Pitchers hitting

I like pitchers hitting in theory. In practice however, it just simply doesn’t work. Pitchers at every level of the sport except the NL don’t hit. Most pitchers don’t start practicing their hitting until they get to the NL. Even then they don’t practice much. If they can’t be bothered to become good hitters, why should I watch them in professional sports?

I especially don’t like pitchers hitting in the all star game. It leaves off a worthy starter so we can watch a double switch late in the game? How is that worth it?

Derek

I for one want to see Scott Feldman take his cuts.

If pitchers didn’t hit we would miss out on the unintentional comedy of, say, Randy Johnson or C.C. Safatia at the plate…

I’m for pitchers hitting because it just doesn’t seem natural that the pitchers don’t. I just think it makes the game feel a little silly that some guy who has no other bearing on the game comes in to hit every other inning or so. To me, a better solution would be to just have 8 batters in the lineup.

than watching a pitchers duel end in the 6th or 7th inning so some scrub can pinch hit for one of the pitchers.

wants to see Eddie Guardado and Frankie Francisco hit?

everybody hits, everybody fields.

get rid of it. I prefer the NL style of managing a game; double switches, PH for pitchers, etc.

Like Jason Botts DHing.

dude can rake. now, if he could only pitch…

pitchers that can hit.

mike hampton was pretty decent.

so is rick ankiel.

bob lemon was the definition of beast.

now babe ruth, he was decent.

Pitchers aren’t in the majors because they can hit. I think it makes little sense to give pitchers a freebie out, which just serves to dilute the quality of the game. This is one aspect of the game on which old timers are out to lunch. It was always a bad idea to force someone to be good at both hitting and pitching, even moreso now that athletes use specialized training regimens and year-round conditioning.

Of course, back then there were quite a few less people in the world. Maybe they just couldn’t find 20 guys to play, only 18.

Besides the DH, there is one other rule difference between the NL and AL. Anyone know what it is (no googling and it’s completely unrelated to the DH).

AJM would be more of a purist and want to leave it as is. Anyways, since I won’t be around later today… Rangers sweep the Mets and Randolph is fired on Monday.

Is that sometimes you get lucky and you see one hit a homerun.

So your a pitcher and you just gave up a bomb to a pitcher who never bats, does not practice batting, and this is the only time he will bat the entire year.

Talk about instant DFA.

hit him as the DH on the days he doesn’t pitch.

I would be for amending the DH rule to allow a pitcher to hit in a game he is pitching, if it isn’t all ready acceptable to do so.

This is off topic. And please be gentle but….

Any chance Ian Kinsler could be had in a trade for an ace pitching prospect or two?

have a chance at least. but being a reliever, the chances are about 0%

he should beg to get a start.

not really. he has a hard enough time getting 3 outs.

i’m just joshin’

I also like having a more pure and slightly more strategically complicated form of baseball.

So I like having different rules in different leagues.

Texas Rangers
Milton Bradley says he just wanted to introduce himself to Kansas City Royals announcer Ryan Lefebvre after storming the press box in a fit of anger Wednesday night. Would it have been similar to Inigo Montoya’s “introduction” in The Princess Bride?
“Hello, My name is Milton Bradley. You killed my psyche. Prepare to die.”

Thats pretty damn funny even if it is a slight dig on MB

to aluminum

That dude should be awesome when he gets here in interleague play. A top CF prospect as well as pitching and didn’t he tear up the AZ Fall League before going pitcher full time?

because the reason I watch MLB is to see people who are the most proficient at what they do, that being play baseball. pitchers can’t hit. therefore i do not want to watch it.

hit in one league and not the other adds to the eccentricity-factor of baseball as does interleague play. Keep baseball weird.

I’ve said it before (last time AJM posted about the DH) but I don’t like the NL just because it’s booooooooring. The teams are boooooooooring. When I first started really watching baseball and dabbling with various teams, they were always AL (A’s, Royals, White Sox) before falling for the Rangers.

...article during the preseason that made the point that the world series should never be won by the NL team do to the sizable gap between the DHs… the AL DH is a hitting machine(at least in the world series, you assume)... hitters of that quality only go to the NL if they can play a position, and since the AL can get him on the field is bound to keep one more great hitter around than an NL team… the same way AL teams hide good hitters who can’t field at first, NL teams do the same with DHs… and since there is really nothing gained by haiving “better” hitting pitchers (cept maybe owings and a few others) all the DH does for a NL team is let them play one more of their marginal hitters, vs the Al which has the much better bat ready and waiting…

watch the pitcher’s spot bunt or strikeout 3 times a game is not exciting.

I understand the purity of the game argument, but give me a break. Sports change. Football didn’t use to have the forward pass. Should we go back to that also?

Not really, I’ve come to accept it. The DH implementation was to increase fan appeal for the game IIRC, stemming from a decade of pitcher dominance and relatively little “action”. It also reduced the focus on not having enough good pitchers since expansion. Years ago, the pitcher when at bat wasn’t always the weak spot in a lineup, even when batting ninth. At times a manager would put a good hitting pitcher elsewhere in the order to make use of his bat.

Forward pass in football isn’t a corrolary, maybe using a flat sided bat like in cricket might be. Or allowing baseball players to tackle the opponent, which they don’t (except in Seattle).

However, since pitching has become so specialized, far more so than other positions, allowing the DH in both leagues does make sense at a couple of levels. The fact that it’s inconsistent between leagues … maybe will go away when energy and other economic pitfalls might cause geographic realignment, and the leagues as we know them would dissolve.

Not using the DH, forces managers to rely on the pitch hitter more when they fall behind in a game. It’s more a game of strategy.

a preference either way….

Keep the DH or do away with it…..but it should be the SAME in each league.

can’t stand watching pitchers hit.

And to all those who bitch about this team bunting and yet want to do away with the DH, umm…..what?

Best thing I ever read on the subject come from, of all people, George Will. I realize, undoubtedly, that this will immediately discount the opinion at the onset for some of you, but he captures the most perfect argument for the DH I’ve ever read:

The real case for the DH is this: It represents the triumph of evidence over ideology. The anti-DH ideology is that there should be no specialization in baseball, no division of labor—everyone should play “the whole game.” That theory is slain by this fact: Most pitchers only go through the motions at bat. The DH is a way of facing that fact. It says: Only serious batters shall bat. Without the DH, every ninth batter is unserious. A pitcher hitting is like the shortstop pitching. Baseball does not expect an unserious pitcher—say, the shortstop—to pitch to one of every nine batters on the opposing team.

From Bunts, a 1998 collection of George Will’s baseball-related columns

But I think they should keep things the way they are, only having the DH in the AL.

First of all, it gives me an excuse to hate the National League, and second it adds a dimension to the home/away games in the World Series (like when Big fat Papi was forced to haul his ass out to first base in Colorado last year).

I think it’s kind of an important thing to have, the whole AL vs. NL, DH vs. no DH controversy. While it might interleague games more palatable, universalizing the DH would rob baseball of another part of its soul. There needs to be some kind of a difference between the AL and the NL, or there’s no reason to have two leagues.

I think they just need to eliminate half the damn interleague games. Astros/Rangers, Mets/Yankees, Red Sox/Braves, Dodgers/Angels – that stuff is fine, it’s kinda cool to see two teams from the same region match up. But I see no reason for the Rangers to be visiting Shea Stadium, or for having the Braves come to Arlington. Those kinds of arbitrary, meaningless matchups are stupid.