Bring Back Edgar!

But NL teams drive up the price a little because they’re always looking for a good bat even if the guy’s not good in the field. Or, they’re used to making more money in the past and would rather retire than take a bargain basement deal.

I think that unless there are special conditions (where you have a really superior hitter as a DH who just doesn’t make sense as a fielder, like Edgar, Paul Molitor, maybe Ellis Burks or Jim Thome during their good years), you should do what Sparky Anderson did: rotate regulars through DH to give them pseudo-days off, maybe have a veteran PH/DH/1B/OF who plays there sometimes so he gets regular AB’s so that when you PH him, he’s not completely rusty from sitting on a bench for a week, maybe platoon some guys there, but don’t have a full-time DH.

The big reason I see for this is with 12 man pitching staffs being the norm (sometimes 13) and 8 roster spots for regulars in the field, that means you’re looking at 4-5 spots on your bench to back up the position players. One of those is the backup catcher, so now we’re down to 3-4. Out of those, if one of those guys is a DH who isn’t a contributor with the glove and can’t cover a critical defensive position, you’re looking at covering your critical infield AND outfield defensive positions with 2-3 players. That just stretches you too thin, because odds are you probably need two guys who are terrible hitters but + defensive players to cover CF and middle infield (it’s rare when those can be the same guy). Having a thin bench also limits the amount of platooning/pinch hitting you can do (and PH’ing for handedness is far more effective than switching pitchers for handedness).

I would personally rather have a deeper bench and spread those ~650 PAs a full-time but kinda “meh” DH is going to get among my bench players, especially given that if you have decent bench players, giving them an extra 200 or so PAs goes a long way to keeping them from rusting on the bench.