biggentleben

So you're saying no one in Jersey has a clue?

Which is too bad because ESPN used to have some of the best hockey analysts and coverage you could find, even when they didn't have live games.

ESPN was incredibly slow (and in many ways still hasn't) to jump into the subscription based systems online, and it's killed them. They tie their WatchESPN app to cable subscription and they still don't have a stand-alone subscriber-based system. I'd love to be able to watch live sports now and then, but I'm not paying for cable just to get it. Now they're at least partnered with Sling TV, but still you cannot get into things like ESPN Classic or ESPN U or anything like that.

Laughable to you, but certainly not in the eyes of many fans across the country who felt the "star" players of color were in the National League. I think it's laughable to think you could statistically measure the perception of the nation, especially the African American community.

The American League instituted the designated hitter rule primarily because they were falling so far behind the National League in All Star Games and national fan interest due to the integration of African American ballplayers into the National League and the exciting brand of baseball they were playing. Stars like Aaron, Mays, and Robinson were all National League guys, and the American League was very hesitant as a whole to integrate. This began hurting the AL's finances, and they were desperate to find anything to turn that around. When the NL rejected the proposal, the AL went ahead with it anyway, creating the split in league rules to attempt to fix their years of bigotry and racism. To have two sets of rules is not positive for the sport, as we've found for 40 years now, whether it's added excitement or energy or whatever to the game for some subset of fans.

My uncle sells cheeses for Sartori, so there are always good cheese options at family gatherings. My wife, however, is lactose intolerant, so I have had to learn to stomach non-dairy varieties.

Seriously. You changed nothing, addressed nothing I stated. This is something that EVERYONE did for years and years, not just the elite athletes in the game. However, at this point, we're talking past one another, not to one another.

He's currently cleared. Which means teams like the Dodgers will have every opportunity at him before July, and teams like the Twins and Braves will have to pray he makes it to July to have any chance.

I think that's by far the biggest argument to have the change happen, and why I'm actually in favor of adding the DH in the NL. I'm not a fan of it by any means, but because the AL screwed up, the game has been played with two different sets of rules for 40 years now, and it's confusing to modern fans why this is so, especially those young fans who cannot fathom the racial divide between the two leagues that existed at the time (oh, to have such innocence!). I sure wish the American League would have had the ability to put aside their bigotry and integrated rather than changing rules of the game and led us to this point, but it's where we're at, and now, I do think you have to have one consistent rule, and with the MLBPA, that won't be getting rid of well-paid DHs.

That's your opinion. This entire discussion is opinion, but it's being railed as fact, and just because there is more populous opinion on an AL team's message board for the integration of DH throughout the league does not mean that the DH being a better option is fact as it has been suggested by some in this discussion.

Most of the best players 25 years ago did play a defensive position as well as pitch. Chipper Jones was his team's best pitcher (and considered a 2nd-3rd round talent as a pitcher) as well as their shortstop. Gary Carter has talked about making the tough decision as to whether to be a pitcher or hitter as he entered pro baseball. Going farther back, Willie Mays and Hank Aaron faced each other on the mound in Alabama before they were signed to Negro League contracts. It still happens today, but much less frequently. Andrelton Simmons was nearly equally regarded as a pitcher and a hitter. The Braves draft choice this season, Austin Riley, was higher on most teams' boards as a pitcher than a hitter, yet he's going to be a borderline top 100 prospect in the game as a hitter. These kids don't stop hitting because they're realizing at 11 years old that they have a major league future as a pitcher. They're not hitting because the DH has pushed its way down all the way to youth baseball, and by that point, pitchers no longer hit for themselves. With most colleges and high schools also employing the DH, a youth that is a pitcher will not have hit on the day he pitches for over a decade by the time he gets to the major leagues. He very well may play another position as typically the guys good enough to make it to the majors are the best of the best and are studs at other positions as well in high school and sometimes even in college. However, they haven't had to have the game preparation of picking up a bat in between innings of pitching. That is a big thing to get back used to as a pitcher. I had one summer where I didn't hit for myself, and it is a big change mentally. You also changed the target. You stated that the players struck out as an automatic out. I then countered that with the fact that one of the worst hitting pitching staffs in the big leagues struck out at the same rate as Miguel Sano. Then you come to OBP. I never said they were on base, just that their strikeout rate was probably in line with a lot of the slugging DH's they're replacing at around 25-35%.

