Has there ever been a case of a baseball player that could play offense but not defense or vise versa?
For example, a pitcher with an incredibly low ERA with a 100 MPH plus fastball, but with a bat, could not hit a basketball thrown by a girl? OR, someone with a .300 plus batting average that is worthless out on the field?
What happens then? Does everyone on a baseball team (single A and up) have to hit and play defense? What’s the scoop?
Dick Stuart, AKA “Dr. Strangeglove” for one…
Offensive skills have never been much of a priority for a pitcher. The major leagues are filled with pitchers who can’t hit well. I doubt that even if a pitcher did hit well that it would give him much of an edge over another pitcher.
As for your second scenario - There are cases of good hitters who are poor fielders. The designated hitter rule allows such players to thrive, since they don’t have to play a defensive position. Even before that rule went into effect, teams would tolerate a poor fielder if his hitting offset his defensive errors by an acceptable margin.
So, to answer your original question: yes. Perhaps others will write in specific players who best illustrate this.
Short MLB answer- in the American League, no. In the National League, yes.
Longer MLB answer: The American League allows for the “designated hittter”, who is allowed to hit for the pitcher. Conversely, the pitcher “fields” for the DH.
In the National League, every pitcher is given a spot in the lineup (usually ninth). If you are still in the lineup when your spot rolls around, you have to bat, you have to bat, except in this situation:
The coach can substitute a hitter for the pitcher in the lineup, this is called the “pinch hitter”. If the game continues, that guy is then replaced by another pitcher at the start of the next inning. To use a pinch hitter, then, you have to take your current pitcher out of the game.
I’ve almost certainly missed something in the above.
You must be from Europe. 
At the professional level, single A and up, virtually all pitchers are totally ineffective hitters. There’s the odd one who can sock a homer now and then but generally speaking they’re awful, basically automatic outs.
Contrary to what some will tell you, this is not a result of the DH rule. Pitchers have always been bad hitters. It’s simply not important for them to be able to hit; a pitcher who can pitch but not hit is far more valuable than a slightly inferior pitcher who can hit. They’re selected only for their pitching skill, so evolution takes over and they lose their hitting ability due to selection.
Now, players who can hit but not field are fairly common. Dick Stuart has already been mentioned. Some other guys who could hit like crazy bastards but not field:
Bobby Bonilla was a very fine hitter but was a brutal defensive player. They tried him at third base AND outfield and he was horrible in both places.
The famed Babe Herman played back in the 1930s and people still talk about what a terrible defensive player he was. On at least two occasions, fly balls bounced off his head.
Frank Thomas, the one playing now, is an absolutely horrific defensive player. He always tried his best but he just never got the hang of it.
Leon Wagner was an unbelievably bad defensive player but he could hit. He used to daydream in the outfield, like a little kid, and get surprised when the ball was hit towards him.
Dave Kingman was one of the strongest home run hitters in major league history, but he was a defensive player of legendary ineptitude; it was once said of him, when he failed to catch a fly ball, “The ball fell among Dave Kingman.”
But the worst ever was Kevin Reimer. Reimer was a Texas Rangers prospect back in the late 80s and he could hit, but he was such a horrible outfielder it drove him out of the major leagues. You had to see how bad the guy was to believe it. He was a worse outfielder than any of the outfielders on my co-ed softball team. If the ball was hit in his direction he would freeze in panic, and then lurch in a randomly chosen direction. Only after taking a few steps would he correct his direction and stumble towards the ball, usually in an arced run. When he got to it he wasn’t very good at catching it, as evidenced by his amazingly bad .948 fielding percentage (average for an outfielder is about .980.) If the ball caromed off a fence he would never anticipate the right bounce. I once saw him play a fly ball into an inside-the-park-home-run, which happens now and then but you have to understand the batter was old Rance Mulliniks, who by that time was about 37 and ran like your grandmother. Reimer was just unbelievable. I am certain he was the worst defensive player in modern major league history to play a significant number of games.
Another bad one was Lonnie Smith. Lonnie wasn’t nearly as bad as Kevin Reimer or Dave Kingman because he was really fast, so he got to a lot of fly balls those guys couldn’t have gotten to with a motorcycle. Lonnie used to fall down, though, all the time. He had really small feet and seemed to have trouble staying on them. I bet he fell on his face or his ass a hundred, maybe 150 times a year, and every now and then he’d fall down and the ball would bounce off his foot or something and go merrily rolling into the corner for a three-base error. Sometimes he would fall down three times in a single game. They called him “Skates” because he fell down so much, and it was just hilarious to watch; he even made fun of himself after awhile. He had a good arm and decent range, though, so he wasn’t TERRIBLE, and he was a good hitter and a great baserunner.
Another guy who can’t field, but is a great pitcher, is Randy Johnson. Johnson might well be the worst fielding pitcher in major league history. His career fielding percentage is .890, which is the fielding equivalent of batting about .120 with no power. He is just astoundingly bad. Watching him try to field a ball hurts my feelings. He’s 6’11" and he’s all arms and legs. When he pitches he’s elegant, but when he tries to field the ball it’s like he’s playing a one-man game of Twister, all tangled up in his own limbs.
On the other side of the coin are players like Bob Uecker. Yes, that Bob Uecker. He was a catcher in the NL for 6 seasons, had a good arm but couldn’t hit. His lifetime batting average is .200.
