The DH

[Anyone]

Originally Posted by chucksabr

Pitchers already do something that nobody else does. The pitcher is already going way above and beyond what the other eight guys on the field do, by a factor of multiples, and that's in addition to fielding his position, too, just like the other guys do. Pitching is the ultimate in specialization. It's also why pitchers don't work on hitting: nobody gives a s*** about their hitting, including the pitcher himself, in most cases, and their performance at the plate is the proof of that.

They most definitely care in non-DH leagues. The problem is the DH's use at lower levels, so pitchers stop learning it early. That's why the DH has to be banned in the minors and my rule with 2 years' notice that would force it out of NCAA and most international play would be a big step forward.

Often in college baseball, the pitcher is still a good batter who plays another position when not pitching. Get rid of the DH in college, the minors, and international leagues that feed MLB, and they'll still be pitchers who can't hit at all, but there'll also be pitchers, as used to be the case, who hit as well as some middle infielders.

Originally Posted by chucksabr

As for the double switch, yes, it is a pretty simple decision, and the player to swap out is always the guy who made the last out, unless he's the team superstar or you have literally have no one on the bench to take the position, then you go to the guy ahead of him. Could a monkey manage a double switch? No, I would agree that a monkey could not do that. But it's not advanced game theory, either. It's fairly simple IF-THEN logic, and anyone who has average or better baseball knowledge can fairly easily determine exactly when and how it's going to go down. I would guess you do it in your own OOTP league, and flawlessly. Unless you're willing to confess to us that it's too complex for you?

I do it all the time, but flawlessly? There is no such thing as that. If you'd always take out the batter who made the last out, I don't do that. For example, on my current team, I have a great hitter/very poor fielder in LF that I love to double-switch out, because with a lead, if I expect him not to come back up, I'd defensive-sub him out anyway. That's come back to bite me if the spot comes back up in an important situation. A horrible part of the DH rule is that with it, I could just play him at DH and not worry that he can't field. He'd never come out of a game unless tired or injured. Yawn.

[chucksabr]

They don't care, at least not enough to swap out training to improve pitching skills for training to improve batting skills. If they did care enough to do that, then pitchers' hitting performance would not be dropping inexorably over time. It would stabilize. But it's not, and that's because everyone has decided that it makes no sense to train pitchers to hit major league pitching. The dozen or so guys who take pride in hitting .200 notwithstanding, teams just shrug and throw pitchers up towards the plate because the rules tell them they have to, and they have to accept all the outs that inevitably result, comforted only by the fact that the other team is similarly handicapped.

They are never, ever, going to suddenly reverse course and just dump the DH everywhere in the entire world, epecially in college and the minors, for a simple reason: if pitchers hit, then that removes an opportunity to develop one of your hitters for advancement. It makes no sense to sign a hitter and pay him a scholarship, or a bonus and salary, if he's just going to sit on the bench while a pitcher hits. They decided that they would rather spend those resources developing a really good hitter, even if he can't field a lick, than to train and train and train a pitcher to bat only to end up having him hit one-something at best, and to the detriment of his pitching training and, ultimately, skills and performance. That's one they figured out a long time ago. The DH is here to stay. The only fight at hand is preserving it in the only two leagues in the world that still use it.

You certainly have the right to prefer the pitchers-hitting game. Lots of people do, and there's nothing wrong with that. It's just that my preference is that I would rather see a guy hit .300/.400/.500 who has no business on the field losing games for his teams playing defense rather than Bartolo Colon flailing around with his helmet flying hither and yon, looking like a clown. I'm going to go out on a limb and make the claim that there's nothing wrong with my preference, either.

As for double switching in OOTP, I believe the decision really is easy. It's just that sometimes, it doesn't work out the way you want it to because, in a strange way, it's humans who play the game and humans fail, even in OOTP. That doesn't mean th double switch decision you made with your great hitting/very poor fielding left fielder was wrong. It just means it didn't work out this particular time. No one is guaranteed success.

[Anyone]

Originally Posted by chucksabr

They are never, ever, going to suddenly reverse course and just dump the DH everywhere in the entire world, epecially in college and the minors, for a simple reason: if pitchers hit, then that removes an opportunity to develop one of your hitters for advancement.

