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Anyway, I like things the way they are - NL has it one way, AL has it another, everyone gets to see baseball the way they like it.
Beer AND Tacos, my friends.
Except for the people who like the AL, who get to see baseball-like substance, rather than baseball.
This isn't a "beer and tacos" situation. More like NY Strip and brake fluid. Or raw pork and champagne.
Mike Hampton career batting line - .246/.294/.356. By the standards of an MLB hitter, Hampton is a bad hitter.
And Owings and Kieschnick are/were hardly "elite" pitchers.
"Baseball is a game between two teams of nine players each..."
The DH is unconstitutional. Good enough for me.
more obvious managerial moves, situations where everybody does the same thing, =/ more strategy: a greater actual variation of strategy in the AL, iirc....
The DH is unconstitutional. Good enough for me.
God, this old chestnut. DH haters have been rolling this one out since 1973.
I'm open to the idea of getting rid of the DH. I wouldn't mind if it went away. But it's ridiculous to talk about it as not "real" baseball. You might as well say that having relief pitchers isn't "real" baseball, or throwing the ball overhand isn't "real" baseball.
No, he didn't. It was not convincing at all.
Yep. Yet it's amazing how people keep bringing it up as though somehow adds weight to the pro-DH argument.
I think people that were not alive when the DH was born shouldn't be allowed to get all huffy about this.
Nor should they be allowed to get all huffy about the Dodgers leaving Brooklyn, which is another of Howard's pet issues, IIRC.
Although I suppose huffiness is in every famous baseball commentator's toolkit, so I won't begrudge him some practice every once in a while.
I agree, although I will say that watching managers make double-switches isn't much of an argument against the DH, either.
Some people like some things, other people like other things. I can see the aesthetic arguments both for and against it.
My favorite part of non-DH strategy is when to pinch hit for a cruising starting pitcher while trailing in a close game. That doesn't happen every game, obviously, but that's always been much more interesting to me than any bunting dilemmas. I'd miss that in the NL.
Has someone crunched the numbers on this, to determine how often a manager pinch-hits in this situation?
Agreed.
If they ever decide to abolish it, it would have to come with some concessions to the union. I would think you would see 42 man rosters and 26 man active rosters, at least.
Although given that my favorite teams's sOPS+ allowed against pitchers the last 4 years is 138/133/96/113, maybe the DH wouldn't be so bad.
I don't think I'm too huffy. Feel free to find counterexamples (He said in a Gary Hart kind of manner.)
PS - I forgot you said famous.
But honestly, I don't give much of a crap.
Still, that was pretty bait-y, which isn't helpful. Sorry, all.
Well, that explains the headline then.
Your average little leaguer understands the double switch perfectly well. It doesn't add some kind of cosmically sublime nuance to our appreciation of the game.
The "framers" probably wouldn't recognize what pitchers do today as "pitching". Basically, the pitcher was supposed to just be a guy who chucked it up there so that the batter could put the ball in play. In early baseball, the pitcher might be the best hitter on the team, because he had the least fielding responsibilities. It took a while before the sport even acknowledged that the pitcher was trying to get the batter out. The role of the pitcher has evolved more than any other position in the game, and the DH is just the end result of that.
There is a simple, obvious, and elegant solution to this conundrum.
There is a simple, obvious, and elegant solution to this conundrum.
Abolish the AL
Use the DH in all All-Star Games
Keep current rules for the World Series
Sure; a lot of this is what you're used to seeing.
If the NL had adopted the DH in 1973 as well (which they came really close to doing), we probably wouldn't be having this conversation. The DH would seem as natural as the 3-point line in basketball, or offensive and defensive specialists in football.
I'm a Mets fan that prefers the DH. In general I prefer the AL - I can watch any AL game, whereas non-Mets NL games are always full of teams and players that I am consistently rooting against. It's less enjoyable.
