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Jack Rabbit

(45,984 posts)
2. Opposition to the DH, of course, is not about the pitchers who can hit
Thu May 10, 2012, 01:53 PM
May 2012

Since Lincecum usually can't, it isn't about the few times that a pitcher actually gets his bat in the way of the ball.

It is about what to do when the pitcher is due up in a critical situation. In the middle innings, he would probably be told to bunt or, with first base open and a runner at second, see if he can hit the ball to to the right side of the infield. In the later innings with his team behind, he's lifted for a pinch hitter.

The last argument I saw on a thread about the virtues and vices of the DH rule was basically a long, windy screed over several posts that boiled down to pitchers nowadays are too much of an "investment" to waste their time taking batting practice in order to become "decent" hitters, therefore baseball "needs" the DH. In other words, the author of that argument said, perhaps with some justification, that baseball needs the DH because before the DH a pitcher was a poor hitter, but now that there is a DH he can't hit at all. To put it down to its its most basic form, baseball needs the DH because it has the DH, which has simply made the problem of poor hitting pitchers worse.

If I had something wrong with me that kept getting worse, I'd see a doctor about it. He would recommend that I have surgery to remove the problem. That is exactly how the problem of the DH should be handled.

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