Why do pitchers suck at hitting once they reach minor/major league?

The Game Room
41

I think you’re right Cliffy. If someone can’t appreciate the tactical decisions generated by requiring all players (including pitchers) to hit then the facets of baseball that they enjoy aren’t really the same ones I enjoy.

Baseball has a pace, a rhythm, a “feel” that is just off if I’m watching an AL game. I’m no longer watching the pitcher’s pitch count or when his spot is going to come up in the order. I no longer get to second guess my manager when he lets the starter bat for himself down 1-0 with a man on. Hell, I don’t get the random joy of seeing a completely helpless pitcher slap a 50-hopper through the right side for a base hit (or the painful disbelief when the opposing pitcher is walked to lead off an inning).

I wouldn’t trade that for getting one more slugger in the lineup, even if it means I have to watch 3 pretty lousy at-bats per game. I understand some people would, and thus, we have the AL :slight_smile:

Are you seriously proposing unlimited substitutions in baseball? Can you imagine what that would do to the pace of the game? Basketball has multiple stoppages in which substitutions occur (as does hockey). Hockey often substitutes during play. You’re trying to compare two vastly different sport. I think the most relevant comparison is cricket, in which every player (even the weak-hitting bowlers) must take a turn at the crease. It’s just part of the game, and always has been.

42

Those are continuous action sports. There are major differences. In continuous action sports, one can switch quickly between offense and defense based on possession. Fatigue plays more of a role in continuous action sports because…the action doesn’t stop.

In sports such as football and baseball, plays often stop, with a natural break in between. The stoppage is even more significant in baseball than it is in football. In football, an offense can control when the next play starts, and a defense can only stop the clock 3 times per half. In baseball, both sides can control when the next play starts and there are unlimited time outs.

To allow unlimited substitutions in baseball would change the game significantly. It would remove much of the strategy from the game, and as most baseball fans would agree, the strategy is one of the most interesting parts of the game.

now, if they had the coaches and managers stop wearing uniforms, I could get behind that rule change.

43

I’m not so down on the DH* (although I agree the game is more interesting in the Senior Circuit), but I just can’t understand the impulse to make the entire game played by separate offensive and defensive squads. Where’s the baseball in that? All you’ve got there is the home run derby played 162 times a year.

–Cliffy

  • One of the reasons I actually like interleague play is because I get to watch AL pitchers come to Nationals Park and flail at the ball like twelve year olds. For that reason I was sort of disappointed that John Smoltz was pitching for the Red Sox when I lucked into (really great!) seats for last Thursday’s Nats/Sox contest. But fortunately David Ortiz muffed an easy catch down the first base line, so it all evens out.
44

Bleh! I agree with those who find the beauty of baseball in that (the DH anomaly aside) everyone who plays, PLAYS. In the field as well as the batter’s box.

From a purely practical point of view, we might see the onset of 5+ hour games. Very rarely is a big inning begun by a miscue in the field, as opposed to an ineffective pitching performance, and pitching is already specialized with the DH rule in the AL. If one were able to field a 1-9 lineup of DHs, this would not improve the fielding or pitching nearly as much as it would allow one-dimensional sluggers to hone their art.

To follow suit with football, baseball would have to have a clock or a mercy rule. Both of which are completely against what baseball is fundamentally about: no matter how big the lead is, until the 27th out is made, you have the throw the ball, you have to field the play, and give the other team a chance to swing the bat.

As for the question raised by the OP, I was under the impression that many of the best position players in the major leagues did in fact pitch in Little League or through High School, or even through college. Babe Ruth is the obvious example of “could do it all at the major league level”, but even players like Nick Swisher on the Yankees follow this pattern. One NY area sports columnist I read pointed out (in reaction to fans howling about how ridiculous it was for Swisher to be the most effective pitcher in a blowout loss earlier this season) that Swisher did, in fact, pitch in HS, as do many American-raised major leaguers, and that throwing 75-MPH “fastballs” for strikes with just a little warming up (as opposed to a whole off-season and spring training) is pretty extraordinary with respect to the general population. In other words, yes, in another universe, Swisher COULD have been developed as a pitcher… Maybe not a MLB caliber pitcher, but the basic talent necessary is there.

