The universal designated hitter is here. A style of baseball that has been a near constant in this nation since 1876 is about to ease into quasi-extinction, save for a few Shohei Ohtani starts on the mound and, perhaps, a smattering of pinch-hit appearances (Madison Bumgarner, Zack Greinke) or pinch-running maneuvers.
It’s a done deal. That became true when the new CBA was mercifully ratified, and it became real when free-agent DH Nelson Cruz signed with the Washington Nationals, the first National League team he’ll toil for since he broke in with the Milwaukee Brewers in 2005.
So, with the DH coming to the NL, pitcher hitting is dead. Love it or lump it, the game is going to be different. But how much different? There have been many assumptions made about how this will play out — some of it is spot on, but a lot of it is really much more complicated. The reality might surprise you.
Let’s put some of those assumptions to the test.
Assumption: Designated hitters will out-hit pitchers
Is it true? Well, duh.
Proponents of the universal DH — which we’ll now start referring to as just “the DH” because now that it’s been adopted, the “universal” part becomes redundant — like to point to the increased offense it will bring.
More on that in a bit, but what we can say with certainty is that as a group, designated hitters will out-produce whatever numbers pitchers would have put up had they continued to hit. This is blindingly obvious, but we have to begin there because that is kind of what this is all about.
Pitchers, typically, can’t hit at a big league level and DHs, for the most part, can. Pitcher hitting has been getting inexorably worse. For many, this is the bottom-line reason pitcher hitting had to die.
Assumption: The scale of the difference in hitting ability will lead to many more runs
Is it true? Depends on what you mean by “many.”
We’ve seen a persistent drop in the collective performance of DHs as the spot has increasingly become a shared position rather than one for everyday players. Nevertheless, as the chart above shows, the gap between DHs and pitchers at the plate has only grown over the years. In terms of OPS, DHs were less than twice as good as pitchers in the 1970s; so far in the 2020s (or mostly last season, since few pitchers batted in 2020) that factor has increased to more than 2.5.
However, consider another chart:
The raw number of pitcher plate appearances per game has dropped continuously over the years as the emphasis on getting starters deep into the games has waned. Thus we’re now talking about fewer than two pitcher plate appearances per game (per team) that will be replaced by DHs.
Last season, big league pitchers had 4,829 plate appearances, per TruMedia. Let’s pretend Ohtani doesn’t exist. Now, using weighted runs created from FanGraphs, we can estimate that DHs produced an average of 0.155 more runs per plate appearance than pitchers last season. If you replace all the pitcher PAs with DHs, that’s an extra 750 runs on the MLB ledger, or about 25 runs per team over the course of a season, basically an extra run per team every six or seven games.
Assumption: With the expansion of the DH rule, scoring will go up
Is it true? Maybe, maybe not.
During the AL-only DH era, the AL has almost always outscored the NL. The difference has varied, from 0.71 runs per game (1996) to 0.03 (1976). (This does not include two seasons in which the NL outscored the AL, which we’ll get to.) The average difference has been 0.28 runs per game.
The thing is, during this time frame the AL has seen larger year-over-year fluctuations in scoring than 0.28 runs 16 times, and it’s happened 10 times in the NL. In other words, any bump in offense we see overall because of the NL using the DH could be subsumed by other factors. All we can really say for sure is that we will get more runs over the course of a season with the DH than we would get without it. The effect in any one game is not really noticeable from this standpoint, though clearly NL fans will notice when they arrive at the ballpark and see all those DHs listed in the lineups on the scoreboard.
Assumption: The expanded DH will help solve baseball’s scoring problem
Is it true? No, because the assumption is based on a false premise.
I’m not trying to create a straw man argument here, and this tidbit seems necessary probably more because of semantics than anything else. But you often hear defenses of the DH that include something about boosting scoring in baseball. And if that is a desired effect, then it only follows that we would want such an outcome because baseball has a scoring problem.
