Oops…I see that Walter Johnson was already mentioned. His batting avg was .235 as the previous poster said. I was looking at his On base percentage.
Just a tangential factoid to share: The Giants broadcast team (best in baseball, iMHO) of Mike Krukow (former pitcher) and Duane Kuiper( former 2B) – Krukow has more lifetime home runs, 12 vs 1.
I was considering Rick Ankiel for the Cardinals, although I don’t know if the player in question has to have been a pitcher and a hitter at the same time.
Just the OP here, so pay no particular attention, but I think Ankiel is closer to what I’m seeking than Gibson, a guy who functioned as a batter in competition with other batters. I’m more seeking to find those than to identify pitchers who were okay with the bat, though I’ll settle for those if we can’t find more legitimate position players.
It’s an open question whether Gibson could have played a position if his arm went bad on him, but there’s no question but that Ankiel could have because he did.
For the Giants, I’ll nominate Clint Hartung who had a career much like Ankiel’s.
Ken Brett appeared in 30 games for the Royals over 2 seasons, pitching just 45 innings. He had zero plate appearances in that stretch.
KC began play in 1969, so the franchise had just four seasons before the DH was instituted. Their best hitting pitcher in that span was probably Al Fitzmorris, who batted .242 over those four years. In his Royals career, he was 70-48. He might be the best candidate for KC.
Michael Lorenzen would be the Reds version. In 2019, he pitched in 73 games and played outfield in 29 with 7 times pinch hitting and 13 times as a pinch runner.
If Smoky Joe Wood would have done everything at the same time for the same franchise he would be on the list. Wood’s best season was in 1912 with the Boston Red Sox, when he had an ERA of 1.91, 258 strikeouts, a record of 34 wins and only 5 losses. He was injured the following season and while he continured to pitch, it wasn’t to the same level as 1912.
He sat out the 1916 and most of 1917 before being sold to the Cleveland Indians. He became an outfielder who Wood finished in the top 10 in RBI twice (1918 and 1922) and in 1918 was in the top 10 in hone runs, doubles, batting average, and total bases.
Pitchers prior to the 1970s generally couldn’t hit either. We hear a lot about the ones that could, but most sucked. Lefty Grove was a career .148 hitter, Bob Feller hit .151, Warren Spahn hit a few homers every year but was still a terrible hitter, Satchel Paige managed to keep above .200 but at the expense of any power or walks, and on and on. Don Drysale had that one great year but he was, overall, a very bad hitter; .186 for his career, and his slugging percentage was below .300.
The main reason pitchers generally don’t hit well is that pitching is so specific an athletic skill that it’s almost as if you are selecting people to play an entirely different sport. In a sense pitchers aren’t MLB quality hitters for the same reason NHL defensemen aren’t MLB quality hitters; why would they be? Obviously that’s not 100 percent the case, since pitchers as a group absolutely do hit better than if you chose randomly selected athletes from other sports. However, it’s generally the reason. MLB teams, when selecting pitchers, don’t give a shit if they can hit or not because there is no measurable amount of pitching skill they can give up to get a pitcher who hits better.
Of course, the lack of practice will now mean pitchers won’t be able to hit at all; there is no doubt the lack of batting practice affects pitchers, and now they’ll get none, unless they’re Shohei Ohtani. It is interesting here to note pitchers are also disproportionately likely to be bad FIELDERS; their collective fielding percentage is bad, and some great pitchers were just hideous as fielders. Nolan Ryan couldn’t catch a cold (or hit, actually.) The reason for their general mediocrity is the same; no one was selecting pitchers for fielding skill. However, there’s a lower limit as to how mediocre they could ever be, because they’re always practicing. Fielding drills for pitchers are a constant in organized baseball - you are CONSTANTLY drilling in that tricky 3-1 play at first, as well as proper base coverage on different scenarios. So unlike hitting, they never stop practicing their fielding.
I previously nominated Wes Ferrell for Cleveland, but although he was a career .280 hittter in comparison to Bob Lemon’s .232 lifetime mark, Lemon was not only elected to the Hall of Fame after compiling a 207-128 pitching record, but played 28 games in the outfield and two at third base during his time with the Indians.
Ferrell is one of the most underrated players in the history of baseball. There is a pretty good argument he’s the greatest hitting pitcher in baseball history who was not used as an everyday position player at any point, but he was also a really, really good pitcher.
Their best hitting pitcher was actually Jim Rooker. Fitz outdid him on the pitching end of things over the course of his Royals career, which extended to 1976, but if you limit it to the pre-DH years, Rooker’s ERA was a bit lower and his K-BB ratio a bit better (his W-L record was worse, but I think most baseball fans have come to agree that that’s not the best statistic by which to judge pitching performance).
If I may be permitted a bit of self-promotion, I researched and wrote an article on the subject (from the batting side): https://www.royalsreview.com/2022/3/21/22979399/royals-pitchers-hitting-the-least-bad-the-truly-ugly-and-the
For Cleveland and Detroit, allow me please to nominate George Uhle. As a pitcher, he had a winning record and ERA under 4 for both teams (Cleveland from 1919 through 1928, and Detroit from 1929 until 1933) and he hit over .280 for each of those teams as well. Over the course of his career, he was called upon to pinch-hit more than 200 times.