To DH or not to DH?
By Tim Haberin
It wouldn’t be a Major League Baseball season without the age-old designated hitter debate flaring up at least once. It reared its ugly head a bit earlier than usual this year in response to the injury Cardinals pitcher Adam Wainwright suffered while hitting. Wainwright hurt his Achilles stumbling out of the batter’s box during last Saturday’s game against the Brewers and will miss the remainder of the season.
This isn’t the first time a pitcher has been injured while fulfilling his hitting duties and it almost surely won’t be the last. Big league hurlers have suffered injuries of varying severity while hitting and running the bases in recent memory. In 2009, Yankees pitcher Chien-Ming Wang tore a ligament in his right foot rounding third in an interleague game against Houston. The former 19-game winner was never the same again. This prompted a chagrined Hank Steinbrenner to do his best impression of his father in calling for the National League to “join the modern age.”
Several prominent pitchers are weighing in on the issue in light of this latest unfortunate incident. The Nationals’ Max Scherzer, who recently sprained his thumb while hitting, endorsed the idea of the league adopting the designated hitter. “If you look at it from the macro side,” he reasons, “who’d people rather see hit: Big Papi or me? Who would people rather see, a real hitter hitting home runs or a pitcher swinging a wet newspaper? Both leagues need to be on the same set of rules.”
Some of his peers disagree, however, and strongly. World Series MVP Madison Bumgarner points out that Scherzer had plenty of options in free agency last winter and chose to go to an NL team, knowing full well he would have to bat (though he did hit for two seasons in Arizona). The Giants ace argues that pitchers routinely get injured in all aspects of on-field play including, you know, pitching itself. It’s a fair point; the National League’s lack of a DH likely wouldn’t top the list of threats to pitchers’ health. If anything, that might be finding a way to slow the increasingly alarming rate at which pitchers are requiring elbow surgery (Dodgers starter Brandon McCarthy being the most recent victim).
Bumgarner also highlights his own personal affinity for hitting as a reason he wants things to remain unchanged. Nevertheless, it’s a decent bet that relatively few pitchers share his sentiment. As David Schoenfield illustrates on ESPN.com, pitchers have never been particularly effective hitters, even in the pre-DH “golden age.” In 1972, the year before the American League added the designated hitter, pitchers hit .146, a figure low enough that action was deemed necessary. Things haven’t exactly improved either. Pitchers’ .122 average in 2014 was their most meager ever, and they struck out in nearly 40 percent of plate appearances. That’s about as close to an automatic out as you’re going to get.
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Proponents of a DH-free league, however, argue that the extra strategic wrinkles that come with requiring pitchers to hit make for a more interesting, nuanced game. Deciding when to pinch-hit, run and sacrifice are all things an NL manager considers a bit differently than his AL counterpart. Owners of teams in the senior circuit have also been resistant to a rule change for monetary reasons: hard-hitting, full-time DH types like the aforementioned Mr. Ortiz tend to get big contracts.
The side of the fence you stand on often seems to depend on which team you support. Fans naturally enjoy whatever they’re most familiar and comfortable with. Though interleague play brings us some classic rivalries, it tends to force clubs into becoming somewhat awkward versions of themselves. AL teams sit their usual DHs down or put them onto the field, often at the expense of defensive quality. NL squads rarely have a particularly great hitter on the bench to put in the DH spot. As a result, some argue in favor of preserving the current rules but eliminating or at least significantly reducing the interleague schedule.
So what will be done? Like every year, nothing. And that’s probably for the best. If anything, the DH debate is simply a wedge issue that riles up fans into defending their concept of the “pure game” and little else. Commissioner Rob Manfred appears to recognize that and even encourage it. In an interview with ESPN’s Mike & Mike, baseball’s head honcho said:
"“I try not to be too swayed by particular events that happen in a given season. My view on the DH is that the difference between the two leagues is actually a point of debate among our fans, and that those sorts of debate are good for the game over the long haul.”"
Well, there you have it. Next time you get into a vehement argument about how the DH tarnishes the game or how the National League is stuck in the 19th century, you’re just doing your part for the good of baseball.