When Pitchers Were Hitters

Before there was the DH, all pitchers HAD to hit and there were some greats, if you can remember. I recall someone by the name of Ruth who came up in the Boston organization as a starting pitcher. We all know what happened to George Herman Ruth once he was traded to NY and transitioned into an everyday player in the OF. Now-a-days, you have players like Micah Owings, who, in a short period of time, has been looked upon as one of the best hitting pitchers of recent history as the Diamondbacks even used him as a pinch hitter last year before trading him to the Reds. Somewhere in between, you had Glavine and Maddux reminding us that “Chicks Dig the Long Ball” (video to be found later today). Both were decent hitting pitchers in their younger days.

But let’s take a look back to Owings and what a good hitting pitcher can do for a ballclub. Having a pitcher on your team that hits better than some of your position players must almost feel like cheating. It just gives a manager a whole heck of a lot more options. For one, you don’t have the headache of deciding to pull the pitcher for a pinch hitter when he’s pitching well in a close game or carrying a weaker hitting position player who is great defensively, but can’t hit well because now you have a one off option who wouldn’t be going into the field anyway. The risk here is of course, the extra chance of an injury, getting hit by a pitch (especially in retaliation), fouling a ball off himself or even injuring himself on the base path.

If I were a major league manager who isn’t in Cincinnati, I’d be highly jealous, bordering on covetous, of the Red’s Micah Owings. By the way, does Jim Leyland know how good of a hitter D-Train is? Or how about the Mets Livan Hernandez, a former innings eater? For a list of the top 10 current players, go to Baseball Prospectus and either look up Nate Silver’s article on this topic entitled “Evaluating Pitcher Hitting”. By the way, it’s also a good read if you bother to read the whole article and not just look at the top 10 list.

Other good hitting pitchers that I can remember are Steve Avery, Josh Beckett, and Tom Seaver; all were within the past 30 years, but to look beyond this timeframe go to the Baseball Think Factory and look at their article on pitcher hitting which you can find HERE. Here is another site titled Career Batting Records From Great Hitting Pitchers.

In my opinion, High School and College pitchers should be held accountable to work on their hitting skills almost as much as they do their pitching. For proof, just look at players like Rick Ankiel of the Cardinals. You just never know!

If you remember a pitcher who stood out to you at the plate, please list him in the comments section of this post!