Schwarber hit .299 as DH
The universal designated hitter rule will be implemented in the National League in the 2020 regular season. It will give some good hitters more plate appearances in this shortened season. The DH rule is not totally new for National League teams since they play interleague games every year and they do use a DH when they play at an American League ballpark.
Which teams might benefit from the universal DH rule? To think of this question, I checked out the baseball reference website.
Looking at the position performance from 2017 to 2019, we can see which teams led in DHs by different stats.
The Phillies led in OPS in 2017, Dodgers led in 2018 and Reds ranked 1st in 2019. Yes, the leaders were from 3 different divisions in the last 3 seasons. We can only say that the Reds were on the top 2 in the last 2 seasons.
Similar to the result we saw in OPS, the Phillies and the Dodgers each led in batting average in 2017 and 2018. We see the Reds and the Cardinals were on the top 5 last 2 seasons, meanwhile, the Pirates were on the top 5 last 3 seasons. Maybe these 3 NL Central teams put the right guys in the DH spot in the interleague games?
The Dodgers DHs collected 14 hits in 2018 and 10 hits in 2019. Meanwhile, looking at NL Central again, Cardinals, Pirates and Reds each had at least 10 hits in the DH role in the last 2 seasons.
Hitting a home run is always one of the most exciting things in baseball. However, it may not be that easy to hit a homer in an interleague game. It is not like the division opponents, each team only meets their interleague opponents once in a while, except natural rivals and geographical matchups. However, New York Mets DHs hit 5 homers in 2017 and had 4 in 2018. Giants DHs had 5 home runs in 2019.
10 RBIs seem to be a good indicator. Only 4 National League teams’ DHs had more than 10 RBIs in the last 3 seasons. The Reds’ and Giants’ DHs were on the top 5 in RBIs last 2 seasons.
National League teams are not so unfamiliar with DH rules since they play interleague games with American League teams every year. However, they might use DHs in a different way. In the American League, there is a full-time DH in a team. When NL teams visit an AL ballpark, they usually use DH as a partial day-off for regular players. In a 162-game season, there are 20 interleague games and 10 games are at American League ballparks. The 162-game season is a marathon, so the DH is a good spot for regular players or veterans to have a partial day-off. National League managers have been frequently doing that. Skippers give some players, particularly veteran players, a mini-break in a long season because players don’t have to take on the field on defense as DH. Also, only 10 games are at American League ballparks, in this situation, we see some interesting numbers and performance may vary a lot each year.
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