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On February 5, 2016 at 0:21 PM, Tim McG said:

I dunno, Scott. Our pitchers can hit!

Madison-Bumgarner-grand-slam-SF-Giants.j

So? Most can't. 

And as far as the slump argument is concerned, at least slumping hitters eventually work their way out of it. 

You're a NL guy and don't like it. Fine. But us AL guys do. We're not insisting you adopt our rules, and neither should you. 

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Metal bats would be an abomination. All the DH does is ensure that never again will it be third and goal from the 3 and you're forced to bring your placekicker in to play halfback and then further forced to give him the ball.

I see no reason for the leagues to conform. What destroys the "internal construct", not of any single game but of "the game" as a whole is interleague play and the unbalanced schedule. But even that's not so much ruining anything as it is shifting the nature of the season from one of getting results from a tightly controlled experiment to one of getting results from as series of increasingly arbitrary "exhibition" games.

Which, ok, it's still baseball, and it's still the best game there is. And let's face it - the collective "we" tends to favor exhibition over experiment most any damn day. So sell them tickets and play them games!

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It's not that drastic a thing to have the pitcher come in to ht, Guys.

This is where we see the beauty of the game: Strategy. Are there fewer than two outs, does he lay down a bunt, attempt a squeeze, swing away, hit to the opposite side of the IF to move the runner along, work the count to up the pitch total on the opposing pitcher, hit a SAC Fly, send in a PH, manager does a double defensive switch, etc.

It is baseball at it's purest.

 

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36 minutes ago, Tim McG said:

It's not that drastic a thing to have the pitcher come in to ht, Guys.

This is where we see the beauty of the game: Strategy. Are there fewer than two outs, does he lay down a bunt, attempt a squeeze, swing away, hit to the opposite side of the IF to move the runner along, work the count to up the pitch total on the opposing pitcher, hit a SAC Fly, send in a PH, manager does a double defensive switch, etc.

It is baseball at it's purest.

 

Seriously Tim?  Pitchers who work the count or have the bat control to hit to the right side and move a runner?  The few pitchers who can kinda sorta every-once-in-a-blue moon look like they know what they are doing are the exception that proves the rule:  Pitchers suck at hitting. Most are lucky to take four pitches before turning around and sitting down on the bench. You're lucky if you have a pitcher who can get a bunt down.  You're unbelievably lucky if he can grind a bat or move a runner or elevate a pitch to get a sac fly.

Pitchers taking their hacks may be baseball as it was originally conceived but that doesn't make it sacrosanct.

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5 hours ago, Dan Gould said:

Seriously Tim?  Pitchers who work the count or have the bat control to hit to the right side and move a runner?  The few pitchers who can kinda sorta every-once-in-a-blue moon look like they know what they are doing are the exception that proves the rule:  Pitchers suck at hitting. Most are lucky to take four pitches before turning around and sitting down on the bench. You're lucky if you have a pitcher who can get a bunt down.  You're unbelievably lucky if he can grind a bat or move a runner or elevate a pitch to get a sac fly.

Pitchers taking their hacks may be baseball as it was originally conceived but that doesn't make it sacrosanct.

That hasn't been my experience, Dan. Pitchers can handle a bat a whole lot better than you're allowing.

Besides, as an NL guy I have had a few more opportunities to watch this scenario play out. Sometimes well, sometimes not. But it is unmistakably a part of the strategy in a game...and one, quite frankly, which gives the game some of its charm. But that's just me.

Edited by Tim McG
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Here's one (really, two) tradition(s) that got fucked with: http://www.hardballtimes.com/the-height-of-the-hill/

And let's not forget the glory days when the AL Umps wore those big ass external chest protectors and the NL umps wore the internal ones. Anecdotal evidence suggests that that led to two subtly different strike zones for each league.

Anyway...I think it would be fun to get the old Strat-O-Matic out of the closet, and play a season with some older teams using a DH instead of a pitcher in the 9 spot. I suspect that the strategy would be different, but it would still be baseball strategy, as it's still gonna be about offense getting runners on base and then moving them all the way around and defense trying to keep that from happening.