Every once in a while you'd still get moralizers popping up to declare it an abomination. The issue wouldn't get as much play as it does now, but it wouldn't be totally dead.
Exactly. This argument exemplifies "waste of time."
The Nationals have been at it for 5 years and they still haven't acknowledged this.
Ach, yes-for comic effect. I'm not really angry at Mike Silva for ruining baseball for my unborn child.
I do feel strongly about this, but I don't hold anger or contempt for those who feel the opposite.
I am all about deploying my child in pursuit of keeping the DH out of the NL, however.
I think people that were not alive when the DH was born shouldn't be allowed to get all huffy about this.
Nor should they be allowed to get all huffy about the Dodgers leaving Brooklyn, which is another of Howard's pet issues, IIRC.
Although I suppose huffiness is in every famous baseball commentator's toolkit, so I won't begrudge him some practice every once in a while.
Well, the NL without DH is clearly a part of my life, and so I don't think this example holds up.
I was also raised to understand the tragedy of the Dodgers leaving Brooklyn, and have had conversations about it with hundreds of people who experienced it directly, so I'm frankly not very removed from it. I think my feelings on this are justified, just as I'd give a thumbs-down to the Black Plague, even though I wasn't around for it.
Every once in a while you'd still get moralizers popping up to declare it an abomination. The issue wouldn't get as much play as it does now, but it wouldn't be totally dead.
Fortunately, I wasn't subjected to soulless baseball growing up. So I am thankful for that.
My girlfriend, an NL fan, often cites this as why she isn't that fond of football, her argument being that if you play the game you should, you know, actually play the whole game as in soccer and basketball. I often ask her why first basemen aren't asked to pitch or why goalkeepers don't try to score more often just to bait her, and I'd do the same here except that Vlad has always scared me a little. Decapitation is not a threat I take lightly.
No thanks. I'll go with baseball.
If you really got it, you'd hate the DH, too.
And if the giant ants had conquered the earth, we'd all be toiling away in their underground sugar caves. Which would be nearly as bad, but not quite.
I don't like the DH, and it's hard for me to imagine the early rules-makers (the "framers," if you will) having a guy who just hit, or a guy who just pitched.
It's hard for me to imagine the framers making excuses for the inability of pitchers to hit or play other positions in the field. I object to those notions far more than I do the additional specialization of the DH.
What Howard said. I like baseball. A different non-baseball game would hold no more interest for me than DH-ball does.
That's... dumb. I hope your girlfriend ignores and/or throws a rock at you when you say that.
Then NPB would be the only major league, right? :P
Something that I've wondered is why it's considered terrible that teams are allowed to mask, say, AJ Burnett's inability to hit with a DH, but it's not terrible that teams are allowed to mask Manny Ramirez's inability to pitch, or catch, or play shortstop, by hiding him in left field for the whole game. The only reason that I can come up with is that "it's always been that way". Again, it's all up to what you're used to.
If until 1973 teams were forced to rotate positions every inning (or lose the player to a substitute if you don't want to rotate him), and then they passed a rule saying that teams could keep players at the same position the whole game, we'd have people here complaining about how this new-fangled fixed position system is for the birds.
Even pre-1900, when the rules were somewhat amorphous, a large portion of pitchers were pretty crappy hitters,
Ditto.
Right, so "baseball" is exactly what it is. Only 321 rule changes are allowed; after the 322nd rule change, it's not "baseball" anymore.
This.
(3) We've already won.
How many of those other rule changes completely destroyed the symmetry of the game, and helped usher in the rampant bullepn expansion of the modern era in the bargain?
I don't hate the DH because I'm against all changes. I hate the DH because that particular change sucks.
I'm a Dodgers fan and I prefer the DH. I just want to see good hitters hit and good pitchers pitch. That, to me, is the fun of baseball at its core.
There's a certain joy to watching somebody like Randy Johnson hit, though, so maybe we should just install the DH rule for every pitcher except the funny ones. C.C. Sabathia has to hit, for example.
