How would Atlanta Braves fare in Justin Turner’s home run derby proposal?
The Atlanta Braves aren’t short on personnel when it comes to hitting for power, especially after the addition of Marcell Ozuna. How would they stack up against the league if Justin Turner’s proposition actually happened?
Los Angeles Dodgers’ third baseman Justin Turner recently made a radical and controversial proposition that is gaining ground throughout the MLB community.
In a virtual interview with the Los Angeles regional cable sports network, Spectrum Sportsnet, the sweet-swinging Turner suggested that MLB ball games should be decided by a five-out home run derby should the match-up still be tied after 10 innings of play.
“Instead of playing 17 innings, you get one extra inning, you play the 10th inning, and no one scores, then you go to a home run derby. You take each team’s three best hitters and you give them all five outs and see who hits the most homers,” he explained in the interview.
Whether this proposal is being seriously considered by the administrative offices of the MLB has yet to be seen; one would think that Rob Manfred and other executives have more pressing things on their minds, given our current and increasingly tragic predicament we find ourselves in regard to the halt put upon the world of baseball.
Personally, as both an adherent of traditional, purist baseball and a proponent of new ideas for the game, Justin’s comments got me thinking. I could not help but wonder how all the teams would stack up in this outlandish format.
Some teams are obviously better built for power and a few have an extremely deep lineup in terms of home-run-hitting (we’re looking at you, Minnesota). But, being a lifelong Atlanta Braves fanatic, another thought that came to my mind was “how would Atlanta perform with this rule change? Would it really affect the team’s performance in any significant way?”
To answer these questions, I turned to what many have done in order to get their baseball fix, which happens to be the closest thing we have to real baseball at the moment: MLB the Show 20.
Given the critically acclaimed video game series’ reputation as a well-made and realistic simulation, I figured that it would give us a pretty clear picture of what Turner’s idea would look like if it were to really go into effect.