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15 hours ago, Scott Dolan said:

Pitchers, by and large, cannot handle a bat like a professional hitter. No matter how much you try to convince yourself that they can. 

No doubt. But they do far better than some are willing to give credit. That's all I'm saying.

12 hours ago, JSngry said:

Ok, Big Bad Mother has a loaded .45 at your head and is about to get the shakes. He gives you the choice between the DH or a return to the Dead Ball. If you choose, he drops the gun. If not, hey, you're the new wallpaper.

Call it. Now.

 

Why the Dead Ball Era? How about the juiced ball of the 90s? 

Just sayin'.

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53 minutes ago, Tim McG said:

No doubt. But they do far better than some are willing to give credit. That's all I'm saying.

No, they don't. Just because you have some good hitting pitchers on your club doesn't mean it's like that across the league. It's not, and it's not even close. 

Go to MLB.com and check the slash lines of the pitchers who had the most PAs last year. Almost all of them are below the Mendoza line. 

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1 hour ago, Tim McG said:

Why the Dead Ball Era? How about the juiced ball of the 90s?

Exactly.

There have always been changes that affect performance, and therefore, strategy. The DH might be one of the more "obvious" ones, but it's really not any more "radical" than was changing away from the dead ball (which was done openly) and going to the juiced ball (which was not, and may not have yet been fully admitted to, I don't know) and then back again. Let's see what the strategy of a game with both a DH and a dead ball and a higher mound looks like!

We're not playing the "original" game any more, and haven't been for over a century (look up the foul strike rule). Arguments for or against implementing the DH in both leagues can be made on many grounds (and I'm not unsympathetic to the emotional appeal of keeping any remaining vestiges of the game as I grew up with it), but "you can't change the game" really should not be among them, because yes, you can, and yes, you have already done so more than a few times.

Night baseball, anybody?

mac-speedie-white-ball.jpg

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And I  get that, Jim. But you have to admit rules changes are a tad different from adding a new position to the roster, wouldn't you agree?

In softball leagues they have a position called the "rover". Essentially, a 4th infielder. Now, I am willing to bet the ranch that if MLB instituted such a thing all hell would break loose because it changes the nature of the game. I think that is the resistance we NL guys are feeling relative to the DH. In our mind, everybody in the line-up hits. It levels the playing field, if I may be so cliche'.

I followed the Angels as a kid, too. But when they changed the rules to allow the DH it just seemed strange to me.Something just wasn't right. Old habits die hard, I guess. The DH is just not to my liking.

3 hours ago, Scott Dolan said:

No, they don't. Just because you have some good hitting pitchers on your club doesn't mean it's like that across the league. It's not, and it's not even close. 

Go to MLB.com and check the slash lines of the pitchers who had the most PAs last year. Almost all of them are below the Mendoza line. 

Fair enough.

But the strategy is still at work irrespective of that.

Edited by Tim McG
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I don't know that quality is being sacrificed, Scott.

Because really, all it comes down to is which teams have the better DHers as far as hitting goes. A Frank Thomas or a David Ortiz can only play for one team at a time, right? So, to me, it's the same thing as letting the pitchers hit: The teams with better guys at DH will get more hits than the teams which don't.  The only difference would be the DHers would be more consistent.

Edited by Tim McG
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Adding a DH to the batting order (not to the roster, really) is/was a rule change. You think somebody snuck that one by one day and by the time somebody noticed it was like, oh, wow, who knew...welllllll...., ok then! :g

Adding a 10th fielder is not quite the same as having a DH in the batting order. You still have 9 guys on the both sides of the ball. And also keep in mind that there is no rule that says that an AL team must use a DH or that the DH must be used in the pitchers' place. If you got Super Sluggo on the mound and Uber Mensoza at shortstop,, hey, DH for the SS and let Sluggo hit that day. It happens very rarely, but I gotta think that some team some day is going to be in a situation where somebody crunches some numbers and says let's try this as a recurring plan, and it actually works. Heads will explode, but games will continue to be played. I'm thinking htat some teams have actually used a pitcher as a DH, as a response to an immediate situation.

