andrew McCutchen |
105
|
108
|
3
|
 Nathaniel Lowe |
128
|
124
|
4
|
When the only players that have had smaller platoon splits and hit better than you are Aaron Judge, Yordan Alvarez, Julio Rodríguez and Pete Alonso, well, yeah, maybe you’ll be used for the Golden At-Bat a few times when the other team has equally-good lefty and righty options they can go to in the bullpen.
Cal Raleigh, Seattle Mariners
There are other times where you absolutely need an extra base hit. Nothing else will do the trick. It’s the seventh spot in the lineup, two outs, guy on first, and the next two guys are probably not going to get it done if your guy hits a single. The list above says you might want to take Rodríguez if you’re the Mariners. Except Rodríguez didn’t hit the ball exceptionally hard this season. Cal Raleigh did, though. Among qualified hitters, Raleigh was seventh in Barrel rate, behind Kyle Schwarber and Juan Soto and ahead of Teoscar Hernández and Alvarez.
Raleigh hits the ball hard, but also just as importantly, he hits it in the air. His average launch angle was only behind four hitters (including Betts and Anthony Santander) this past season. There are no guarantees in life, but if the Mariners need a screamer into the gap, they might reach for the Big Dumper over Rodríguez.
Pete Crow-Armstrong, Chicago Cubs
If there’s something Pete Crow-Armstrong is known for in his short career so far, it’s his glove. Maybe the best defensive center fielder in the game (who has struck out a fair amount and hasn’t yet proven himself as a bat) is a weird choice for a Golden At-Bat, for sure. But there’s a situation that we haven’t yet detailed: the bunt. You just need a run and you’re willing to give an out to get it, but you want to be 100 percent sure that the batter will get the bunt down.
There have been a few batters who have put more sacrifice bunts down in the past few years — Michael Siani this past season, and Geraldo Perdomo over the last two — but none of them are as fast as Crow-Armstrong. Only three qualified runners averaged less than Crow-Armstrong’s 4.1 seconds to first base. The combination of the two could make him an ideal choice, if the bunt (or at least the threat of a bunt) and the legs are the most important pieces of that specific late-inning puzzle your team is trying to figure out.
(Photo of Edman: Jayne Kamin-Oncea / Imagn Images)
