re mvp revisited in article r hf innc gap caltech edu tim shippert writes ideally dhs should be the strongest offensive players because any schmoe can play dh if he can hit that would take care of position corrected anomolies such as frank s since that is not the case and why not is it always this way then we are going to have trouble finding the true value of dhs using the same models as that for position players there are several reasons for this difference the main reason is that good hitters in their prime such as frank thomas and danny tartabull are rarely regular dh s even if they can t field it s more commonly a place to put aging veterans another use of the dh slot is to help a player come back from injury slowly getting his bat in the lineup without forcing him to play in the field i would expect such players to hit worse as dh s than they did during the rest of the season a third factor is that most player who split time between dh and first or the outfield don t hit as well as dh s for some reason reggie jackson was a good example in five years as a rf dh for the angels he hit like the old reggie when he was in right the second and third factors will be lost if players are considered by their primary position only a player who plays games in right and at dh will count only in the right fielders averages a logical starting place would be to look at defensive replacement value if you can find it for b or lf or something we can assume that if forced to play defense they would play at true zero value even though i doubt this is actually true for players like winfield and molitor this would let us discount the time they spend playing dh because that forces the team to find another real fielder to play this makes sense you might also look at it another way although the average offensive performance of a dh may be lower than for a left fielder the replacement level offensive performance is certainly lower if you are a left fielder but can t hit well enough to keep a job anywhere then you certainly can t hit well enough to keep a job at dh david grabiner grabiner zariski harvard edu we are sorry but the number you have dialed is imaginary please rotate your phone degrees and try again disclaimer i speak for no one and no one speaks for me
