>" and banning the "shift" is wonderful!"

>I get why they did this, but this was the one change that I hated. I like letting the math nerds find optimal strategies to winning games.

A fair point. Although isn't that what Fantasy Baseball is for?

>Edit: Should say I also liked the addition of the DH, although I didn't really care either way. As an AL fan I prefer the DH, but enjoyed the quirkiness of seeing pitchers bat now and then. The ghost runners I thought I'd hate and initially did, but came to enjoy it as time went on.

I get it. As a lifelong fan of an NL team (I'd also note that the DH wasn't adopted in the AL until the early 1970s), I always found games with the DH to be less interesting because, since most pitchers are poor hitters, there's a good deal of tactical and strategic thinking that has to go into whether to bat for a pitcher or let him come to the plate.

If your ace is rolling, but he's coming up with men on base and two outs -- what are you going to do? Remove him from the game and burning a bench player as a pinch hitter?

What happens when you run out of bench players because you burned them all (except, presumably, the backup catcher) hitting in the pitcher's spot?

Do you make a double switch, putting a position player in the pitcher's spot in the order to stave off having to take out a reliever who couldn't hit a tee-ball?

There's all kinds of wonderful complexity and nuance there that the DH just destroys.

As for the "ghost runner," my objection is less well founded. I just don't like that there's a base runner who didn't earn their way on.

All that said, I dig your point of view. That's one of the wonderful things about baseball: we can argue about the finer points, but still enjoy the beauty of the game.