Athletics Can Be Happy MLB is Making the Move to a Universal Designated Hitter
We don’t know yet what baseball will look like in 2020 because the players’ union has to sign off on the owners’ proposal to reopen the sport, and there’s no guarantee that negotiations will go either smoothly or quickly.
As things stand now, however, the universal designated hitter will be in place, and for teams like the Oakland A’s, that’s going to be a bonus.
Consider the option – there is plenty of opinion inside baseball that the designated hitter is the spawn of the devil, that it should never have come into existence and that the National League is purer and better because pitchers hit – well, come to the plate, anyway – in the NL.
So instead of the universal designated hitter, the negotiations to restart the season presumably could have included no designated hitter. For a team like the A’s, that would be brutal.
Like all American League teams, the A’s have structured their roster around the use of a DH. By that, we mean not just having the use of Khris Davis’ bat in the lineup without being negatively impacted by his sub-standard arm strength.
That’s not insignificant. Davis has driven in 408 runs with the help of 156 home runs the last four seasons, most of that as a DH. That’s been particularly true the last two seasons when Davis has for the first time been the A’s DH more than 75 percent of the time. It’s not a coincidence that those two seasons have seen the A’s win 97 games and make the postseason both times.
However, the use of the DH also trickles over to how the pitching staff is built. National League teams have had to rely more on their bullpens than AL teams during the era of the DH. In NL games, there are times the manager has his hand forced to lift his starting pitcher for a pinch-hitter by the score, forcing early use of the bullpen
Madison Bumgarner might have been allowed to hit because he’s show he can – he has 19 career homers. But Clayton Kershaw or Walker Buehler? Not so much. They’ve combined for one career bomb, and that was seven years ago from Kershaw.
If the new plan had called for no DH, the A’s probably would need to reimagine their bullpen, although admittedly, having a 30-man roster as is part of the owners’ proposal instead of a 26-man roster as had been the plan, that reimagination might not have been that difficult.
For now, the A’s and most American League teams don’t need to be concerned. The powers that be have structured things to include the DH, and they’re going to be allowed to go with it.
Whenever the season actually starts.
Follow Athletics insider John Hickey on Twitter: @JHickey3
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