Ahem.
Snark aside, it’s completely beside the point. Pitchers are in the game for their ability to pitch - that doesn’t absolve them of having to crawl into the batter’s box. Ozzie Smith was a pretty shitty hitter too, but he made up for it in the field. Tradeoffs between defensive value and offensive value are part of the game, right?
I dislike the DH, not just because of the aforementioned symmetry and strategy reasons, but for this:
With the DH, not only do you have a pitcher who doesn’t have to hit, you have a hitter who doesn’t have to field. I think I find the notion of the latter even more repugnant than the former. Think about the average game played by a DH–he sits on the bench the whole game, and only gets up to take his 4 at bats. That just doesn’t sound like a participant in a baseball game to me.
I don’t really have a dog in this fight since I’m not much of a baseball fan, but I just don’t understand why this topic is so passionate. As others have mentioned, I just don’t see any real strategy or competitive element since there just aren’t any pitchers who are good batters. ISTM that with or without the DH has roughly the same effect on both teams, so it really comes down how it affects the game.
Yeah, it does affect the symmetry, in that only 8 of the 9 players are playing both ways, but since the strategy element is largely missing, and you’re effectively seeing, at best, a minor league quality batter against a Major League pitcher, it’s got to be pretty boring to see a pitcher bat. Sure, you get a random surprise when they successfully get on base but is that any more compelling?
The reason I watch sports is I want to see the best athletes in the world at that sport competing against eachother. In my view, seeing a Major League quality batter against a Major League quality pitcher will make for a more compelling experience as a spectator. It raises the quality of the product for a relatively minor impact, so I say go for it.
After all, when I watch football, I don’t want to see a place kicker forced to play offense or defense, it’s embarassing enough watching them try to make a tackle on a long kick return. Or worse, with modern athletes, seeing a good offensive or defensive player try to kick. Sure, a few rare exceptions can do it, but in most cases it’s abyssmal. Sure, it removes some of the symmetry of the game, but it makes the kicking game compelling to watch because you’re seeing world-class kickers. Hell, when they introduced unlimited substitutions it quickly led to more specialized players, but without it you don’t get such varied and interesting packages and it makes for a more compelling game.
I wouldn’t advocate that in baseball, since there’s a lot less gained from such specialization and a lot more lost, but the DH replaces the one batter that is just horrible with one that is competent, so it doesn’t fit that same generalization.
Babe Ruth hasn’t played in 75 years, and I already mentioned him as the single exception to the rule that pitchers suck at hitting.
It should be illustrative that there has only been one of him in the history of baseball. Where are the players labeled “poor man’s Babe Ruth” You know, a pitcher who is actually, legitimately, good at hitting, even if he’s not a superstar level hitter?
They’re not out there, because even if they have the natural talent necessary to do both, you have to pick ONE to be good at.
Carlos Zambrano wouldn’t embarrass himself as a middle infielder. And Rick Ankiel famously came back as a hitter. There are always a few per generation.
Zambrano’s career BA is .242 20 points lower than “shitty hitting” Ozzie Smith, and his OPS+ is 64.
I do suppose that’s better than his teammate Ryan Dempster, who has a career BA of .099 and an OPS+ of -37.
Is your point that, every generation, there are a few pitchers who buck the trend by being good enough hitters to warrant comparison to terrible hitting middle infielders? The best hitting pitchers barely manage to be as good as the worst of the non pitchers. The other 98% of pitchers are so bad, it’s embarrassing. That is the reality of the game.
Well I’m calling for a return to limited substitution football! So feel free to look all you want.
(It’s an easy mechanism, too: allow free substitutions for any player, but only 3 players can be substituted per down. So you can still run different packages, with nickel and dime sets, or end-zone power rushing, but at least half your players need to be able to play both offense and defense. We can have a ‘catastrophic injury’ rule, too, so a fourth (or more) player can go out, but then they can’t return. Are you telling me anyone who enjoyed watching, say, Revis cover Moss wouldn’t want to see then Moss trying to cover Revis? Gronkowski playing linebacker? Ray Lewis taking a pitch and pulling up for a halfback pass? )
And pitchers should hit. Otherwise why not have all offense and all defense teams, with designated runners as well? Put it this way: is there anyone (well aside from people who would rather just watch the All-Star dunk contest) who would rather have had Larry Bird or LeBron or Kevin Garnett only playing offense or defense?
And yet he adds so much value defensively that it’s worth putting him on your team. Them’s the breaks.
I’m not trying to argue that, by and large, pitcher’s aren’t terrible hitters. Of course they are. Nobody that watches as many NL games as I do would say otherwise. But they are still ballplayers, and they still have to take their licks. That’s the way the game was designed and I see no compelling reason to change it.
The DH, IMHO, dilutes the symmetry and beauty of the game. It also would take away some of my favorite memories - I’ll never forget Jeff Suppan launching a HR in the second inning of an NLCS game I was at, and then pitching the win. Or even this year Jake Westbrook hitting a Grand Slam - that was fun.
Sometimes watching the endless failures makes the successes sweeter. Although I’m also a soccer fan so maybe that explains that part of it…
The beauty? 90% of the time watching a pitcher hit is about as far from beauty as you can get. Those pathetic swings they make actually makes it a mockery. And honestly, I also don’t like when a pitcher has to be removed because he can’t hit, something no one expects him to do, when he is otherwise pitching a great game.
