IT'S ONE OF the mysteries of the modern game of baseball: Why do so many teams receive so little "hitting" from their designated hitters?
A few weeks ago, I ran some of the numbers past Josh Bell, the regular designated hitter for the Cleveland Guardians. Some of those updated figures for 2023:
Three teams are hitting under .200 from the DH spot. Another six are hitting under .225.
The major league average OPS is .729. Thirteen teams are seeing their DHs produce an OPS worse than a league-average hitter.
Seattle Mariners DHs are hitting .161 with a .553 OPS -- and that isn't even the worst OPS in the majors. Milwaukee Brewers DHs are hitting .184 with three home runs for a .533 OPS.
The Detroit Tigers have used 16 different DHs and started nine different players there -- and they've combined to hit .206 with three home runs.
These numbers aren't anomalies. Last season, four teams hit under .200, and a whopping 14 teams saw their DHs produce an OPS under .700, despite a leaguewide OPS of .707.
"Yeah, I don't know what to say," Bell replied. He paused and laughed. "Other than hitting is really hard."
No franchise should realize the value of a productive designated hitter more than the Mariners, who employed Hall of Famer Edgar Martinez as their regular DH from 1995 through 2004 and Nelson Cruz from 2015 to 2018, a stretch in which Cruz averaged 41 home runs per season. Since then, though, the Mariners have struggled to fill the position. In 2021, their DHs hit a meager .233/.304/.396 (and the M's missed the playoffs by two wins). In 2022, Seattle acquired Jesse Winker to serve as a DH, but he struggled at the plate and spent most of his time in left field. Instead, the 18 different players the Mariners started at DH ended up hitting .179/.275/.338.
They've somehow bottomed out in 2023. Rather than fix an obvious problem, Mariners president of baseball operations Jerry Dipoto signed 35-year-old AJ Pollock, who had a .681 OPS with the Chicago White Sox last season, and 34-year-old Tommy La Stella, who had a .632 OPS with the San Francisco Giants. Pollock is hitting .162, and La Stella was released after 21 at-bats. The Mariners have started 12 different players at DH.
What in the name of David Ortiz and Jim Thome and, yes, Edgar Martinez, is going on here? After all, the position is called "hitter."
In one sense, Bell is right: Hitting is hard -- and the full-time DH rarely exists anymore, replaced by ... well, somebody on the roster. More than half the league -- 22 teams -- have used at least 11 different designated hitters so far this season. It's a list that includes Kevin Newman, Luis Torrens, James McCann, Miles Mastrobuoni, Andy Ibanez, Michael Massey, Carlos Perez, Tyler Nevin, Josh Lester, Harold Castro, Nick Maton, Henry Ramos, Stone Garrett, Miguel Amaya, Ryan Jeffers, Brandon Dixon, Luke Maile and Mark Mathias.
There are so few DH specialists. Last season, only three players batted at least 500 times as a DH: Shohei Ohtani, J.D. Martinez and Cruz. Four others (Daniel Vogelbach, Miguel Cabrera, Franmil Reyes and Luke Voit) batted at least 400 times. The number of more-or-less full-time DHs has crept up slightly in 2023, with the likes of Byron Buxton, Andrew McCutchen, Jorge Soler, Charlie Blackmon and Bryce Harper mostly forgoing their gloves (many in the cases of injury recovery or prevention). Perhaps not coincidentally, DH production has improved slightly overall. Last season, DHs produced a .710 OPS versus the MLB OPS of .707; this year, it's .742 versus .729. (Thanks in no small part to Ohtani, who leads the majors in OPS.) Still, we're a long way from the peak DH days of the late 1990s and early 2000s.
THE AMERICAN LEAGUE instituted the designated hitter 50 years ago, in 1973, although the idea had first been floated way back in 1887. It was born of a desire -- desperation? -- to inject more offense into the game and bring more fans to the park. In 1972, the American League had hit just .239, and teams averaged 3.47 runs per game, barely higher than the meager totals of 1968, the famous "Year of the Pitcher" that led to MLB lowering the mound and decreasing the size of the strike zone. Players in the National League, meanwhile, had hit .248 and averaged 3.91 runs. According to AP reports at the time, American League attendance had declined three seasons in a row, to just 12,305 fans per game, 27% lower than the National League average. Eight of the 12 AL teams reportedly lost money in 1972.
