On this date in 2005, during the All Star game Town Hall discussion, commissioner Bud Selig stated that the designated hitter rule would remain in use for the foreseeable future, as Leo Panetta of NationalPastime.com writes. However, Selig said we would never see the rule applied to the National League. Ten years later, it sounds like the DH could very well happen in the NL. Here’s this week’s look around the baseball blogosphere..
- Yankees Unscripted spoke with Hall of Famer Goose Gossage.
- Inside The ‘Zona says pitching down isn’t working for the D’Backs.
- Blue Jay Hunter is concerned about Aaron Sanchez.
- Camden Depot is encouraged by the Orioles’ success against bad teams.
- From Duke 2 Joc discussed Clayton Kershaw‘s All-Star snub.
- Reviewing The Brew wonders if Jonathan Lucroy wants out of Milwaukee.
- Baseball Hot Corner marvels at the wizard that is Francisco Lindor.
- Fantasy Pros looked at June by the numbers.
- Baseball Essential says the Orioles should consider trading Jimmy Paredes.
- The Point of Pittsburgh looked at the needs of playoff contenders in the NL.
- Marlin Maniac has some ideas for what Miami can do at the deadline.
- Rumbunter wonders if Jameson Taillon has trade value.
- SoDo Mojo tells us who’s hot and who’s not.
- Nolan Writin says the Rangers are struggling against bad clubs.
Please send submissions to Zach at ZachBBWI@gmail.com.
I don’t understand how MLB can be a multi-billion dollar industry and:
1. Have an unbalanced schedule where some teams get to beat up and boost their win total by playing the worst teams more often, diluting how good their actual team is.
2. Have a league thats the only league in the world that doesn’t use a DH.
3. Let fans have any kind of a say in who gets home field advantage in the world series by making the ASG mean something, yet still be a popularity contest.
4. Lets only some on-field play cases be reviewed by umpires, and also let aging umpires with poor eyesight call balls and strikes, when the technology exists to have a laser-guided strike zone that would be impervious to human mistakes.
Its one of the most powerful groups on earth, yet MLB has all these things you’d expect from a little league still going on. It makes no sense.
The NL is not the only league in the world that doesn’t use the DH. The Central League in Japan’s NPB has that same format.
AL fans are the only ones who want the DH, most of us NL fans like the pitcher batting. Plus it’s baseball’s go to debate. What would we write about without it? That would be the only one of your 4 that I’d be upset if changed.
Way back, the All Star Game let the starters stay in the game longer and they weren’t worried about getting all the players into the game. I wanted to see Willie Mays and Hank Aaron come to bat 3-4 times and let Don Drysdale, Juan Marichal and Bob Gibson pitch 3-4 innings. I wasn’t interested in seeing Art Mahaffey, George Altman or Frank Bolling.
As a fan of an NL team, I (not surprisingly) don’t want to see the DH transition to the senior circuit, but I wouldn’t be devastated if it happened either. There are some positives, like more runs (aka excitement for the average consumer), better rest for pitchers, rest for offense-first players, etc.
I never want to see the strategy and intrigue of planning around a pitcher at the plate, but at the same time, it wouldn’t be an entirely negative transition.
I’ve mentally resigned myself to the assumption that the NL will have a DH at some point, and it’s not so bad. It’s not great, but it’s not so bad…
I think the unbalanced schedule has been messing up the game in a far more catastrophic fashion, allowing actually-not good teams to make the playoffs (see: every team that gets swept out first round) while good teams miss out just because of the city they’re located in. That’s not right at all. If I ran things I’d do away with divisions and just have two leagues, with every team playing each other the same amount at home and away and the top 4 teams make the playoffs. Thats the only way will see authentic playoffs.
As for DH, I just cannot stand watching pitchers hit, its pathetic, 99% of them don’t care and make it a joke…and again, this is a billion dollar industry, why do we have something thats a joke in it? NL games are boring for me because of the constant manager intervention, the one “free out” every time through the lineup and hitting a baseball is the hardest thing to do in pro sports – why not let a professional do it? Almost all pitchers are amateur hitters, this is fact.