WHAT IF…the designated hitter had never been adopted?
Posted by Andy on September 18, 2010
Thanks to Double Diamond for the great idea for this What If post. In the What If series, readers are invited to postulate how history might have been changed.
What if the designated hitter had never been adopted?
Here are a couple of ideas. Please add your own below.
1. After being injured, Edgar Martinez is relegated to pinch-hitting status in 1995 since DHing is not an option. The Mariners fail to make their first franchise post-season appearance that year, and Washington state residents lose interest in the team. The Mariners move to Oklahoma City, and local fan interest in the NBA's Seattle SuperSonics increases in the absence of a baseball team. Today, the Sonics are still in Seattle while the Mariners are now know as the Oklahoma City Thunder.
2. In 2004, Red Sox first baseman David Ortiz still hits 3 HR against the Yankees in the ALCS, but also commits a costly error early in Game 7, leading to a Yankee victory. The Yankees go on to beat the Cardinals in the 2004 World Series. With the victory, Joe Torre's career with the Yankees is solidified. He continues to manage the team through 2010, when it is announced that Don Mattingly will take over as manager of the Yankees in 2011.
September 20th, 2010 at 10:33 am
MikeD-
Good points. It's entirely possible, likely even maybe, that Clemens and Pedro would have seen no change. Then again, their style was honed and perfected in the AL. They may never have developed the personalities they did if they were pitching with different rules. As you pointed out, there is reason to believe they might have anyway, but it's fun to postulate other possibilities. Had Clemens 3 years in the NL come before his dominance in the AL, I think it'd be a better argument. But by the time he went to Houston, he was who he was and nothing was going to change that. Had he spent his formative years getting thrown at, he might have had a very different mentality.
I think Pedro's case is probably a better argument, since he did spend his formative years in the NL, thought only saw success towards the very end (which makes perfect sense, based on what we know of how a pitcher develops).
So, yea, my point wasn't particular data driven. It was just a fun thought.
September 20th, 2010 at 10:34 am
Very little is different. Edgar Martinez becomes a first baseman, and not a good one. Hal McRae is a better first baseman than Martinez and Frank Thomas, who might be most adversely affected. In an ideal universe, there is no DH and the powers that be figure out that fans want the guys who are already in the lineup to be hitting more, probably by shrinking the strike zone or lowering the minimum fence distance. Fanciful ideas that Roger Clemens would be adversely affected by this rule change never happen.
I may be a wet blanket, but you know I'm right.
September 20th, 2010 at 11:02 am
I think a lot of this What If scenario depends on if the DH is still in all of the minor leagues and colleges (not sure when it was adopted for those leagues). Currently, I think the MLB NL is the only U.S. baseball league without the DH. So my point is, is the question "What if the concept if the DH never existed".
If that were the case, I believe there would be a whole different mind set from High-school thru the majors. All players would realize they needed to become at least serviceable at a defensive positon, otherwise they would not even approach major league baseball. So for a lot of the guys mentioned above in this post, they would have either become better fielders (in the minors, probably) or would have washed out prior to being known commodities. Now to the question of old/injury plagued guys, I think the original premise of the post (no DH in MLB) still aplies and has been outlined in previous posts (either earlier retirements or more pinch hitting only players - similar to the end of Rusty Staub's career with the Mets in the NL.
September 20th, 2010 at 12:29 pm
An extreme although not impossible scenario: in the mid to late 1970s in the AL, scoring continues to decline and fans continue not to come to the ballpark despite giveaways, mascots, and burning of disco albums. Given rough economic conditions of the late 1970s, the AL decides not to expand to Toronto and Seattle in 1977. George Steinbrenner, frustrated that attendance and poor residual income from other marketing is too low, sells the team in 1980 at a substantial profit and states: "I'm getting out while I still can." With still-struggling attendance figures and slumping performance, the Cleveland Indians and Oakland A's fold in 1982 amid another rough recession. With these big/traditional markets still available for the taking in the properous early to mid 90s, MLB returns to Oakland, Cleveland, Seattle, and goes to large market Denver.
If baseball survives its rough period in the 70s and early 80s, AL attendance is 10-20% lower than it is now. People come to the ballpark to see stars, and the DH allows the well known stars to hang on a couple years longer. No one's reason for coming to the game to watch the pitcher and his .050 average wave weakly at 3 balls over his head (I am an Orioles' fan, its bad enough watching Cesar Izturis do it instead!).
I still think Eddie Murray gets into the HOF without the DH. He still is the all time leader in GP at 1B. But his rookie year may have been 1978 instead of '77 (only had 42 games...he DH'd while Lee May played 1st) and was a position player part time even into 1994-95.
September 20th, 2010 at 2:20 pm
In these days of pitch counts and guys leading a league with 3 complete games, I think the claim of more baseball "strategy" w/o DH is pretty weak.
As noted elsewhere, there have always been some hitters that couldn't field and vice versa as long as they could do one or the other well enough.
September 20th, 2010 at 2:54 pm
Without the DH, I wouldn't be calling the other league the Softball League. There's nothing American about requiring 10 guys to play a 9 man game.
September 20th, 2010 at 5:49 pm
#80- Baines was a decent defensive RF before DH'ing IIRC.
September 20th, 2010 at 11:45 pm
Another question is what if the NL adopted the DH far earlier. There were rumblings in the 20's for it but I believe it was the AL that balked at the idea, for that matter Connie Mack wanted it at the turn of the century.