There is no beauty in a pitcher going up to bat in a warm up jacket.
To me, it’s not the excitement of strategizing as an armchair manager or so much the “a pitcher’s gotta hit” part of the equation that makes me dislike the DH rule, but the “DH never takes the field” part. In my opinion, guys with pure hitting talent should have to learn a position in the field that they’re adequate enough in to not cost more runs than they earn back with their bat.
OK it’s nice to have a landing place for an aging or injured power slugger to have a role in the game when his legs are shot, like Vlad Guerrero who was an awesome outfielder in his younger days; or a spot in the lineup to give extra rest to older guys, like the Yankees with their rotating the DH slot between a trio of 35+ year old star veterans. But to me it’s terrible that there are guys who are everyday players whose “position” is DH. Even more so if there are players who are under 30 years old that are “everyday” DHs.
Why? Because defense is when playing baseball is really TEAM baseball from a player’s perspective. The pitcher can skip going to the plate in this view because he’s the anchor of the entire defensive effort. For a guy to opt out of the defensive side feels to me one step away from being a guy who views being in the lineup as an opportunity to burnish his personal offensive stats, which is one step away from being a guy who isn’t there to help the team win the game but to smack the ball around. I’d have a lot of trouble rooting for a guy who “was” a DH.
Now I admit, this is to some extent be something of a straw man argument, as opposed to one rooted in reality. My mental image of a guy like this is Manny Ramirez, yet he actually mostly played in the OF for the Indians and Red Sox (with one year as the primary DH in between) to give the DH spot to guys like Frank Thomas and David Ortiz. It’s Ortiz who’s an example of a “career starting DH” (his everyday “position” since age 28), yet I don’t think of either of them as “selfish players” the way I do Manny.
Still, it’s the phrase “everyday DH” that just tastes bad. If there was a rule that no player could have more innings played as a DH than in the field (except for, say, the first 14 games he played in for the season), I’d have not much problem with its adoption in the NL.
Obviously beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
I feel like a game should have trade-offs. You play your sharp-shooting guard even if he’s a bad defender. You put your off-spinner in the line-up even though he’s a shoddy batsman. You put your speedy left-winger on the pitch even though he can’t be troubled to track back on defense. You put your slick-fielding SS on the field even though he has no power. The DH removes that part of the calculation for one position, merely for the sake of increasing offense (which isn’t really a problem these days).
And every now and then your pitcher will get ahold of one and lumber into second with a sheepish grin on his face and laughs from the dugout (and probably in the stands). And I eat that shit up.
I understand this is not a universal sentiment.
I’ve never seen a pitcher bat with a jacket on - I’m pretty sure it’s not allowed. They can run the bases with one, and wear one in the on-deck circle.
If the argument is “middle infielders can’t hit either, look at Ozzie Smith” then you have no argument. Ozzie hit .262 in his career and stole about 30 bases per year. No pitcher is anywhere remotely close to that.
Carlos Zambrano hits, what, .240, and he’s far and away the best hitting pitcher in baseball. Folks, it’s not close. There are a multitude of reasons for it, but pitchers just can’t hit.
“But the DH doesn’t have to play defense.” So what? How is his participation less than the LOOGY who comes in and throws two pitches?
Hey dropzone, just wanted to pop in and say “great thread”. Kudos to jsgoddess too.
Since I brought up Ozzie and Carlos, let me once again explain the point I am trying to make.
Part of the beauty, to me, of baseball is trying to assemble a roster that balances defense, offense, and pitching. Often this requires making choices between fielding prowess and offensive ability. A similar tradeoff is made with pitchers - we develop them as pitchers only because that skill is so much more valuable than any marginal impact they could have with the bat.
These types of tradeoffs happen in many other sports as well. Only American Football has taken it to the extreme of unique players for every position in every facet of the game. I don’t find that a more entertaining sport, and would hate to see baseball go that way.
Zambrano was merely brought up to counter a claim that Babe Ruth was the only pitcher that could hit above replacement level (although, in fairness, Carlos only did it a over small samples). I don’t think anybody can deny that it’s fun watching Zambrano hit.
Because if his spot comes up the LOOGY has to bat. And of course the LOOGY has to field his position.
Look, I’m happy to concede that pitchers are lousy hitters. I have done so many times in this very thread. I just don’t concede that their lousiness breaks the game in some way that requires changing the rules. I actually do enjoy watching pitchers flail and only occasionally make weak contact - but maybe I’m a sadist in that regard.
Just to note that Ozzie got to be a significantly better hitter later in his career. In his first few seasons (particularly when he was with the Padres), he was the archetype of “good-field, no-hit” middle infielders. He had full seasons with the Padres in which he hit .211 (1979), .230 (1980), and .222 (1981) – but was in the All-Star Game in the latter two seasons.
You are right, I was misremembering the rule that allowed them to wear jackets on the bases. Big, puffy jackets, with two little chicken legs sticking out the bottom. 
Adam Everett is a career .242 hitter, with an OPS+ of 66.
So, half the people prefer the dh, and and half the people hate it. If only there could be a reasonably workable solution that would give each side what they want.