Great Moments in Pitchers Hitting: Part I

One of the great joys of baseball is the sheer quantity of ways it fosters greatness and heroics. Burly home run hitters share headlines with scrawny speedsters. A pitcher who can touch triple digits with his fastball relieves a finesse wizard. An MVP candidate ties the game in the top of the ninth and a 35-year-old utility infielder wins it in the bottom of the ninth with a walk-off homer. Baseball is a masterful juxtaposition of the expected and the unpredictable. This is why I love watching pitchers hit.

The rigid structure of baseball and the isolated pitcher-batter matchups provide opportunities for all players to shine. Players like Mike Trout and Bryce Harper will always have plenty of opportunities to put their greatness on display, but on any given day any member of a lineup, weak hitting pitchers included, can be the hero. This endearing layer of unpredictability is an essential part of what moves us to tune in night after night, seven months a year.

I promise this won’t be a diatribe against the designated hitter – I, too, have loved watching David Ortiz build a career only possible through the existence of the designated hitter rule. But there is one common argument in support of a universal DH rule that I would like to address and debunk: optimization.

The pitcher hitting in the lineup is not an optimal construction, not even the most ardent DH opponent would claim otherwise. Every time a pitcher is in the batter’s box he leaves behind an entire dugout of position players better equipped to succeed at the plate. Common sense tells you before even looking at league splits that baseball played with the DH will result in better team offensive production than baseball played without it. An optimized lineup in baseball’s modern era is a lineup constructed under the DH Rule. Optimal is better and, therefore, all leagues ought to adopt the DH in order to optimize offense. Right?

Let’s take this one step further, though. A lineup only actually needs six batters because after three runners are on the bases, two men are out, and a batter is at the plate, the inning will either end or the runner on third will score and be able to take the next at bat. Why not remove the three worst hitters from a lineup and adopt six-player lineups?

While we’re at it, middle relievers are often the lowest quality pitchers on a staff; why not shorten games from nine innings to seven in order to decrease the reliance on lesser quality players?

Six-player lineups and seven inning games are more optimal, but optimization isn’t really the purpose of baseball. We all accept the arbitrary rules and structure of a baseball game whether they represent optimized conditions or not. Optimized strategies and rules do not automatically result in a better product.

The question of whether or not the quality of pitchers’ hitting abilities have deteriorated to the point that it’s no longer logical or entertaining enough to carry on without the designated hitter, however, is relevant and important. National League teams took 91,790 plate appearances last summer. Pitchers accounted for 5,015 of these, or just over five percent. It is this author’s opinion that the moments of shock, hilarity and even unexpected greatness that result from pitchers hitting are still common enough to warrant one-in-20 plate appearances a season. It’s impossible to deny, though, that the writing appears to be on the wall and the era of the Universal DH Rule is now a matter of when, not if. In acknowledgement of this seeming inevitability, both today and next week here at The Hardball Times I’ll be celebrating the bizarre and, yes, suboptimal quirk of pitchers hitting as a source of entertainment and joy.

We’ll kick off the tribute today with a look at a collection of shocking, memorable, and immortal moments in pitchers hitting. Next week, we’ll continue on with delightful absurdities including expectation defiance, thrilling debuts, and, of course, Bartolo.

I feel obligated to mention that the greatness left on the proverbial cutting room floor in planning this piece is enough to fill a book. If I left out your favorite moment or your favorite hurler to watch hit, trust that it pained me to do so, and I ask you to please share other legendary moments in the comments section.

Part I: Greatness and Dramatics

The Grand Slam

In 2008, Johan Santana finished third in Cy Young Award voting. It was his fifth consecutive year finishing in the top five and his sixth consecutive year in the top 10. He was undeniably one of the greatest pitchers in baseball and had been for an enviable amount of time. Felix Hernandez, on the other hand, was a 22-year-old pitcher on the precipice of becoming one of the greatest pitchers in baseball. Interleague play is not without its flaws, but one of the great benefits of the system is that it creates match-ups like the one that saw the present-great Santana and the future-great Hernandez face off against one another on June 23rd, 2008 at Shea Stadium.

In the top of the second, Santana should have been out of the inning. With runners on first and second and two outs, he induced a weak ground ball off the bat of Mariners center fielder Willie Bloomquist, but Mets third baseman David Wright was unable to execute the play and wound up charged with an E5. Consequently, Felix Hernandez stepped to the plate with the bases loaded and two outs.

