Controversial rule change could affect the Marlins

At this early point of the off-season, most of the Miami Marlins news has to do with prospects, while the team's division rivals are all over the rumor mill. It's fascinating to watch what will actually happen as the off-season ultimately ends. In the meantime, we're hearing some bizarre news on a potential rule change in the future.

A potential rule change can affect the Miami Marlins.

Imagine this scenario... the Miami Marlins are down by a run in the bottom of the ninth. The number nine hitter in the lineup is up at bat, but wait Manager Clayton McCullough is utilizing the "Golden At-Bat" rule! The best hitter on the team is coming up instead! Let's say for the sake of this example, we're talking about Nick Fortes getting replaced by Jake Burger just for this one at-bat. Fortes will remain in the game, and Burger will bat later on as expected.

It works in other ways too. Suppose the Los Angeles Dodgers are playing The Fish and are down by a run in the ninth inning. Gavin Lux is up, but they replace him with Shohei Ohtani instead. Imagine if Ohtani then hits a game-winning home run...

Rob Manfred's proposed idea is for teams to be allowed to replace a hitter with another one for one at-bat. The replaced hitter would stay in the game and the new hitter would keep his regular at-bat. This is of course pretty unprecedented as this goes against the rules of the game. There is a specific order of at-bats and changing it seems quite unfair.

The argument for the rule is of course that it allows teams to try and win the game with their best hitters. It makes sense, however once again it goes against tradition and how the game has been played for literally centuries. Baseball is a team game and the order is there for a reason. There's a certain strategy to it, that would be affected by this rule change. It's fair to say that this rule change should not go through and probably won't.