Reply #38: I guess it depends on what 'strategy' is [View All]

[nickgutierrez]

Is it the rote application of "the book"? Doing something that we all know should happen is not strategy (pinch hitting for a pitcher that can't hit, for instance, is not strategy but something you just have to do). Is the way most managers run their bullpens now strategy?

"I'm not an advocate of the Designated Hitter Rule; I'm only an advocate of seeing the truth and telling the truth. What the truth comes down to here is a question of in what does strategy reside? Does strategy exist in the act of bunting? If so the Designated Hitter Rule has reduced strategy. But if strategy exists in the decision about when a bunt should be used, then the DH rule has increased the differences of opinion which exist about that question, and thus increased strategy... that there is more of a difference of opinion, not less, in the American League." - Bill James in The Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract (1986)

More recent analysis shows that a sacrifice bunt is almost always a bad play unless you need one run and only one run to win a game, but that's beside the point.

In the AL, there is that extra good hitter in every lineup (the average DH hit .263/344/.445 this season) that makes pitching against an AL lineup much harder: there's not an automatic out in most lineups as there is against an NL lineup. Doesn't that extra hitter make filling out the lineup card harder? Is there no strategy in that? And doesn't that extra hitter make managing a bullpen that much harder?

The DH doesn't reduce strategy enough for that to be an argument for its removal. There are other, better, reasons - this one just doesn't hold water.