Economists have debated whether and why the designated hitter (DH) rule in North American Major League Baseball led to an increase in hit batsmen. We use data from Japan's professional baseball leagues to reexamine this question. Our empirical analyses of hit batsmen for batters as well as by...

This article investigates the effect of baseball's designated hitter rule on the number of hit batsmen, with a focus on individual pitchers. Researchers have debated the rule's incentives for pitchers and its impact on hit batsmen based on aggregate and cross-section statistics: They treat...