[Anyone]

Originally Posted by chucksabr

That statement is not proof that the owners want the DH to go away. It is only the opinion of some dude named Chuck who has a blog. There are no quotes from owners in his post. Can you honestly not tell the difference? Because I'm pretty sure the rest of us can.

Pitchers hitting definitely does lead to push button tactical decisions, regardless of rare anecdotes about managers unclear on the concept of pushing buttons. It is the DH that imparts truly strategic decision making into the acts of pinch hitting, sacrifice bunting and the removal of pitchers. Because with the DH, you have the make the decision to change pitchers based on how the pitcher is actually doing, or on feel and gut, rather than on If-A-Then-B flowcharting. With pinch hitting and bunting, the decision is made based more often on managerial fiat and on the element of surprise, rather than on conditions that 10,000 other people in the ballpark can clearly see.

You had claimed that nowhere in the article does it say that. It does say that in the article. If you want to dispute the article's spin, I understand that. But don't claim I said something was in the article that wasn't there, when it was.

You accused me of being inflammatory (some of my statements about how bad the DH is are, I guess), but you're the one doing more of such in this thread. "Cinnamon J. Scudworth" calmly made the point that the Competition Committee may not have represented the owners' thought, that what may have happened was that in 2009 the Competition Committee made its recommendation to dump the DH, based on a number of things including the poll I remembered and Amazin found, the MLBPA voiced strong opposition, and the matter was dropped before we could really see how many owners wanted to do away with the DH.

I admitted that was possible, and after thinking about it I think it's more likely than I stated in my response. I still think it would likely (not definitely) have happened had the MLBPA said "Great idea!" but I'm no longer sure and we'll never know.

What is certain was in 2009 we were certainly closer to eliminating the DH from MLB than to universalizing it. Now, we're certainly closer to universalizing it than eliminating it, but I hold that neither is very likely anytime soon, though it doesn't matter in evaluating whether it should happen or not.

As far as your claim in of the "push button" manager decision, there are examples in this thread where it was clearly anything but. I believe that's fairly common. Your starter's pitching a very good game, tied 1-1 in the 7th and has only thrown 83 pitches. Your bullpen is pretty weak. The first two hitters in the 7th get on and the pitcher's up. You can have the pitcher bunt and hope your 1/2 men can score the runners, or you can take three shots by pinch hitting. Most managers probably bunt there, but it's not push button. What if there's one out? You only get one shot if you don't pinch hit. Tough call whether to pinch hit or not. Some guys even leave him in with 2 outs, so they can keep him in the game. That's a tough decision AL managers don't have to make.

The McNamara and Davey Johnson decisions from playoff games are well explained in the thread, and are examples of the far from push-button decisions that NL managers have to make every day. Go back and tell me what the supposedly obvious "push button" decision was they should have made. There was none. Decisions were harder. The decision I had to make every game last OOTP season about who to pull on a double switch, that I also described, made me think quite a bit when playing, and added to my enjoyment when playing out a game. Had I been watching the game, it would have added to my enjoyment when watching it.

You say the DH frees the manager not to have to consider when the pitcher is due up when he decides whether to pull a pitcher, as if that's good. To me, that simplifies the decision and makes it far less interesting. Of course, there can still be interesting leave-in or pull-the-pitcher decisions with the DH, including the very famous Grady Little choice to stick with Pedro too long, resulting in the Red Sox losing the ALCS to the Yankees. They occur much more often with no DH, though.

Yes, the DH frees a manager not to bunt, ever, at all, which is probably close to what I'd do if managing in a DH league. And it is push-button, I freely admit, that the pitcher comes up in a potential DP situation, if he isn't an unusually good hitter for a pitcher and it's too early to pinch hit, to have him bunt...although I guess some sabermetricians are questioning whether one should bunt even then...interesting, as is the sabermetric view gaining some acceptance that the pitcher should bat 8th-- both conversations you don't have to have in the AL.

I find it very weak to claim there is no strategy gained from the NL rules, when you've been posted strategy dilemmas and can't find the one, obvious, push button way out of them.

I think the pro-DH argument is more that it's so boring to watch pitchers bat and so frustrating to see a rally die out because the pitcher came up to outweigh the non-DH benefits. But to deny those benefits even exist seems silly to me.

Then there's a purely aesthetic argument, about whether lummoxes who can't field (any more; often they fielded in their primes) should have a chance to bat if they can still do so, without the team suffering in the field because they are no longer really athletes. To me, it's obvious which way those arguments fall. To you, they likely fall the other way. To the MLBPA, they fall on the pro-DH side, because those lummoxes are among those they represent. Of course, those guys would still be on rosters as pinch hitters in real (non-DH) baseball, but would get paid much less-- which explains the MLBPA's stance, but not necessarily why fans back them.