Most of your post was conciliatory, and I was about to just let the subject drop because of that. But I told you how MLB, if it wanted, could easily get the DH out of college and out of most of the world's leagues. It could, of course, just dump it in the AL and ban it in the minors. But out of college and the rest of the world, simply a rule:

"Starting two years from the date of this rule's adoption, any player who is 18 or over and plays in a league that includes the designated hitter rule shall be forever ineligible to play in Major League Baseball."

Note that it would not be retroactive (or even immediate). No one currently playing at any level could be penalized for having played in a DH league, and it would give a two year grace period to let college and international leagues adapt, during which players could still play in DH leagues. No one would ever be prohibited, even in the future, because of what their little league did when they were a pre-teen or teen.

But of course NCAA baseball would dump the DH within the two years so its players could go on to the Majors, and leagues in other countries that feed the majors would drop the rule or lose any players who wanted any chance to eventually play MLB.

Teams would lose very little development, because every minor league team includes filler players who no one thinks are true prospects. Anyone who plays OOTP with a minor league system but with "ghost players" disabled has to fill their minor league system with some of those. Those guys would be the ones to lose at bats.

You have as much right to enjoy the DH as I have to enjoy its absence. I feel certain the NL won't adopt it in the foreseeable future, because the majority of fans dislike it and despite the AL having the team both loved and hated the most with the Yankees, the NL is more popular (in attendance, etc.), and I think the absence of the DH is a reason for that.

MLB is also unlikely to dump it in the AL, because the MLBPA doesn't want to see 15 "starters" turn into bench players and would fight it all the way. MLB wanted at one point wanted to dump it, and offered the MLBPA 26 man rosters in exchange, but the union said, reasonably from the view of the interests of its members, "those 26th men will earn the league minimum, whereas top DH's earn much more."

The status quo will likely be maintained in MLB regarding the DH for quite a while, though I think MLB could get the MLBPA on board if they offered two expansion teams (creating, with no DH, 16 more "starting" spots plus 10 more rotation spots for pitchers and 2 more "closer" roles) in return for dumping the DH.

[chucksabr]

I think putting playing in a DH league on a par with betting on a game in which one has a duty to perform is laughably harsh. Literally, because I laughed when I read that. Thank you for that. It made my day.

I have never heard that Major League Baseball ever offered MLBPA a 26 man roster in exchange for killing off the DH. Can you supply a link to that news story? Because I have been well informed about the business of major league baseball for over thirty years, and that one got completely by me. Don't take it personally when I say I'm initally skeptical of this claim. I am also not quite convinced that a clear majority of fans oppose the DH, at least here in 2015. I can't find any poll on the DH in the past decade that uses accepted sampling techniques, such as those employed by Gallup. If you have a link to a recent one, would love to see it.

In any event, I can see how it would be fun to devise a system by which the DH would be destroyed for good. After, OOTP is in part a fictional league simulation game, and what fun is inventing and managing a fictional league without meticulously designing the system that underpins it? But outside of your post, I have seen nothing about anyone inside of baseball leading a movement afoot to relegate the DH to the dustbin of history. All the evidence indicates to me it's going quite the opposite way, and in fact, I will bet you a dollar that the National League adopts the DH in time for the 2017 season. You up for that?

[Anyone]

In searching for the article to show the 26 man roster for the dumping of the DH rule was proposed, I found what you're referring to in that the players' union is now pushing for a universal DH and there's considered a possibility they'll get it.

I'd still happily bet $1 they won't, if I felt confident enough I'd still be around this board next year to either collect or pay. MLB would alienate more fans than they'd gain. From a marketing standpoint, it makes no sense to take away the version of baseball more fans prefer.

But anyway, here's a link to a discussion of the 26 man roster tradeoff proposal from 2009, and while I only found it on a seemingly small site I know I heard it discussed fairly seriously at some point (I guess it was then): DH: Designated for Assignment?

Edit to add: As to the harshness of the proposed penalty, it isn't really because it would never be imposed. Someone might think he can get away with covertly betting on baseball. No one would think he wouldn't be caught having played as an adult in any sort of significant league. Maybe leagues unworthy of the name would have to be exempted. I have no desire to punish the guy who thinks there's no chance he'll ever be a high level pro baseball player and plays semi-pro ball in some small league that has a DH.

It's to get the DH out of any significant league in the world. I'd exempt "amateur" leagues, except that college leagues are technically considered "amateur."

