If the DH is a good idea then why not just go football style with completely different offensive and defensive players for the teams. Right now all the other players have to balance their fielding ability and hitting ability, why should pitchers be the only special snowflakes? We could have massive guys who can hit the ball a country mile* at the plate. The fielders could all be speedy gymnasts pulling off amazing leaping catches. And why not just let unlimited substitutions also, why should a player be pulled for being slow after reaching base, just put pinch runners in whenever needed, even designated runners like Babe Ruth used in his later days just to round the bases when they hit a dinger.
*I guess the hit the ball a country mile already being that it’s an non-specific distance.
:rolleyes: It’s absurd to suggest that old fans only root for the NL, or that young fans only root for the DH. It’s almost as absurd as suggesting that all DHs are slow, fat and unable to run the bases.
10? No. I already regressed them up over 4 for his entire career. But just for shits and giggles, let’s say he averaged 10 a season those missing years (which is absurdly generous). That’s an extra 170 runs saved, which means his 3.15 ERA would have been a 3.46 ERA without his defensive ability.
Maddux was an amazing defender. But 5008 innings over 23 seasons doesn’t add up as fast as someone who’s on the field every day.
Roll your eyes all you want, but I think this thread is a decent sample of fans who almost overwhelmingly don’t want the DH. I happen to root for an NL team, so the DH has not impacted me like it has the AL teams. But I still hate it. I played baseball through college, and I pitched AND hit. That is the way I believe the game should be played. To me, caving in to a bad rule is not the right way to go, and it wll no longer be the game I love.
I honestly don’t watch AL baseball because to me (and the ilk like me) think it is an inferior brand of baseball. I don’t believe I am alone. Again, though, I realize MLB may not care about us as a fanbase.
But I also think the last 3 seasons of average runs scored in each league doesn’t show a significant amount of offense being added.
And my point about the Fat, slow DH flailing away was in the same vein as TriPolar’s idea. Because to me, that is the next logical step. Why not have guys who just run. They are VERY fast spinters, but cannot hit and cannot field. Let them stamd behind the older, out of shape or injured home run hitter, and if he hits the ball, let the runner do what HE does best. After all, it is never fun to have a slow player clogging up the base paths. It drags the game… slows the offense. So why not swap out those guys as well? When does it stop?
When the DH came in, it was supposed to be an experiment, but everyone knew it was a union move to save a high salaried veteran from losing his job due to weakening fielding performance. If you can’t hide him at 1st base any longer, well, hell, he can still hit!
That is just a bastardization of the game, and it always has been.
I don’t see some great uptick in offense. Less than 1/3 run a game? ** YAWN **
Why don’t they take the DH OUT of the AL for a season or two and see if that makes the game better?
That B/R article has a bunch of comments, most of which say “no” to the DH in the NL. They don’t all identify thrmselves, but it seems the younger demographic (in general) wants it (or doesn’t care) while the older demographic (again, in general) definitely doesn’t want it.
Maybe there is only 10 of us, and they are all posting here.
Seems to me that much of the DH attraction for the league is that star players bring in fans and thus dollars, and having a DH lets a star player keep on hitting homers for a couple of extra years. So as usual, money. I think the younger fans don’t care because they have always watched games with the DH and so it seems normal to them. I sure hope if the change does come it’s after I’m either dead or too senile to follow the game (some would say, oh, next year then?).
If they moved to abolish it in the AL, I’d be happy. Adding it to the NL makes me sick. The DH rule sucks. It removes so much of the coaching strategy late in the games. (Do you keep your star pitcher in in a close game, or pull a double switch since he’s due to lead off the next inning…etc).
Terrible idea. It makes the game for dummies. Losing all the strategic nuances around the pitcher’s spot–double switching etc–would make the chess hame into checkers. It stinks up the American League. Now they want to stink up the national? No sir. Absolutely not. I ruins the brains of it.
I prefer the non-DH game, and I like having a real difference between the leagues.
Given that there are clearly many fans of each mode, and that this gives an added dimension of personality to teams and particular matchups… it seems crazy that MLB would consider subtracting a driver of fan interest.