There have been plenty of careers that never got off the ground because teams couldn't find a place for them.
I have no issues at all with the DH, would like to see both leagues use it but have it be the home teams choice.
With no DH though, Ryan would have a Cy Young, Clemens would likely gain a additional 15-20 wins, Johnson and Pedro would have been even greater as well.
I doubt that teams would have not played players like Thomas, Thome, Edgar Martinez, and Molitor. Now the last two would have had trouble staying on the field which is why they became DH's. Guys like Thome and Thomas were moved their because of their gloves, but teams would have sucked it up and played them at 1B, much like the Nationals do with Dunn now.
I think the DH is a good thing, it allows fans to see players that can hit, and allows veterans a few more years as well. Yes there are a few pitchers that can swing the bat, but by and large their easy outs.
September 21st, 2010 at 1:26 am
Biff @106, sure, but then we have the ALers and commentators who now refer to the NL as AAAA baseball.
The DH issue to me is simply an NL hangup right now, nothing more, and fans of NL teams follow along because that's what they've know since they were kids. Similar, there are AL fans who are graying middle-aged men approaching 50, who have children of their own, and who only know the DH. That's why it's never going away. It's been around that long now and virtually all professional leagues worldwide use the DH, and it's for a good reason.
When the game came about in the 1800s, pitchers were the best athletes, starting 50-70 games, and completing 50-70 games. During the course of the season, pitchers would bat as reguarly as the position players and could very good hitters, but as the game evolved, pitchers hitting abilities decreased, and then became absolutly horrible. If the game in the 1870s was played under the conditions from 1900 forward, and certainly 1920 forward, the DH would have been included from day one in all leagues, or they just would have had the eight position players bat, never letting the pitcher come up to hit. It would have altered our hitting records, but we wouldn't think twice about it since that's the way it's always been. They'd recognize the pitcher as being very different from the other position players.
I think the NL is still stuck in 1876, yet if their fans like it, then let it be.
September 21st, 2010 at 1:48 am
Flipping through a few of the other comments (sorry, I was late to this thread), I don't think it would have impacted Frank Thomas' or Jim Thome's HOF chances. Thomas switched over to mostly DH at age 30, but that's because he wasn't a great fielder. They still would have played him in the field if that was their only option. He probably wouldn't have hit 500 HRs, but he'd still make the HOF. Thomas won't be going in because he hit 500. He's going in because of his dominance as a hitter the first half of his career. Same with Thome. He switched over to DH when he left Philly, yet if playing first was the only option in a DH-less world, Thome would have continued to man first. He'd still be a 500-HR player. Basically, an AL without a DH means more defensive-limited players would putting on the leather, making for a slightly inferior game.
Edgar Martinez is an interesting case. My first reaction is by having to play a position his shot at the HOF would be lessened since he would have no doubt suffered a few more injuries, and had to take a few days more for rest, yet if he could have maintained most of his health, there's the possibility his chances for the HOF would actually increase because he won't be penalized for being just a DH for most of his career.
Interesting stuff.
September 21st, 2010 at 8:33 am
Good hitting pitchers like Walt Terrell and Rick Aguilera get ABs in the AL as pitchers and/or pinch-hitters and finish their careers with 10-25 homers instead of the 3 they each hit for the Mets.
September 21st, 2010 at 12:04 pm
BSK:
#79: Clemens did not handle Piazza's thrown bat incident well
How you figure? He pitched 8 shutout innings that game.
#90: There have always been one-dimensional players. No matter what era, there were players who were detriments to their team on one side of the ledger or the other. There were defensive players who had no business swinging a bat and offensive players who couldn't play the field. The DH didn't usher in so-called one-dimensional players; it simply allowed certain players to avoid playing defense. Let's not go overboard romancing the past.
And teams had to make choices about how to use such players. Do you play someone like Dal Maxvill or Mark Belanger full-time, even though they are poor hitters? Do you use them as defensive replacements? Do you pinch hit for them in the 6th inning? Smead Jolley probably could have thrived as a DH, but he could barely stay on his feet in the outfield, so he only lasted a few seasons in the majors. Teams couldn't pretend they were full-time players while having the option to completely shield them from one essential part of the game. Managers had to choose how or whether such players' skills could be leveraged for the good of the team. Now the rules enable them to use such a player without regard for his liabilties.
September 21st, 2010 at 5:29 pm
#79: Clemens did not handle Piazza's thrown bat incident well
How you figure? He pitched 8 shutout innings that game.
Clemens threw the bat in the first place (and we now know that the jerk probably was strung out on steroids)...he's damn lucky he wasn't tossed out of the game for throwing equipment and stuck around to pitch 8 innings...
September 21st, 2010 at 8:39 pm
Ron Blomberg is only ever famous among Jewish Yankees fans.
September 24th, 2010 at 12:50 pm
@89 "One-dimensional players like Jim Thome are an embarrasment to the history and spirit of this great game"
Well, I've never heard Ted Williams called an embarrassment to the game, but if you say so
September 27th, 2010 at 6:29 pm
There have always been terrible players in baseball- Johnnie LeMaster, Charlie Comiskey, Doug Flynn, Tommy Dowd (AWFUL fielder), Bill Bergen, Hal Janvrin, etc.