[Elektranaut]

Who needs a DH when you've got Alex Wood on your team...3 hits and an RBI last night.

[metsguy234]

Originally Posted by Elektranaut

Who needs a DH when you've got Alex Wood on your team...3 hits and an RBI last night.

Did a double take when I read this. I was at this game, and didn't even realize that Wood had 3 hits.

[jaysdailydose]

I never use the DH in fictional leagues. I just like the extra layer of strategy in the video game... I dislike the DH in real life, but I think the day is coming very soon when pitchers will no longer bat in the majors.
I do use the DH in the minors in some leagues in order to get another young player ABs.

[kq76]

Originally Posted by Elektranaut

Who needs a DH when you've got Alex Wood on your team...3 hits and an RBI last night.

I was watching that game (MLB.com free game of the day) and I thought about these threads every time he got a hit.

[Elektranaut]

Same here,I'd just been reading this thread and then I watched the game.

[Amazin69]

Not to get chucksabr yelling again, but Ned Yost is far from the only manager ever to botch a double-switch. One of the reasons Mets fans never took much to Willie "Yankee Pride!" Randoph's reign (besides the obvious fact that the idea this dipsh*t was going bring "Yankee Pride" to Queens made us vomit, and all that winning he did as "assistant manager" in the Bronx was due to Steinbrenner's checkbook, anyhow…we saw Joe Torre "manage" for 4+ seasons, and he was no strategic genius, let me tell you) was that Willie couldn't even understand the double-switch. Because he spent almost his whole career in the A.L. (Or because he's kinda dim, one or the other.)

But even someone who spent their entire career in the NL (or pre-DH AL) can screw it up. Remember the great rally by the Mets to win Game 6 of the 1986 World Series? Two outs and then Gary Carter singles, Kevin Mitchell pinch-singles, Ray Knight singles, wild pitch, grounder to, er, through Bill Buckner? But wait, why was Mitchell pinch-hitting, anyway? Where was Darryl Strawberry?

Well, he was out of the game because Davey Johnson had made the wrong double-switch, that's where. In the top of the 8th, with the Red Sox ahead 3-2 and threatening to blow the game open (bases loaded, two out, Bill Buckner coming to bat), Davey decides he's seen enough of Roger McDowell and brings in Jesse Orosco. Buckner flies to center, threat averted, good call.

Except…Davey forgot to make a double-switch. So he has to pinch-hit Lee Mazzilli to start the eighth, and when the Mets tie the game, he has to preserve his new pitcher, Rick Aguilera, for as long as possible, since his two bullpen aces are already gone. (Orosco having pitched to only one batter with the World Series on the line!) So he keeps Mazzilli in to play right field and takes Darryl (who made the final out of the 8th) out. And two innings later, Mets down by two, tying run at the plate, two out…a situation where you would normally be hoping you had somebody who could tie the game with one swat coming up, and where is Darryl Strawberry, who will hit the most HRs in the National League over the following two seasons? Gone, because Davey chose not to double-switch in the top of the 8th (not putting Orosco in the 8th spot, replacing Kevin Elster, and bringing Howard Johnson to bat 9th and play SS) and then did double-switch in the 9th, keeping Mazzilli in the 9th spot and yanking Darryl for Aguilera.

Now, Mitchell did get the hit and the Mets did win the game. (And the Series, two days later.) But can you imagine the second-guessing if they hadn't? The game lost because the inexperienced Aguilera had to keep pitching into the 10th, with Orosco wasted in a cameo? The final out coming from a rookie waving hopelessly at strike three, while the most dangerous hitter in the NL watches futilely from the bench, yanked prematurely? (We, with benefit of hindsight, know that both Aguilera and Mitchell went on to excellent careers, but the NY media in 1986 would have no way of knowing that, and would have torn Johnson to shreds for losing the game and Series on account of them.)

Now, Davey could articulate his reasoning…if he double-switched when he brought in Orosco, he would have had to play Johnson at SS, somewhat out of position, and it was a critical moment in the game for defense. But Johnson played a lot of shortstop that season, and it's not as though Kevin Elster was a Gold Glover, either. (Although he would later set a record for consecutive errorless games, he didn't have much range or DP skill and was mostly in the lineup for his bat.) Elster was only in the game to begin with because Johnson had pinch-hit for starter Rafael Santana back in the 5th. (The pinch-hitter, Danny Heep, hit into a 4-6-3 DP, although the runner on 3B did score to tie the game.) And Johnson did have Hojo hit for Elster in the 9th, and so he finished the game at SS, anyway. If you're willing to put Hojo in at SS for the 10th, why not for the 9th, especially if it means saving your best reliever?