Having played his entire career in Seattle, Hernandez entered the game with a limited and thoroughly unimpressive track record at the plate: 1-for-8 with a single and six strikeouts. Now he was tasked with facing one of the best pitchers in the world. Against incomprehensible odds, Hernandez took the first pitch he saw from Santana and promptly deposited it over the fence in right center field for an opposite field blast on one of the more unattractive swings you will ever see.

Since the DH Rule went into effect in 1973, King Felix’s homer is the only grand slam hit by an American League pitcher. Greatness doesn’t come much more unexpected than that.

The Walk-Off

In the era when pitchers regularly tossed nine-inning complete games and even extra-inning complete games, it wasn’t unheard of for pitchers to record a walk-off hit. On June 19th, 1967, Indians starting pitcher Steve Hargan pitched nine innings, but with the game knotted at two a piece he dutifully stepped to the plate in the bottom of the ninth with one on and two outs only to hit a walk-off two run homer. In 357 career plate appearances, it was Hargan’s only career home run.

The most recent walk-off hit by a starting pitcher came on September 18th, 1971, when the Cubs faced off against the Phillies in Veterans Stadium’s rookie season. The Phillies starting pitcher that day, Rick Wise, allowed three runs, just two earned, through 12 innings of work. After allowing a leadoff homer in the second inning, Wise retired 32 consecutive Cubs until Ron Santo tagged him for a two-out single in the 12th. Feel free to go back and read that absolutely absurd sentence one more time. And still, when his spot in the lineup came up in the bottom of the 12th, Wise stayed in the game! With the bases loaded and one out, he recorded a walk-off single, upping his batting line on the day to 3-for-6. Pitcher wins may be a highly flawed stat, but there is no doubt that Wise earned his “W” that day.

The walk-off pitcher hit is a joy baseball fans rarely have the opportunity to know anymore, with the last coming in 2005 on a walk-off single in the 14th by Reds reliever Randy Keisler. In 2014, however, we got a glimpse of the joy and incredulity induced by a pitcher walk-off when the Brewers took on the Orioles at Miller Park on May 27th.

In the bottom of the ninth, Jonathan Lucroy sent the game to extra innings with a game-tying RBI single. Brewers closer Francisco Rodriguez efficiently retired the Orioles in the top of the 10th, but in the bottom of the inning the Orioles made a calculated strategic move that backfired in dramatic fashion. Orioles reliever T.J. McFarland quickly retired the first two batters he faced, but with Mark Reynolds up, the pitchers spot on deck, and the Brewers entirely out of position players, he decided to intentionally walk Reynolds.

Brewers manager Ron Roenicke declined to let Rodriguez bat for himself, instead sending the next day’s scheduled starting pitcher, Yovani Gallardo, to the plate as a pinch hitter. Gallardo is one of the best active hitting pitchers, a distinction which is damning with faint praise. Throughout his career, Gallardo has hit .198/.223/.333 with 12 homers in 470 plate appearances. In the 10th inning of a tie game, a “good” hitting pitcher like Gallardo at the plate was still an immensely more appealing option than a true hitter like Reynolds. So, naturally, Gallardo took a 2-0 fastball for a double so deep to left center that Reynolds was able to score all the way from first to win the game and finish off the exceedingly rare and thrilling pitcher pinch-hit walk-off.

The Fall Classic

Thirteen pitchers have homered on baseball’s biggest stage. Among the most notable was Mickey Lolich, who homered for Detroit in the 1968 World Series — it was the only homer of Lolich’s career. An even more impressive World Series pitcher-slugger was Bob Gibson, who went deep in October twice for the St. Louis Cardinals — first in Game Seven of the 1967 Series and then in Game Four the following season against Lolich’s Tigers.

The only other pitcher with two World Series blasts is Dave McNally of the Baltimore Orioles, who homered in both 1969 and 1970.

Since the DH Rule went into effect in 1973, the opportunity for pitchers to engage in heroics at the plate have obviously been halved. The first World Series home run by a pitcher in the DH Era came off the bat of Oakland Athletics pitcher Ken Holtzman in the 1974 World Series. The second wouldn’t come for another 34 years, and the batter couldn’t have been more unlikely if it were by design.

Joe Blanton spent his entire major league career in the American League until he was traded to the Philadelphia Phillies in July 2008. He brought with him to Philly a career batting record of 1-for-10 with five strikeouts. In his first half-season with Philly, he added another hit in 16 at-bats, as well as 10 more strikeouts. All told, Blanton entered the 2008 postseason with two hits in his entire major league career, zero runs scored, zero extra-base hits, and 15 strikeouts in 26 career at-bats.

