Fans slam ‘hypocrite’ Rob Manfred as it emerges he called hated MLB golden bat rule ‘a waste of time’ in 2015

MLB commissioner Rob Manfred has been slammed for his ‘golden-at-bat’ idea and fans are now further incensed by it emerging that back in 2015, the man himself didn’t like it much either.

Manfred this week discussed his idea on John Ourand’s ‘The Varsity’ podcast, which would allow teams to pick one at-bat per game to use their preferred hitter – rather than follow the batting order.

Baseball followers have pretty much responded in unison to trash the idea and it turns out that Manfred once thought exactly the same as the fans he serves.

A video of him being interviewed in 2015 has now gone viral of Jon Weiner pitching an identical idea to Manfred on the Dan Le Batard Show.

Using the example of watching Giancarlo Stanton at the Miami Marlins (Stanton is now at New York Yankees), Weiner said: ‘Commissioner, I like to call it the “magic at-bat”. Now just hear me out for a second.

‘When you go to an NBA game you are guaranteed to see LeBron James, Kevin Durant, you are guaranteed to see these guys play 35 or 40 minutes, which is basically about 90 percent of the entire game.

Rob Manfred’s potential ‘golden-at-bat’ rule for MLB is causing dismay among baseball fans

And it has now emerged that back in 2015, Manfred himself disliked the suggested rule

‘In baseball, when I go to a Marlins game, I’m only going to see four at-bats from Stanton. 

‘So I want to implement what I like to call “the magic at-bat” where each manager at any time during the game – because commissioner I’m not going to see a short stop hit, I’m going to see Stanton hit – so 4-5 magic at-bats for each manager to put Stanton in wherever he wants and there is smoke and the kids love magic, commissioner. What do you think?’

Weiner’s fellow co-hosts kept shouting throughout his pitch that he was wasting Manfred’s time by raising the idea, and Manfred agreed.

‘I’m with your friend, you’re wasting my time,’ Manfred said. ‘I think it’s a crazy idea.

‘Let me give you a really serious answer about a suggestion like that; we are very open to the idea of making changes to the game.

‘We see pace of game as one example of it, we see instant replay as another example. When you make those changes it is always important to ask yourself whether you are interfering with the history or traditions of the game.

‘And I think the suggestion that you just floated would fall squarely into the category “would interfere with the history and traditions of the game”‘.

When Weiner joked ‘so it’s a maybe’ Manfred replied ‘it is a no!’. And in just two hours of being reposted by the Le Batard show on Wednesday, it was had over 125,000 views.

A ‘golden-at-bat- would mean players like Shohei Ohtani could potentially hit in any inning

‘What a hypocrite,’ one fan wrote back in response to the clip.

Another posted: ‘Pinch hitting already exists. Managers can already do it anytime they want. These ideas are coming from stupid casual fans who just happen to be the commissioner.’

A different reply said: ‘Un-MF-believable. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. Because it really is an idea that laps every idiotic rule change in the history of sports.’

But speaking nine years later, Manfred said to Ourand that there ‘was a little buzz around it at an owners’ meeting,’ but noted that things are in the ‘conversation-only stage right now.’