However, for the most part, I think it’s great that people feel differently and they have their choice of 16 teams to watch who play most of their games DH-free.
On there other hand, the anti-DH fundamentalists are so irritating that I’m a little bit looking forward to the day the NL adopts the DH (which is inevitable, IMO).
As for the situation Voxter describes, the frigging Indians were trying to put Ryan Garko in left field to fit in Hafner and Martinez in the lineup, so that crap happens anyway.
The lively ball changed the game drastically. I wonder if there's some parallel universe BTF from the FDR Administration bemoaning the demise of the spitter.
I like variety.
That would be me. The spitball was a staple of every semi-pro game I watched growing up.
And of course Lew was fun to watch. Among others.
The rampant expansion of the bullpen actually started in the NL, for the most part; to the extent that the DH rule contributed to pitching changes, on balance, the DH led to pitchers being left in the game *longer*.
-- MWE
People who like watching pitchers hit shouldn't be allowed to reproduce.
- waaaaaaaal
it's a little to late to do the raht thang naowwwwwww
besides, then i would have been deprived of the great pleasure of hearing some pompous baseball commentator say, while watching some nobody 38 year old korean relief pitcher stride to the plate against randy johnson - talk about an unfair matchup, this shouldn't be allowed
then watching aforementioned skinny Old Guy relief pitcher wallop a triple to the base of the wall, AWESOME!!!
bettern watching some worn out used to be a baseball player DH hit another of his 325' popups into the crawford boxes or try to beat out a single to right and get thrown out by 10'
I guarantee you this would not have happened. People who can bat .300 and hit 40 home runs will be put on the field as long as they can do that.
Ortiz's career might have ended last season, but the fact that he was fat and slow would not have prevented a team from running him out there somewhere for his bat.
Also, Dude, Chinaman is not the preferred nomenclature. Asian-American, please.
This has basically become a non-issue, though, because by the time a cruising starting pitcher bats in a game situation that might call for a PH he's usually approaching his pitch count limit, anyway.
-- MWE
The first time I went to an A's game with an old GF of mine who'd grown up in Philly (not a baseball fan, but she'd seen a few games) I had to explain about the "designated hitter." She was like, "Wait, WHAT? Pitchers don't BAT? Are they baseball players, or not? That's ########."
*sigh* I loved that girl.
Unless this is a joke, who gets worked up about that?
Except for the many times it still happens, of course. Oh, and the similar situations where a reliever comes in, pitches to one or two batters successfully, and then is due up the next inning. It seemed the Dodgers encountered these situations once or twice a week at least last season, where Torre would have to decide whether to pull an effective pitcher prematurely in order to hit for him - and it was not always decided in terms of pinch hitting. I'm not sure what games people are watching where these decisions are almost always automatic.
I'm a DH supporter, but this argument doesn't make much sense to me. Unless you would also support the designated runner, to free us from the pleasure of watching David Ortiz and Jim Thome running the bases? Or why not just move to a totally football based system - where you can have 9 designated hitters.
Related question (I find the DH debate itself very boring) - if baseball did move to such a system (9 designated hitters) - how many players would still play both ways? Is there anyone in MLB who is good enough on both sides of the ball? My suspicion is that there is not, but anyone have a nomination?
When was the last time you saw The Big Lebowski?
Any argument can be extended to an absurd point in order to make it sound silly. Part of the reason there's no designated runner is that the mechanics of it would be impossible. But part of it is that "designated hitter" should be understood to mean "designated offensive player". The fact that there's no designated runner does not change the fact that the DH has made defenses better.
Did I miss a study? Defenses got better in the AL in 1973, and stayed that way?
Double-post here, but I think there are a few. Willie Mays, certainly, and Joe DiMaggio, were good enough fielders that a DF probably wouldn't have been able to shunt them aside. After all, fielding and hitting do require some of the same athletic gifts, or at least abilities that are born of the same athletic gifts. And both were great hitters.
