Earl Weaver's Phantom DH

More Lineup Disasters

Earl Weaver’s Phantom DH

Remember when we talked a week or so ago about problems with real life lineups in the 1902 season?

If you don’t, you can find the post here:

You probably thought that this sort of thing doesn’t happen anymore, right? After all, that was over 120 years ago — and there aren’t many people who want to sit through a 1902 replay.

The truth is that even recent seasons are not immune from problems like this.

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The Phantom DH

The Orioles were 3 games out of first place on September 10, 1980.

As usual, Weaver reached into his bag of tricks to find something that they weren’t expecting.

This is what he came up with:

From The Baltimore Sun, September 11, 1980, page C5

If you’re not familiar with the players on the 1980 Orioles (and I don’t blame you, since it was almost 45 years ago), you probably won’t notice at first glance the strange thing going on here.

Steve Stone was listed as the starting designated hitter.

The problem? Steve Stone was a starting pitcher.

Actually, the problem was worse than that. You see, Stone wasn’t even in Detroit at the time. Check out this clipping from The Detroit Free Press:

From The Detroit Free Press, September 11, 1980, page F1

Stone was in Toronto at the time.

Now, this creates a massive problem for replayers. Most of us want to recreate the exact rosters available to a manager on any given day.

You can’t in this case. The player listed as the starting DH for the Orioles was in Toronto. If real life lineups are turned on, you (or the computer automatically playing this game) will have to assume that Stone was there — but he wasn’t.

So what was the purpose of all this?

Well, the idea was that Weaver wouldn’t have to reveal his starting designated hitter until the last possible second. The idea apparently was that he could change that player on the fly if the opposing pitcher was changed before the DH spot came up. That would save Weaver a bench player, you see.

The craziest thing about this? It wasn’t a one off.

1980 Orioles September Lineups, from Baseball Reference

See this list?

Weaver pulled the trick almost every game from September 10 through the first game of the doubleheader on October 4th.

In fact, it seems that the only thing that prevented Weaver from continuing was the fact that the Orioles could no longer catch up with the Yankees.

The one exception in that 21 game stretch was on September 23 against Boston, when Pat Kelly (an actual position player) was the designated hitter. Weaver didn’t take him out.

Now, you’ll run into another problem if you try this — assuming that your baseball sim of choice is set up correctly, that is.

In December 1980, the rules committee decided to ban this practice.

As it now stands, you can’t do what Weaver did. The current rule is found in rule 5.11(a)(2) of the rulebook:

In other words — if you play through a 1980 Orioles season (or, even worse, set it on autoplay) and these lineups come up, you’re going to see a lot of Steve Stone and Jim Palmer hitting in the DH spot. If your game is created in accordance with current baseball rules, you can’t even take those guys out for a pinch hitter once you realize what happened — not until they have at least one plate appearance.

So where does the term “Shadow DH” come from? From this excellent article in the Baltimore Evening Sun:

And there you have it. The Phantom DH: a masterful strategic move — and a nightmare for replayers.