God NL baseball is awful

[davearm]

First, as Eight pointed out, pitcher's relative hitting hasn't declined any faster since 1973 than before.

Well while pitchers' hitting has declined, hitting throughout baseball has increased. Thus, the gap between pitchers and hitters has increased more dramatically.

Throughout this thread you've harped on the OPS gap between pitchers and other position players. That gap has been widened by the DH rule itself -- the self-fulfilling prophecy: if you tell pitchers they're lousy hitters, and take away all their opportunities to hit in HS, college, and the minors, well of course they're going to be bad years later when you give them a handful of ABs against the highest caliber of pitching in baseball.

Second, you'd expect NL pitchers to be far better than AL pitchers with the bat, as they practice and get game reps with the bat, while their AL counterparts mostly don't.

I wouldn't expect that. The difference should be small, given how little repetition NL pitchers get with the bat. I'd expect the differenct to be about what it actually is.

Third, you'd expect pitchers to hit better when they first come into the league, and decline throughout their careers. In college and high school more pitchers play other positions and bat regularly, so they'd have more recent batting reps early in their MLB careers. But that's almost certainly not the case. I need to do more research, but of the top 50 seasons in pitcher's OPS since 1990 (min 50 PAs), only 10 came from pitchers younger than 25. 15 came from pitchers aged 30+.

I wouldn't expect that, either. Pitchers don't hit in the minors, and many don't hit in college, either. Their hitting skills have eroded by the time they hit the bigleagues.

If anything, a guy might get a little of their skill back after a few years in the majors, but the effect would be small given the paucity of ABs and BP they get.

[J Raab]

I would like to see them play a WS in which the AL team gets to play by their rule, while the NL team has to play by its rule.

I'd like to see the visiting team in the WS (and Interleague play) get to decide what rule both teams would be playing. If, say, the Giants go into Yankee stadium, they'd be better off using Bonds to DH. But most NL teams wouldn't be able to match the Yankees ( or any teams) production from the DH spot, so I imagine they'd be much more likely to use no DH - and force the the AL team to as well.

Now, I think it would an abomination to see a pitcher hitting in Yankee stadium (or OPACY for that matter) but they were doing it for 60 years, so why not for a game or two nowadays? Also, I have heard many a commentator say it would be a good idea to bring the DH to NL parks during Interleague play and pitchers bat in AL parks, to bring a different experience to fans, and I dont think thats too bad of an idea. This would do just that, expect voluntarily.

[tennOsfan]

I would like to see them play a WS in which the AL team gets to play by their rule, while the NL team has to play by its rule.

As long as that provision didn't apply for the Yankees, sure:002_sbiggrin:

[MTOsFan]

I made a note in another thread that I was lucky enough to sit next to Jeremy's wife and brother at the game in San Diego last week. They were rooting soooooooo hard for him to get a hit. He finally got the bat on the ball in his 2nd or 3rd ab and we all cheered.

[Frobby]

Just putting my 2 cents in, without having read the whole thread. It is bad enough watching the pitcher bat once every 9 batters when his turn comes up. But what I really hate is when a team has a 2-out rally, the 8th place hitter comes up, and they walk him and now they face the opposing pitcher, end of rally. That stinks.

[Migrant Redbird]

Just putting my 2 cents in, without having read the whole thread. It is bad enough watching the pitcher bat once every 9 batters when his turn comes up. But what I really hate is when a team has a 2-out rally, the 8th place hitter comes up, and they walk him and now they face the opposing pitcher, end of rally. That stinks.

It stinks whether it's the pitcher or the cleanup hitter that ends the rally if it's my team that loses the game; I'd think that it would be the same with any baseball fan who has a team to root for.

