Tim Colishaw argues in favor of the NL instituting the designated hitter in Thursday’s edition of the Dallas Morning News, and who amongst us dare argue with his motivations —- the Senior Circuit is routinely getting its collective ass kicked in the all-important All-Star Game, and the DH rule has extended the career of such baseball legends as…Milton Bradley.
There is no good reason for the NL to be clinging to the past, and other than Arizona’s Micah Owings, there’s just nothing pretty about watching pitchers try to hit.
When you add the DH to the game, you increase run production. That in itself increases attendance. That increases revenues and provides the funds to go out and better your team, whether it’s through spending on free agents, foreign scouting or player development.
The DH rule allows teams to save their players. Rangers manager Ron Washington has gotten maximum value out of Milton Bradley this season. Bradley suffered a knee injury in the final week of 2007 while playing for the San Diego Padres.
Had he remained a Padre, he probably wouldn’t have been a regular in the lineup until mid-May because of the wear and tear of playing the outfield every day. With the Rangers, Bradley has served as the DH 51 times and is bound to be an All-Star for the first time with his league-leading on-base production.
For the most part in the modern game, “small ball” has become small-minded. I don’t have any problems with teams bunting runners over to third in the eighth inning of a tie game. Makes sense.
Bunting in the first four or five innings to try to scratch out a run? Nonsense.
Small ball made sense when NL teams played in Cincinnati’s Riverfront Stadium, Pittsburgh’s Three Rivers Stadium, Houston’s cavernous Astrodome, San Francisco’s Candlestick Park, Philadelphia’s Veterans Stadium and the old Busch Stadium in St. Louis.
Those have all been replaced by parks that favor hitters and home runs. There’s no reason for NL teams to play a game no longer suited to their surroundings.
No reason whatsoever, besides applying a rule that never should’ve been broken in the first place. If increased offense is such a tremendous boon to the game, why not lower the pitching mound and increase the number of outs per inning to 5?
Wouldn’t the money made thanks to “increased run production” just get spent on some $15 million/year DH?
Personally, I don’t care about the increased run production per se. The main reason to institute the DH in the NL is because *pitchers can’t fucking hit* and it’s obnoxious to watch them flail around like little leaguers 3 times a game.
Pitchers hitting is an anachronism that belongs in the 1920s. They’re drafted as pitchers, have a completely different skill set and aren’t in the majors for their hitting. It makes no sense to have them batting, it’s like letting the hot dog vendor come up every ninth turn and take a hack. Let them do their end of the job and then go sit in the dugout.
Every now and then you get a 19-1 game where the losing manager lets a position player pitch to ease the burden on the bullpen in an unwinnable game. Invariably, the guy sucks, he embarrasses himself, and everyone laughs. The reverse happens every night in the NL but for tradition’s sake people passionately argue that it’s the best thing since the wheel. I’m an ardent fan of an NL team and I don’t understand it.