MLB Commissioner
Rob Manfred has seen fit to to continue the
ridiculous bifurcation of
fundamental baseball rules in the American and National Leagues. Thus, the Red Sox will have
no DH in Games 3,4,5 of this year's World Series. So, manager
Alex Cora needs to figure out a way to rotate his four "outfielders" (
Mookie Betts,
Andrew Benintendi,
Jackie Bradley, Jr.,
J.D. Martinez) in and out of those games. No matter how you look at it, it's a penalty on every American League entrant in the World Series. Every year, the National League entrant gets the
bonus of the DH in the American League city—and for a deep team like LA, "finding" a DH on their roster is no problem
at all. This suggests that Boston needs to
"make hay while the DH shines"—and win
both Games One and Two at Fenway Park tonight and tomorrow. Any experimentation needed at Chavez Ravine (such as putting Mookie at 2B or benching JBJ/Benny) will be
less risky if Boston is already up two-games-to-none and eyeing the comfort of Games Six and Seven back at Fenway. This could all be avoided, of course, by
forcing the National League to enter the 21st century and adopt the DH.
