by Ryan Gray

Created on: January 26, 2010

Think about the major professional sports leagues in this country. How many of them have a setup where half of the league uses one kind of lineup and the other half uses a different one?

The answer is one – Major League Baseball. And that setup is outdated, unnecessary and even harmful to the game at times. That's why the league needs to eliminate the designated hitter.

Interleague play has provided a number of benefits for the league and its fans. But the mixture of teams forces managers to reconstruct their lineups and use a setup they will only put to use 12 times during the regular season. That's right, seven percent of the time.

Then there is the awkwardness of the World Series, where the lineup rules of one league are used part of the time and the rules from the other league are employed the rest of the way, depending on where the game is being played.

What sense does that make? Why can't both leagues use the same lineups and forget all of the other nonsense – starting with the designated hitter?

In too many cases, the designated hitter spot has become a place for players who are near the end of their career. They are still terrific hitters, but their bodies aren't in good enough shape to play in the field every day.

A closer examination of this situation reveals that these players are only “part-time” players. If all they can do is hit, shouldn't they be used as pinch-hitters?

That leads us back to the strategic part of the game once again. If a team is trailing by a run or two late in the game and there are runners on base with the pitcher coming up to bat, it is the manager's job to decide: Should I send the pitcher up to bunt or should I pinch-hit for him?

This is the ideal spot for the player who would like to be a designated hitter. If he is a good enough hitter for that, then he should be able to deliver the pinch-hit single or double to give his team the runs they need.

Take, for example, the case of Hall-of-Famer-to-be Jim Thome. He had been averaging approximately 500 at-bats per season as a designated hitter the past three years. But after being traded to the National League late last season, he collected 17 at-bats in about a month as a pinch-hitter.

Now a free agent, he is busy shopping for a job as a designated hitter to keep his career alive. He could be a very valuable pinch-hitter, but because he is not healthy enough to play in the field, he should not be getting 500 at-bats in a different role.

Every year when it comes time for voters to make their selections for the Baseball Hall of Fame, a discussion always follows about this player or that player who had a terrific career and should have been elected but was instead denied.

To this point no player who served as a full-time designated hitter for any extended period of time during his career has been elected to the Hall. Voters have written many columns about how they will never vote for “part-time” players to be included among the game's greatest.

This is all of the evidence necessary to take the designated hitter out of the lineup.

Learn more about this author, Ryan Gray.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.