Strategy adjustment
With universal DH likely for 2020, Colorado is at “a little bit of a disadvantage”
Momentum to bring the designated hitter to the National League has grown stronger in recent years, and it appears the rule change will get a one-year trial run for Colorado in 2020.
The universal DH is part of the owners’ proposal for an amended season. While there is still much to hash out regarding the safety and financial aspects of a season amid the coronavirus pandemic, Bud Black and the Rockies are preparing for an unexpected rule change that the manager acknowledged “puts us at a little bit of a disadvantage.”
“That’s the big thing for me is the roster construction,” Black said. “When you put together a National League team, there’s no doubt about it, you don’t focus on just one offensive player or a big bat in your lineup — the Nelson Cruz-type players, and going back in history, David Ortiz and Edgar Martinez, those types of offensive players.”
With a geographical schedule proposed by the owners, the Rockies would play National League West opponents as well as interleague opponents in a similar area (i.e. the Los Angeles Angles and Oakland A’s).
Black noted the universal DH would “obviously affect us in interleague play.” It could also potentially increase the gap between Colorado and the seven-time defending divisional champion Dodgers, whose offensive depth is unrivaled within the West.
So what would the Rockies’ DH strategy look like? “All our main guys who are everyday players — Nolan (Arenado), Trevor (Story), Charlie (Blackmon), David (Dahl), (Daniel) Murphy — those guys will need a blow (and will DH),” Black said. “And ironically, all of them don’t like to DH — they’d rather play.”
The most obvious choices to be the team’s main designated hitters in 2020 would be Murphy, Blackmon and Ian Desmond. All three turned in subaverage seasons defensively in 2019, per sabermetric standards (outs above average and outfielder jump) from Baseball Savant.
Projected starting second baseman Ryan McMahon gives the team defensive flexibility at first base while keeping the 35-year-old Murphy’s veteran bat in the lineup at DH (Brendan Rodgers or Garrett Hampson could play second in that scenario). And Blackmon, 33, and Desmond, 34, will surely see plenty of games at DH seeing as Colorado has young, talented corner outfield depth in Raimel Tapia and Sam Hilliard.
“We have a lot of versatility — (McMahon) can go play first base, go play third,” Black said. “Hampson can move around the diamond. Almost all of our outfielders are very versatile, especially (center fielder David) Dahl, Tapia and Hilliard. We’d sort of like to keep Charlie in right and Desmond in left, but we have a lot of versatility in our group, and with expanded rosters (as another part of the owners’ proposal) there will be even more versatility.”
While the DH has been in the American League since 1973, many baseball traditionalists decry the rule’s infiltration into the NL as tantamount to sacrilege. They mourn the loss of double switches, bunt scenarios and other strategic decisions due to the presence of a universal DH.
Those on the other side of the argument welcome more intrigue from the pitcher’s spot in the batting order. After all, for every solid-swinging pitcher like Colorado right-hander German Marquez, who won a Silver Slugger Award in 2018, there is overall ineptitude: NL pitchers slashed .131/.161/.168 at the dish last year.
Blackmon remains “on the fence about it.”
“It’s exciting to have another offensive player join the lineup, but at the same time, I’m not a big proponent of change in the game,” Blackmon said. “It’s also exciting to have a league where you have pitchers up there trying to hit, trying to bunt, coming up in big situations like with runners in scoring position and the manager has to make a decision (to keep him in).
“Plus I want to have as big of an impact on the game as I can. I want to make a good defensive play and I want to come up (big) at the plate. I don’t like to sit there for half the time, doing nothing, and then all of a sudden I’ve got to get ready to hit. I don’t feel like as much of a baseball player when I’m the DH.”
But Blackmon said he would embrace the role when called upon nonetheless, and acknowledged it could serve to help the team’s older players perform more consistently over the grind of a condensed schedule that might feature minimal off-days as well as more doubleheaders.
“If you look at career numbers — my numbers, Nolan’s numbers — when guys have a day off (from the field), it seems like they play really well the next day,” Blackmon said. “Strategically spelling certain players (with the DH) can help our team. And yeah, older guys probably need a little bit more rest than the guys who are 24 years old.”
In theory, the DH would also make Coors Field even more of an offensive ballpark — provided games can be played there in 2020.
Helped out by last year’s more aerodynamic baseball, the stadium averaged 12.88 runs per game in 2019, in the same realm as the “Coors Canaveral” atmosphere that led to 13.4 runs per game in the stadium’s last pre-humidor year, 2001.
And while Rockies player rep Scott Oberg believes “people aren’t going to be be tearing down the doors one way or another” on the issue of the DH during a pandemic in which the nation simply wants baseball back, the traditionalist in Blackmon is holding out hope that the rule change wouldn’t necessarily be permanent.
“This year, some crazy circumstances that I hope never happen again led to this, so if the NL has a DH this year, that does not mean it’s here to stay,” Blackmon said.