More and more people lately seem to be weighing in on the designated hitter. It started a little over a month ago, with Adam Wainwright and Max Scherzer sustaining injuries while batting. I expected it to be a story for a while then go away, but I’ve continued to see rumblings about it since then, so I figured I should finally weigh in on the matter.
I’ve never really had much of a preference on the matter. I
like that the leagues have different rules and all that. But the more I think
about it the last month, the more that I think if I had to pick one rule to
govern both the AL and NL, I’d unquestionably come down in favor of the DH.
I realize that most of the reasoning is aesthetics. Having 1/9th of a lineup be an automatic rally-killer is irritating. I realize that fans of the pitcher batting will argue that it isn’t, that I should look at things like Clayton Kershaw’s 3-hit game last night. Yes, it’s great that Kershaw made headlines for going 3-4 with a double. But that in and of itself kind of just shows how sad the situation is; Kershaw got headlines for his 3 hit games, despite the fact that he was arguably the worst of the eight hitters who managed the feat on June 1st alone (and that was on a travel day-the day before saw 20 such games). He wasn’t even the best 3-hit game on his own team on Monday.
