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Baseball Primer Newsblog— The Best News Links from the Baseball Newsstand
Thursday, June 14, 2012
And once a Sweeny Murti falls in line…all else will follow!
I like interleague play. I like going to cities I don’t normally visit, see new ballparks and different players. I never thought I’d say that. I always thought of myself as traditional, but I’ve grown to love the post 1995 wildcard format, and you know what? I’ve even come around on the DH. So much so, that it’s time to add it to the National League.
That’s right, I said it. I want the NL to adopt the DH.
...Pitchers like to think they can hit, but we all know that most of them can’t. So why put us through the torturous process and them through the potentially dangerous activity? I have come to think of telling a pitcher he HAS to pick up a bat as just as insane an idea as telling a position player he HAS to pitch in a game. You would never want to risk injury to Derek Jeter by telling him he has to pitch an inning. So why should we tell Andy Pettitte that he has to swing a bat? This is not what these guys get paid millions to do. Let’s just stop.
...As I discussed this issue in the Yankee clubhouse this week, I had one pitcher tell me it would be a terrible idea if they didn’t get to bat during interleague games. I won’t give up my source. All I can tell you is his name rhymes with BB Rabbathia.
Repoz
Posted: June 14, 2012 at 06:46 PM | 54 comment(s)
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1. Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Griffin (Vlad) Posted: June 14, 2012 at 06:50 PM (#4157155)And I, in turn, want to see you get hit by a bus.
Likes this.
You might not feel this is a big enough reason, but you will two years from now when Alex Rodriguez has become the full-time DH and his bat is left on the bench down the stretch with the Yankees down 1 game in the wildcard race and playing their last 3 games of the year in Cincinnati.
I so hope this happens.
I mean c'mon... I think even Bobby Valentine would find a way to get A-Rod into the game in this situation.
EDIT: Sweet Jebus, this guy seems to have a bucket list of cliches.
Win. I'll chip in for the bus.
Edit: And it's crazy that we are this far down the interleague path and haven't figured out it would be more fun for the fans to play by the visiting team's rules. Mix it up a little, it's a long season.
Could you do this? If you listed Zambrano at SS, and the SS as pitcher (to be DHed for) in the opening lineup, but then you just sent Zambrano to the mound to pitch, would that be legal? Or would you lose the DH?
Yep, they keep saying maybe next year, and next year comes and it's not here. How tough is it to say the second game of the series is played by the visiting team rules?
Why would it be more fun for NL fans to watch an inferior game? It's bad enough that we have to play with the DH in AL parks.
I don't, but I must admit that I enjoy seeing Thome get a chance to take his cuts (what the heck is he doing in the NL, anyway?) In his 24 PA as a DH this year, he is .476/.542/.857/1.399, and he just hit a three-run homer in Minnesota, after walking his first time up.
Yesterday, the Minnesota fans who have fond memories of Jim, gave him a standing O when he hit a monster shot to dead center, over the batter's eye. He still got some applause today as well, but the enthusiasm for watching him abuse the home team is starting to wear off.
To expose fans in the AL to the superior game.
Personally I like the concept of having one game per series by the visitor rules, to allow for fairness(teams are constructed to their league) and allow me as a fan to see what would be an NL bench player, playing an all star "position" in the AL. As an NL fan you don't generally get to see the Ortiz, Edgar, Thome's etc, when the AL plays at your park.
Why not allow batters to specify where they want the ball pitched or play with minimal gloves or get rid of the infield fly rule?
They all seem equally silly to me and they all will seem equally silly to a future generation of baseball fans when the NL loses the battle against progress.
Find 6 guys who can mash, and they are your offensive squad; and three really fast guys as your base runners.
Then on defense, to make up for it, allow free substitution of pitchers, so you can always have the platoon advantage.
Once we add in the robot umpires, then we'll really have a modern game.
Hey it works for football, and ask people, football is the most popular sport in the U.S. (not the European football, which is also known as advanced grass growing observational school)
a thousand times this.
They should get rid of the infield fly rule. Forcing players and managers to make tough decisions and tradeoffs is good.
I volunteer to drive the bus. That's right, you don't have to pay me. In fact I'll pay to rent the bus.
Oh poor delicate flower! Andy might break a nail! If he wants to get paid millions of dollars to play baseball he had damn well better play baseball. He shouldn't get to choose which parts of baseball he likes and doesn't like. Adam Dunn is a terrible fielder but he had the decency to prefer playing both ways, at least until he was offered more money not to. Even David Ortiz plays 1B when he has to and runs the bases even though it's probably not his favorite part of the job. If Andy doesn't like hitting, tough @#$@.
That's where I am too. It's an unnecessary gimmick that adds nothing to the game. While not a catastrophic deal breaker -- I still watch AL games -- it's just dumb. It would be like adding a second fence beyond the first OF fence whereby balls hit over that second fence are worth 2 runs. Unnecessary and dumb.
That's if they even bother to make a legitimate swing. I could side with the anti-DHers if more pitchers took the approach (and not necessarily the results) of a Zambrano or Sabathia, where they went up there at least looking to drive the ball. But too many pitchers aren't interested in swinging the bat, making them just as one-dimensional as the DHs that people wail about. I can get behind the idea of pitchers batting, but I'd rather watch one guy not play one part of the game than watch one guy fail miserably at one part of the game.
Also, I absolutely don't get the guys like Vlad, who seem to refuse to watch DH-ball. I totally get that you greatly prefer NL-ball, but not that you see a vastly different game.
That's a feature, not a bug. If guys like Ortiz, Edgar, etc. are too fat/feeble/fragile to play in the field, then I don't want to watch them play at all. Bring 'em out for alumni day for the softball game.
Do you like music?
