Time to rectify a big mistake
It's a contrarian view, but the old National League rules promoted strategy and good role players.
Next spring it will be a half-century since Ron Blomberg of the New York Yankees made himself forever the answer to the trivia question: “who was the first major league designated hitter?” Unfortunately, with the exception of part-time hurler Shohei Ohtani, it appears that Zach Greinke, then with Houston and sporting a decent .225 lifetime average (many catchers don’t even hit that well and no one’s taking away their PAs) will be the last pitcher to bat for himself in a regular turn as he did in the 2021 World Series at Atlanta. From here on out, it may be that pitchers will be called upon to hit only in the most dire of circumstances, times even more rare than a position player pitching.
While I think the designated hitter is a blight upon the game, though, I will admit it has its place and we’ve been talking about it a long time. (SABR’s John Cronin wrote a long piece on this a few years ago so I leave the historical explanation to him.) In fact, there’s nothing which says the DH has to hit for the pitcher, as is tradition: in high school, we occasionally used the DH for the light-hitting but good-fielding second baseman because some of our pitchers could still handle a bat.
I can also see one other use: at the level of the low minor leagues it may be better for the teams to have a DH just so developing players can get extra at-bats, but in my world once pitchers make it to the AA level they would have to learn (or re-learn) hitting.
To me, doing away with the DH would have three advantages:
Pitchers couldn’t hit batters with impunity knowing their turn at bat would eventually come.
Managers would have to manage their personnel wisely and use their entire bench, not just bat the same nine guys in the lineup night after night.
A team would gain an advantage from having a strong-hitting pitcher.
On the first point I think the warning/ejection system they have in place for pitchers going after hitters could be scrapped if pitchers had to hit. Either pitchers would become less aggressive or their managers would be stuck having to pinch-hit for a hurler who wants to fire up beanballs.
More important to me, though, is the strategy that’s involved in a good baseball game. The problem with the DH is that it allows a manager to place part of the game on cruise control: you give the starter five or six innings, then toss out 2 or 3 setup guys until you get to the closer. This is why teams have 13 pitchers when back in the day a 10-man staff was the norm.
There’s just something about the decision to make with the pitcher’s spot coming up where’s he’s doing great in a 2-1 game but you have a runner in scoring position. Is it worth taking the guy out for a pinch-hitter who only has a 1 in 4 chance to succeed? And what if the lineup comes around to your best hitter and you have to make a double switch? Those were the kinds of decisions I relished weighing the risks of when I played my baseball simulation games.
Having a guy who could handle the bat and pitch effectively was a real asset to the team, but we’ve thrown that away for maybe a less automatic out? Anymore half the league is automatic outs as batting averages keep dropping despite the full-on DH.
Call me a traditionalist, but the game was better when the pitchers hit and managers had to manage. I get the argument that having a designated hitter allowed a few stars of the 1970s and 1980s to hang on a little bit longer, but the era of the full-time DH is pretty much behind us anyway. How about putting that entirely in the dust bin of history?