Pitchers Hitting

If you open this up it is going to lead to stratball. The retro leagues I run, the pitchers have to bat in the 9th spot and they cannot PH unless it is for another pitcher and there are not any more hitters available. Yes, I know Larussa is sometimes batting a pitcher 8th, and over the years occasionally a pitcher has PH'd for a postion player, but 99.99% of the games in the last 30 years the pitcher bats 9th (in the NL games) and does not PH for a position player. Open this up and it will be abused.

On the topic, in my leagues that have the pitchers bat, because this is a pretty significant advantage to the manager actually playing the game instead of HAL managing the game, we have teams play their road games and turn on Home Field Advantage. This helps offset some of the advantage of making your pitching moves while you watch the game unfold.

My .02
Scott