OT: New MLB Season ...Closer than ever to Universal DH?
 

I'm probably in the minority here, but I'm not a fan of the DH. I certainly understand it from a business persepective: why watch a guy that can't hit .150 when you could watch an Ortiz?

But I'd rather watch a pitching duel than a one dimensional big bopper. My favorite team was the Cardinals of the 80s: pitching, speed, and defense. Seems like those concepts have been relegated to the history books. Especially speed and "manufacturing" runs.

This article seems to represent the consensus: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cbs...he-switch/amp/

Small-fries relative to other MLB issues
 

I see bigger, broader issues than the DH.

I'm intrigued by the other pieces that the commissioner is investigating ~ 3-batter pitching minimum, pitch-clock, and even the machine-rubbed balls that were discussed this past week ~ but I see the salary piece and lack of parity as far bigger issues.

I saw a stat that 1.32 billion was spent in the last month between Machado, Arrenado, Harper and Trout. And, ironically, they say that those contracts are likely to be advantageous for ownership (from a revenue point of view). P

Players make no bones about it in stating that they are expected to get paid for what they DID, based largely on how low compensation is (relatively speaking) under rookie contracts (explained fairly well HERE).
That, along with the lower-spending organizations accepting mediocrity, feels far more deeply broken to me, and, to my mind, risks the longer term viability.

The DH or minimum batter issue may polarize and be easy for people to identify as a cause for problems in the game, but the bigger issues are economic factors that are below the surface.

Agree with this assessment 100%. Happy my hometown team (Giants) weren't hamstrung by Harper's ludicrous contract.

I love baseball so much that I gladly accept the abuse I take as a youth baseball umpire. I'm also happy that Edgar Martinez finally made the baseball HOF based on his entire career, most of it as a DH. Maybe one of the best fundamental hitters to play the game. His swing and approach to hitting were as refined as any pitcher's approach to throwing strikes. The purist in me would like to see pitchers bat, the practical side knows that teams don't work on their pitcher's batting skills.

When interleague started in 1997, the Mariners made one of the best commercials ever.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRo3Cqsa0Vw

Me, too...and I'm a Yankees fan.

HATED the "evil-empire" stretch, but feel like many of those that still use that moniker are equally guilty.

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I grew up playing little league and high school ball...and watching the game with my mom's dad, in particular, Papa.
He was an immigrant from Italy and I think that the ethnic make-up as well as transitioning through NY made him a Yankees fan.

12 years ago, my wife and I elected to go to my brother's wedding in Bellingham, WA by driving across the country with our 9 year old. We saw all sorts of cool things in the month that we traveled.
On a lark, I picked up some $10 Yankee tickets off of Craigslist and the two of us took the Metro North to the stadium in early August.

First day back to school and his answer to the prompt of "what was the highlight of your summer" was the Yankees trip. Go figure!

Fast forward a few years and my wife is looking to FORCE us to give her space to do her work for another graduate degree that she's working towards, so gives us an option ~ she'll bury us with a honey-do list or we can take a baseball road trip.
I can be obtuse, but I'm no dummy, so we take a 1-week whirlwind trip to Pittsburgh, then Cincinnati, then St. Louis where we take an extra day to spend with my sister and her family, then hit Detroit and Cleveland on our way home. We were hooked.
This past summer we finished our odyssey of seeing every ballpark...and my son's career interest had been baseball analytics. But the business side has become so convoluted that he's mostly disenfranchised and is thinking of something different.
Personally, I'm not terribly saddened by that other than seeing a loss of an adolescent passion. He can still tell me extraordinarily detailed analysis of the prospects and farm-systems of every team, but the financial aspects frustrate him to no end.

Maybe the changes to the tv-market will bring salaries out of the stratosphere, but either way, I think we'll see some sort of league-wide "adjustment" in the near future.

