Major League Baseball: Universal DH is long overdue

The one unquestionably good thing that came out of the new Major League Baseball Collective Bargaining Agreement was the universal DH.

I’m old enough to remember when there was no designated hitter. It started as a gimmick because so many American League teams were drawing poorly that something was needed to juice things up. For the first 10 or so years of the DH, it seemed far more likely that the American League would abandon it than the National League would adopt it. The overwhelming sentiment was that not allowing pitchers to hit cheapened the game.

Over time, college teams and minor leagues began to use the DH, and circumstances evolved from a situation where only the AL was using the DH to one in which everyone but the NL was using it. For all intents and purposes, the debate was settled … and the DH won.

I have always been ambivalent about whether pitchers should hit, but two things have changed that make me glad for the universal DH.

First is that the hybrid rules that govern interleague play and the postseason give a huge advantage to the NL. When NL teams play in AL parks, they use an extra outfielder as DH and hardly notice the difference. But when AL teams go into NL parks, even in the World Series, their pitchers have to bat, sometimes the only time all season they will face live pitching. As bad as NL pitchers are, at least they have laid down a bunt at some point.

Bad is putting it mildly, when it comes to how pitchers hit. Last year, 76 pitchers had 20 or more at-bats in the National League. Four of those pitchers posted an OPS above .600. Only 18 were above .400! At any other position, an OPS of .600 usually gets you a bus ticket to the minors, and the math of a .400 OPS should tell you all you need to know. If a pitcher goes to the plate 20 times, gets three singles and walks twice, that adds up to an OPS of .417. Three-fourths of MLB pitchers couldn’t even manage that.

To some extent, it has always been this way, but two things have changed. One is, as noted, few pitchers hit in the minors or in college, so they come to the majors having barely taken a swing against real pitching since high school. We can hardly expect them to become proficient hitters, starting virtually from scratch, when they already are putting so much effort into their pitching.

The other thing that has changed is the chances to hit. Last season, Walker Buehler of the Los Angeles Dodgers led MLB pitchers with 59 at-bats, and only 18 pitchers had more than 50. This means an average of less than two trips to the plate per start for most of these players, which is not surprising when you consider how often starting pitchers were pulled to avoid facing the other team’s hitters a third time. In contrast, in 1970, Gaylord Perry came to the plate 120 times. That year, there were 61 pitchers who posted an OPS above .400.

So a pitcher can pretty much expect that he will only come to bat once or twice in a game, and, if anyone is on base, he will be asked to bunt anyway.  It’s hardly a wonder that few pitchers are able to develop any proficiency as hitters.

Regardless of the politics surrounding the decision, the universal DH represents an acknowledgement that this will never change. It is a long overdue change.