Similarly, a friend of mine at work grew up playing in Little League with two current major leaguers, Jason Marquis (a pitcher) and Jody Gerut (an outfielder). This came up in conversation when I mentioned seeing Gerut hit the first HR at Citi Field at the Mets’ home opener this year. I asked him what they were like. They were, both of them, simply the BEST at EVERY POSITION all the way through HS. They could throw, pitch, hit, field, etc., years ahead of their peers. Marquis would hit bombs of HRs when 12 years old while playing with kids two years ahead of him. There was no obvious reason to him (through age 16-ish) to suggest that Marquis would end up being a pitcher (with the typically poor hitting stats for a pitcher) while Gerut would be an position player. The differences surely are real, but are only visible when their top-end talent gets refined, trained and directed at the college or minor-league level.

45

The Mariners do a thing for some home games where they bring some young kid into the broadcast booth to be a “Junior Broadcaster” for an inning, and Rick Rizzs has a conversation with them. Invariably, the kid plays Little League (or softball if it’s a girl), and when Rick asks what position they play, the answer is always “Pitcher and …” *

So I think at that level, everybody gets to pitch until they get to the point where they can start separating out those who can actually pitch well. However, I never played Little League, so this is purely anecdotal.

  • I’ve been meaning to write to Mr. Rizzs to suggest that, since this is radio, he should stop asking questions that have “Yes or no” answers, because the younger kids, being nervous, tend to answer those by nodding or shaking their heads, which really doesn’t translate on radio. For example, instead of asking, “Is this your first visit to Safeco Field?”, ask “How many times have you visited Safeco Field?”
46

How is that any different than watching NL pitchers flail at the ball like twelve year olds? Watching pitchers bat is boring and stupid. For every ounce of “strategy” involved with pitchers hitting, you get 10 tons of interesting situations killed by a pitcher batting. All those “2 on, 2 out, oh well the pitchers up so much for that” kinds of things. And its not at all fun to watch someone close their eyes and bloop something in, either. I would honestly rather watch them bring a fan from the stands in to hit then watch a pitcher hit. At least they have an excuse!

47

:rolleyes:

In 2008, the Diamondbacks had 190 plate appearances by their 9th hitter with a runner in scoring position. That doesn’t subtract out any substitutions for a PH. In that situation, they hit .241/.318. (Their #3 hitters hit .291/.416 in 191 plate appearances.) I just can’t muster that much outrage over “all those” 190 plate appearances, many of which came with no outs.

(The 9-hole accounted for 10 double plays overall while the #3 hitters hit into 25, which certainly accounts for the 40 v. 4 advantage the pitchers had in sacrifice hits as well. Just because they’re not swinging for the fences doesn’t mean their time at the plate is “boring”.)

48

rolleyes are for morons who can’t discuss things objectively. Arguments are much more effective without them.

190 means more than once per game. If it happened once a week I would think that was too much. And the fences have nothing to do with it, the fact is that it isn’t fun watching someone incompetent perform someone else’s job. I dont see anything exciting about the strategy of a doubleswitch.

49

Then bring up at least one objective fact, rather than an opinion based on evidence I just countered.

50

This is the part I don’t understand. The pitcher is a baseball player. His job is to play baseball. Part of playing baseball is batting. Another part is playing the field. The final part is running the bases. All players must do all parts. It has always been this way, and (hopefully) always will be (at least in the NL).

Well, why not? Does any baseball strategy excite you?

Games become interesting by their constraints. Chess would be less interesting if every piece could move like a queen. Basketball would be diminished if you didn’t have to dribble. Hockey would suck if there were no limits on goalie pad size. The limitations imposed by having every player both hit, field, and run is what gives baseball its depth. Otherwise you have what someone mentioned above - 162 home run derbies.

51

Well, to be fair, every once in a while you get something exciting like Felix Hernandez of the Mariners hitting a grand slam off Johan Santana of the Mets :smiley:

52

I don’t need to, you did it for me. 190 is way too many times to auto-kill an interesting rally. 19 is too many, IMO.

A pitchers job is to pitch. You don’t see catchers playing shortstop, because thats not their job, they would suck at it, and it isn’t fun watching people suck at something professionally.

To me, by far the most interesting thing about baseball is the battle between pitcher and hitter. What is the situation? What count is it? What is the pitchers best pitch? Where does the hitter like the ball? What happened last at bat? To me that is the fun part. When the pitcher comes up, all of that goes out the window and its just “can he make contact and maybe get lucky and find a hole” which isn’t interesting to me at all.

