How do you feel about the designated hitter?

[Fresno Bob]

i also think that in interleague you should have to play by the visiting teams rules, not the home team, wasn't the point of interleague to see how the other league plays? batting last is enough of a home field advantage.

[Moonlight J]

There are hundreds examples of strategy in baseball that happen in every game. The whole "lack of strategy" thing we hear in defense of pitchers hitting is garbage.

[Judge Jude]

I was pretty neutral until I read this today

"Pitchers batting is dumb and the DH should be universal"

http://hardballtalk.nbcsports.com/20...-be-universal/

has me sympathizing more with anti-DH crowd - while a "DH fans are dumb" post would have had me leaning DH

straw men, insults, demands to comply with the writer's "wisdom" - as in political posts, you lose more souls than you gain, and rightly so

[Midnight Otter]

I like it the way it is.

I would not want to see DH come to the NL. I do not particularly want it eliminated from the AL If push came to shove and it had to be the same across both leagues then no DH.

with so much intra-league action, the rules should be the same in both leagues

[rhd]

For years I was all for abolishing the DH. In just the last year or 2 I've come around to the other way of thinking. There are several reasons I think the DH should be in both leagues:

1) Rules should be the same in both "leagues"
This really is my main reason. It's been essentially all one league for decades, maybe longer. Every MLB rule is the same in both leagues except this one. This is really SILLY. It's like having the 3-point shot in the Eastern Conference of the NBA but not the Western. Or, like having the 2-point conversion in the AFC but not the NFC. Totally senseless. Originally, the DH was instituted as an "experiment", w the idea that if it worked it would be instituted in both leagues. The experiment is now 42 years old and still counting.

Of course, abolishing the DH in both leagues would solve this problem, too. But for the other reasons, below, I would add the DH to the NL.

2) Pitchers are paid to pitch, not hit and nobody is buying tickets or watching games to see pitchers hit
Someone above mentioned that pitchers' BA is .150. It's actually .120. This issue also has been discussed recently at BA, who made the good point that pitchers today dont focus on hitting at all. They're being asked to do (in the NL) something that they cant do well and arent even trained to do. This makes sense because the NL is one of the few places that pitchers have to hit. I think it's only in the upper minors where pitchers hit and then only in NL-affiliates' parks and sometimes not even then. Minor leaguers cant become better at hitting because they hardly ever hit in a game and they dont work on it in practice - rightly so, they're too busy learning how to pitch.

Nor do I buy the argument that having the pitcher hit adds excitement and strategy to the game. I think the strategy argument is bogus; there's just about as much strategy in the AL. IMO, any excitement pitchers hitting adds is mostly the wrong type of excitement. Kinda like having the running back be the QB for a few series of downs in football. The quality of the game is enhanced by having players do what they're best at doing.

3) Pitchers can and do get hurt hitting and running the bases
This might be the best reason. Pitchers are being paid millions of $. They get hurt entirely too much already just from pitching. If I'm an owner, I dont my $15 mil a year pitcher going on the DL for possibly and extended period because he got hit in the head while batting and has a concussion. Or tore an Achilles sliding into 2B. And as a fan, I dont want to see Joe Wieland pitching instead of an injured Clayton Kershaw.

As an amusing aside, I've taken my wife to more than a dozen minor and major league games over the years, and it took her about 6 games to realize that the hitters were the same players as the fielders. She assumed it was like football, where the whole line up was made of specialists--one group of hitters and one group of fielders. I made fun of her for it, but she said she thought they were such separate skill sets, it just made sense to her. So, to her, the entire team of fielders should have DHs .

This is exactly what some people predicted would be the case after the DH was first instituted. Of course, this will never happen because you'd have to increase the roster size so much to make it possible and no way the owners would go for that.

i also think that in interleague you should have to play by the visiting teams rules, not the home team, wasn't the point of interleague to see how the other league plays? batting last is enough of a home field advantage.

This is exactly what they do in Japan now.

Oh, and also I think this issue is something the owners and players could agree on. The players would want the DH because it gives some MLB players jobs that wouldnt otherwise have one. The owners have been generally against the DH because it means a higher-salaried position (DH instead of middle reliever or bench guy). But the owners also want an international draft. In the next CBA, which I think is after the 2016 season, the owners can offer to add the DH to the NL in exchange w the players allowing the international draft. I dont think the players would object to this because the international players affects are not part of the players union. So, I'm thinking this could happen soon.

[Judge Jude]

42 years, but whatever.

also, it would not shock me if more AL starting pitchers hurt their arms from not having a "free pass" a couple of times early in the game. So if protecting pitchers is the goal, I don't get why giving them no break whatsoever in a lineup would preserve their arms - and that is a more urgent interest than the occasionally fluky, hitting running injury, no?

I don't have a strong feeling on it, but the demand by DH fans that all must conform - which some people have - strikes me as odd. Plus as I say, given the fragility of pitching arms, removing the last break they get in a lineup doesn't strike me as something that will improve their chances of staying healthy.

[Kevin Seitzer]

Pro-pitcher-hitting article published today that I thought was well-written:

http://grantland.com/the-triangle/mlb-national-league-designated-hitter-debate-adam-wainwright/

[Sour Masher]

Pro-DH article published today that I thought was well-written:
http://grantland.com/the-triangle/ml...am-wainwright/

If the author of that article identified it as an argument in favor of the DH in one of my college writing courses, I'd fail him . That is an argument for keeping the DH out of the NL all the way. He simply starts by conceding that the DH to the NL is inevitable, but he spends the rest of the article refuting pro-DH arguments, and explaining why he likes watching NL baseball without the DH and why he likes watching the flawed, imperfect baseball played in college for similar reasons.

[heyelander]

I don't get the conformity argument either. I like that it's different and don't really see how the difference is hurting interleague play.

Should we require all stadiums to be the exact same dimensions?

[Kevin Seitzer]

If the author of that article identified it as an argument in favor of the DH in one of my college writing courses, I'd fail him . That is an argument for keeping the DH out of the NL all the way. He simply starts by conceding that the DH to the NL is inevitable, but he spends the rest of the article refuting pro-DH arguments, and explaining why he likes watching NL baseball without the DH and why he likes watching the flawed, imperfect baseball played in college for similar reasons.

Sorry. My fingers didn't type what my brain was thinking. Edited. Definitely not a pro-DH article.

[GwynnInTheHall]

I think we should allow Chris Rock to re brand baseball.......

[rhd]

42 years, but whatever.

Right, sorry. Corrected now.

[Pogues]

Currently likes vs. dislikes is even at 17.

[The Dane]

Bumgarner is way cooler than Scherzer.

http://www.sportingnews.com/mlb/story/2015-04-28/nl-dh-debate-national-league-designated-hitter-madison-bumgarner-max-scherzer?eadid=SOC%2FFB%2FSNMain

[rhd]

Currently likes vs. dislikes is even at 17.

Not everyone w a strong opinion necessarily is voting. I didnt vote because I dont think any of the option apply. I've always been a fan of an AL team (Orioles) but when I was growing up there was no DH in the AL either.