The Braves in 2015 had one of the most incompetent group of hitting pitchers I can ever remember in my life of watching the team, yet they struck out at a percentage rate that was 0.2% different than Miguel Sano's strikeout rate in 2015. I do think there is some pretty heavy bias in viewing a pitcher hitting by those who have seen nothing but AL games their whole lives so that the other things they do within their at bats are glossed over, because I would nearly guarantee you that not a single Twins fan would have gotten that question correct. Can we change? Yes, but I don't think it's as much a bettering of the game as it is a consistency of the game. Right now there are two sets of rules because of the poor choices of the AL, and that is confusing to casual fans and to those fans who are learning about the game. The conversation with my die-hard, baseball-nut 6 year-old nephew when he asked about the origin of the DH and reasoning behind it left his mind spinning. He simply couldn't understand how the best player on the team (typically the pitcher at his age) wouldn't be allowed to hit. Yet, within 3-5 years (depending on if he jumps leagues for his age), he'll be in a league that implements the DH already for 11-12 year-olds. You want to know why pitchers can't hit? It's because they don't hit, for 7-10 years before they're drafted, then for the 2-5 years of the minor leagues, and then they get to the majors, and we suddenly expect them to figure out what this long wooden stick is supposed to do when put in contact with the white sphere they're used to throwing? C'mon now! I cheer for a National League team, but I love baseball, and all of baseball. I can understand both sides of this discussion, but as a former pitcher, I certainly could not have been comfortable letting someone else take swings for me to back my effort on the mound. It just wouldn't have worked for me. Clayton Kershaw and Madison Bumgarner have mentioned similar things when asked why they work so hard on their pitching. The Braves "big 3" in the 90s used to work for hours on skills with the bat to help push runs across to help their own efforts. My own personal preference when playing would absolutely be to have the pitcher hit.

See, that's where NL baseball is different. Pitchers do get plunked or thrown at fairly frequent. Jose Fernandez took one upstairs the next time he came up after the incident where he threw at Brian McCann with the Braves as a rookie. Julio Teheran took a pitch high and up from the Nationals last season (honestly forgetting which pitcher) when he threw a similar pitch to Bryce Harper late in the season after he "pimped" a home run off of Teheran. Those are two quick ones off the top of my head. It does happen quite a bit in the NL.

I think you'd be surprised if you went to places like general baseball message boards how split the conversation would be. National League team boards are generally very anti-DH and AL team boards are generally very pro-DH. Heck, John Sickels ended up banning multiple users a few years ago off of his site due to a debate about the DH that got so heated that multiple posters, some of whom had been posters on his site since the early 2000s.

So here are some numbers for you: The Twins had 6017 plate appearances in 2015. 2125 came with 0 out, or 35.32%. 1996 came with 1 out, or 33.17%. 1896 came with 2 out, or 31.51%. To look at other teams, 2015 had 183628 plate appearances. 63432 were with 0 outs, or 34.54%. 60876 were with 1 out, or 33.15%. and 59320 came with 2 outs, or 32.30%. I know it's a matter of a couple percent, but it's quite unlikely that statistically, any position in the order would come up with 2 outs 33% of the time.

Because it'd mean losing members of the players union, and not just members of the union, but typically well-paid members. You'll never get the MLBPA to agree to getting rid of the DH. There's only one way the DH rule can go at this point due to the power of the players' union.

Because that's assuming it's all linear. I think you'd be surprised how much better the pitches an 8 hitter sees. In general, more strikes at least.

No, I think more than anything, it's an admission that it's extremely confusing to the casual fan why there are different rules in different parks for interleague games. My wife was confused in our road trip last summer why certain games had the pitcher hitting and certain ones didn't. Implementing the DH in one league never should have happened, but once again, the AL was too bull-headed to actually make efforts in race relations rather than simply make a one-sided overhaul to the game in order to change their revenues.

As a former pitcher, I completely support this. Pretty easy to end this BS about who should be hit on the other side when your guy is hit when the pitcher has to face his own justice.

Really? You think any one position in the order comes to the plate with 2 outs 1/3 of the time? That's pretty incredible.

They had already announced the single team package. Today's settlement added to it the $10 option to allow out-of-market viewers to watch their team's home broadcast for each game, so not a ton of extra.news based on this settlement. Still something more than there was. We still need more to get rid of these ridiculous blackouts.

And guys are shortstops for a...wait, no, we still force them to hit...

I find it completely unsurprising that on a message board for an AL team that the majority would support the DH. I will tell you that the same discussion on a Braves forum recently was fervently in the other direction, and not just from the "old baseball purists", but from the teens and 20-somethings on the forum as well.

Or maybe there's just not that much difference between the Rey Ordonez and Andrelton Simmons level players of the world and a pitcher at the plate, so you recognize that what they do with a bat in their hand is not why they're on the field. Similarly, I don't know of any team who has ever signed a lead running back because of his blocking ability. It's something that's part of his game, most running backs suck at it, which is why the ones who don't are actually notable. However, no one's advocating changing the rules to allow for an additional lineman to be allowed to line up in the back field. There are rules against that, in fact, requiring a player in a certain number range to declare his position if he won't be within the tackle box or covered up. We watch all of our sports understanding that we are seeing the excellence in athletes as well as their shortcomings, not trying to cover up any shortcoming they may have.

But I also think it's super boring watching guys who have the agility of a furniture truck strike out 3 out of 4 at bats as well. If I wanted to watch rec league softball, I'd go to the softball park on Wednesday nights and do that. I'd like to see a game featuring the best athletes in the world playing baseball.