The pinch hitter was a workaround and the game outgrew it

Promoting a slogger solved a problem that vanished the moment top-order batters learned to attack from the first ball.

The pinch hitter existed because openers of a certain era could not or would not attack the new ball. Somebody worked out that if you sent a lower-order hitter up with instructions to swing, you would sometimes get thirty from fifteen and you would always keep your proper batters intact. It was a good idea in a world where the specialist top three scored at four an over.

That world is gone. Top-order players now arrive able to hit over the ring, and they can do it against a moving ball rather than only against a slow one. So the pinch hitter competes for a slot against someone who does the same job with a better defence, and there is no version of that argument he wins.

What survives is the pinch hitter's descendant, the floater, and I think teams confuse the two constantly. A floater is picked for a match-up. He goes up when the bowling changes to something he punishes, usually left-arm spin or a fourth seamer, and he stays down when it does not. He is not there to swing at everything. He is there because the batting order is a live decision rather than a list written before the toss.

The trouble is that floating needs a dressing room that can decide inside thirty seconds and a player comfortable not knowing when he bats. That is a temperament question and it is badly under-scouted. I have watched sides promote a hitter three overs too late, after the field spread, which is the worst possible moment, because now he has to clear protected boundaries with no ring gaps to work with. Correct in principle, useless in execution.

There is a fairness point too. The role burned players. You gave a bowling all-rounder an impossible brief, he failed at it four times in five, and the failures were charged to his batting record while the successes were credited to the team's tactics. Several careers were shortened by a job nobody could do consistently.

Keep the flexible order. Bury the phrase. If a player is worth promoting he is worth batting there properly, not sent out as a lit fuse.