What follows is an email chat between myself and Father Keanu relating to baseball’s forthcoming adoption of the universal DH.
Father: Ok Brian. I saw that MLB is looking to expand the DH into the NL. I will admit that I am strongly against this, but also, that I am an AL guy. I have long enjoyed the pleasure of watching a Harold Baines, a David Ortiz or a late-career Jim Thome get to stay around and sock dingers. What has your experience with DH been like?
Brian: I've always enjoyed the two different versions of baseball, the "American League" version with the DH and the "National League" version without. Of course, there are a few impetuses for this, of course, first being the addition of a few extra union jobs for hitters and more offense for National League games, which will ironically lengthen games in contradiction to the goofy pace of play rules the Commissioner has introduced.
Father: Outside of Carlos Zambrano starts, the lack of a DH definitely suppressed scoring and kept games shorter in the NL. It’s not a coincidence that Yankees vs Red Sox games were often longer than a midnight showing of The Green Mile. There is no question this will lengthen NL games.
Brian: Pinch-hitting also kept a lot of other guys in the game who might not have been good at DH but could swing the bat when it mattered. Look at Lenny Harris, for example.
Father: Right. This also addresses a point you hit briefly earlier. Back in the day, the DH was a plus because the hulking slugger, that we all loved, on his last legs, could hang around. It really isn’t used that way anymore by most teams. I don't think it is going to add any hitter jobs because most teams now use it for utility men to sub guys in and out of the lineup so nobody plays 162 games. The Edwin Encarnacions and the Nelson Cruzes are going away.
Brian: It's already started to go away based on analytics, both because of how OPS is now valued more than pure sluggers and how rest time influences player performance. You could very well see a team rotate 9 guys through the starting lineup and rotate positions based on who needs to "rest" that day. Ron Blomberg, and even Edgar Martinez aren't walking through that door any time soon.
It is kinda funny because, as you point out, as recently as five years ago some of these sluggers in the NL that wound up out of the game would have become DH's. Jack Cust doesn't get traded out of Colorado if the NL would have had a DH
Father: Yes, the dynamics of the DH have shifted a lot. The Indians recently picked up a 23 year old "prospect" named Franmil Reyes who hit nearly 40 homers last year for very little. This was mostly because he is a colossus who projects as a borderline unplayable outfielder. 10 years ago a 23 year old hitting 40 home runs would make you rookie of the year and a franchise cornerstone. Now nobody noticed, and he got traded.
Beyond this, the addition of the DH takes away something else I cherish. Pitcher ABs. We will never again have this:
Brian: There's gonna be all sorts of fun stuff we won't see anymore. The first National League player to hit two grand slams in one game was Tony Cloninger, a pitcher for the Braves. Rick Wise threw a no-hitter and hit two home runs in the same game, which actually got him immortalized in song:
Also, we'll miss out on the real adventure: American League pitchers who get five at-bats a year getting to hit, which sometimes produces gems like this
Father: I think what I would miss the most are those horrific pitcher at bats. Those at bats say more than we realize. To me, they show what it would be like if a normal person had to try to get a hit off of Gerritt Cole. Baseball is hard, and you are never more aware of it than you are when someone like Trevor Bauer is trying to hit (admittedly, he draws a walk here).
Brian: But do you really want to know how much the game would have changed if the DH always existed? Imagine a world where the universal; DH was adopted in 1910. Now imagine that the Boston Red Sox, who purchased the contract of a left-handed pitcher from minor-league Baltimore in 1914, never had the opportunity to see that young kid hit. That kid slashed .315/.376/.576, .272/.322/.419 and .325/.385/.572 his first three years while also pitching to a 2.44, 1.75, and 2.01 ERA.
So if there was a DH in 1914, Babe Ruth may have never happened. Can you imagine what baseball would look like had Babe Ruth never become *Babe Ruth*?
Father: Counterpoint to that, however, would be Shohei Ohtani. If a pitcher can hit, he would still be allowed to. In fact, the DH allows him to hit more often. That is sort of an outlier though, and I don't think it's a coincidence that the one player good enough to do it came from Japan and didn't get his start here, where he almost certainly would have been told to pick one.
One last thing about this, that we have hardly touched on, is the strategy. Watching a manager pull a double switch that could cause chaos later, seeing a pitcher have to play right field, running out of catchers or the impossible choice to pull your ace for a pinch hitter in the ninth of a 0-0 game. That stuff is great.
Brian: Definitely. I have always loved that part of the strategic aspect of the NL game. This game always comes to mind, when Roger McDowell and Jesse Orosco kept swapping places between the outfield and the pitcher's mound over the course of the last five innings(!) of 14-inning Mets win.
Fortunately, even with the DH in place those things can still happen in real major league games, say when the DH has to come in to pitch the last two-innings of a 17-inning win in Fenway Park.
What this will really impact the most is the World Series. We've sometimes seen American League managers get tripped up by National League strategy at National League Parks. We've seen National League managers trying to make the most of their DH spot when they really don't have a DH on the roster. There's a big difference between sending Howie Kendrick out as your DH in game 7 as opposed to Yordan Álvarez, even though 2019 is a horrible comparison for this entire exercise considering the road team won every game in the Series.
Father: Yeah, now it really doesn't matter who has home-field advantage, since home field advantage was pretty much meaningless already (unless you are the Astros).
This was probably inevitable, and I suspect we will all get used to it someday. I just feel like we are losing history. In my 2 part jersey article, I mention that, to me, what makes baseball special is seeing players play virtually the same game my great, great grandfather would have seen. No other sport has that. Baseball is also the kind of game where I suspect Babe Ruth would still have been great now. We can’t say the same for George Mikan. Now, with the NL changing over, the game will officially be played in a significantly different way than it was then.
Brian: We were heading that way anyway. Things *have* changed over the last 100 years. The spitball was banished. Night games happened. Rosters expanded to 26 players. Bullpens evolved. Pitch counts. Year-round travel teams for youth players. Tommy John surgery. Expansion. Lowering the mound. Interleague Play. But yes, this is going to change the game significantly in probably the most radical way (American League notwithstanding) since they moved the mound to 60 foot six inches in 1893 and with regard to personnel since free substitution was ended in the 1880's.
Of course, the universal DH has really been here all along. The minor leagues have had the universal DH in Rookie Ball and A-ball for years. It was only AA and AAA-ball that had pitchers hitting, and even then it was only between National League affiliates and even then, in the case of the Pacific Coast League, they could use the DH if both teams agreed. This was coming down the track, though let’s hope some of Manfred’s other nonsense proposed rules never see the light of day.
Of course, the plan to radically realign the minors is its own debacle.
Father: Well, let's put a bow on this. "Dear baseball, please stop this nonsense. You don't have to be basketball or football to be popular. Just be baseball. When I take my son to a baseball game, I don’t want him to see Spiderman on the bases, no pitchers batting, everyone strike out or homer, and a bunch of crazy rules changes to speed up the game. I just want him to see baseball. Speaking of which, how about you guys get started."
Brian: Play Ball
Personally, I don't particularly care whether they have a universal DH or eliminate it completely, but it should be the same in both leagues. It's the biggest rule difference between two conferences in any one league in any sport. It would be as if the NFC didn't have Offensive Pass Interference and the AFC did.