2025 ALL STAR GAME THREAD JULY 15 8:00 PM

[gehringer_2]

7 hours ago, Klondike said:

It's best feature (the DH) is simply it allows older players who cant run or play the field well to stick around and hit. Pretty much the only positive thing. The unions love it.

 

6 hours ago, chasfh said:

Per FanGraphs, the average age of DHs is 28, which is less than the average age for catchers and first basemen; and the same as the average age for third basemen, right fielders, and left fielders.

 

When the DH first came into use, it did extend a lot of careers, and you did see a lot of guys move to DH their as their gloves got worse, but that was in an era where everyone who made the bigs made them as a position player somewhere. Since then, the DH has been available for players who from the beginning of their careers were poor defenders but hit well enough to hold down DH, so the profile of the DH has shifted. Sure a few guys still end up there when they lose their fielding (Cabrera) but as many or maybe more start there - JHM for example (assuming he were to return to the Tigers and stick as some point). The availability of younger no-glove players, who are lower cost, means holding on to your old players as DH's is less attractive then in the first generation of the DH.

Edited Friday at 08:29 PM by gehringer_2

[Tiger337]

On 7/18/2025 at 9:39 AM, chasfh said:

Per FanGraphs, the average age of DHs is 28, which is less than the average age for catchers and first basemen; and the same as the average age for third basemen, right fielders, and left fielders.

 

That is interesting.  It seems that a lot of teams don't use a regular DH. As we have seen with Hinch, a lot of teams use it to give them flexibility and to give players rests without taking them out of the line-up.  

[chasfh]

1 hour ago, Tiger337 said:

That is interesting.  It seems that a lot of teams don't use a regular DH. As we have seen with Hinch, a lot of teams use it to give them flexibility and to give players rests without taking them out of the line-up.  

I think it has been quite some time since teams have routinely given all of their DH at bats to overpaid superannuated sluggers.

Here is a quick table I put together from Fangraphs data for 2024, showing how many total DH PAs each team had, how many they gave to their top DH, and at percent of the teams total that made up:

Only 13 of the 30 teams gave more than half of their DH plate appearances to one guy, and 12 other teams gave fewer than a third to their top DH.

Here's another way of looking at it: a total of 361 different hitters DH'ed for their team. Here is a list of all the players who "half-qualified" for a batting title (i.e., minimum 251 plate appearances) and got more than 50% of their team's DH plate trips:

You don't have to count, I'll just tell you: only sixteen of the half-qualified hitters who DH'ed at any point of the season received as many as half the DH at bats their team logged last season.

We can conclude that while there were some old, slow-footed, overpaid sluggers on these lists (hello, J.D., my old friend!), most of these guys were still under 30. 

[Arlington]

6 hours ago, Tiger337 said:

That is interesting.  It seems that a lot of teams don't use a regular DH. As we have seen with Hinch, a lot of teams use it to give them flexibility and to give players rests without taking them out of the line-up.  

It's the one position that everyone can play.