Do you like ALL kinds of music? Boy bands, bagpipes, breakcore, and everything in between?
What's the difference? It's all music, right?
I've always found it funny that fans of baseball would call soccer boring because I am pretty sure that the neutral observer, who knew nothing about the rules or intricacies of either sport, would call baseball the more boring sport. There's a lot of standing around, the ball is in play for probably 10-15% of the time it takes for a game to play, etc. There's far more activity in a soccer game than a baseball game.
Baseball is interesting because you understand the importance of a 2-0 count to a slugger and the other subtle things about the game. I think baseball fans would understand why someone would like soccer even when they don't personally do so.
It's also amazing how much more fun games are when you are watching it with people who really care about the outcome. Be in a soccer-loving country when one of the big tournaments are going on and it's hard not to get excited about it as well.
Why stop there? I like food too. I'm sure the difference in DH and no-DH ball is the same as the one between five-star cuisine and picking my own berries.
There's probably only two, maybe three, guys who would be out of a job if the DH didn't exist. If having to watch them lug around the bases a couple times is so distasteful for you, I'm not sure how you put up with all the players in the league who struggle at some aspect of the game, whether it be at the plate, in the field, or on the bases. And I refuse to buy the argument that a NL manager having to make a double-switch to hide the one guy in his lineup who has no real interest in putting the bat on the ball is somehow line algebra compared to the AL's arithmetic.
Probably true. Heck I played soccer for several years, it's just a boring spectator sport to me. I was a big fan of indoor soccer in it's heyday (before scores started to resemble basketball games). When the female version of the sport is arguably more interesting/exciting then I think there is a problem with the main sport(exception being of course beach volleyball for different reasons) And yes, I know that world cup soccer is not the best gauge to judge the game by, but that is when I have the most vested interest in the game.
That is where I'm at, I'm more an agnostic about it, and prefer that players play both ways, and think it's a more purer version of the game, but unlike Lisa, the DH isn't a deal breaker, when the NL adopts the Dh(not if) I'l just shrug my shoulders and say "ehh".
That is a point the anti-dhers argue, but I don't see any real evidence in the history of baseball that non-fielding players didn't continue to get playing time if they could still hit.
Why would it be more fun for NL fans to watch an inferior game?
This from a Pirates fan no less. :-)
(Chill, I wish my team was anywhere near as good as the Pirates this year.)
Actually you don't even need 8 men. You only need 4 since there can only be 3 baserunners at a time. Josh Hamilton will hit 200 HR per year!
And this is the only answer that makes sense for MLB, which I hope to hell Bud and co. are smart enough to recognize. Obviously, as every damn one of these threads demonstrates, there are people on both sides of the divide who feel very, very strongly about the DH. And, what do you know, each of these determined partisans have a league that caters to this strongly held conviction about the best way to play the game. Why the hell would baseball want to anger/alienate one very large group of fervent supporters (ah, the hell with it, nutjobs) simply for homogeneity's sake.
There's so many negations in here that your sentence is hard to follow, but I'll respond to what I think you said. Besides for Hafner and Ortiz, are there any guys that couldn't play a passable 1B? Yes, Butler Dunn, and Encarnacion might look rough out there, but their defense is acceptable enough to live with that bat. They are DH's because it makes logical sense to use the rules to your best advantage, not because they couldn't be major leaguers without that spot.
Oh, I'm with you there.
Sorry, that was what I was trying to say. Historically speaking, if the player can still hit, they found him a spot to play.
But I liked batting! And my position out in the field was independent of the lousy dice roll and that mother trucker on the mound beaning me (IIRC, I am dead, you know).
It's funny. I haven't heard a thing about Giambi since he signed with the Rockies, but according to BB-Ref he is in his third season there and played as recently as yesterday. Huh. Where would we be without the internet?
a) Eliminate the pitcher/DH spot in the batting order entirely (only have position players batting), or
b) Have the DH, but tie his appearance with the starting pitcher -- when you change pitchers, you must pinch-hit for the DH the rest of the game.
"It's an unnecessary gimmick that adds nothing to the game."
"I think this applies perfectly to perpetuating the notion that pitchers are two-way players and must hit."
.......
hmm, I don't think the original rule of having pitchers bat - which wasn't controversial from the 1870s into the 1960s - could be considered a "gimmick." It might be antiquated, but I'd reserve "gimmick" for opponents of a relatively (on the baseball history scale) new rules change if they consider it so.
just as if there was a DH for 100 years, and then it was outlawed, I think the critics of having pitchers bat would be the ones who would have the rights to the word "gimmick" for the new approach, if they so chose.
from dictionary.com:
gim·mick
? ?[gim-ik] Show IPA
noun
1.
an ingenious or novel device, scheme, or stratagem, especially one designed to attract attention or increase appeal.
The DH argument is an emotional argument. Other sports have changed their rules in the name of progress.
Aside from the Giants, the NL West is where veteran base-ballers go to be forgotten about.
Rockies players this season also include Ramon Hernandez, Marco Scutaro and Michael Cuddyer, in case you were wondering what happened to them.
Diamondbacks players include Aaron Hill, John McDonald, Jason Kubel, Willie Bloomquist, Lyle Overbay, Henry Blanco, and Geoff Blum.
Padres players include Jeff Suppan, Micah Owings, Jason Marquis, Jason Bartlett, Mark Kotsay, and Carlos Quentin, who is 2nd on the team in home runs and 14th in plate appearances.
Even on the first-place Dodgers you may be unaware of the presence of Bobby Abreu, Juan Rivera, Adam Kennedy, and Aaron Harang, not to mention the man about whom the sentence "I thought he retired five years ago" has been uttered more than any other, Jamey Wright.
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