NFBC Message Boards

"MLB commissioner Rob Manfred confirmed Thursday that the owners and players have agreed to instituting the universal DH.
It won't become official until a new collective bargaining agreement is put in place, but the writing has been on the wall for a while now that the designated hitter would be arriving in the National League rule book for the 2022 season and beyond. Manfred presented it as a concession on the part of MLB owners in the ongoing CBA negotiations, as it will indeed add a sometimes high-paying player role to the senior circuit. There are obvious fantasy implications here, both for NL hitters who could see an increase in plate appearances and for NL pitchers who are going to have to face deeper batting orders moving forward."

Heavy sigh...we all knew it was coming...just like shingles, fallen arches, and unwanted nose hair. But we will now have the universal desecrated hitter. Lessor players, less strategy, less athleticism...less game.

Hallelujah, our long national nightmare of pretending pitchers can hit is over. In 2021, pitchers hit .110/.150/.142. They struck out in 44% of their plate appearances, and in nearly half the ones that didn’t end in a sacrifice bunt. They had nearly five times as many strikeouts as they did hits. (Joe Sheehan Newsletter)

This idealized notion that it's a "nine-man game" and that a pitcher is the same as any other player on the field simply is not borne out in reality or by history. The time is long overdue to recognize this & quit pretending that pitchers are complete players and that treating them as hitters is anything but an exercise in futility. Heck, most of us can remember when the game was stopped to bring out a jacket for the pitcher any time he got on base and bullpen cars drove relief pitchers out to the mound. As far as most of us have been alive, pitchers have always been treated differently. Indeed, as Joe Sheehan wrote in his newsletter:

"The idea that pitchers in professional baseball were ever just like every other player on the diamond was dead by the time the National League came into being in 1876. Pitchers are fundamentally a different class of player from the other eight on the diamond. Different rules apply to them. They're compensated differently. They're handled, within games and on rosters, differently. And they cannot, as a class, hit well enough to be asked to do so in a major-league setting. Their attempts to do so are an embarrassing anachronism not as of 2013, not as of 1973, but as of your great-great-great-grandparents' baseball."

The “nine-man game” argument has been mooted by the evolution of pitcher usage. If you accept one-inning relief pitchers as baseball players, which the game clearly does, then you have to accept designated hitters as well. Pitcher batting has become a joke, with pitchers more overmatched at the plate than ever before. The evolution of pitcher usage is such that pitchers are asked to bat less than they ever have. Most pitchers, even in the National League, rarely bat, and a significant number of them never do. The argument that baseball purity demands complete players, a nine-man game, is forever lost. Let’s acknowledge that to end the silliness of pitcher batting."

Hear, hear. I am interested to hear any rebuttal arguments against the DH.

Madison Bumgarner, Ken Brett, Bullet Joe Bush, Don Drysdale, Wes Ferrell, Yovani Gallardo, Bob Gibson, Tom Glavine, Zack Greinke, Mike Hampton, Walter Johnson, Don Larsen, Shoehei Ohtani, Micah Owings, Schoolboy Rowe, Babe Ruth, Sloppy Thurston, Dontrelle Willis, Carlos Zambrano, Dan Kenyon, and the list goes on....

Oh, and other arguments include "bunt" and "steal" over "grip it and rip it".

When all of us played when we were younger, often the pitcher was the best athlete, most complete player, and the ones I played with would of fought like hell if the coach wanted to pitch him for him, much less take the bat out of his hands totally. Sorry, MLB is protecting an investment (a pitcher) rather than keeping the game real and more watchable.

Never again to see July 4th 1985, May 3rd, 2019, managers "thinking"...who needs strategy?

I'm slightly torn.
Fantasy-wise, THANK YOU! A hitting pitcher has no place in fantasy baseball.
Hell, even when we do have a great hitting pitcher who can hit like Shohei Ohtani, no fantasy sites really know how to treat him.
In NFBC rules, he is diminished in that his owners must choose whether to pitch him or hit him each week.
We have game 163 because ,supposedly, all stats must count. But we can't even count on ALL of Ohtani's stats. Go figure.
Fantasy has no place for a hitting pitcher or really, any pitcher in a batting order.

As far as enjoying a baseball game at a park...
The DH Iis dull.
It's like Bugs Bunny facing that lineup of 'Giants'. Each hitter looking the same.
No matter how bad, the pitcher changed the lineup and signaled to fans that the top of the order was approaching.
Sure, it is better watching a 'real' hitter over most pitchers. That is understood.
Still, the DH allows for push-button Managing. Any troll can manage a team with a DH. Dull.
The fan's will not miss pitcher's hitting as much as they'll miss what happens when a pitcher's spot is due in the lineup.
Does the Manager take a Pitcher out who is throwing well in a close game?
Does he go for the pinch hitter to try to win the game now?
Not to mention that even though most pitcher's do it so poorly nowadays, this may be the last chance for a generation of fans to see a bunt

The argument is not about having a 'real hitter' instead of a pitcher hitting.
The argument is that spot. That ninth spot.
The spot that adds intrigue and suspense in the game within the game.
An equivalent would be a little like us removing the second catcher from our fantasy game.
Yes, we don't need a second catcher. For all intents and purposes, it's stupid that we have that second catcher.
Most of these catchers hit for shit, like pitchers.
We can easily do without them and our game would carry on as with a DH in baseball.
At the same time, a lot of folks would not want to part with that second catcher.
The same could be said for the past National League game.

Over the years, my fantasy brain has overtaken my love for the game of baseball itself.
I don't mind the switch to the DH at all.
Still, my baseball side will miss the years of strategy and angst that fans had when the ninth spot had to be reckoned with by many Managers.
RIP Ninth Spot.

DOUGHBOYS wrote: ↑

Sun Feb 13, 2022 12:46 pm

In NFBC rules, he is diminished in that his owners must choose whether to pitch him or hit him each week.
We have game 163 because ,supposedly, all stats must count. But we can't even count on ALL of Ohtani's stats. Go figure.

And I thought yesterday was a bad day. Go figure.

Greg Ambrosius wrote: ↑

Sun Feb 13, 2022 1:52 pm

DOUGHBOYS wrote: ↑

Sun Feb 13, 2022 12:46 pm

In NFBC rules, he is diminished in that his owners must choose whether to pitch him or hit him each week.
We have game 163 because ,supposedly, all stats must count. But we can't even count on ALL of Ohtani's stats. Go figure.

And I thought yesterday was a bad day. Go figure.

Yesterday wasn't a bad day. Just another slow step.
Both these sides have to quicken the pace if they're only going to trim their proposals minimally.
Lock 'em in a room for a death match!