To DH or not to DH — Giants still oppose it

Baseball traditionalists tend to freak out whenever someone mentions the designated hitter and the National League in the same sentence.

A bit of news surfaced over the weekend at the St. Louis Cardinals’ version of fanfest when general manager John Mozeliak said there’s “more momentum” to add the DH rule to the NL.

The tidbit isn’t forcing noted part-time hitters Madison Bumgarner and Bartolo Colon into retirement, but the where-there’s-smoke-there’s-fire thinking invariably is a consideration, especially among DH-fearing fans who prefer old-style strategies and pitchers swinging for themselves.

Giants CEO Larry Baer said Monday that Major League Baseball owners haven’t formally discussed an expansion of the DH rule. The owners’ quarterly meetings are Wednesday and Thursday in Coral Gables, Fla., and the DH isn’t on the agenda, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be discussed.

The Giants haven’t changed their stance.

“We are against the DH in the National League,” Baer said. “We believe in the strategy around the traditional game.”

For the NL to adopt the DH rule, 75 percent of owners would need to give their approval (23 of 30), meaning eight NL owners would need to side with the 15 American League owners. It also would need to be collectively bargained with the players’ union, but the union undoubtedly would be fine with 15 more handsomely paid hitters in its membership.

The current labor agreement is in its final year and expires Dec. 1, and it wouldn’t be surprising if the DH discussion intensifies — starting with adding the rule to interleague games in NL parks. Could the NL adopt the DH as early as 2017? By most accounts, that’s premature.

“I do feel like there were times I could look all of you in the face and say it’s a non-starter, it’s not being discussed at the owner level or GM,” Mozeliak said, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “But over the past year, it has. I’m not suggesting you’re going to see a change, but I definitely think the momentum” has changed.

Mozeliak noted that Cardinals Chairman Bill DeWitt Jr. would not support a DH rule in the NL but, “That’s not to say that we would not be open-minded to it if there was a big swell to push.”

Under Commissioner Bud Selig, there was little chance the NL would ever take on the DH rule, and successor Rob Manfred said he’s OK with separate rules for the leagues, adding constant debate on the subject is good for baseball. Manfred famously said in June, “Not having National League pitchers hit would deprive us of the entertainment that Bartolo Colon has given us this year.”

Though Colon’s at-bats are must-see because of their zaniness and unpredictability, Bumgarner provides a different kind of entertainment as a legitimate power threat, slugging five home runs in 2015 and nine the past two seasons. Of the 18 pitchers who homered last season, five were Giants.

Bumgarner is an exception, of course. New Giants pitcher Johnny Cueto is a .107 career hitter, and a lot more pitchers hit like Cueto than like Bumgarner.

If AL owners wanted to press NL owners, they’d have at least two good arguments.

The offensive numbers in the NL are on the decline — of the 10 teams scoring the fewest runs and hitting the fewest home runs last season, seven came from the NL.

The injuries mount for pitchers who try to swing a bat and run the bases — in fact, one of Mozeliak’s key pitchers, Adam Wainwright, tore his Achilles tendon running from the batter’s box, and Giants fans can’t forget Santiago Casilla pulling his hamstring running to first base or Jeremy Affeldt resembling an injury waiting to happen whenever he picked up a bat.

Still, pitchers can get hurt doing any number of things on and off the field. Ask Affeldt.

Baseball amped up its interleague schedule the past three seasons after creating two 15-team leagues, prompting interleague play virtually daily and more DH debate. Some executives have suggested making the DH rule universal isn’t a matter of if but when. It’s a benefit to AL teams wanting to “rest” a player by giving him swings at DH, but it’s not something that regularly can be exercised by the Giants with Buster Posey or by the Cardinals with Yadier Molina.

But wiping out this portion of traditional baseball also would wipe out much of the chess match between managers, notably the strategy and mystery that goes into deciding when and how to remove a starting pitcher.

Until further notice, it’s the status quo. Two sets of rules for two leagues and a debate that won’t go away.

John Shea is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: jshea@sfchronicle.com

Twitter: @JohnSheaHey