Timely post - opening day is on Thursday!
I agree - and I am an AL guy (Boston) and Ortiz brought us to the promise land. The fans (in all sports seem to want offense - runs - goals - TD's, 3 pointers etc).
But, I enjoy the strategy involved in the NL games - and the manager is forced manager. The purist in me enjoys watching a perfectly executed bunt, the employment of a pinch hitter at the correct time, a stolen base, or double switch. Plus pitchers must be accountable for their actions (beanballs) - and will be when they step in the batters box. Pitchers are players and should hit - what would the Babe say.

The DH is dumb, always has been. Kids in little league don't get to DH. If you can't throw or field a position, work on it or ride the pine, or take up golf instead. The Nats at least have a couple of pitchers whose at-bats are not complete snooze-fest gimmes for the defense (Strasburg & Scherzer) and it is aesthetically pleasing when they help their own cause.

It's been two decades, and regular season interleague play remains a gimmicky abomination. I could see the appeal for like 4 matchups (Yanks/Mets, Angels/Dodgers, Giants/A's, Cubs/WhiteSox) or wherever the Yankees, Red Sox, and Cubs are traveling to, but does anyone who follows any of the 23 other teams really care? When I see Nats-Orioles is on TV, I'll go vacuum the floors or clean toilets or do yard work instead.

What bothers me about the pace of the games is not the pace of the games; it's how often writers and broadcasters whine about it. When I go to a game, I want to be away from the house for a good long while. A pitch clock set at 30 seconds would be reasonable to rein in the worst offenders, but not without a corresponding restriction on batters stepping out of the box. A 3-batter minimum for pitchers is also dumb. Given the state of relief pitching these days, managers may occasionally need to burn through their bullpen in 2/3 of an inning.

Watching pitchers flail around at the plate, or even worse, standing there taking three strikes and not even swinging, is not "strategy" or "real baseball," it's pitiful. I'll take even the worst DH every time over putting the game in the hands of managers who rely too much on "gut instinct," or worse, "faith."

Rate of play concerns reek of ownership not thinking they're getting every last cent out of the players, who are all overworked and underpaid (even Harper, Trout, and the likes) compared the money printing happening in the league. Don't kid yourselves - absolutely NO team would be "hamstrung" by paying the players the contracts that are coming out. That storyline is created to excuse cheapness and exploitation. Teams across professional sports are worth 5-10 times what they were even 10 years ago, and player contracts have not even come close to that same rate of growth. The players union needs to take action.

Snooze fest games have been occurring more and more as the pitchers are required to push the limits of their bodies to throw high velocity, and statisticians deciding even the low percentage of home runs hit will earn teams enough wins. Letting the players just go out and put the ball in play instead of forcing this "strategy" is more harmful to the game than DH or rate of play - as soon as a team stops hitting homers, they are done for.

Also, you can have the DH with pitching, speed, defense, small ball, bunting - just look at the Royals World Series teams from just a few years ago. Having 9 bats and 9 baserunners in the lineup instead of forcing a pitcher out there created opportunities to get runners on and around the bases at every slot of the lineup.

I'm against it because a pitcher can just throw at batters when he loses his stuff.

Every team in the league could have afforded Harper, Trout or Machado's contracts. Hell, there's teams who could have afforded two of them. 100% this.

Owners are more interested in depressing wages -- and yes, those contracts are relatively depressed valuations for those players -- compared to rising league revenues.

The luxury tax thresholds now functions as a de facto excuse to not spend and depress player wages.

What a great Father-Son story!

Totally agree with this. But we live in an "Attention Deficit Disorder" society and the Lords of Baseball think they need to market the game that way. From the perspective of the casual fan, they may be right. Which is a shame. Very few things are as exciting as a pitchers duel, in my opinion...

Totally with you on compensation for athletes, James. See my post on Gronk in the Pats thread. I just don't like the "lone savior" theory. I thought the Giants were a boring team when they relied on Bonds for a dinger to win the game,

Completely disagree with you on the DH.