Hell, you can second-guess every decision Davey made about his shortstops in the game. Why pinch-hit for Santana in the 5th? You're down 2-1, first and third, nobody out, and the Sox are conceding the tying run by playing for the DP…did you really think Heep was going to take Roger Clemens deep and blow the game open? Santana was a perfectly good candidate to just make contact and get the runner in, I'm thinking. If Santana whiffs, you can have Heep hit for Bobby Ojeda instead. (You've got Sid Fernandez available for long relief and Ojeda only goes one more inning, anyway.) Still plenty of shot for the SF or a hit or a slow grounder to tie up.

And in the 9th, when Davey decides he doesn't care about Howard Johnson's weak glove, he's got 1st and 2nd and he wants to win this now, and so he sends Hojo up to hit for Elster, after all? (Johnson whiffs, Mazzilli flies out, Lenny Dykstra flies out, Mets get nothing and look dead when the Sox score in the top of the 10th.) Why not just have Elster bunt and, if he succeeds, Mazzilli can win the game with a sac fly (the fly he hit would have been deep enough)? That was the decision that everybody was prepared to roast Davey's nuts over…just listen to the second-guessing on the NBC broadcast.

So Davey blew a chance to keep Santana in the game (5th inning), refuses the obvious double-switch because he wants to keep Elster in the game (8th inning), then pulls the trigger to use Hojo anyway (9th inning) and nearly loses the game in the 10th with the wrong pitcher on the mound, the non-defensive SS in the field, and Darryl Strawberry gone when he would seem to need him most. Ugh.

And, by the way, if you really want to keep Elster in the field instead of Santana, why not double-switch out the #7 batter instead of the #8? Bring in Mazzilli and hit him 9th, as he would anyhow, but now tuck Orosco safely in the #7 slot, so he can pitch to more than one batter, and all you have to do sit down…Mookie Wilson. You get a stronger defensive OF with Mazz in left and Strawberry in RF, you get to keep Orosco on the mound until the 9th at least (and when Mookie hit in the 9th, he was bunting…the Sox tried to get the lead runner at 2B and failed, which is why there were two guys on for Elster/Hojo in the first place. But, heck, Orosco can bunt; Aguilera might never have gotten in the game at all) and, when you need Darryl in the 10th, he's right there, ready to take Calvin Schiraldi downtown. (Or not.)

Finally, just because Strawberry made the final out in the 8th, was it really wise to pull him from the game? Maybe Davey should have kept Darryl in and just put Aguilera in the #9 spot. Yes, he would have to come to bat in the 9th, as it happened, but he wasn't helpless at the plate (he had played 3B at Brigham Young) and if you pinch-hit for him, would that have been so bad? It's not as though he pitched a great top of the 10th, after all. (And Sid Fernandez was in the pen, and so was Doug Sisk [*shudder*] and Randy Niemann and some rookie named Randy Myers…)

So Davey had four strategic decisions to make about working around the pitcher's spot in this game (pinch-hitting for Santana instead of [perhaps] Ojeda in the 5th; double-switching Orosco and Howard Johnson for McDowell/Elster in the top of the 8th; double-switching Orosco and Mazzilli for McDowell/Mookie instead of that; not double-switching Strawberry out to start the 9th and hitting Aguilera in the 9th spot, instead), and it's arguable that they all went wrong. He only got a GIDP out of Heep and one more inning out of Ojeda; he pulled Orosco after only one hitter to save a not-great-fielding SS that he hit for in the next inning anyway; he made a raw Rick Aguilera go one more inning than he had in him, and of Strawberry/Wilson/Mazzilli, he made it so that the one who was missing at the end of the game was the All-Star, not the roleplayers. And he might have blown them all, despite the fact that Davey had never played in a DH league in his entire career (he left Baltimore before the AL added the DH; the Tokyo Giants play in Japan's non-DH Central League, not the DH Pacific)

