Which players and teams are best positioned if the NL uses the DH?
The first time that one of the two major leagues instituted a designated hitter rule -- "the first time" written with increasing resignation that there will be a second time -- it was chaos.
The rule was implemented on January 11, 1973, exactly 12 weeks before the season was scheduled to start. That wasn't the end though. Three weeks later, the league office was still writing the rules, coming out with multiple changes and clarifications on January 30 of that year.
According to the next day's New York Times, American League President Joe Cronin convened umpires in the Roosevelt Hotel in New York and used a chalkboard to lay out scenarios for some of the complexities. Essentially, they added to the rule that the DH could take the field at any time but that the team would forfeit its DH for the rest of the game as a result.
There should be no need for Rob Manfred to break out the chalkboard this time amid the speculation that the National League could be uniting its rules with its counterpart. But the thing that could be worth revisiting in the story of the first time we went through this is just how rushed the process was and how rushed it could be in the National League.
Every conversation in the most recent flare-up of the designated hitter debate has centered on the negotiations of the collective bargaining agreement, which expires in its current form on December 1, 2016. If the negotiations -- with the DH being any significant part of them -- take the agreement toward its final hour, we could be faced with a situation where there are 15 new positions created with much of the offseason's activity behind us.
Such was the case in the offseason of 1972-73 when more than half of the offseason and several significant trades had all gone down before American League teams were officially granted the ability to supplement their lineups with an extra hitter.
In 1973, there was a fairly even breakdown of how teams acquired their designated hitters. Of the 12 American League teams in those days, five used a player who had been on the roster the year before as their primary DH. Three teams acquired the player who would become their primary designated hitter earlier in the offseason -- all in November in the early round of moves.
And the last four were able to acquire a DH after the rule change was made. Boston went out and signed the great but aging Orlando Cepeda with the understanding that he would be the full-time DH after the rule was initiated. Nobody started more games at DH in the inaugural season than Cepeda.
The Yankees, famous for having an early opener and thus making Ron Blomberg the first major-league designated hitter, had actually purchased the rights to a different hitter -- Jim Ray Hart -- on the eve of the season to serve as their primary DH. Texas also traded for its would-be primary DH Alex Johnson right before the season, while Oakland acquired Deron Johnson in a trade with the Phillies a month into the season to serve as its DH.
There is some thought that this transition -- were it to happen with a full year's notice or with virtually no notice -- would be easier now than it was in the early days of the DH. The well-established storyline is that the days of the full-time DH are gone. That teams would need only to shuffle around some outfielders, make a schedule for some days off for the veterans and get the lefty-righty matchups correct for a DH platoon.
However, the 2015 season saw a strong and sudden comeback of the full-time designated hitter. After four players started 130+ games at DH from 2012-2014, six did last year alone: Kendrys Morales, Prince Fielder, Billy Butler, Evan Gattis, Alex Rodriguez and of course David Ortiz. The six tied a record set in 1983 -- a fact that speaks even more to the resurgence given that American League teams play 10 games without a DH now thanks to interleague play.
And even without that, it's still hard to find much of a pronounced trend over time. Once one accounts for strike years and the invention of interleague play and adjusts everything up to 162 DH starts a season, the average number of games started by teams' primary DHs has fluctuated but almost without a defined trend.
Some teams are already extremely well positioned for the switch to the DH lifestyle should the rules change in 2017. Nobody is in a better spot than the position player-rich Cubs, as Kyle Schwarber might not be a long-term fit behind the plate and has looked wobbly in the outfield. However, his bat is beyond good enough for the DH spot. It's also a good opportunity for teams like the Giants, who can keep an elite catcher's bat in the lineup on non-catching days without having to eat up the first base spot.
Some will have to make moves, though, and in that, there is an opportunity for a handful of hitters in the free-agent class of 2017 to expand their group of teams willing to give them offers or just make them slightly more attractive to twice the teams.
At age 36 in 2017, Jose Bautista is the class of the class, and with his age combined with a negative PECOTA projection for his defense at that point, he could stand to be one of the biggest beneficiaries. A longer-term deal for a player like Bautista gets a bit more attractive if you're buying only the bat.
Bautista leads a group of average-to-defensively-limited potential signees in the free-agent class of 2017 who could earn their way into a bigger payday with a strong 2016.
Potential free agents and the DH
| PLAYER | 2017 AGE | 2017 PROJ. WARP | 2017 PROJ. FRAA |
| Jose Bautista | 36 | 4.2 | -3.9 |
| Matt Holliday | 37 | 1.7 | -7.7 |
| Edwin Encarnacion | 34 | 1.6 | -1.5 |
| Adrian Beltre | 37 | 1.1 | -0.6 |
| Mitch Moreland | 31 | 1.1 | 1.2 |
| Mark Trumbo | 31 | 0.8 | 0 |
| Luis Valbuena | 31 | 0.5 | -1.6 |
| Adam Lind | 33 | 0.4 | -1.8 |
| Justin Turner | 32 | -0.1 | -7.2 |
If this comes up in collective bargaining, the reasons will be that starting DHs make higher salaries than the extra bench player that National League teams are currently carrying and that the DH extends careers.
If this group hits free agency next year and waits it out until everything is settled, it's this type of player who will be the beneficiaries of the latest rush between the rule change and Opening Day.
