(See Part I elsewhere on my website.)
Monday, I posted a piece I wrote *coughety-cough* years ago about why I disagreed with the DH rule. I was quite sincere, but the game has changed to the point that none of my old arguments against the rule hold water anymore. Today, we’ll examine why.
Dated Reason 1) It’s fun to watch managers work around bad hitters.
Well, it USED to be fun watching managers work around bad hitters. The thing is, they don’t do that anymore, for several reasons.
That example I gave of considering whether to hit for Pete Harnisch in the eighth inning is completely dated. These days, baseball teams have numerous studies suggesting that asking your pitcher to throw more than 100 pitches in a game after just four days rest is not a good idea if you want to keep him healthy. If you average 15 pitches an inning, which is normal or even very efficient, you’ll have thrown 105 pitches after 7 innings, and your manager is going to take you out of the game anyway. There’s no decision to make; the manager IS going to pinch hit for you.
On top of that, relievers are very rarely asked to pitch consecutive innings; teams believe it’s better to use them for one inning tops, because you don’t want to overwork them (in which case they get hurt) or overexpose them (in case opposing hitters figure out how to hit against them.)
This is also the reason the double switch is pretty much dead. For those who may not know, a double switch is where you replace two players at a time, with the position player batting in the pitcher’s spot in the order and vice versa. The reason managers did that was to allow the new pitcher a chance to finish the current inning and stay in the game to pitch the following inning without having to hit. BUT, since we almost never see relief pitchers throw consecutive innings anymore, what’s the point?
Dated Reason 2) It’s fun to watch pitchers who actually CAN hit.
Changes that subvert Reason 1 also subvert reason 2. Once upon a time, you’d expect your pitchers to bat three or four times in a game. You might even see a reliever hit if the manager wanted to keep him in the game. Instead, starting pitchers are done after around six innings, relievers pretty much never hit, so we only saw pitchers bat about two times a game anyway.
That said, we have seen a couple of players who fit this statement. Rick Ankeil made it the major leagues as pitcher; when he began struggling to throw strikes, he went back to the minors as an outfielder and worked his way back to the major leagues. (He’s the only man in the last 65 years to hit his first major league home run as a pitcher and later homer as a position player.)
Then there’s Shohei Otani, who was both a pitcher and a designated hitter in Japan, then signed with the Los Angles Angels to the same…. But he injured his arm, didn’t pitch at all in 2019, and is done pitching in 2020 due to reinjuring the arm after two poor outings.
So in each of these cases, we’re only sort of talking about pitchers who hit.
Dated Reason 3) It’s fun to watch bad fielders at least TRY to play defense.
Well, here’s another touchy subject. “Spray charts”, which diagram where each hitter has hit a baseball during games, have become so advanced that teams use them to create preposterously extreme defensive shifts. The logic is, if Joey Gallo is never going to hit the ball to the left side of the field, and you know that, why put three defenders there? As a result, weak defenders don’t have as much territory to cover, and strong defenders can cover the weak defender’s limitations.
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Dated Reason 4) The DH artificially extends careers and taints career achievements.
DH rule: “I’ve skewed the offensive numbers in major league baseball.”
Anabolic steroids: “Hold my beer.”
That thought aside for a moment, this ties to #1, where managers changes relievers at the start of each inning.
Because of this, teams need more pitchers on the roster to get through a season. Just 30 years ago, teams routinely kept 10 pitchers on their 25 man rosters. When you had 15 roster spots you could use for hitters, it was easy to use one on a guy who could be your regular designated hitter a la Edgar Martinez or Paul Molitor.
However, now that teams needs to carry 12 or even 13 pitchers, and you only have 12 or 13 spots left for hitters, you CAN’T waste a roster spot on somebody who can’t play defense. Instead, managers give one of their regular fielders a day off from playing defense and let that guy DH.
Instead of full time DH of irrelevant fielding skill, teams now look for the opposite – a player who’s versatile enough to play many positions, such as Marwin Gonzalez when he was with the Astros.
Monday: “Marwin, I need you to DH today.”
Marwin: “Okay, Skipper.”
Tuesday: “Marwin, I need you to play third base today so Sean Bregman can DH.”
Marwin: “Okay, Skip.”
Wednesday: “Marwin, I need you to play second base so Jose Altuve can DH.”
Marwin: “Okay, Skip.”
This is a cool thing, but it actually works in a favor of having the designated hitter rule.
David Ortiz may well be the last full-time DH we see until the nature of major league rosters changes again.
You may read all this and still dislike the DH rule. I do think it’s important to be intellectually honest about the situation, though. If someone knocks the DH rule because they like the strategy involved in the double switch, it makes me wonder if they’ve seen a major league game in the last 10 years.
The DH rule does cut into the strategic element of the game, but not as much as swings for the fences, the decline in bunting, and the decline in base stealing. If you study the numbers, it’s clear that upper cut swings do lead to harder hit balls (which hitters desire), asking a major league caliber hitter to sacrifice (and thus give away an out) is not a good idea, and stealing a base is only a good idea if you can do it at an adequate rate.
Understanding that nothing a manager does will work every time, and given the environment, baseball people really are taking the approach that will win most often.
So what should we do? There are rules that can be adjusted, such as making the strike zone larger (high strikes are harder to uppercut, for one), redesigning ballparks so there isn’t such a premium on home runs, limiting throws to first base to keep a runner close that impede base stealing, changing the mound in ways that help pitchers.... if you change enough of these rules, you can change the equations to the point that bunting makes more sense, and stealing bases makes more sense.
Eliminating the DH may still be justifiable, but I believe the priority should be changing other rules which would do more for baseball.
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