The DH

[chucksabr]

Originally Posted by Anyone

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.

OK, this is the last time I am responding to this kind of thing.

You are flat wrong on this. At no point did I claim that "nowhere in the article does it say that". What I said was, quote, "there is nothing in the link you provided that confirms that MLB owners wanted to eliminate the DH in 2009, and did not only because of the MLBPA". And there demonstrably isn't, and as proof, here's the link to that never-edited post. Everybody here can easily go back for themselves and see that's the case, if they had any interest in doing so.

I am not going to be drawn into the ridiculous sidebar arguing with you over who is the worse arguer here. It accomplishes nothing, and I can add only that when you couch your relevant points within irrelevant ad hominem points about how bad the other person is, the other person is not going to be interested in engaging you anymore.

I believe the DH game is the superior game, for reasons I've stated. I'm going to leave it at that and split, so feel free to take as many inaccurate potshots at me as you want now.

[Amazin69]

Originally Posted by MrWideFrame

The amount of vitriol coming from the anti-DH crowd is ASTOUNDING.

No, you mean the PRO-DH crowd. They're the ones slinging the insults. My best guess would be it's because they lack any facts to cite, other than "it's inevitable!" and "neener-neener, you'll never get it out of the AL!"

Since I don't give much of a sh*t what happens in the AL (the racist league, the league with the Yankees, the league with the DH), I don't particularly care. Just keep it out of my league, tyvm.

Likewise, the sooner we get rid of interleague play (but…we'll lose those epic Padres-Blue Jays rivalry games! What will we do without them?? Rays-Rockies! Mariners-Astros! All that history! ) so I can ignore the AL even more, the better. Bye, Felicia! Take your DH and we'll see you in October.

[Amazin69]

Originally Posted by bwburke94

Re: DH/strategy

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far, away, there was a man named Bill James. And I can't keep the Star Wars references going, so I'll just say that Bill James thinks the DH increases strategic decisions.

Has he said that lately? I remember his pointing out that there were more pinch-hitters used in the AL during a Baseball Abstract somewhere in the 1980s, because with no "pitcher's spot" to save them for, AL managers could consistently pinch-hit to get the platoon advantage. Of course, the problem with sending up a platoon of platoon guys is that you get trapped when the other manager then switches back to a different pitcher, as Dick Howser did to Bobby Cox and the Jays in the 1985 ALCS, starting righties Mark Gubicza and Bret Saberhagen in games 6 and 7 to get the Toronto lefty platoon (Rance Mulliniks, Al Oliver) in the starting lineup, bringing in a lefty in the middle innings (Bud Black in Game 6, Charlie Leibrandt in Game 7) to get Cox to pinch-hit at the platoon spots (Garth Iorg for Mulliniks, Cliff Johnson for Oliver), and thus leaving the Toronto bench bare of lefties when Dan Quisenberry came into the game at the end.

It's a strategy as old as the hills, or at least the 1924 World Series, where Bucky Harris trotted out Curly Ogden to start Game 7 just so John McGraw would have Bill Terry at 1B rather than Irish Meusel in LF, then pulled Ogden after two hitters for lefty George Mogridge, until McGraw couldn't hold off and pulled the trigger to get Meusel in the game in the 6th. (In fairness, it worked, as the Giants rallied to take a 3-1 lead.) But then the Senators went the rest of the way with righties Firpo Marberry and Walter Johnson in relief, and no Terry available to get the platoon advantage at a key moment.

But a) robo-platooning isn't necessarily deep thinking, b) this has all died out with the shrinking of the benches in this era of the 12-man pitching staff (barf), and c) James has walked back a few opinions over the decades. He used to be all in favor of AstroTurf; in the 2003 revised version of the Historical Baseball Abstract, he takes it all back. So, yes, Bill did make note of the increased pinch-hit attempt stats of the AL in the first decade or so of its employment. But I don't think that should be the be-all and end-all right there.

(Besides, Bill's been wrong, plenty of times. That 1986 Baseball Abstract where he goes on for 30 pages about the Royals' World Series win read like a pouty child's dissertation on how the mean kids could go suck it, brave little Kansas City was standing up to all the insults New York had put on it through the years, blah blah blah. It was so laughable and slanted that I ended up making notes all around the margins of the pages about what a fool Bill was making of himself. Then, of course, the next year, he has barely anything to say about the Mets. F*ck him. F*ck him long, f*ck him hard. [I still respect his opinion, and his methodology breakthroughs even more. I just don't venerate him.])

[Amazin69]

Originally Posted by Kronos

Rock is dead and the DH is coming.

So is Jesus, but they both seem to be taking their sweet time.

(And more seriously, thanks to kq76 for the useful links.)

[jaysdailydose]

Here's the actual James quote, too, before anyone gets too silly.

Originally Posted by Bill James

"I'm not an advocate of the Designated Hitter Rule; I'm only an advocate of seeing the truth and telling the truth. What the truth comes down to here is a question of in what does strategy reside? Does strategy exist in the act of bunting? If so the Designated Hitter Rule has reduced strategy. But if strategy exists in the decision about when a bunt should be used, then the DH rule has increased the differences of opinion which exist about that question, and thus increased strategy...[the research shows] that there is more of a difference of opinion, not less, in the American League." (The Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract. Villard Books, New York. 1986. Page 260.)

Just for posterity and the sake of quality debate.

[Anyone]

Originally Posted by chucksabr

OK, this is the last time I am responding to this kind of thing.

You are flat wrong on this. At no point did I claim that "nowhere in the article does it say that". What I said was, quote, "there is nothing in the link you provided that confirms that MLB owners wanted to eliminate the DH in 2009, and did not only because of the MLBPA". And there demonstrably isn't, and as proof, here's the link to that never-edited post. Everybody here can easily go back for themselves and see that's the case, if they had any interest in doing so.

There's only one point I still need to argue with, having reread the thread and seen that, unlike how it felt to me at the time, when you voiced skepticism that the idea of "Dump the DH in return for a 26 man roster" was proposed (which at the very least it was by the competition committee, and while I have no source for this I very clearly remember an MLBPA response similar to "The 26th man will make the minimum salary; everyday DH's make much more than that.") you took care to say not to take your skepticism personally. I did, and it's hard to avoid taking personally the suggestion that I fabricated what I said, but if you were skeptical your initial response was not as unreasonable as it felt at the time.

However, what you did say when you said the link did not confirm that the owners wanted to eliminate the DH wasn't that the link was unreliable, but (to quote) "There is nothing in the link you provided that confirms that MLB owners wanted to eliminate the DH in 2009, and did not only because of the MLBPA. If you insist there is, then you will have to cite chapter and verse from that article."

This seems to suggest that the article didn't say it. You welcomed me to "cite chapter and verse from the article," which I then did. If "chapter and verse from the article" was not enough, which is reasonable on looking back-- what the article did was prove that I wasn't making the whole thing up, that there really was at least that discussion, but not much more was proven-- then don't simply ask for me to cite it from the article.

There were other ways to make the point that it didn't necessarily go as far as I thought, such as Scudworth's suggestion that when the Competition Committee made its proposal, it's very possible that the MLBPA voiced strong opposition then, and it likely never got far enough to see whether the owners as a group actually would go along with it, if the MLBPA had not voiced opposition.

I admit to overreacting what I saw as an accusation of making the whole thing up, when I clearly remembered the proposal, and while there were other things I still feel I have a right to object to, you asked for proof of the proposal in a fairly nonconfrontational way, and in that area I overreacted.