World Series showcases inevitability of universal DH

After five largely riveting games, the World Series will head back to the National League team’s “home” ballpark, which in this pandemic season means the Los Angeles Dodgers will merely don white uniforms, not grays, when they “host” the Tampa Bay Rays at neutral-site Globe Life Field in Arlington, Texas.

Yet as the teams flip-flop home-road designations, one thing will not change: The designated hitter.

Did you even notice?

For the first time, Major League Baseball played a season with the universal DH, part of several COVID-19 workarounds that enabled it to complete a 60-game season and get to the brink of a virus-free postseason.

The DH has endured through this postseason, too, and for the first time since 1986, the AL team did not lose the DH when it played as the road team. From 1976 to 1985, the World Series alternated years entirely with the DH, or with none at all.

As the NL champion Dodgers carry a 3-2 lead over the Tampa Bay Rays into Game 6, it’s hard to deny that players, managers and fans have largely been reconditioned to expect all DH, all the time.

And that only furthers the impression that the universal DH is here to stay.

“It is very normal now,” says Dodgers manager Dave Roberts, who spent more than 80% of his playing career in the NL. “I was kind of always on the other side of that, being a traditional National League, pitcher hit guy. But I actually have warmed up to it.

“I flipped. I like the DH.”

It certainly makes managers’ lives easier, what with not worrying about pitchers hitting and wondering when to pinch-hit for them, along with the vagaries of double-switches. And for the Dodgers, who have perhaps the deepest roster in the major leagues and liberally platoon players, the DH is ostensibly a perfect fit.

Yet one of the oldest tropes about the DH — that those who fill the role on less than a full-time basis are often uncomfortable doing it — has rung true.

The Dodgers, one through nine, have pressured opponents into submission in running up a 14-5 playoff record. Yet that extra hitter has, strangely, been a liability.

Dodgers DHs are batting .125 this postseason, with just 10 hits in 64 at-bats. Perhaps most surprisingly, a team noted for its plate discipline has drawn just three walks out of the DH spot, for a grim .194 on-base percentage.

As for non-DH Dodgers? They’re batting .271, with a .385 OBP and 27 home runs in 19 games.

Still, the extra bat has its benefits.

It’s a natural workaround when Roberts wants to start Austin Barnes — who works particularly well with aces Clayton Kershaw and Walker Buehler — at catcher without taking Will Smith’s bat out of the lineup.

Smith led the Dodgers in OBP (.401), OPS (.980) and adjusted OPS (164) during the regular season, though he has struggled perhaps more than any Dodger at the DH slot this postseason, batting .083 (2 for 24) with no homers, one walk and a .120 OBP. As a catcher, he’s hitting .262 (11 for 42), with two homers, five walks, a .340 OBP and a five-hit game in the NL Division Series against San Diego.

Yet, the DH spot also provided one of the biggest hits of the season — Kiké Hernandez’s game-tying pinch-hit homer leading off the sixth inning in Game 7 of the NLCS. Cody Bellinger’s homer an inning later would send the Dodgers to the World Series.

And if nothing else, it keeps the deep Dodgers bench engaged, and the regulars rested.

“Playing on turf here beats your body up, so to get (A.J.) Pollock or Joc (Pederson) a day at DH, gives you a little more flexibility,” says Roberts, “and I think the fans enjoy having that extra hitter in there as well.”

More and more, it seems. The wail of traditionalists — and a bloc of NL owners who shared their viewpoint — has kept the DH out of the NL long after it was approved in the AL before the 1973 season.

Its permanent adoption seems likely, and most certainly will be a key bargaining chip when Major League Baseball and the Players’ Association negotiate a new collective bargaining agreement after the 2021 season.

And as for next year?

Perhaps it will temporarily vanish, or be renewed if pandemic playing conditions largely prevail.

Either way, it’s a way of life many are getting used to, even if begrudgingly at first.

“It hasn’t been too bad,” says Dodgers third baseman Justin Turner, a 10-year veteran who has played all but 17 of his 1,114 career games in the NL. “It’s actually kind of nice to DH some games.”

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