Thus began a strange experiment that would last nearly half a century: two leagues under the same umbrella of Major League Baseball playing under different rules. If you weren't a baseball fan back then, it's hard to explain how intensely the DH debate raged those first couple of decades. It would even make it into film, when Crash Davis tells Annie Savoy in "Bull Durham" that he wants "a constitutional amendment outlawing AstroTurf and the designated hitter." Former Atlanta Braves manager Bobby Cox would call the DH "the worst thing that's ever happened to the game." Hall of Fame manager Sparky Anderson, who managed in both the NL and AL, once said of the DH, "It stinks. The fans can't even tell if I can manage."
The National League in the 1970s had an air of arrogance about the whole thing. Chub Feeney, the NL president at the time, called the DH rule a "gimmick." Heck, the DH wasn't even used in the All-Star Game until 1989 -- and then only when the game was played in an AL ballpark.
In those early years, DHs were often veteran stars on the back ends of their careers -- such as Orlando Cepeda, Tommy Davis, Billy Williams and Henry Aaron -- or players like Tony Oliva and Hal McRae who could still hit but had bad knees. Eventually, the career DH would arrive, heralded by four future Hall of Famers who would play more than half their games at the position: David Ortiz (84%), Edgar Martinez (68%), Harold Baines (58%) and Frank Thomas (56%).
DH production relative to the league peaked in the 1990s, with the five best rates all coming in that decade. The highest came in 1998, a year in which regular DHs included names such as Martinez, Thomas, David Justice, Paul Molitor, Matt Stairs and Tim Salmon. In 2017, however, for just the second time, American League DHs hit worse than the average hitter: a .735 OPS that season as compared to the leaguewide average of .753. The numbers crept back up again over the next several years before falling last season, when AL DHs produced a .702 OPS, barely above the league average of .701. National League DHs, in their first full season with the rule, weren't much better, producing a .718 OPS as compared to the league mark of .712.
A couple of things have happened: (1) As teams began carrying more pitchers, that meant fewer position players on the 25- or 26-man roster and more difficulty in rostering a player who is limited defensively; and (2) teams don't want to pay for a DH, unless he is a really good one. Indeed, while the initial National League argument against the DH centered around ruining the tradition of the game, eventually the NL owners' nonpublic rationale was more about not having to pay DHs -- usually veterans who made much more than the league minimum, unlike a young utility player.
I thought I found a franchise that had perhaps discovered a market inefficiency in the way most teams currently operate. Under manager Terry Francona and one of the smartest front offices in the game, the Guardians -- despite low payrolls -- have usually had a regular DH in recent years. In 2016, when they reached the World Series, it was Carlos Santana (sharing time at first base with Mike Napoli). In 2017, they signed Edwin Encarnacion to the biggest free agent contract in franchise history. Encarnacion lasted two seasons before he was traded, but the Guardians eventually acquired Franmil Reyes, who gave them solid production in 2020 and 2021. When Reyes' numbers collapsed in 2022, so did Cleveland's DH production: .217/.277/.310 with just eight home runs. Only the Oakland Athletics had worse numbers. In their five-game AL Division Series loss to the New York Yankees, the Guardians started three different DHs who went a combined 2-for-20.
Signing Bell as a free agent made a lot of sense. Primarily a first baseman during his NL days, Bell had started 31 games at DH with the San Diego Padres last season (and actually won the NL Silver Slugger Award for DH, which tells you about the sorrowful state of NL DHs). With Bell and Josh Naylor, Cleveland now had two players essentially limited to first base.
Except ...
"We didn't want to have a full-time DH," Francona said. "Josh plays first every three games or so, and that can change based on health and productivity. If you're going to have an every-day DH, he's got to really be good; because if you don't, it handcuffs you in so many other ways. Right now, we can maybe put [Jose Ramirez] at DH once a week and put somebody at third. Keep his bat in the game but maybe keep his legs fresh. If you have that every-day DH that's clogging it up, it can make it tough."
Indeed, the emphasis on resting players or giving them a day off from the field has increased in recent years.
"I think a lot of teams are valuing versatility. And I agree," Francona said.
Still, having two first basemen/DHs in Bell and Naylor does limit Francona's defensive options, although he has still managed to give Ramirez nine starts at DH. When Ramirez is the DH, however, either Naylor or Bell has to sit, as neither can play third.
Chris Antonetti, Cleveland's president of baseball operations, backed Francona, saying the club didn't sign Bell to a two-year, $33 million contract with the singular goal of improving DH production. DH was one area of need, sure. However, Antonetti said, "In a different scenario, that money could have gone to a starting pitcher."