The thing is, baseball does not have a scoring problem. The current three-year average for scoring (4.67 runs per game) ranks 16th of 51 measured periods during the divisional era, and higher than any before 1994.
This is something to bear in mind when thinking about the DH. When people talk about the lack of offense in baseball, they aren’t talking about scoring, but how the scoring happens. They are talking about too many strikeouts, walks and homers and not enough of … everything else. Unless teams start employing Ichiro Suzuki facsimiles as their DHs, the expansion of the rule isn’t going to solve the problem.
Assumption: The offensive environments between leagues will now be on even footing
Is it true? Yep.
The 2022 season will mark the 50th year of the designated hitter as a thing in the big leagues. During the first 49 campaigns, the AL averaged more runs per game 47 times. The exceptions were 1974, the second year after the AL adopted the DH at the end of an era of extraordinarily bad hitting in the junior circuit, and 2020, when the NL used the DH in the pandemic-shortened season.
There are three possible explanations for the one-sidedness: distribution of talent, the DH and the ballparks.
The concentration of talent between the leagues will always be in flux. Sometimes one league is just stronger than the other, though on a long enough timeline, this should even out. The DH, well, as a factor in league-versus-league scoring, that’s going away. That leaves the ballparks.
According to the park factors at FanGraphs, there is not much difference in aggregate numbers between the leagues at all, even with the NL claiming the extreme scoring climate of Coors Field in Denver.
There are some rounding errors in there, as the overall average by definition should be 100, but you get the idea. With the DH in play in both leagues, the circuits are indeed on equal footing when it comes to run environments.
Assumption: Strikeouts will go down
Is it true? Maybe, maybe not.
First, we again stipulate something obvious: Pitchers strike out more than DHs and it’s not even close. Pitchers strike out a lot. According to baseball-reference.com, pitchers whiffed in 44% of their plate appearances last season. If you remove sacrifice hits from the equation, that jumps to 48%. The next-highest position group was — ironically — designated hitters at 26%.
So we’ll get fewer strikeouts. The overall MLB strikeout rate last season was 23.2%. If you remove pitchers — which, again, won’t entirely be the case as long as Ohtani is around, along with pinch-hitting candidates like Bumgarner, Greinke, Michael Lorenzen, etc. — that number was 22.6%.
A small difference perhaps, but at least it is a rare move in the right direction. We’ll have more balls in play and the composite MLB batting average will rise. Last season that figure was .244 with pitchers and .247 with pitchers removed.
However, as with run scoring, the gains here are small enough that if other factors continue to push the strikeout rate upward there may be no progress at all. But there will be more progress without pitchers hitting than there would be if they did.
Assumption: Small-ball tactics will die
Is it true? Pretty much.
Will we notice any differences at all as we watch the game day after day? In some respects, we will at first and then just get used to it over time. Fans in NL-only cities haven’t seen much of the DH in person over the years, and it will be an adjustment. But the DH has been part of big league baseball for a half-century, so it’s not going to take long before they just get used to it.
However, some strategies likely will become so infrequently used we largely forget about them. Double-switches. Sacrifice bunts. Intentional walks, particularly to hitters at the bottom of the order. These are things that have always popped up while watching the NL-style game and when the situations arose that might call for such maneuvers, they gave us something to debate.
Will we miss the debates? With the pitcher hitting, we (fans, players, managers, broadcasters) always had to keep one eye on the batting order to know what spot was going to come up. And that informed how we interpreted everything that happened up to and after the pitcher’s at-bat.
Now, that factor is going to be gone. Much of this has been happening anyway. Still, the presence of pitchers in lineups had been keeping some of these small-ball tactics on life support. Now, the plug has been yanked out of the wall.
The decline of the one-run strategy has been steady and inevitable. The percentages against it won’t change as long as home run rates remain where they are. Any respectable run expectation table will tell you that most of the offensive incentives now are heavily tilted toward long-ball strategies. That’s why you don’t see much, if any, team-to-team diversity in offensive styles these days. And when it comes to bunts, the fewer we see, the fewer we can expect to see, because the skill will become a lost art.