The only strategic move that would be lost is the double switch (which only exists because pitchers are shitty hitters). There’s still plenty of coaching decisions on when to remove the starter.
The only thing I’d miss is the enforcement of beanings, which is much better in the NL since pitchers have to face the possibility of retaliation.
It’s been tried, at least once (after a fashion). Herb Washington was an NCAA champion sprinter, whom Charley Finley signed to be a “designated runner” for his A’s team in the 1970s. AFAICT, Washington had no real baseball experience before joining the A’s.
Becvause they’ve been special snowflakes for longer than you have been alive. The DH is a reflection of what is simply, inarguably true; pitchers suck at hitting, and there is no effort being made for their to balance their pitching skills with other skills.
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Losing all the strategic nuances around the pitcher’s spot–double switching etc–would make the chess hame into checkers.
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Almost no NL games’ results ever revolve around the successful execution of a double switch, and quite frankly every 10-year-old boy interested in baseball has the double switch figured out. Really, it is super easy. If you think pulling a double switch amount to the equivalent of chess, I don’t think you get chess.
[QUOTE=crypto]
When the DH came in, it was supposed to be an experiment, but everyone knew it was a union move to save a high salaried veteran from losing his job due to weakening fielding performance.
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This is just completely false. The DH was specifically introduced by ownership for the express purpose of increasing offense.
Right, Washington was a very good track runner, not a very good baserunner.
But the question is still posed: would baseball be more fun to watch, if every task on the field was reserved for players selected only for skill in that particular task? Only the best hitters hit. Only the best baserunners run. Only the best fielders, at each position, play those positions in the field. Slice it as fine as you like. Allow unlimited substitutions, as in many sports, and a roster of 75 super-specialists.
Does that make baseball better? If you think not, think about why not.
Specifically the offensive apocalypse of 1968, where Bob Gibson posted an ERA of 1.12, pitchers posted 339 shutouts and only one player batted over .300 for the season. The DH was tried out on a limited basis in spring training in 1969 before the AL made it official in 1973. That said, however, I don’t think the players union was opposed to the move, and wouldn’t necessarily be against the addition of 15 more DH slots next season.
(Yes, I know they’re not expanding the rosters to add a DH, but the position has extended the careers of quite a few good-hit/poor-field types in the AL over the years.)
Also put me down for a fan of the leagues being different, well … leagues. The AL was founded in 1901 as a direct competitor to the NL. They had separate schedules and umpiring crews for nearly a century. For a considerable time, they even had different (effective) strike zones, with AL umpires sticking with the outer “balloon” protector after the NL had moved to the under-shirt chest protector. The only time the leagues crossed were All-Star games and World Series.
And you know what? That was just fine. I don’t know who first came up with the notion that inter-league games were a good idea. There’s nothing wrong with the leagues being separate leagues. Let them have different styles of play, different umpiring processes, and even slightly different rules.
All this vanilla combining of the AL/NL has not been my cup of tea. Not to mention the entire idea of interleague play has made any separation of statistics between AL and NL a complete fiction. How does somebody get to be crowned American League batting champion when a significant portion of his at bats comes against NL teams, and different NL teams than the second-place batter faced? I feel like I’m taking crazy pills!
Hell, why not just abolish the whole AL/NL fiction once and for all. Put the Mets and the Yankees in the same division. Similarly Reds and Indians, Giants and As, Dodgers and Angels, Cubs/Cardinals/White Sox/Brewers. Think of the travel savings!
Hey, there’s an idea! Make the two starting pitchers play a chess game before the start of the regular baseball game, and whichever one wins gets to use a DH, while the loser has to do his own batting. That’d definitely add strategy to the game, right? Why don’t we do that?
Answer: Because while that might be strategy, it isn’t baseball. And neither is the double-switch.
I’ll concede that calling pitchers and “automatic out” was an exaggeration, but I don’t think it is completely false. If the DH rule takes away the double switch as a strategy (which is one of the favorite arguments of its opponents) that is only because of the fact that pitchers generally suck and hitting. You can’t have it both ways.