Now it all worked out fine, because Johnson got what he needed when he needed it. Heep's GIDP at least tied the score; maybe Santana can't even manage that. Mazzilli singled to start the bottom of the 8th and eventually scored the tying run; maybe Howard Johnson would have struck out as he did in the 9th if Davey has him in there, and the Mets don't even get it tied. Mitchell got the key pinch-hit in the 10th because he and Schiraldi had been roomies at AAA the previous year (before Schiraldi went to Boston in the Ojeda deal) and one time Mitchell had asked Schiraldi how he would pitch to him and that's just what Schiraldi did in the 10th (jam him once, go outside) and maybe Strawberry, lacking Mitchell's inside knowledge, overswings and ends the game. And Mookie ended up with a heroic at-bat that included lots of foul balls, jacknifing away from the wild pitch so he doesn't take the less-useful HPB instead, and hitting that "little roller" up the 1B line and putting pressure on Buckner with his speed…that's pretty good for what really should have been a U-3, after all.

But still…four key decisions Johnson had to make (not to mention how, if Orosco had been double-switched in, how this would have impacted the decisions Davey had to make during the 9th) versus absolutely zero such decisions he had to make in games 3-5 at Boston. Just put Heep or Mitchell as the DH, bat him 7th, and knock Mookie/Santana down to 8th/9th. Yawn city. But no, anybody can make a double-switch, it doesn't take any brainpower at all!

In the immortal words of Jim Gosger, "Yeah, surrrrrrre."

[Amazin69]

Just because the pitchers' hitting performance has been declining recently does not mean such a decline is inexorable or irreversible. I can think of many baseball trends that went first one way and then another. It's not as though offense kept spiraling upwards as it did during the Steroid Era and now we see nothing but double-digit bombfests and yearn for the occasional 8-7 "pitchers' duel", is it? Once racial integration happened, more and more African-Americans got a chance to play, and one day in 1971, the Pirates featured an "all-black" starting lineup. (Including Dock Ellis on the mound.) But it's not as if the white baseball player went the way of the white cornerback; barely a half-dozen years later, M. Donald Grant struck a blow for racists everywhere by turning the 1977 Mets into 24 whiteys and Designated Negro John Milner. (Who was traded after the season to, appropriately enough, Pittsburgh.) Defensive shifts, a staple of the dead-ball era, went away for a long, long time, but are back with a vengeance nowadays. Platooning, batter's walks, stolen bases, all have waxed and waned with the greater trends.

Rather than "throwing their hands up" as pitchers' averages decline, this will only increase the pressure on managers to get their pitchers to hit better. It may not be easy to turn a .150 hitter into a .250 hitter, but you can get a guy from .100 to .150. (With a smaller base, you require fewer additions for an equivalent boost in performance.) Imagine a league where all of a sudden, a .150 hitter gives you a distinct advantage…you think no manager is going to try to exploit that opportunity? I disagree.

Or, NL teams and their GMs might place a higher emphasis on finding pitchers who had converted from other positions (such as Jacob DeGrom, a former shortstop) or even converting them in the minors, because the pitchers' advantage at the plate would make them even more valuable. (And hey, they don't have too many "young innings" in their arms, either, so they are less likely to get injured! A corollary to the "Skip Bertman, You Jerk!" principle, where the Orioles took LSU star Ben McDonald as the #1 overall, only to realize that Bertman, his college coach, had burnt McDonald's arm out by overusing him in the CWS.) Perhaps instead of the Rick Ankiels and the Adam Loewens going from pitcher to outfield, we'll see, even at the major league level, the Hal Jeffcoats and the Willie Smiths being encouraged to take to the mound, because good-hitting pitchers are useful and hey, if you can throw, we can teach you how to pitch, but batting takes reflexes and skill…

Equilibrium exists. Water seeks its own level. And all that. So there's no reason to go all "Doomsday!" today, I say.

[conception]

I do two subleagues and one has the DH. I enjoy the contrast in strategies and the difference between leagues. My minors always have the DH, batters need to bat and pitchers need to pitch.

[sdw1000]

Sadly there's talk of bring the DH to the NL. Ken Rosenthal was all for it last week.

[Amazin69]

On the other side of Game 6, that Boston threat in the top of the eighth also included John McNamara's decision to pinch-hit for Roger Clemens, with one out and a runner on 2B.