In the first two rounds of the 2008 playoffs, Blanton struck out all five times he stepped to the plate. When he got the start in Game Four of the World Series, it goes without saying that any and all production expected from him that night was to come entirely from his performance on the mound, not at the plate. In his first at-bat of the night, Blanton struck out. He finally made contact his next time up with a foul pop out to first base. When Blanton batted for a third and final time that evening, the Phillies were winning 5-2, the bases were empty and there were already two outs. Not a soul in Citizens Bank Park expected Blanton to do anything even remotely productive against Rays pitcher Edwin Jackson. But then, for reasons defying all logic and reason, Blanton swung, connected and sent a baseball over the left-field wall.

Countless tremendous home run hitters have failed to do what Joe Blanton inexplicably did in that moment. Of the 27 members of the 500 home run club, seven failed to ever homer in a World Series game. Six more are tied with Joe Blanton at precisely one World Series blast.

There may be no more compelling evidence that anything is possible in baseball than this bizarre side-by-side comparison:

With 260 career plate appearances now under his belt, Blanton is up to 23 career hits, but has still yet to hit a single extra-base hit in the regular season. How significant is that number? Since 1901, only 10 players have ever racked up more plate appearances without a single extra-base hit. He will enter the 2016 season six plate appearances behind the man currently sitting in 10th place on the list, Don Nottebart.

In what has a great case for the most unlikely home run of all-time, a man who is likely to finish his career with a .000 ISO hit a home run in the Fall Classic. There are fewer better examples of the absurd heroics which help make baseball endlessly entertaining.

The Greatest Games

During World War II, Boston Braves pitcher Jim Tobin became the only pitcher in the modern era to hit three home runs in a game, accomplishing the feat on May 13th, 1942, against the Chicago Cubs. His third and final round-tripper that day scored two to break a 4-4 in the bottom of the eighth. Tobin successfully closed out the game in the ninth to secure the win. As if that weren’t enough, he had homered the previous day as a pinch hitter. In the span of little more than 24 hours, Tobin hit four homers — a truly remarkable feat given that Tobin homered just 17 times in his entire nine-year career. Yes, this was the first year of four that MLB would play with a diluted talent base thanks to players shipping off to fight in World War II. But no matter the talent base, three homers in one game is damn impressive, and especially so for a pitcher.

On September 30th, 1972, Claude Osteen recorded the highest WPA (Win Probability Added) for a pitcher at the plate in a game since at least 1914 (which is as far back as the superb Baseball-Reference Play Index can query). Pitching for the Cincinnati Reds, Osteen stepped to the plate in the top of the eighth with a runner on second, two outs, and his team down 2-1. Osteen slapped an RBI single to tie the game. After a scoreless ninth inning, the game went to the 10th still knotted at two, when Osteen once again stepped to the plate — this time with runners on first and second and two outs. He knocked a two-run double to put his team up, 4-2. Incredibly, Osteen remained in the game to lock down the game. At the end of the day, he had pitched 10 innings, yielded just two runs and gone 2-for-4 at the plate with three runs batted in. He logged 0.660 WPA as a hitter and 0.284 WPA as a pitcher, giving him a jaw-dropping cumulative 0.944 WPA in one game.

There is another game, however, which stands out beyond Tobin and Osteen as having a powerful case for being the greatest single-game performance in baseball’s modern era. On June 23rd, 1971, Rick Wise took the hill for the Philadelphia Phillies against the Cincinnati Reds at Riverfront Stadium. Wise was a decent hitting pitcher throughout his career, as he racked up a career line of .195/.228/.308 with 15 HR in 741 plate appearances, but never did his baseball abilities shine as brightly as they did that evening.

In the sixth inning, Wise yielded a walk to the Reds’ slick fielding shortstop, Dave Concepcion. It was the only baserunner he allowed through nine innings of work. Holding an opposing team to zero runs and zero hits is an incredibly memorable feat on its own, but is not enough to win a game in and of itself. A team needs offense to win, and offense is exactly what Wise provided.

In the fifth inning with a runner on second, Wise knocked a two-run homer against Reds pitcher Ross Grimsley. When Wise next stepped to the plate to lead off the eighth, he went deep for a second time. In one game, Rick Wise managed to toss a nine inning no-hitter while slugging two home runs. I’d call the feat Ruthian, but not even Babe Ruth accomplished such a complete synthesis of baseball talents within the span of one single game.

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Moments of pitcher offensive glory are virtually always unexpected, but some moments are more unexpected than others. Next week we’ll continue on with achievements closer to the Felix Hernandez and Joe Blanton extreme of the unexpected spectrum than the Yovani Gallardo and Rick Wise end.

References & Resources

• Baseball-Reference