While IBBs are so boring MLB decided we didn’t have to watch them anymore, their decline is another tool in the manager’s kit that is rusting into obsolescence. They are often more frustrating than fun. Still, when teams are matching wits over trying to plate or prevent a single run, that much is fun. There will be less of that.
There probably aren’t a lot of fans who go to games hoping to see sacrifice bunts or intentional walks, so few will weep over their virtual disappearance. However, variety is attractive, and beyond some player usage tendencies there just aren’t many stylistic differences between teams. Having the pitchers bat ensured at least a modicum of league-to-league difference in style of play. That will change.
For the better or worse? It’s really a matter of taste.
Assumption: Games will be longer
Is it true? Maybe, but not because of the DH.
Let’s consider how all of this might impact the length of games, an issue that should fall under the umbrella of “hot button” but somehow has been rarely mentioned during the CBA negotiations. And if expanding the DH rule were to contribute to baseball’s length-of-game problem — and you agree it is a problem — that would be a point against it.
Over the past decade, there has been virtually no difference in the average length of game between leagues. The AL’s run levels have been a little higher, and the NL has had most of the pitcher at-bats, which tend to play out more quickly than other at-bats. Researchers have found that NL teams have tended to have fewer time-eating, mid-inning pitching changes. Nevertheless, in the end it’s all been a wash.
Thus, we shouldn’t expect the DH to be the culprit for further increases in game length, so that’s good. But it’s not likely to help, either.
Assumption: There will be fewer pinch hitters
Is it true? Most definitely.
Over the last five full seasons, NL teams have averaged 1.14 more pinch hitters per game than AL teams. Last season that figure was 1.24 pinch hitters per game, a record gap for the DH era, so we’re going to see significantly fewer pinch hitters if the DH rule is expanded.
In fact, we’ll see fewer players per game, period. NL teams have used more pitchers per game (a difference of 0.28 over the last five full seasons) and more players overall (an additional 0.44 per game in that span, including 0.65 in 2021, the second-biggest bulge of the DH era, behind 2011).
This might be seen as one unfortunate consequences of an expanded DH rule. While no one really wants to see more pitchers trotting out of the bullpen than the record numbers of them we already see, it is both interesting and enjoyable when managers are forced to deploy their benches.
Roster depth will be more about navigating a season than a game, which was already the case but now it will be even truer. Some teams will still platoon at some positions. The Rays do a lot of this and on the Dodgers, it’s almost an upset when a player plays a full game at one position. Still, even L.A. may use more of a set lineup now that Dave Roberts won’t have to navigate around pitcher at-bats.
While season-long roster management is crucial, when you are at a game you don’t really sit there with a scorecard and try to project how many days off players might need by July. You cross off players as they enter the game and keep track of who’s left on the bench, and the possible matchups they might represent later at a key juncture of the game. There will be less of that now, and it’s a loss.
Assumption: NL pitchers will go deeper into games
Is it true? If it is, it won’t be because of the DH.
Another topic that was at the forefront of the debate when the DH first entered the majors in the 1970s was how it might affect the manager’s decision of when to remove a pitcher. The thought was that the total of complete games would explode. That didn’t quite happen, though there were more complete games in the AL for a time. Now, nothing is more irrelevant than aggregate complete-game totals. No one gets them.
More relevant is whether there remains a difference in the average outing length by starting pitchers between the leagues. If there is, this would be a point in favor of the DH. Baseball needs more from starting pitchers, not less.
Alas: In recent seasons, NL starters have actually thrown fractionally more innings per start than their AL counterparts. In 2019, NL starters averaged 0.37 more innings per outing than AL pitchers, the largest advantage for either circuit during the DH era.
This doesn’t mean NL pitchers will start throwing fewer innings now. It just means the DH factor in determining average outing length for starters is a minor one compared with a thousand other things. At least pitchers won’t get injured while hitting and running the bases anymore, though that was a relatively uncommon event anyway.