Mike Greenwell (like Aguilera and Mitchell having a good career a head of him, but then just a rookie) went up, and struck out on three pitches. As Robin Roberts said to Lou Piniella after Lou struck out pinch-hitting for Roberts in what, for a long time, looked as though it was going be Piniella's only ML AB (this was the 1964 Orioles, Lou didn't make it back up until '68), "Sh*t, kid, I coulda done that." McDowell followed by intentionally walking Wade Boggs and unintentionally walking Marty "Temporary WS MVP" Barrett, setting the stage for Davey Johnson to bring in Orosco, but with Clemens out of there, the Sox had to bring in Calvin Schiraldi, who didn't exactly inspire fear in the hearts of the Mets, and not just because he'd been a failed starter with them the year before.

Schiraldi promptly gave up the tying run in the bottom of the 8th, got himself in trouble in the 9th (in part by wrongly trying to get the runner on Mookie Wilson's sac bunt), and well, we know what he did in the 10th. (To be fair to Schiraldi, that's his third inning of work. To be fair to the 1980s, that's what relievers were expected to be capable of, back then.)

But who is John McNamara going to bring in? Bob Stanley pitched a bit during the Series, but in low-leverage situations prior to this game because he'd been so bad as a closer during the year, and since the Sox were using a 4-man rotation (as opposed to the Mets just going Darling/Gooden/Ojeda and keeping Sid Fernandez in the pen), 4th starter Al Nipper was unavailable. (And he was Al Nipper, too.) 5th starter Tom Seaver was out with the injury that ended his career, and the bullpen consisted of Sammy Stewart, Steve Crawford, Joe Sambito (finishing up his career a year after the Mets had hung him out to dry in the 26-7 drubbing in Philadelphia) and a Mystery Guest. (Seriously, I have no clue who the 10th man on the Sox staff was that Series; he didn't get into a game, and there are no obvious candidates, based on in-season work.) So if we were in Boston, and Clemens wasn't being asked to swing the bat at a key moment, he'd stay in the game.

But because the game was in New York, and we were playing baseball, not DH-ball, John McNamara had to make a decision, add up the pluses and minuses of pinch-hitting here:

PRO

• We could really use that insurance run
• Roger has thrown 135 pitches
• He's got a blister on his finger, he's bleeding out there!
• Damn, we could really use that insurance run

CON

• He's 24-4. Cy Young winner. MVP. Had a 20-strikeout game this year. No 1985 Gooden [/pride], but almost as good.
• Have you seen our bullpen?
• He's allowed only 4 hits so far, 2 walks, 8 Ks. 91 strikes, 44 balls, just worked a 1-2-3 inning.
• Have you seen our bullpen?
• Pitch counts are for sissies. We didn't care about the pitch count in the 20-K game, did we?
• Have you seen our bullpen?
• The Red Sox haven't won a World Series since Babe Ruth was a pitcher; you're telling me to take out the best pitcher in the game when we have a chance to close out the Series and end all of this "Curse of the Bambino" bullcrap, once and forever?
• Seriously, have you seen our bullpen?
• So he throws a few extra pitches. He can rest all winter.

PRO:

• We could really use that insurance run, though.

If this is Boston, a non-strategic DH game, McNamara doesn't think at all; Clemens stays in. But, in the real league, under the real rules, Johnny Mac has to think, and he makes the wrong choice. Clemens comes out, the Sox don't score, Schiraldi comes in, Schiraldi blows the save, Schiraldi nearly blows the game in the 9th, the Sox score two in the 10th, Schiraldi and Stanley blow the game in the 10th, McNamara claims Clemens asked to come out of the game, Clemens goes red in the face, screams like he's trying to kill Mike Piazza (not yet, 'Roidboy, that's later), and charges at the manager's office, trying to break the door down. Sox lose the series, Clemens holds out to start 1987, Bob Stanley (of all people) is the Opening Day starter, Sox go belly-up, McNamara gets fired, Clemens eventually pouts off to Toronto, and it's 18 more seasons before the Sox (with Curt Schilling's bloody sock playing the role of Clemens's bloody finger) finally put "The Curse" to rest.

And that's why I (and others) love this game.

[jaysdailydose]

Originally Posted by sdw1000

Sadly there's talk of bring the DH to the NL. Ken Rosenthal was all for it last week.

Of course there's talk after the Wainwright injury. A 7-figure ace is done for the season because he "didn't belong in the batters box"...

