Seems to me that what would make people like Ruth or Ohtani good is that being a pitcher enables them to know even better, as a batter, what a pitcher’s tendencies and foibles are, and vice versa - that being a batter enables them to know, as a pitcher, how to better exploit a batter’s vulnerabilities.
Is it mainly that, or is it entirely unrelated - that Ohtani, etc. are simply great batters in their own right, and great pitchers in their own right, and it has nothing to do with mutual cross-development of skills?
And, he was considered to be a very good hitter, as pitchers go. Similarly, Red Ruffing – a star pitcher for the Yankees in the 1930s and 1940s – was considered to be among the best “hitting pitchers” of all time; he had a career average of .269, which is good, but not amazing, as MLB hitters go.
I think it comes down to the degree of specialization, practice, and skill required to succeed at either role, particularly at the major league level. It’s damned hard to be able to do one of the roles well enough to be a major leaguer, and the number of men who have excelled at both is only a handful.
Yeah, until very recently, there were quite a few pitchers in the National League who batted. And if being a pitcher gave them any advantage as a hitter, it wasn’t enough to overcome the disadvantages that made them worse hitters than almost every position player.
I have wondered whether being a catcher gives a hitter any advantage, either in general or against a pitcher that they once caught. I suspect not, or at least not more than the advantage that a good scouting report gives.
MLB pitchers are bad hitters for basically the same reason they’re bad punters and bad bowlers; there is no reason why they would be good at those things. (They are also disproportionately likely to be poor fielders; some Hall of Fame pitchers, like Nolan Ryan and Randy Johnson, were sub-slo-pitch level fielders.) The skill required to pitch in high level baseball is just so unique that it’s almost as if they’re playing a different sport. Of course, it’s also true that hitting and fielding are entirely different skills, but because the rules of the sport only let you DH for the pitcher, the amount of ineptitude permitted at one or the other for position players has a limit.
That’s one of the reasons why there’s aren’t more Shohei Ohtanis, but in truth there COULD be more. MLB teams are generally extremely risk averse and if they think they have a primo bat or arm they don’t want to risk screwing around. John Olerud was a brilliant college pitcher, but when he went to MLB he never pitched an inning. Rick Ankiel ended up doing both jobs but first he was a pitcher and only when he flamed out was he tried as a full time outfielder.
Exactly so. Baseball people talk about the “five tools” for everyday players:
Hitting for average
Hitting for power
Running
Defense/fielding
Throwing
“Five-tool players,” i.e., those who excel at all of those tools, are a rare breed, and are, as a result, highly valued and sought-after. Most guys who make it to the majors are going to excel at two or three of these, and fielding and throwing are more valued at some positions than others.
The DH means that teams can carry, and use, a guy whose only strong tools are hitting, and at the extreme, you can get a guy like Adam Dunn, who, late in his career, essentially only had one of the five skills (power hitting), but was still an everyday player as a DH.