Rob Manfred confirmed on Thursday that the DH is coming to the National League. For the first time since 1972, all of Major League Baseball will play by the same rules.

The DH has often been a heated topic of debate in the baseball world. I’m just here to offer my two cents, that I believe the DH will be beneficial for the Mets, but a detriment to MLB as a whole.

To get this out of the way, I hear the argument Mets fans have been making for years. The DH helps the Mets. On paper, there’s no denying it. When approaching how to split playing time among players like Pete Alonso, Dominic Smith and J.D. Davis, having a DH in the fold certainly makes matters easier. Especially with Eduardo Escobar taking over third base duties and Davis being limited defensively, a DH gives the Mets more options and flexibility.

But is that a justification to change the fundamental structure of the game? I don’t quite see it.

Now, obviously the AL has had the DH for some time now — since 1973, in fact. It does seem only logical for both leagues to play by the same rules. But the DH is still a radical change to the way baseball is traditionally played. The rules are that every player in the field also has to bat. It shouldn’t be complicated. Nine players on the field, nine players in the lineup. Simple.

If I had been alive in 1973, I probably would have adamantly opposed the AL adopting the DH. Especially at the time, it was a drastic change. It alters the strategies and approaches that a team goes into a game with, while collectively increasing offensive production in the long run. It’s not a small detail, but a large difference.

I would be all for the AL going back to the old days and taking away the DH entirely. It’s not that I have some strange attachment to the differing styles of play between the leagues. In an ideal scenario, yes, both leagues should play by the same rules. But the system we’ve had until now, with one league having a DH and the other not, is still better than all of MLB adopting the DH. It used to be that the NL preserved at least some of the traditional integrity of the game. Now, that’s no longer the case.

Mets fans might be happy about the DH news because it helps the team. Sure, it helps the team. But it breaks the integral structure of the game. If Manfred instated a rule that the Mets could recruit a player from any team and just have them for free, for no rhyme or reason whatsoever, and the Mets picked Mike Trout, that would help the team too. It would even make fans thrilled. But what’s the point of that? It’s like playing OOTP in Commissioner Mode, where you can force trades that would never happen in real life. It makes winning a lot easier, but what’s the fun in that?

I’m not arguing that the implementation of a DH is equivalent to the Mets getting Trout for free. The Trout hypothetical is merely a logical extension of what a rule like the DH does for baseball. It can be applied to a lot of the changes baseball is going through, as well as the ones that have been rumored. Things like the three-batter minimum for relievers and the runner on second in extra innings. These are “rules” that directly contradict the basic framework of the game. There’s no explanation or rationale for them, even by their proponents. They’re put in place simply as a lazy mechanism to eliminate some of baseball’s beautiful nuances.

So yes, the Mets are probably going to score more runs this year. It’s going to be easier to fit Davis, Alonso and Smith in the lineup. Is it worth sabotaging the game though? The way I see it, it’s one more in a long line of harmful decisions Manfred has made for the state of baseball. MLB needs a new commissioner, one who actually likes baseball and cares about its well-being.

For now, we’re just going to have painfully watch as baseball is dismantled, step-by-step.