conrad@ucsfcca.UUCP (Conrad Huang) (05/28/85)
< --------------------------- > I don't find anything particularly objectionable about the DH rule's effect in the day-to-day play of American League baseball games. As a National League partisan I find it a little disorientating to watch an AL game sort of instinctively expecting a bottom of the order [read pitcher] to come up and all of the side strategies that that involves. But I'm sure that if I watched AL games with regularity that uneasy feeling would go away. What I *don't* like about the DH rule is its insiduous side effects. Namely: (1) It distorts the career statistics of today's players compared to their predecessors. Could Reggie have broken the 500 HR barrier without the rule? How many HR would Mickey Mantle have collected if the DH rule were in effect then? Whenever Reggie passes another name on the all-time HR list I wonder if he could have done it without the DH rule. I would prefer not to have to wonder. (2) It is detrimental to the careers of American League pitchers. In the NL, a good pitcher will often get pulled from a close game in the late innings for offensive purposes even though he hasn't tired. Not so in the AL. That difference alone has caused the careers of AL pitchers in recent years to be considerably more lackluster than those of their NL counterparts. I can think of several NL pitchers who are about to turn in Hall of Fame careers (Carlton, Seaver, Niekro). They are matched by none in the AL (Stieb and Morris are still quite young). Strictly speaking, this is the fault of the manager and not the DH rule. But how can you fault the manager? His job is to win with this pitcher now, not five years down the road (unless he has job security, rare for a field manager). NL managers would kill their pitchers too, if they had the DH rule. The massacre that Billy Martin performed on the 1981 A's pitching staff, ruining five careers would have been mitigated had their been no DH rule. [At least, there would have been no *extra-inning* complete games.] I enjoy baseball by seeing a players season, then career develop as a whole. If player X goes 2 for 4 in a game, so what? If player X hits .302 with 27 homers and 115 RBI in a season I find that much more interesting. This motivation makes the above objections to the DH rule much more important to me than it may to you. They are still valid objections however. Go in peace- Eric Pettersen