Contrary to casual observance, DHs create a strategy of their own. Batting order, who plays in the field on any given day, how aggressively you do or do not move on the bases, all that and more come into play when you do not have that pitcher hitting in the 9 hole. Pitching and defensive strategies change too. It's not an elimination of traditional strategy, it's a recasting/reframing of it.

Having watched mostly AL ball now for decades after years of being a NL-only guy, I get that it "feels" different. But it's like any other rules change, at first, nobody gets the finer points of it and they just thud along doing the obvious, but then, some guys start thinking, hey, what happens if we do This with it, and it works, and then everybody follows suit, lather rinse repeat. Evolution.

And if you want to get hyper-granular about it, "pitcher" is not an offensive position, nor is any other player's position in the field. Imagine a game where your batting order had to be the same from game to game, that would suck, that would be stupid, who would want that level of arbitrary rigidity? Yes, the DH adds a variable between offensive and defensive positions that did not exist before, but there are so many different things that have changed so many other things about how the game gets played while still keeping the playing of the game intact that it's hard for me at this point to get all puristy about this one thing (still not happy about the scheduling thing, but apparently that's just a matter of me being on the wrong side of history, oh well.).

You still got 9 players on both sides of the ball, 3 outs per inning, 3 strikes per out, no clock, 27 outs (in theory) to win, three bases, 90 feet, 60 feet, 6 inches, grass/"grass" (and ok, that's another game-changer), dirt, fences and foul territory all of them totally non-standardized, (and think about what other sport has that!), and still only one way to score only one unit of scoring. Pitchers still gotta pitch, hitters still gotta hit, fielders still gotta field. As long as you got all that, you still have baseball, in whatever form it takes.

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Makes perfect sense. Though, here again, having  teams with good hitting pitchers vs teams with poor hitting pitchers is still a bit like having a good DH vs a not so good DH. The BA, as you well know, is only part of the story. Walks, bunts, SAC flies and the like don't factor in to the BA but still help the team.

For me, it's all a matter of degree.

Let the pitchers hit.

Edited by Tim McG
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For all the focus on how the DH is about empowering offense, it sometimes goes overlooked that it also empowers a pitching staff - having a DH hitting instead of a pitcher alters how your team can handle its staff and bullpen. It frees up a manager to handle a staff as more "purely" a staff, without having to look at should I risk wasting/overextending a pitcher because he's due to bat next inning. Different, yes, but still a strategy that can become quite engaging when handled with aplomb.

Truthfully, I like there still being a difference between leagues in this regard. World Series/Interleague is still weird, but you know that if it were up to me, I'd say do away with inter-league play and for the WS....maybe get some sabermetic university geek lab to run a year's worth of simulations 24/7/365 to see what would happen if you played a huge bulknumber of games where each league's team played to their own model in the same game - the NL team has pitchers hit, the AL team uses the DH, yes, all in the same game - and then take it from there. I suspect the end results would be skewed toward the AL/DH model, but if in the end, pitching is what wins (and this I do believe), then maybe not so much. I'd gladly put my tax dollars to work for that kind of research!

Back in the real world, though, how many days until pitchers and catcher report is it now?

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8 hours ago, Tim McG said:

Makes perfect sense. Though, here again, having  teams with good hitting pitchers vs teams with poor hitting pitchers is still a bit like having a good DH vs a not so good DH. The BA, as you well know, is only part of the story. Walks, bunts, SAC flies and the like don't factor in to the BA but still help the team.

For me, it's all a matter of degree.

Let the pitchers hit.

AVG is nearly inconsequential. OBP is of the utmost importance. If you don't get on base, you don't have a chance to score.

Here is the OBP os the top ten pitchers in plate appearances last year:

.163

.275

.162

.116

.239

.145

.232

.179

.108

.169

Sorry, that is beyond abysmal. No matter what other numbers you want to look at, SAC, SF, Runs, RBI, they are all just horrendous. Let the pitchers hit?! No, thanks. 

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