The Angels now have the best Pitcher/Batter combination in Shohei Ohtani, and the Red Sox are IMO second-best with Ruth, but every franchise has had, I think, some player who turned in their best combo of the two roles. Can we nominate one player for each franchise who best filled both roles?
To qualify, he must have been successful in BOTH roles–that is, a batter who threw a few innings or a pitcher who did some okay hitting wouldn’t qualify, unless (and this is probably true for some franchises that got started in the past five decades) they simply don’t have any legitimate Pitcher/Batter combos, in which case I guess we’d have to go with a good-hitting pitcher or a batter who threw some effective innings. But I’m looking for the one best from each franchise–if you want to mention several candidates, fine, but select one.
Franchises extend backwards through time–so the Orioles include the St. Louis Browns, etc. In fact, I’ll start the game there, with the Orioles/Browns, and pick George Sisler.
For the Yankees, if we don’t include Babe Ruth (who only pitched 31 innings in pinstripes), it’d probably be Red Ruffing. Ruffing won 231 games for the Yankees in the 1930s and early '40s, and finished in the top 10 in MVP voting three times. He was considered to be among the best hitting pitchers of his era, hitting .270 as a Yankee, and was regularly used as a pinch-hitter.
Indeed, for a lot of franchises, there simply isn’t going to be a guy like this, mostly any AL team which primarily, or exclusively, played after the implementation of the DH in the AL in 1973.
That last thought in the above, “a batter who through some effective innings” is probably going to be even rarer, as position players who come into pitch pretty much only do so in a blowout – they aren’t really expected to be “effective;” they’re just there there to get the game over with and not further stress the team’s actual pitching staff.
Yeah, this is tougher–I’m sure the post-1973 expansion teams will have to pick from position players in blowouts, or maybe those pitchers who batted in games vs. NL teams before the universal DH.
I wasn’t aware of him; it looks like he was an OK relief pitcher later in his career, when he learned a knuckleball, but he wasn’t nearly as good a pitcher as Ruffing, and he was OK, but not great, as a batter – and his two best years as a batter were 1943 and 1944, when baseball’s talent pool was thin due to the war.
Ruffing was a star pitcher, who also batted pretty well; Lindell was a fairly good batter, who also pitched a bit.
Schoolboy Rowe was a solid pitcher for the Tigers way back in the day, and put up solid batting numbers as well, with the Tigers, Phillies and in the Navy.
That last bit is the key, I suppose. Scherzer has a .168 career average, and other modern pitchers who have been known as “good hitters, as pitchers go,” such as Greg Maddux (.171), Tom Glavine (.186), and Zach Greinke (.225) have struggled to get to, or much over, the Mendoza Line.
I suspect that, due to the DH becoming more pervasive in lower levels of baseball over the decades, promising young pitchers likely had less and less opportunity to work on hitting, and those who came up to the NL had far less practice at hitting, compared to guys prior to the '70s.
Facing a lefty, Hampton (who batted righty) was usually more dangerous than at least one batter in his own lineup: per 162 games vs. lefties, he hit 15 HRs, drove in 70 runs, and batted .254.
As a kid, I remember that Don Drysdale was considered both one of the Dodger’s best pitchers (he won a Cy Young) and one of the best hitters (for a pitcher). I don’t know what his career batting average was, but his Wiki page has this:
In 1965, he was the Dodgers’ only .300 hitter and tied his own National League record for pitchers with seven home runs. That year, he also won 23 games and helped the Dodgers to their third World Series title in Los Angeles.
Drysdale had a career .186 average (again, putting him in the “good for a pitcher” range); he had that one season where he hit exactly .300, but otherwise, only hit over .200 in one other season.
If the Red Sox don’t want to claim him, the Royals will. Ken Brett made history by becoming the youngest pitcher to ever appear in a World Series when he debuted for the Sox. He was a good-definitely-not-great pitcher for about 10 years, playing mostly for American League teams in the post-DH world. But as a hitter, his oldest brother claimed he was the most talented hitter in the family. His career playing alongside George in Kansas City was nearly non-existent, but I think he’s our guy. (Greinke was a decent hitter for a pitcher, but I bet Ken would’ve done well in an Ohtani role.)
Wes Ferrell would be my pick for the franchise now known as Guardians. He had an overall MLB record of 193-128 on the mound (including 102-62 with the Indians) and hit .280 with 38 homers for his career, .274 with 19 homers for Cleveland.