I would much prefer if the DH never existed at all, and pitchers could probably still hit. But now that ace pitchers are 8-figure investments for a franchise, and the powers-that-be care more about entertainment value than preserving old traditions, you should probably prepare for the rules to be uniform within the next two years, in my opinion.

[jaysdailydose]

Those two posts on the Mets/Sox series are why I always make the decision to never, ever have a designated hitter in my OOTP games!

Hate American League ball... Which is pretty bad, considering I'm an American League hometowner...

[chucksabr]

Just because Davey Johnson botched a double switch once doesn't mean it's rocket science. It's not. It's a pushbutton decision any fan with average or above baseball intelligence can easily make.

The only way pitchers are going to hit better is for them to work on their hitting, and that is not going to happen. A pitcher makes all his money, every last penny, pitching, and he is not going to give up any of the time he spends working on his pitching to work on hitting, because in a super competitive environment in which a couple of bad outings in a row can cost him his career, he is not going to risk losing one bit of his edge so he can learn how to ground out instead of strike out.

You can hope against hope, or pray to the deity of your choice if you prefer, until you turn blue, but leagues around the world dropping the DH en masse simply is never going to happen. Pitchers learning to hit will never happen. Your only hope is that the National League remains on the wrong side of history. Anything more than that is nothing more, nothing less, than wishful thinking.

And I'm not the one yelling. You are.

[chucksabr]

Originally Posted by Amazin69

Just because the pitchers' hitting performance has been declining recently does not mean such a decline is inexorable or irreversible. I can think of many baseball trends that went first one way and then another. It's not as though offense kept spiraling upwards as it did during the Steroid Era and now we see nothing but double-digit bombfests and yearn for the occasional 8-7 "pitchers' duel", is it? Once racial integration happened, more and more African-Americans got a chance to play, and one day in 1971, the Pirates featured an "all-black" starting lineup. (Including Dock Ellis on the mound.) But it's not as if the white baseball player went the way of the white cornerback; barely a half-dozen years later, M. Donald Grant struck a blow for racists everywhere by turning the 1977 Mets into 24 whiteys and Designated Negro John Milner. (Who was traded after the season to, appropriately enough, Pittsburgh.) Defensive shifts, a staple of the dead-ball era, went away for a long, long time, but are back with a vengeance nowadays. Platooning, batter's walks, stolen bases, all have waxed and waned with the greater trends.

Rather than "throwing their hands up" as pitchers' averages decline, this will only increase the pressure on managers to get their pitchers to hit better. It may not be easy to turn a .150 hitter into a .250 hitter, but you can get a guy from .100 to .150. (With a smaller base, you require fewer additions for an equivalent boost in performance.) Imagine a league where all of a sudden, a .150 hitter gives you a distinct advantage…you think no manager is going to try to exploit that opportunity? I disagree.

Or, NL teams and their GMs might place a higher emphasis on finding pitchers who had converted from other positions (such as Jacob DeGrom, a former shortstop) or even converting them in the minors, because the pitchers' advantage at the plate would make them even more valuable. (And hey, they don't have too many "young innings" in their arms, either, so they are less likely to get injured! A corollary to the "Skip Bertman, You Jerk!" principle, where the Orioles took LSU star Ben McDonald as the #1 overall, only to realize that Bertman, his college coach, had burnt McDonald's arm out by overusing him in the CWS.) Perhaps instead of the Rick Ankiels and the Adam Loewens going from pitcher to outfield, we'll see, even at the major league level, the Hal Jeffcoats and the Willie Smiths being encouraged to take to the mound, because good-hitting pitchers are useful and hey, if you can throw, we can teach you how to pitch, but batting takes reflexes and skill…

Equilibrium exists. Water seeks its own level. And all that. So there's no reason to go all "Doomsday!" today, I say.

This entire post woefully underestimates how difficult it is to pitch effectively and competitvely at the major league level, and wildly overestimates the value of a .150 hitter.

[Cinnamon J. Scudworth]

The only reason I really prefer non-DH baseball at this point, both real baseball and OOTP, is that I think it makes your bench a little more important, which creates interesting decisions from a roster building point of view. For example, the Mets are now one of the rare modern teams carrying three catchers, just because they felt they needed another left-handed bat on the bench as a pinch hitter. It's significantly changed Terry Collins' options -- for both good and ill -- in the late innings.