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God NL baseball is awful


Sports Guy

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Nothing better than watching your pitcher look like a little leaguer facing Roger Clemens.

Guthrie hasn't come close. Just disgusting.

I dislike all the baseball purists who think the DH is a joke. The game's evolved quite a bit over the years. Batters used to be the ones who would call pitch location. It used to take 8 balls to walk a batter. Fielders didn't even use gloves! Of course, this is all back in the 19th century, and the DH is quite a bit more recent an addition than that, but it's still just another evolution of the game.

If MLB were to remove the DH, then everyone would need to learn to pick up a bat and start hitting. Pitchers should take batting practice even on their off days. Obviously due to the fact that they don't see live pitching every day they wont be as good, but there's no reason they have to be the jokes at the plate that they usually are.

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LOL!

Because your pitcher is clueless at the plate, NL baseball is awful.

A more appropriate title would've been, "Guthrie is awful at hitting". No need to disparage an entire league just because your guy sucks.

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LOL!

Because your pitcher is clueless at the plate, NL baseball is awful.

A more appropriate title would've been, "Guthrie is awful at hitting". No need to disparage an entire league just because your guy sucks.

Unfortunately it is not just him.

Break out the big sticks.

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LOL!

Because your pitcher is clueless at the plate, NL baseball is awful.

A more appropriate title would've been, "Guthrie is awful at hitting". No need to disparage an entire league just because your guy sucks.

Since 1990 NL pitchers hit a combined .144/.184/.179, good for a .363 OPS. That's about what a typical 36th-round draft pick out of high school might hit if he was called up the moment he was signed. That's probably what Sam Perlozzo's kid would hit if they let him bypass the minors.

I'm disparaging an entire position, not an entire league. Modern baseball has become too difficult to allow the vast, vast majority of pitchers to devote enough time to batting become adequate hitters. Also, pitching and hitting have such disparate skill sets that selecting out pitchers for their ability to pitch means that most of them simply aren't good hitters no matter how much practice they put in. Out of the entire population you probably have to be in the top .0001% in various skills to be a major league player, and while pitchers are good baseball players, most are probably only in the top 0.5% or 0.01% as hitters, and that's just not good enough. They're like a guy who can run the 100m dash in 11 seconds. That's damn fast, but it might not win you the MEAC track championship, much less put you in the Olympics.

By the way, here's the Cubs' top hitting pitchers since '90:

OPS                             OPS    1    Jim Bullinger              .581   2    Carlos Zambrano            .577   3    Kevin Foster               .513   4    Shawn Boskie               .512   5    Shawn Estes                .496   6    Mark Prior                 .496   7    Mike Harkey                .447   8    Kerry Wood                 .447   9    Glendon Rusch              .438   10   Steve Trachsel             .433  

Bullinger was about 90% the hitter Paul Bako has been over his career. Mark Prior isn't quite as good as Corey Patterson in the middle of one of his really fantastically ugly "swing at everything all the time" phases.

When your best examples aren't as good as ridiculously abysmal position players it's time to tweak the rules. They weren't handed down to Moses on stone tablets, you know.

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LOL!

Because your pitcher is clueless at the plate, NL baseball is awful.

A more appropriate title would've been, "Guthrie is awful at hitting". No need to disparage an entire league just because your guy sucks.

I wouldn't go as far as saying the NL is awful, but I'm a DH guy and beleive the extra hitting adds a lot to the game. Purists and NL fans like to point out the double switch strategy and having to pinch hit for you starter late in the game when you might want to normally keep him in as good strategy.

That may be all well and tue, but walking or pitching around the number eight guy alomst everytime with two outs in order to get to the pitcher is not fun to watch.

I'd much rather see guys like Ken Griffey Jr. be able to extend their careers or keep healthy by DHing then watch pitchers take thier feable hacks.

Every baseball league (high school, college, minors, foreign) has the DH but the NL. The only change that should be considered is bringing the DH to the NL, not vice versa.

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I think it's too much to call NL baseball awful because of the lack of the DH, but I agree watching the pitcher hit is awful. However, that's probably only seen about 7 times a game.

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The only joy I get out of watching a pitcher hit is when they get a very unlikely hit, like last year when Kris Benson hit an opposite field home run off of Pedro Martinez and his former ball club.

You can get almost the same thrill watching your 68-year-old grandfather take some hacks in the 90 mph cage at the local Swing and Swat.

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I think it's too much to call NL baseball awful because of the lack of the DH, but I agree watching the pitcher hit is awful. However, that's probably only seen about 7 times a game.

One tenth of the total ABs in a game (I'm estimating to account for pinch hitters) being given to sub-high school level hitters is already far too many.

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