Wednesday, December 12, 2012
2013 Results: Bonds, Clemens, Piazza and Biggio are elected to the Hall of Merit!
(bbtf)
Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Mike Piazza and Craig Biggio have been elected to the Hall of Merit!
The timing for our first year electing 4 candidates could not have worked out better, since class of 2013 is the strongest in terms of electees that we’ve ever had. The top of the 1934 ballot included Ty Cobb, Tris Speaker, Eddie Collins, Pop Lloyd, Smokey Joe Williams and Cristobal Torriente, but only 2 were elected.
Bonds and Clemens were each unanimous at 1 and 2. I believe that’s the first ...
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1 2 3 >Or, we could just (gasp) put the DH in the NL.
Also, I'm not sure it would really lead to any additional managerial strategizing (maybe GM strategizing). Teams are either going to be DH teams or non-DH teams. I couldn't really see a team being much of a hybrid in the their home games unless they were a DH team whose DH got hurt, turning them into a non-DH team.
The only reason I could see a team consciously deciding to be a DH team is to protect big time talent pitchers from hitting in an effort to reduce their risk of injury. But a team in that position is probably spending a bunch of money on their staff, which leaves less money available for a hitter.
As an AL-fan I'll say, the DH is stupid. Everyone else plays defense and offense, it's idiotic to have one player who doesn't.
I mean, I like the idea of forcing more strategy, and I'm not against a "home team decides" rule.
But basically the second order effect is that each team will sign two first basemen: one who can field very well but not necessarily hit well, and another who can hit very well but not necessarily field well. If the DH is invoked, the "hitting 1B" is DH and the "fielding 1B" is in the field; if not, the "hitting 1B" plays 1B and the "fielding 1B" is his defensive replacement in later innings when ahead. (Or they'll do the same approach, but with LF instead of 1B.) That doesn't appeal to me enough to change the status quo.
If you really want to make an unnecessary rule, have each team pick one opposing player to deactivate from the roster for the day. Stipulate that the same player can't be deactivated more than once in any 7-game span.
But some teams worry more about how they can transfer their monetary advantage to the field. I would expect the ilk of the Yankees, Red Sox and Angels to go for the DH, especially if the pinata teams have penny-pinched in that slot. A DH/pinch-hitter will get a lot of ABs as he will start every single home game and probably quite a few road games.
No relief pitchers play offense, and way too many starters go up there with little interest in getting the ball out of the infield. If we enforce the "has to play both offense and defense" rule, we have to make it apply to everyone.
I don't know if it's the auto-response you expect, but I'm gung ho for anything we can do to reduce the number of relief pitchers used.
Maybe limit the number of pitchers that can be rostered to 10? Require an RP to face at least 3 batters?
I actually like having the leagues with different rules - it is the only thing left that makes the NL and AL different afaik. Players hop from league to league all the time, interleague play, etc. We need something otherwise we might as well do the big shift that has been talked about - ie: putting both NY's in the same division and the like.
The one change for DH's I'd like though is to have it be that in interleague play the DH is in use in NL parks and not in AL parks just so the hometown fans in each league can see something a bit different.
Player Rfield OPS+ PA From To SLG PosFrank Howard -109 143 7101 1958 1972 .500 *793
Roy Sievers -79 124 7347 1949 1965 .475 378/59
Leon Wagner -78 120 4950 1958 1969 .455 *79
Harmon Killebrew -77 149 8792 1954 1972 .527 357/49
Wes Covington -76 122 3291 1956 1966 .466 *7/98
Jim Bottomley -73 125 8354 1922 1937 .500 *3/4
Willie Stargell -44 145 5266 1962 1972 .522 *73/98
Jack Fournier -41 141 4813 1916 1927 .494 *3/17
Ralph Kiner -40 149 6256 1946 1955 .548 *7/83
Bob Nieman -36 132 3947 1951 1962 .474 *79
And of course a couple of them did end up DHing some after the rule came in, including Killebrew in his old age, (And he maybe doesn't belong on the list; he could play an adequate 3B, and it's hard to rate him as a defender, given his multiple positions.)
One thing the list suggests is that if you can hit like Frank Howard, a DHless sport will find somewhere for you to play. Ortiz would be in that class as a hitter, I imagine.
If the NL ever adopts the DH, I'm going to stop following baseball, and use all my new free time to track down every person who ever suggested that the NL adopt the DH and then murder them in their sleep.
This, this, a thousand times this. The first time a pitcher tweaks an ankle sliding into second base, the talking heads will erupt in a frenzy of "why didn't you protect your pitcher!!!"
Managers in all sports manage to deflect criticism as much as to win the games. More so in many cases, like fraidy-cat punts in football.
That's not even particularly an option *right now*. IF Ortiz is out for a substantial amount of time, I would think the Sox would be okay with Napoli at DH and a Dougie Alphabet at 1B, but I can't think of anyone out there.
I could be wrong about the Sox's assesment of Napoli's defensive prowess though.
How about get rid of the DH and pitcher's batting. 8-man lineups! No non-athletic DHs hiding from playing defence, no crappy pitchers trying to bunt. And new single-season batting records for all!
Maybe it's the wrong attitude, but I generally think of the status quo as the middle ground.
