True, it’s been a long time. But the move to the 5-man rotation happened in my lifetime, Teams have been carrying more pitchers, and expecting less work from them, for the last several years.
When I first started being a baseball fan in the late 70s, the rotation was four pitchers. I recall Steve Rogers starting 40 games and I’m sure many of the top pitchers did too. A quick check confirms it: Steve Carlton started 41 games in 1972 and 40 the next year. Rogers did in 1977 and it wasn’t needed as the Expos were below 500. It was just a different mindset back then, plus Dick Williams was the manager.
The Orioles had four 20 game winners one year. Try that with a five man rotation.
It’s a relative thing. I’m immune to the charm of 5 1/2 hour games, even in the playoffs and World Series.
It’s irritating when pitchers take forever to throw the ball to batters who can’t stay in the box but have to continually step out and adjust their batting gloves and crotches. I’ve been to minor league games where there was a pitch count (not all that rigorously enforced) and it didn’t ruin enjoyment for me.
I suspect that if batters facing a shift continually bunted for base hits, leaving sluggers to hit home runs with men on base, shift usage would decline proportionally.
As an aside, never, ever watch Cricket. 
Surely, the option the owners would favor would be whatever would sell more tickets and tune in more fans on TV, because they want profits, and that’s where profits come from. I haven’t seen any stats on fan preference for and against the DH: Surely that’s been surveyed?
MLB is the second most profitable sports league in the world. The most profitable is the NFL, so it’s no mystery why owners are trying to make baseball more like football by emphasizing specialization. Kinda sucks if (like me) you like baseball largely because it isn’t anything like football.
That, to me, suggests that if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
If MLB is the second most profitable league in the world I’d say they do not have much to fix. The National League has done without a DH since…forever. The DH only came on the scene in 1973. Baseball has existed in the US since when…1850’s?
Somehow baseball has survived and been very profitable without everyone having a DH. But now we need a universal DH because the game has sucked for 170 years without it and they just figured that out?
Baseball was the most popular team sport in the USA then they banned the spitball, let players start wearing gloves, let Black guys play, and expanded to California. Success doesn’t mean you don’t try to improve, and the fact is however profitable they are, actual popularity has been flat or declining for over a decade.
Baseball has the oldest fan base of any of the major North American professional sports leagues; the average age of a baseball fan is 57 years old.
This does suggest that they do need to fix something, if they don’t want to become irrelevant as their fan base dies off.
None of that changed the fundamentals of the game. What is (was) fundamental was picking nine players and those nine need to play both sides (offense and defense).
Part of the game is balancing the skills of those nine.
But now, you don’t need to worry about one of them. If that makes the game better then why not also allow catcher to have a DH? Why not just make it like football where you have a completely separate offense and defense? That would be more exciting wouldn’t it?
What do we need to get Millennials and younger interested again? Does anyone think a DH rule change is what will bring in younger fans?
I’d suggest stop charging $10 for a beer or $7 for a hot dog for starters.
The whole experience, including food and merchandise, for a family of four cost a league-wide average of 234.38 U.S. dollars in the 2019 season. The most expensive day out was at the Chicago Cubs, where a family would have to fork out over 370 U.S. dollars. Fans of the Arizona Diamondbacks, meanwhile, would only have to pay just over 142 U.S. dollars to experience their team live. SOURCE
Honestly, I don’t think a little more offense (from the DH) is even part of the answer. I think three major factors are:
- Cost of attending a game (though it’s not like attending an NFL or NBA game is any cheaper)
- Pace of play, and length of time between anything actually happening in a game, and an awful lot of that empty time is spent in the players standing around
- Perception that the league frowns on players expressing their individuality (as mentioned in the article I linked to earlier today)
I think that if you’re in the game, then you’re in the game. Everyone should bat. But if they’re going to have the universal DH, then there it is.
I can, however, think of a couple of alternatives I would prefer. One would be to let each team go with an eight-man batting order. Just leave out your weakest hitter, whoever he might be. I’m not saying it’s a good option, and I won’t defend it. Just that I’d prefer it to the DH. That way, instead of two players in the lineup who are playing only “one way,” you just have one.
The other would be to let the batting team simply declare the next batter out without even sending him to the plate. Skip to the guy after him. I don’t see it as much different from letting the defensive team award an intentional walk without pitching the ball. It might even, marginally, speed up the game.
I doubt that would ever happen. Even pitchers have an on base percentage greater than zero.
IMHO attending a baseball game is different than attending an NFL or NBA game. Not that they are different sports, just that baseball has always really benefited by being there, in the park, watching the game. Baseball is not great for TV but it blows away NBA/NFL when there in person.
That means there are now whole generations of kids who were simply not raised on going to the baseball park. Sure, mom and dad took them for a game here and there but it happened only a handful of times because it is too expensive to take the family multiple times in a season.
So, those kids grow up and are kinda meh about the whole thing. It doesn’t figure large in their childhood so it doesn’t as an adult either.
This is why I much prefer minor league baseball games these days. I’d rather go to a Kane County Cougars game before a Cubs game. Those games still have the feel of family and community and not trying to charge you a fortune at every turn to attend.
Well, usually the pitcher is the last in the rotation and then you start again with your best batters so, skipping your pitcher could certainly be worthwhile.
I’ve been at more than a few games with a runner stranded on third because the pitcher was up next.
Taking the out would be optional. No outs, nobody on base, ahead by four runs? Sure, why not? In other situations, you might want him to bat.
I’m thinking of the rule mostly as a way to address the issue of “we don’t want to expose a fabulously valuable pitcher to the risks of coming up to bat and/or running the bases.” It wouldn’t eliminate the risk, but it would provide an option to mitigate it.
That’s about as far as I’m willing to defend it, though. If there are any other objections, I’ll concede the point altogether.
Which is undermined when you swap out your pitcher for a pinch-hitter and then swap back to another pitcher at the next half-inning. Which is what the NL does already.
While I agree it’s awfully expensive sometimes to see a game, these things always include the price of buying two authentic league-approved baseball caps, programs, and a bunch of food and beer, and seem to assume that if you’re on a budget you can’t buy cheaper seats, though in the real world you can. Who the hell buys souvenirs at every game? Who buys programs anymore? And it’s MORE expensive to see a hockey game or a basketball game, yet it’s MLB with the older fanbase.
While I agree football isn’t great live, an NBA game live is amazing. It’s by far the sport where I find the biggest advantage to being there, which likely has something to do with the small play area.
Dodger Stadium, at least, always has Family 4-packs available (4 bleacher tickets, 4 Dodger Dogs, 4 sodas and parking) for a very reasonable price. Sure, it’s the bleachers. But 1) that’s where kids should be seeing the game from anyway, and B) that’s where they grill the dogs rather than steam them. Much better all around. Back in the day, friends and I would always catch games that way on a summer afternoon, listening to the play by play on the radio (Miss you, Vin!)