BACK TO BELL'S original point: Hitting is hard. And hitting as a designated hitter can be especially difficult, particularly when you're not used to it. DHs are somewhat removed from the game, not playing the field and simply showing up to bat four or five times a game. When the Guardians give Ramirez a day off on defense, they're arguably getting a lesser version of Ramirez at the plate. (Indeed, in his nine games at DH, he has hit .135 with no home runs and one RBI. Last season, he had a .903 OPS when playing third base and a .730 OPS in 30 games at DH. When starting at third, Ramirez is hitting .311 with a .372 OBP, a .921 OPS with 11 homers and 43 RBI.)
Bell was a teammate of Cruz with the Washington Nationals in 2021. When Bell occasionally served as DH, he picked Cruz's brain on how to spend time between at-bats and finding a routine that works.
"I think I've done it all," Bell said. "Throwing medicine balls, taking balls off the machine, doing nothing. For the most part, I think if I can lock into the game and watch the pitchers and stay in tune, that's what keeps me locked in at the plate.
"I think there's an art to it. Just trying to help the team only on the offensive side magnifies the at-bats. If you haven't done it, you maybe make it a little more tough. It's getting easier as I've done it more."
With the Guardians, Bell got off to a slow start, with a .194 average through his first 19 games. His overall numbers remain below his career norms -- although he has hit better as a DH (.760 OPS) than in his 21 games at first base (.586 OPS), and he has started to pick things up in June.
When the National League introduced the DH last season, Justin Turner, then with the Los Angeles Dodgers, also made the transition to part-time DH. In 66 games as a third baseman, he produced an .837 OPS; in 62 games at DH, he had a .729 OPS. Now with the Boston Red Sox, he has spent most of 2023 at DH, where his .825 OPS is better than what he has produced when he has played the field.
"The biggest adjustment is finding a routine on what to do," he said, echoing Bell's sentiments. "When you're playing both sides and have a bad at-bat, you grab your glove, run out to the field and you have to play defense. When you're DHing, you have to sit there for 45 minutes and just think about that and try to let it go."
Turner said he likes to spend a lot of time in the dugout, although if he has a bad at-bat as the designated hitter, he might go down into the clubhouse and get a quick workout in. He isn't surprised that, in general, players do hit worse when they DH, stating, "It almost feels like four or five pinch-hit at-bats, and pinch hitting is hard."
Turner at least can play the field -- he has started 17 games at first and five at third -- so he does give Alex Cora a little flexibility if the manager wants to give a position player a day at DH.
In other cases, though, I wonder if the desire for flexibility and rest days has gone too far -- if it's led to the undervaluing of DH-type players. Bell hasn't been great, but he would be an improvement over what the Mariners have received from their DHs.
Or look at somebody like J.D. Martinez. His power was down a bit last season with the Red Sox, but he still produced a 117 OPS+ -- much better than most teams received from their DH spot. He signed with the Dodgers for one year and $10 million, essentially trading places with Turner. Martinez ranks second in the NL in slugging percentage and fourth in extra-base hits. The Mariners have paid Pollock and La Stella nearly $8 million.
Look at McCutchen. He spent more than half his time with the Brewers last season at DH. He was basically a league-average hitter -- and as we've seen, many teams would love league-average production from their DH spot. He returned to the Pittsburgh Pirates for $5 million, and his contract has been a bargain, with McCutchen hitting .264/.385/.425. The Brewers, meanwhile, let McCutchen leave as a free agent and traded for Winker -- who has been even worse than he was with the Mariners. The Brewers have started 10 different DHs, a group that, as mentioned, has the worst OPS in the majors.
To be clear, the multiplayer/flexible DH role can work. The Tampa Bay Rays have started seven different players there, and they rank fourth in OPS at DH -- although Harold Ramirez has started a vast majority of the time (45 games). It makes sense for the Baltimore Orioles to not employ a full-time DH since they often use catcher Adley Rutschman there. The Arizona Diamondbacks are seventh in OPS after having started 10 different players at DH.
But often it doesn't work, and even considering modern roster construction, there could be an opening for a full-time DH. Teams carry 13 position players. You have your eight regulars and five spots to play with. One of those has to be the backup catcher and another a utility type who can play all over and fill in at various infield positions. That still leaves three spots: Even if you platoon at one outfield spot and somewhere else, that still leaves a spot for a hitter. Yet few teams have gone down that route.
Maybe they should start. However a DH gets there, production is paramount if you want to contend. The top 10 teams in OPS at DH are all above .500. Eight of the bottom 10 teams are under .500 (with the Mariners at .500).
Designated hitters who can hit are a good thing -- and they don't have to be Edgar Martinez or David Ortiz.