Also, The Giambi brothers cannot field at all (and some Sox fans would argue that Jermey can’t hit either, but that is a different thread)
Well, for guys who could not hit but could field, you have Bill Bergen, absolutely the worst hitter in the history of the major leagues. Bergen stayed in the majors for eleven years thanks to having a good glove, but he was a worse hitter than most pitchers. His CAREER batting average was .170; he couldn’t draw walks, and he hit two homers in his whole career. His best year he hit .227. He was easily, far and away, the most inept hitter to ever play a significant number of games.
Oh, one more: The legendary Ray Oyler, Shortstop for the Tigers. 542 career games and 1265 ABs over 6 years. .175 career average with a .258 OBP and a .251 SLG. Now I wasn’t around then, but my stepdad loves to call him the worst hitter of all time, but says he was a slick fielder, but the fielding stats don’t support that (I know they don’t mean much, but it is all I got). I mean, this guy had a .966 career fielding percentage, which doesn’t seem that great to me.
Along with being a grade-A jagoff, Jose Canseco is a prime example of great hitting/awful fielding. Rookie of the year, first player with 40HRs & 40 stolen bases in a season etc., but a constant liability in the field. In a classic moment, he turned a fly ball into a HR by allowing the ball to bounce off his head and over the fence.
As one who witnessed Jose’s early years in the big leagues firsthand–roughly the years 1986-1989 with the Oakland A’s–I can attest that Canseco was not always a “constant liability in the field.” During that period, as Oakland’s regular right fielder, he had speed, good hands and a good arm. But then he won the MVP, mostly for his hitting, and a kind of individual version of the aforementioned evolutionary process took hold: the hitting was what was important, so that stayed prime, while the fielding became irrelevant and he stopped working at it. That’s what led to the–literal–bonehead play mentioned above.
But Canseco still got several more years in “the show” after that, because–as mentioned above–teams will tolerate an “incomplete” player if then need that one specific talent (hitting, or pitching, or fielding, or even running [as a pinch runner]) and can use him accordingly.
As for other individuals, no one has mentioned Marv Throneberry of the Mets–a guy who was the standard of bad fielding when I was just a little kitty.
And I too am wondering where the OPer is from. Has baseball dropped so below the radar in this country that people haven’t even heard of the DH?
And to continue the Joses, Jose Offerman. I saw him playing with the Dukes back in the early 90s, and while he could definitely hit and run, I have no idea why he was played at shortstop. He had so many errors–both fielding and throwing–that I’m amazed he ever made it into regular play for the Dodgers. No idea where he is now or if his fielding has gotten any better in the last decade.
Oyler was considered one of the better defensive shortstops of his time, fielding percentage or not. But he was so bad at the plate that the Tigers taught Mickey Stanley – an outfielder – to play short in September so he could be in the lineup for the 1968 World Series.
What about Mets pitcher Sid Finch? He could really deliver the fast ball (I believe he was clocked at 168 mph) but I don’t recall that he hit worth a lick.
I am the original poster. I am from America. I seldom watch baseball on TV and I live in a foreign country where baseball is not a popular sport. I like football, NFL, college, even arena.
My city of Memphis has a good AAA team with a beautiful ballpark. The lead pitcher’s name is Stubby Clapp (I kid you not.) If i lived in Memphis, I would go watch them play. We had another minor league team that I saw play a few times in the past.
Either there’s two Stubby Clapps, or he changed positions. There was a Stubby Clapp in the Cardinal farm system and was called up to the bigs for a stint, but he played middle infield.
Major league teams might do well to consider pitchers who can hit. That extra 3-4 significant at bats per game can be huge. Babe Ruth showed what happens when you let the pitcher take batting practice, but current teams still haven’t learned the lesson.
If there were a pitcher who could hit like Babe Ruth, or even as half as good as Babe Ruth, that guy would not be a pitcher much longer. That guy would become an everyday player.
There is one pitcher/hitter combo player in the majors now, Brooks Kieschnick of the Milwaukee Brewers. He was a mediocre outfielder/first baseman for most of his career, but has gone back to pitching and often enters games first as a pinch hitter for another pitcher.
I think most teams would take a pitcher that can pitch lights out and can’t hit ;). I’d take Randy Johnson in his prime or Pedro Martinez right now who can’t hit over a pitcher who can hit a bit better.
He’s the perfect example. Alot of managers figure they can eventually move the bad fielder to 1st and solve the problem. You see alot of bad fielders in MLB (many who were decent fielders in college) start out at 3rd and move to right field (where only left-handed pull hitters send balls) and eventually settle on 1st. This, of course, makes first base defense a pretty rare commodity in the league. There hasn’t been a good defensive first baseman since Keith Hernandez.
As for men good at hitting and pitching, there have been a few since Babe Ruth. Collegiate pitchers are often pretty good hitters. If you don’t need the pitching you can mold them into hitters (though, since the rapid league expansion of the last 20 years this is extremely rare.) Rick Ankiel, after having his meltdown as an STL pitcher in the playoffs, has been tried at hitting, and does pretty well in A or AA ball. The skills are often there, but the league is so starved for pitching these days that no pitching prospect will be wasted taking BP in A-ball.