Assumption: There will be more every-day DHs like David Ortiz and Edgar Martinez
Is it true? No way.
Think of a player like C.J. Cron. Over the last five years, Cron has posted a 116 OPS+ while averaging 32 homers and 96 RBIs per 162 games. He has also played for a different club in each of those five seasons, though he now seems to have found a home in Colorado. Cron can don a passable glove at first base so he’s not a perfect example, but he is typical of the kind of bat-first slugger teams have increasingly seen as fungible.
Maybe this will self-correct with the addition of 15 new season-long DH slots, but color me a skeptic, if not quite a denier. For one thing, there have never been enough full-time DHs who needed daily at-bats to fill even half of the American League, much less the entire majors. There has never been more than six AL players in a given season to receive at least 500 plate appearances as a DH, and that’s only happened four times (1982, 1991, 2007 and 2015). Since 2000, the average number of hitters to get even 400 PAs as a DH is five.
There just aren’t that many full-time DHs around, players who are true elite-level hitters that just can’t play a position, and there never have been. While 400 plate appearances is a good amount of playing time, chances are you’ve got to be able to do something other than hit to stick on a roster. There won’t be an influx of Ortizes and Martinezes because there just aren’t that many no-field hitters around good enough with the stick to justify a full-season roster spot.
Assumption: There will be more opportunities for 30-something players
Is it true? Could be. Hopefully.
While the pencil-him-into-the-cleanup-slot-every-day DH is a rare thing, the rule does a lot for older players, and also good-hitting catchers whose bats you might want to keep in the lineup but need to give the occasional day off from crouching for three-plus hours. You might not DH such players every day, but you can rotate them in here and there and, in theory, get more out of your older players overall over the course of a season.
This is good: Older players are familiar and have name recognition. And they’ve always taken advantage of the DH rule. Since the rule began, 79% of players who have had a season with at least 100 DH plate appearances have been at least 30 years old, and that number has held strong through the years.
It’s possible the Crons of the world will become more alluring with the additional spots, but it is just as likely we’ll see even more utility types that come and go from the bottom of active rosters who give other older players the latitude to get a half-day off a couple of times a week.
Get ready for even more usage of buzzwords like “versatility,” “flexibility” and “risk management,” then watch the ticket sales soar.
Assumption: Fans are on board with this rule change
Is it true? Yes, which makes me feel like I’m a minnow swimming upstream against an onslaught of hungry carp.
This will come across as the griping of someone who doesn’t like the DH. Without re-adjudicating the now-settled (and tiresome) debate, what I can say about it is that I am someone who grew up rooting for an AL team during the DH era (the Royals) and one of my favorite players was a DH (Hal McRae).
I’m not anti-DH per se, but over time have become more of a status quo proponent. I want the McRaes, Paul Molitors, Ortizes and Martinezes of the world to get their hacks, but you don’t need two leagues to accommodate them because they are rare.
Meanwhile, as I spent more time going to NL games over the years, I found that I just liked the NL game a little bit better. The big thing really was the more expansive use of the rosters. There was more to follow and think about as the games unfolded.
One data point I will be watching will be identical to baseball’s owners: attendance in NL cities. Realistically, I don’t expect it to be a problem. It is objectively true that NL teams have outdrawn AL teams in the aggregate each season since 1995, but that’s probably more of an Oakland/Tampa Bay thing than a DH thing. This is still something to watch.
Pitcher hitting is dead. Proponents of the DH have won. We will adjust and the game will change. But the changes will be incremental. That is, the evolution won’t jump out at us until we see a DH taking a batting order spot Madison Bumgarner might have filled, or we start talking about the last time we saw a sacrifice bunt.
Ultimately, I fear the expanded DH rule will be less about what it adds to the game and more about what it has taken away. Like it or lump it, we’re about to find out if that fear is justified.