53

I find it kind of interesting that you picked the two positions that hit the worst - sometimes almost as bad as pitchers. A poor-hitting SS is often worth carrying if his defense is superb. This team-building strategy is interesting, and all of that would go away if we went with gonzomax’s approach and had a full hitting team and a full defense team.

How far are you willing to take your aversion to watching pros “suck”? Should NBA teams let better free-throw shooters stand in for Shaq? Should every baseball player get a pinch-runner if they’re slow? Nobody likes watching crappy third lines in hockey so maybe we should have longer breaks so the better players can rest up and stay on the ice.

This is all good stuff, and certainly the primary focus of the game. I guess I just don’t have a problem with the fact that sometimes the pitcher will be at a large advantage against the batter. I’m of the “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” school of thought and when it comes to baseball I absolutely don’t think it’s broke.

54

The worst hitting catcher with more than 100 abs this year is Rob Johnson with an ave of .183. How many pitchers have an average that high? My player sorter wont let me sort pitchers by batting average or Id answer that myself, but I’m guessing not many. By contrast, there are 20 catchers with more than 100 abs with an ave of higher than .250 and 10 with an ave of .275 or higher (iirc .270 is the league average). I see over 25 SSs with 100+ abs and aves higher than .270 (granted, some of these are util players with multiple position eligibility, not everyday SS per se) so in other words I’m not buying your all-glove-no-stick argument. If it makes you feel better, you can swap out “shortstop” for “outfield” and my argument remains the same.

Here’s how far I would take it: when someone has no chance other than blind luck to successfully accomplish something, that’s when I lose interest. None of your hypotheticals enter that realm (I don’t watch hockey so I’ll take a mulligan on that one).

55

Well done. Clearly the numbers showed pitchers creating outs all 190 of those times. They hit a perfect .000, and probably didn’t even move any runners.

I may not see catchers playing short, but I do them bat every game. Why is that? The majority of them are terrible hitters -why don’t we have another DH for them? (Using catchers as an example was the single worst thing to do for your argument, btw.)

56

See post #54

57

You say this, and yet one of the accepted facts in this very thread is that pitchers generally do not treat hitting as being an important part of their job.

I actually like having one league with one set of rules and one with another, anyway, but let’s not pretend that the NL is some sort of super-genius-only strategy fest. Baseball fans have the double switch figured out by the time they’re ten years old.

58

I’ll let you go one further - I’ll swap out “shortstop” for “average DH”. Why compare pitchers to someone else on the field, when we can compare them to their actual batting counterpart in the AL, in the context of the entire lineup? Here’s the numbers from 07-09


Year	League	R/G	HR	BA	OBP
2007	AL	4.90	0.990	0.271	0.338
	NL	4.71	1.040	0.266	0.334
2008	AL	4.78	1.000	0.268	0.336
	NL	4.54	1.010	0.260	0.331
2009	AL	4.80	1.130	0.264	0.336
	NL	4.45	0.940	0.257	0.330

If you can point to where having pitchers batting significantly changes the outcome of the NL’s overall offense, I’d love to see it.

59

Of course its not difficult strategy. I never claimed it was. But it’s still more strategy than having a DH for the pitcher. It gives the manager (and the fans) a few more things to think about. And managers do still routinely screw it up.

And yes, pitchers don’t work on hitting (much) - although some do work a pretty fair amount on bunting. Their primary concern is being effective pitchers. They still have to go up there and take their cuts, and the other team has to try to get them out.

Really, at its core, my aversion is an aesthetic one - baseball has some lovely symmetry (9 innings, 9 players, 3 strikes, 3 outs, etc…) that I feel is marred by having one extra player just batting. Silly, probably, but I’m not the only one that feels that way I’m sure.

That said, having the DL in the AL for aging sluggers to go at the end of their career certainly isn’t the worst rule change to happen to baseball (hello inter-league play, unbalanced schedules, and the wild card!).

60

High schooler Bryce “The Lebron James of Baseball” Harper (SI story) hits mammoth home runs and throws 96 mph fastballs. Again this is a Gretzky-like case where he is simply a freak of nature who can do anything he wants against kids his own age. Once he gets into pro baseball, he’ll be a position player. If someday in the future when he’s in MLB and he gets brought into a blowout game to pitch the ninth after the bullpen runs dry and he gets lit up, did he suddenly start to suck at pitching or is he just out of practice at pitching? Obviously, its the latter…