The World Series begins on Oct. 22, and with it will come the renewal of baseball’s great debate: Should the National League adopt the designated hitter (DH) rule?
Baseball teams send nine players onto the field to play defense. In the National League, all nine defensive players, including the pitcher, have to bat. In the American League, the DH rule allows teams to designate a hitter who doesn’t play defense to take the pitcher’s spot in the lineup.
As with any policy debate, the arguments over the DH rule are familiar, the partisans entrenched.
Proponents of the DH rule point to the folly of sending pitchers to home plate to flail at 95-mph fastballs. They also note that it provides a soft landing spot for great hitters, such as Boston’s J.D. Martinez, who are defensive liabilities. The rule’s opponents, often self-styled traditionalists, counter that it dumbs down the game, allowing American League managers to avoid tough decisions about when to pull their pitchers in favor of a pinch hitter. “What about the strategy?” howled MLB Network anchor Brian Kenny when his colleague Ken Rosenthal suggested that the National League might adopt the DH rule in the next round of collective bargaining.
Lost in this debate is the fact that roster configurations have totally reshaped the game since 1973, when the American League introduced the DH rule.
Modern-day teams have become slaves to pitch counts, which means they have to carry significantly larger pitching staffs than they did in the 1970s. Forty years ago, a manager might have had as many as nine utility players on his bench to pinch hit, pinch run, or serve as a late-inning defensive replacement. These days, a manager might have only four utility players, and one of those is the backup catcher, who will only be used as a last resort. So much for all of the managerial strategy.
Consider that in 1973, 64 Major League pitchers threw 200 or more innings, including seven who threw more than 300 innings. That same year, 46 pitchers threw 10 or more complete games, and roughly three dozen pitchers who worked primarily or exclusively as relievers threw more than 100 innings. This was during the era when teams typically deployed four-man rotations.
Now pitchers throw less often, as five-man rotations have become the norm. In 2019, only 14 pitchers exceeded 200 innings, and Houston’s Justin Verlander led the majors with 223 innings pitched. For perspective, that total would have placed Verlander 52nd in innings pitched in 1973. Two pitchers this year tied for the lead in complete games with only three apiece. In 1973, Gaylord Perry threw 29.
The lighter loads of modern pitchers reflect two theories: one physical, one strategic. The physical theory is that less work will lead to fewer injuries. The strategic theory is that since opponents’ batting averages tend to spike during a pitcher’s third time through a lineup, it’s better to pull him before he becomes ineffective. The strategic argument seems to have some merit; the physical argument, not so much.
A medical study of baseball injuries found that the total number of players on the disabled list rose from 387 in 1998 to 536 in 2015, with days lost to injury rising 43%. Pitchers have been hit especially hard. The Hardball Times reported that in 2017, nearly 87% of games included at least one pitcher who had experienced Tommy John surgery, the most common form of elbow surgery.
Bottom line: Pitchers today are throwing harder, logging significantly fewer innings, and getting injured more frequently than in the past. That might seem counterintuitive, particularly in an era when multimillionaire players train year-round, but it’s reality.
The upshot is that teams now have to carry 12 or 13 pitchers, where once they got by comfortably with eight or nine. This reduces a manager’s options off the bench, which is not inherently a bad thing. As sabermetricians (those who study baseball analytics) have long argued, the small-ball tactics that managers used to favor don’t make sense in the modern game. Instead of sending in a pinch runner to try to steal a base, it’s smarter to sit back and hope for a home run.
I’m sympathetic to the nostalgia that traditionalists feel. I grew up revering the workhorse starting pitchers, such as Jim Palmer and Nolan Ryan, who threatened 300 innings every year. I’m partial to the old-school closers, such as Rollie Fingers and Tug McGraw, who often logged two- or three-inning saves, over the coddled closers of today, who inflate their stats with one-inning saves.
But baseball has changed, if not always for the better. The National League might be clinging to tradition, but it’s a lost cause. Like it or not, the American League has won the DH debate.