Let's see . . . A-Rod at his fielding peak, though he probably would have been playing 3B or 1B instead of SS. Joe Morgan? Honus Wagner? This turns out to be a harder question than I had at first realized. Guys like Brooks Robinson get shunted aside because you can trot out nine Travis Hafner sorts, thereby eliminating Robinson's positional adjustment and rendering him an inadequate hitter.
All of that said, how big of a league are we talking about?
It would be an impossible study to perform. The assertion is based on anecdotal evidence from people here, older than I, who remember the days when guys like Babe Herman (well, maybe not Herman himself, but guys like him) still menaced outfields all over MLB.
Pujols? Beltran?
I thought of Pujols, too, but the problem is that you'd end up with someone like, I dunno, Robinson Cano playing 1B, because some no-hit ex-SS is now playing 2B.
The vasy majority of the time, those pitchers would be coming out of the game anyway, PH or not. I think you're failing to realize how well-defined pitcher usage has become, in both leagues.
-- MWE
Let's face it, most catchers can't hit at all, and only a few shortstops and centerfielders excel at it. Who wants to see them hit? We should allow designated hitters for all defensive first positions, designated runners for any good hitters too old or overweight to run well, designated fielders to wear the glove for pitchers who lack Greg Maddux's dexterity.
Or we can accept that athletes are imperfect, and that the enjoyment of the sport is not just watching them at their best, but also at their most challenged.
I like it too, except when I realize that's what I look like to those who support/are indifferent to interleague play.
Same case with Beltran really. He's a great fielder, I would bet that if hitting ability were totally removed from the equation, you'd be able to find 30 center fielders who could do it better. The problem is we never see these guys, since even the Royals aren't going to play a guy who hits .025 with 0 home runs and 0 walks. We're already so strongly selecting for guys who can hit, on the basis that if you can hit, you can play. If that selection were removed, I think pretty much all the current players would fall by the wayside.
Beltran is probably the closest guy in MLB though.
Japanese Central League.
And I believe in its first few years the current incarnation of the Northern League also had no DH.
Just my opinion, of course, but even if someone under these new rules was still talented enough to play on both sides of the ball, why would you do that? For example, even if, say, Beltran was good enough in this new style game to play both offense and defense, why would you risk having him injure himself out in the field? Likewise with Pujols, or DiMaggio, or Mantle: you don't take a chance on them hurting themselves playing defense, no matter how good they may be at it.
DB
IIRC, the Hanseatic League didn't have a DH. Neither did Robert Fripp's League of Gentlemen.
This said better what I was trying to communicate.
This. This. A million times this.
I like watching pitchers hit. I like watching bad fielders field. I like watching slow runners run. Baseball is better when Koo hits, when Stairs fields, when Molina runs. The fact that some players aren't good at everything, that different players have different skills, is what makes the game worthwhile.
Word.
735 Plate Appearances in 2009, NL ballpark, batting 9th, during innings 7-end, Behind By 1 or 2 Runs
PH 556
2B 32
LF 27
SS 26
3B 23
P 20
CF 15
RF 14
C 13
1B 9
Summary: 76% of PA were PH, 3% of PA were P, and the remaining 21% were non-pitchers, many of whom were presumably double-switched into the 9th spot in the batting order. (Only 18 plate appearances by non-pitchers in the 9th spot were by Cardinals.)
Source: BB-REF
It might be interesting to poll Milwaukee Brewer fans (maybe those who are 30 and over) which style of play they like best.
The DH is in effect all through the minors, but in AA & AAA, when NL affiliates play, the managers agree not to use the DH and allow the pitchers bat.
In theory this could happen in the American League as well, but I doubt any two managers would ever have the balls to do it.
Whenever a pitcher has had to bat in an AL game, it's been because someone screwed up the lineup card or some other such error.
The AL is *much* better. The DH thing is a complete red herring.
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