Joel Sherman of the New York Post has been on a rant-fest lately. Monday’s edition involved the designated hitter. But one of his reasons for bringing it to the NL involves one of my own pet peeves.
I have been forced – against my will – to write about the National League and the designated hitter on multiple occasions. Here’s one such time. Here’s another. There was chatter last year about how the Atlanta Braves could benefit while Matt Adams was with the club. Ditto when Evan Gattis was around. Such talk will come and go as time passes.
I am personally on record as being resigned to the eventual inevitability of having this abomination permanently added to the Senior circuit. I don’t like it, but it’s getting almost pointless to argue from my point of view.
That’s essentially the gist of Joel Sherman’s piece in the New York Post today. That all of the arguments against it are dead.
https://t.co/2PsPku3AiB deGrom's injury made me think more about DH in NL, but the reasons it should be adopted is how the game is played now. In other words those items that "purists" think they are defending have already mostly vanished with or without DH.
— Joel Sherman (@Joelsherman1) May 7, 2018
For the most part, he’s right. But there is one aspect that I want to highlight from his work:
"Teams now pretty much roundly dismiss the sacrifice bunt as a valuable strategy. This would be the seventh straight year sacrifices decrease in the NL. On average, an NL club now executes a sacrifice bunt less than once every four games. (It is less than once every 10 in the AL.)"
Well… kinda. The raw numbers are accurate, but not for the reason he suggests.