Baseball... Then and Now

News Item: April 29, 1888 – Charlie Ferguson dies of typhoid fever in Philadelphia in the North Broad Street home of teammate Arthur Irwin at the age of 25.

Micah Owings’ recent pinch-hit home run for the D’Backs has re-opened discussion on a fascinating, and practically extinct, subject. That is, the good-hitting pitcher. Owings’ own personal editorial against the abomination known as the designated hitter, plus current amicus briefs from Livan Hernandez, Carlos Zambrano and Cole Hamels, have made it at least seem as if there is some hope at the plate for baseball’s mound corps, despite the fact that almost none of them have much if any experience swinging a bat in anger in professional baseball.

While home runs by Hernandez (his ninth) and Zambrano (his 13^th in 430 career at bats) were noteworthy, as was Hamels (who is hitting .313) knocking a 349 game winner out of the box with a single, it was Owings’ blast that really generated some questions. Should Owings be playing every day (i.e., should he converted to a position player)? Is he one of the best hitting pitchers of the last 50 years? Of all time? Etc., etc., etc. 

It’s way too early to give any definitive answers to such queries. Nonetheless, it is interesting to look at where Owings stands as a hitter and to assess some of the good-hitting pitchers of baseball history. Following his game-tying home run, Owings’ major league batting line read as follows…

AB	R	H	2B	3B	HR	RBI	W	K	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS
79	14	28	8	1	5	18	3	20	.354	.373	.671	158

A very small sample, but an impressive one, especially his Isolated Power of .317. Still, this is nothing to get too carried away over. Any decent-hitting pitcher can have a fluke season that makes him look like the next coming of what’s-his-name, the big lefty the Red Sox turned into an outfielder before selling him to the Yankees. Take Robin Roberts’ 1955 season, for instance.

AB	R	H	2B	3B	HR	RBI	W	K	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS
107	12	27	9	4	2	13	18	18	.252	.360	.467	120

A monumental fluke, since Robbie’s career OPS+ was just 27. And the biggest part of the fluke? His strikeout/walk ratio. One-to-one. Even good hitting pitchers very seldom have anything but a terrible K/W ratio. Look at Owings’ numbers, for instance. Or look at Rick Ankiel’s numbers, while he was a pitcher. He may be tearing it up now as an outfielder, but his K/W ratio at the plate as a pitcher (the less said about his ratio pitching, the better) was 6/29.

Speaking of great single seasons, how about Walter Johnson’s (who was a very good hitting pitcher) incredible 1925 year, which may have been the best hitting season ever for a pitcher in the 20^th Century.

AB	R	H	2B	3B	HR	RBI	W	K	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS
97	12	42	6	1	2	20	3	6	.433	.455	.577	163

Sir Walter, at the age of 37 no less, set the all-time record for single-season batting average for starting pitcher that year, while going 20-7 on the mound.

So, it’s more significant to compare Owings’ career line, not to Roberts’ or Johnson’s big years, but to the career numbers of arguably the current best hitter among the hurler trade, assuming you want to consider Mike Hampton still active…

AB	R	H	2B	3B	HR	RBI	W	K	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS
664	88	161	19	5	15	68	43	176	.242	.292	.354	66

For this era, that’s a pretty good line. In fact, 88 runs scored in 664 at bats is good for a pitcher in any era. Still, Hampton’s numbers, at least in batting average and home runs, pale in comparison with some of the big hitters of the past. The leading home run hitters among pitchers (hit while they were pitching) are…

Wes Ferrell       38

Bob Lemon       37

Warren Spahn   35

Red Ruffing      34

Earl Wilson       33

Don Drysdale    29

John Clarkson   24

Bob Gibson       24

Walter Johnson 23

Jack Stivetts      21

Clarkson (a Hall of Famer for his pitching) and Stivetts were both 19^th Century hurlers, a time when the game, and player usage, was much different, as indicated by the fact that Stivetts actually hit a total of 35 home runs, but he also played 185 games in the field, along with pitching 388 games. Guy Hecker, in 1886, actually led the American Association in hitting with a .341 average while pitching 49 games (26-23), playing first for 22 games and the outfield for 17 games. It was a different game then. Still, the other eight pitchers on this list did do double duty as hitters a fair amount of the time. Here’s the 20^th Century list showing their appearances as something other than a pitcher…