It stinks even worse when it's the other team's pitcher who gets a key hit that results in your own team's defeat. I recognize that it doesn't happen all that often statistically, but it seems to happen far too often for the Cardinals when I'm listening to them. Friday night, it was 44-year-old Jamie Moyer with his career .375 OPS who singled with 1 out in the 3rd, which was followed with 5 straight hits by the Phillies to result in a loss of the opener of the series. Saturday it was Adam Eaton with a single and a sac bunt in his 2 plate appearances who contributed to the Phillies scoring in a game the Cards won. At least the Cardinals were able to shut down the Phillies pitching on Sunday, but they still lost the rubber game of the series.

People who want to perpetuate the designated hitter rule get all agitated over how terrible it is to see pitchers hit, but it really doesn't work out that way if you don't watch the game with ingrained prejudices. A great hitter fails more often than not, about 60 percent of the time. For a mediocre hitting position player, that rises to about 70 percent of the time. For a pitcher, it's between 80 percent and 90 percent of the time, which equates roughly to a weak hitting position player who's in a slump. If you can tolerate the Corey Patterson of June 2007, the Jay Payton of April 2006, or the Corey Patterson of June-July 2005 without giving up on baseball as a pastime, you shouldn't have any difficulties surviving a baseball game without the obscenity that is the designated hitter.

[howie14]

For a pitcher, it's between 80 percent and 90 percent of the time, which equates roughly to a weak hitting position player who's in a slump. If you can tolerate the Corey Patterson of June 2007, the Jay Payton of April 2006, or the Corey Patterson of June-July 2005 without giving up on baseball as a pastime, you shouldn't have any difficulties surviving a baseball game without the obscenity that is the designated hitter.

Of course, you aren't noting that NL fans have to tolerate the actual slumping player a team usually has in addition to this "equivalent" at the bottom of the order. Also, most teams don't dictate the entire game strategy based on the actual slumper. Both teams assume he'll come out of it. Not true with this equivalent.

BTW, I'm a fan who really doesn't mind the two leagues playing by different rules. I am anti-interleague play because I think it cheapens the "fall classic", but that's another topic. I also think that if the minors went back to pitchers hitting, they would hit slightly better when they came to the NL, but that's pure supposition on my part.

What does tend to get my goat, though, is the belief on the part of some NL fans that the double switch and pitching around the other team's Mark Belanger somehow makes the NL game akin to brain surgery while AL baseball is roughly as difficult as "whack-a-mole".

[Migrant Redbird]

What does tend to get my goat, though, is the belief on the part of some NL fans that the double switch and pitching around the other team's Mark Belanger somehow makes the NL game akin to brain surgery while AL baseball is roughly as difficult as "whack-a-mole".

I don't leverage my arguments off the strategy angle because my personal belief is that there's no way to demonstrate that managerial strategy makes much difference to the course of the game anyhow. All too often, managers make what most fans would agree is the correct move, and it fails! Perhaps not as often, the manager "goes against the book" and his strategy succeeds.

Whitey Herzog used to say that managers don't win any games with their strategy -- the players have to execute on the field. Whitey also said that managers don't lose very many games with their failed strategies -- at worst, no more than 5-10 games over the course of a season.

After all, most managers have a fundamental understanding of how the game is played and what works. When they go against the book, it's more likely to be based on a hunch, or else it's based upon some "microstat" about the matchup between a certain hitter and pitcher, a sample size that's too small to have any predictive value about what will happen between the two their next 10 or 20 meetings.

Thus, the odds are that the moves which one manager will make during a game aren't that much different in type from what another manager might do. Manager A might pinch hit Millar in a certain situation while manager B might use Huff instead -- assuming that they're both available on the bench -- but over the long haul the aggregate of their decisions probably doesn't differ that significantly.

Where I believe that managers make a difference is in handling their players, identifying potential in players and then managing them in ways that will bring that potential out -- the old "putting players in a position to succeed" thing. A large part of that lies in getting the players to believe in their manager's wisdom and in their own capabilities. Thus, being a baseball manager is a job that requires a lot of "people skills".

[Kefner]

How about we find one really good guy that can play all 9 spots in one game. Go 9 on 1. This guy, err, bunny did it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0tbBzlCMHk