Because the Yankees are in town. Seriously, have you looked at that lineup?
See, the problem is your looking at it as a fan of the DH. As someone who isn't, your argument that only 8 NL teams don't want the DH doesn't compel me at all. Its not about what the teams want, its about what the fans want, and there certainly isn't a consensus among fans that the DH is better.
The problem with the DH v no DH argument is that both sides wildly overestimate the fan support for their side. I'd imagine the split is about 50/50. Why is it such a crime that those of us who don't like the DH get to watch DH free games? I'd make the same argument the other way, I don't begrudge AL fans for watching baseball the way they prefer to watch it.
I also think the pro-DH guys miss the train by arguing that "relief pitchers still won't hit." I think most anti-DH fans would prefer to see starters go longer or relievers pitch multiple innings. Just because we can't have the game exactly the way it was doesn't mean we should have to give in to everything. I think we mostly would just prefer that every baseball player was as well rounded as possible.
I've got a better idea, if we're going full-blown mutant.
You can use a DH, but each of the 9 batters must spend 8 innings in the field. One batter sits on D every inning. No batter can sit twice until everyone has sat once. So, you can have your David Ortiz bat, but he's got to field too.
The position switching mayhem would be awesome :-)
There are specialty websites for this sort of thing.
I still prefer real baseball, but at least that's fair from a structural standpoint.
An absurd number of games like soccer and hockey have goalies. Rowing's got the slavedriver guy (OK, I admit I just looked it up and he's the "coxswain", but I'm leaving it as "slavedriver guy"). Football is essentially nothing but a huge mess of specific rules for specific people.
Hell, even ignoring the DH rule, baseball itself has specific rules for the pitcher, catcher, and first baseman.
If you don't like it, that's fine, but it doesn't imply that it's somehow stupid.
And I don't think its stupid. My preference is that the games I watch don't feature it. I think there's enough of us around that letting us keep the NL DH free makes sense. Forgive us for being defensive, but you have to admit the odds seem to be 75% or higher that we'll lose that sometime in the next decade.
I like the idea that the AL and NL are different. The uniqueness of the situation was always best exemplified in the world series, unfortunately for me, interleague play kind of ruined that.
So what? A goalie can score goals at any time if he's in position to do so (it does happen once in a while), and a non-goalie can block shots if he wants. A team always has six players on the ice - how it assigns those players is up to it.
Yes, and football was much better and more interesting when players played both ways, back in the olden days. A desire to keep baseball from being cheapened in the way football was is one of the best reasons to oppose the DH.
This is why I think it's ridiculous for baseball to ever consider changing from what we have now. You've got your Vlads and his pro-DH equivalents. Whether either set would truly give up the game if the DH was universally adopted is debatable, but why the hell would baseball chance it? The sport offers something for each type of fan as is. Alienting one set just for homogeneity's sake makes no sense.
As for me, I like differences between the leagues, and wish there were more of them, not fewer. Go status quo.
Well, there are a lot of people who are genuinely offended at watching a pitcher swing the bat. They see no reason why they should be subjected to it. I see Tim Hudson hit his first MLB HR at 35 to give himself the lead and I figure its worth it.
Well there's a pretty easy solution to that problem.
Really? People are offended! It really raises their ire? They are genuinely cross about the whole thing? That's just silly.
If you want to take offense to something at least pick something meaningful like starving children or humanitarian issues. Or maybe Republicans, steroid abusers and over rated closers!
Sorry, I should have phrased that better. I should have said, "I don't think its stupid..." And then moved on to "I think a lot of the anti-DH vitriol, i.e. calling the DH stupid, is really defensiveness because we're quite likely going to lose this fight sometime before 2020."
6 times in NHL history on shots. My guess is that all six were empty net.
Please. You've been around here enough to know that watching a pitcher hit really does cause people's ire to rise. It's silly to pretend that just because its silly it doesn't happen. Just like some of the most angry people I've ever seen in my life have been arguing about the DH.
No DH, no pinch hitting for the pitcher - might only need a 23-man roster. Players union wouldn't agree unless you tripled the minimum salary or provided other significant tradeoffs.
Fans of teams in the AL like the DH. Fans of teams in the NL don't. Fans root for teams.
Right. It was 99-1 against back in '73. If the NL would just put it in like EVERY OTHER ORGANIZED LEAGUE ON THE PLANET, the number of people who missed seeing the pitcher hit instead of David Ortiz would be, in about 5-10 years, roughly equivalent to the number that are still pissed the A's left Philadelphia.
And if the AL stopped playing by college and Little League rules, the number of people who missed seeing David Ortiz crawl out of the dugout to swing three or four times a game while his teammates played baseball around him, in 5-10 years, would be roughly equivalent to the number that are still active members of the New Kids On The Block fan club.
The use of ALL CAPS doesn't make this true.
I'm not pretending the anger doesn't exist, I'm suggesting it's silly to get really upset about it. I don't like pitchers or batters who take too long between pitches, I don't like interleague play and I don't like guys wearing their pants down to the cleats and not show any socks, but I don't get angry about it.
hey, whoa, where do I sign up?
The NPB Central League, for one.
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