I am at the Nat’s game and my wife asked me…
The DH in the American League bats for the pitcher EVERY time. He’s “designated” to hit in the pitcher’s place.
A pinch hitter only bats ONCE, and then either is removed from the game or stays in to replace the player he hit for. He’s used “in a pinch” to hit for a player, usually the pitcher, to provide an offensive boost.
A pinch hitter is put into a game for a single at-bat, replacing another player in the line-up. Chances are he’ll be yanked before taking the field or coming up to bat again. A DH is a regular man in the line-up who bats for the pitcher.
I think. I’m not exactly a sports maven…TRM
Damn, he slipped it in ahead of me!
Moved to The Game Room from GQ.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
And to clarify, the DH does not play in the field. Thus the DH position has become a haven for aging sluggers who can still hit but are not able to play a full game anymore or who’s fielding has dropped below acceptable levels.
Just a nit to pick–
The DH can hit for any of the nine players on the “fielding” team, not only the pitcher. Had there been a DH rule when Babe Ruth was a pitcher, the DH might have hit for the 2nd baseman, or any other position player.
I don’t believe that this is true. I’ll have to check my rulebook, but I believe the rule states that the DH will hit only for the pitcher.
Note that to bring in a pinch-hitter for a pitcher (or other player), you generally need to take take that player out for the remainder of the game (I think there are some shenanigans the manager can pull to get around this, but they’re complicated and have their own downsides). So if your pitcher is doing a really great job on the mound, or you don’t have very many more pitchers available in the bullpen (where the pitchers who aren’t in the game yet stay warmed up), then you probably just want to accept one at-bat of lousy hitting rather than replacing him with a pinch-hitter.
That’s true in high school and there are complications in college allowing for a pitcher to be his own DH and stay in the game after being taken off the mound, but rule 6.10(b) of the MLB rules specifies that the DH can only hit for the pitcher.
A DH (Designated Hitter) is used in a somewhat baseball-esque activity that some people call baseball.* A pinch hitter can be also used in this game, and also in the actual game of baseball.
More bluntly, a DH is an abomination and a pinch hitter is not. For ease of identification, if you don’t get a sharp whiff of brimstone off the player, he’s a pinch hitter.
- (AIUI these are probably the same people who call boneless chicken chunks cooked in garlic butter “Scampi”).
While I agree that the idea of the designated hitter is contrary to the spirit of baseball, I think that the shenanigans they go through in the National League to get the same effect are even more contrary to the spirit of baseball. So I’ll accept the DH as the lesser of two evils.
To clarify for anyone who doesn’t know, Major League Baseball is composed of two separate leagues, the American League and the National League. The two leagues have slightly different rules, most evident in the fact that the AL allows the designated hitter, while the NL does not.
Every once in a while, depending on the phase of the moon, an AL manager will goof up substitutions and the pitcher will have to bat for himself. The DH rule on this is sufficiently complex that it makes the infield fly rule look simple by comparison.
What shenanigans?
About five million dollars a year.
You saw this a couple of times in the early part of the decade with the New York Yankees and their thin bench. Bernie Williams, who was a perfectly acceptable center fielder, would often play DH. Occasionally, one of the corner fielders (people like Hideki Matsui would be lifted for a pinch runner* and Bernie would be part of a defensive substitution.
*If a slow runner is on base, you can remove him from the game permanently to let someone else run for him. Then, the pinch runner either has to come in defensively or be replaced himself with a defensive player.
It’s not really that complicated.
- You can replace the DH with another DH.
- The DH can switch to playing a fielding position but then you don’t have a DH anymore.
- If the PITCHER switches to playing a defensive position, you don’t get to have a DH anymore.
- If a player who is already playing a defensive position begins pitching, you don’t get to have a DH anymore.
- No matter what happens, the DH’s spot in the batting order never changes. If you lose the right to use a DH the pitcher is hitting in that spot.
Like the infield fly rule, it’s perhaps easiest to understand the rule if you think about WHY it is written the way it is. The gist is that you cannot monkey with the lineup to exploit the DH rule to get hitters in and out of the lineup. The DH can only hit for the pitcher, period.
Slight nitpick here, the rules are the same for all MLB teams. However, the DH rule is optional. The American League chooses to exercise the option, while the National League does not.
There was a notable game this season where the Rays manager (an AL team) screwed up his line-up card that he handed over to the umpire at the start of the game. Since he had listed the same player twice, (that’s a no-no), he lost the ability to use the DH that game.
When the DH was being discussed in the early 1970’s, the position was often described as “a permanent pinch-hitter for the pitcher”, or “designated pinch hitter” for short. By the time the rule entered the rule book, however, it was recognized that “permanent pinch-hitter” was an oxymoron, and that DH at-bats wouldn’t count as PH at-bats except in the case where one DH batted for another.
Why does baseball have 2 sets of rules? I don’t know of any other pro sport that works that way.
A few years ago baseball got rid of the AL and NL presidents and now the umpires are merged as well. So why do they insist on 2 sets of rules?
There’s Rugby Union and Rugby League, too …
There used to be other differences between leagues, such as differing umpire positions (the NL ones looked over the catcher’s inside shoulder, the AL ones over his head) and curfew times, but those have disappeared along with the league president’s offices.
I think it was expected that the DH rule would either be made permanent for both leagues, or dropped, depending on how well it worked and was accepted in the AL. Remarkably, it’s still a subject of strong debate after 36 years, so it still hasn’t been standardized.