Ferrell               OF-13, PH-161

Lemon              OF-14, 3B-2, PH-139

Spahn               PH-33

Ruffing             OF-3, PH-155

Wilson              PH-67

Drysdale           PH-29

Gibson              PH-68

Johnson            OF-13, PH-118

Ferrell’s 13 games in the outfield were all during the 1933 season when his arm was bothering him. Lemon, of course, came to the majors as an infielder before converting to the mound. And Johnson would go to the outfield in Clark Griffith’s joke games at the end of the season. So, basically, all of these power hitting pitchers were just that, power hitting pitchers, except for various levels of pinch-hitting duties.

Now, for that top 10 batting average pitchers with a minimum of 500 at bats since 1900. It is a completely different list…

Jack Bentley     .322

Ervin Brame     .306

Babe Ruth        .304

Mike O’Neill     .292

Bill Bayne         .290

George Uhle     .288

Johnny Cooney  .288

Doc Crandall     .284

Red Lucas        .282

Chad Kimsey    .282

Earl Yingling     .282

Bentley was another combo player – he came up as a pitcher, went back to the minors and became a first baseman/pitcher and came back to the majors as a pitcher who could also play first base. In fact, since he played in the minors as a Baltimore Oriole, and had torn up the International League as a hitter, he was widely billed as the next… Babe Ruth (that’s his name!). He wasn’t, and he basically just stayed as a pitcher in his second tour of the majors. Most of the rest are pretty anonymous, mainly because they had short and undistinguished pitching careers, except for Uhle, Crandall and Lucas, who are probably better known historically as pinch hitters, not pitchers. Cooney was another case of a pitcher who converted to an outfielder in mid-career – he actually played far more games in the outfield than he pitched (794-159).

Putting the two lists together, throwing in a couple of other current pitchers already mentioned, and leaving out the special cases of Clarkson, Stivetts and Ruth (who always seems to be in a class by himself), let’s look at the career Adjusted OPS figures of these good-hitting pitchers, recognizing that this list is by no means comprehensive, more so just representative of good-hitting pitchers.

Crandall            119

O’Neill             101

Ferrell               100

Kimsey             95

Bentley             90

Brame              89

Uhle                 86

Cooney             86

Yingling            85

Lucas               84

Lemon              82

Ruffing             81

Bayne               77

Wilson              76

Johnson            76

Hampton           66

Gibson              49

Zambrano         47

Drysdale           45

Hernandez        44

Spahn               43

These were/are all good hitting-pitchers. But, with the exception of Crandall, it’s a stretch to call any of them good hitters. Ferrell’s combination of power and average (his .280 just misses the top 10) does give him some points if you’re voting for the best hitting pitcher of all time, however, Crandall had nine home runs, playing his entire career in the Deadball Era, whereas Ferrell played largely in the high-scoring ‘30s.

It is clearly them premature to anoint Owings as anything historic, or to suggest the D’Backs try him in the outfield. He’s only batted 79 times in the majors, sort of like Terry Forster…

AB	R	H	2B	3B	HR	RBI	W	K	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS
78	7	31	4	1	0	7	2	9	.397	.413	.474	145

A nice line, and a nice OPS+. It would make a great APBA card, but it’s not enough to make pronouncements about. Pitchers just don’t hit that well. Even Charlie Ferguson, the Phillies’ pitcher/infielder/outfielder for four years in the 1880s who died of typhoid at the age of 25 before his career could play out, had an OPS+ of just 123. Pitchers don’t have Adjusted OPS figures of 158 or 145, at least not over the long term, or unless they’re Babe Ruth. Still, pitchers hitting is supposed to be part of the game.

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