DH Outrage

I was inspired to write this post by an article I just read on one of my new favorite websites: hardballtimes.com. The article was about the unevenness in interleague play. Now, interleague play has changed a lot since it started back when I was in Mr. Berkowitz's class in tenth grade. I remember it was that year because I wrote my very best high school essay in that class, and it was about what? You guessed it, interleague play. Anyway, the point of the article on hardballtimes.com was that interleague play is unfair. The example they use compares the Florida Marlins to the Atlanta Braves, who are both in the race for the National League East crown. This season, the Braves had to play six games against the Boston Red Sox (.623 winning percentage), three games against the Detroit Tigers (.592), Minnesota Twins (.513), and Cleveland Indians (.584). Meanwhile, the Marlins were able to play in the sandbox with the Tampa Bay Devil Rays (.434) six times, and with the Cleveland Indians (.584), Kansas City Royals (.418), and Chicago White Sox (.432) three times each. How exactly is that fair?

Anyway, that's not the point of this discussion; I made my interleague rant in a good old fashioned five paragraph essay nine years ago. Here, I would like to discuss the pros and cons of the designated hitter. For the unenlightened (I seem to have written that prepositional phrase several times recently), the American League allows teams to replace their pitchers in their starting lineups with players who will only hit and not play the field (see "Papi, Big" or "Ortiz, David"), while the National League requires their pitchers to bat. This forces National League managers to come up with elaborate ways of avoiding a relatively sure out in key situations, e.g. a double switch. Par exemple, there are two outs in the seventh inning, and Willie Randolph wants to bring in Pedro Feliciano to face a left-handed hitter to get the final out, but he doesn't want to waste him on just one batter; he wants to use Feliciano to at least start the eighth inning. However, Willie doesn't want to have the pitcher bat, and the pitcher's spot in the lineup is coming up second next inning. Az Willie will do a double switch, wherein the seventh batter in the Mets' lineup, Jose Valentin, who made the last out of the previous inning, will be replaced in the lineup with the new pitcher Feliciano, and in the field by Ruben Gotay, who will take John Maine's spot in the lineup. There, not too hard. This doesn't happen in the American League. In fact, it's quite common for an American League lineup to remain the same for the entire game while the pitchers can get switched all the time. Onto the pros and cons (mostly cons)! Well, I sorta only have one minor pro and one major con.

Pro: Good hitting is almost always more exciting than good pitching. Watching the 7-8-9 hitters in a National League game is often a waste of time.

HUGE CON: Let's pretend for a second that the planets align, and Jesus returns once again to save our mortal souls, and the Mets end up meeting the Red Sox in the World Series. (I'm only using the Sox here instead of the Yankees because the Yanks have been inundated with injuries and I have no idea who will be playing DH for them down the road.) When they play at Fenway Park where American League rules apply, the Sox will be able to use their usual lineup, including Kevin Youkilis at first base, and Big Papi at DH. Meanwhile the Mets will be forced to use one of these scrubs: 712 year old Julio Franco, Damian Easley, Ricky Ledee, Ramon Castro, and the aforementioned Ruben Gotay. Now, when they play at Shea, both pitchers will bat, while Big Papi will probably play first, and Youk will either play out of position or come off the bench. Basically, the point of the argument is that all American League rosters have a DH built into them, while it would be a colossal waste of money for an NL team to carry an extra guy like that (those DH's rates are pretendous. See Fan Costume Commentary from '03 on homestarrunner.com). Anyway, I think this scenario gives American League teams a more than negligible advantage over NL teams when they play at their home parks.

If anyone wants to argue with me, please do so; I can't wait to have an answer for every criticism you throw at me. Man, I love arguing about baseball.