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Originally Posted by frangipard
I'd argue that for small-market teams especially, it's a bad idea; veteran sluggers are expensive,and to the extent the DH helps keep veteran sluggers in the game, it will hurt teams like SD/Pitt/Miami more often than not.
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I think you have it backwards. The economics of baseball say that the team tends to get more value out of a contract if they can sign a player to a long-term deal before he hits the last years of arbitration eligibility. "Veteran sluggers" are always a comparatively worse deal for the team no matter how rich the club is. Now, long-term deals are always a gamble, but the problem for NL teams is that locking down a player like Joey Votto means an
extra gamble about the continuing viability of his fielding. So small market NL teams are disadvantaged precisely in an area where they should be looking for an advantage.
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Simply from a marketing standpoint, it's awful -- NL fans (I am one) have spent 40 years comparing and contrasting and preferring our way, and not occasionally telling AL people how much better our way is. This is a core part of the NL's "brand" ... now you're going to ask your own fans to eat crow and admit the AL people were right all along? That sounds like Coca-Cola reformulating to be more like Pepsi in the 80s. Not a good idea.
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I suspect that most people under the age of 25 couldn't care less about this, which is who the MLB would be thinking about in terms of the marketing aspects, if at all.
I'm resigned to the NL getting the DH at this point. If we're going all-in on interleague, it's got to happen sometime.