from Amazon
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Two pitchers at the same time
Rob Neyer talks about this strategy, including history.
The Book, p. 174:
An unorthodox solution to all of this is to have two pitchers in the game at the same time, one lefty and one righty. Depending on who is at the plate, one will be on the mound, and the other can be put in the outfield. The worst corner outfielders in the majors cost their teams around 30 runs per 162 games, which equals .185 runs per game or about .005 runs per plate appearance, assuming 39 plate appearances per game. Supposing that a pitcher moonlighting as an outfielder were twice as bad as the worst full-time outfielder in the majors, this would leave us at a penalty of around .010 runs per plate appearance. Now let’s look at the positive side of attempting this.
yada yada yada… it’s +.014 runner per PA on the positive side. So, overall, it’s slightly beneficial. However, we didn’t talk about the MLB rule that limits the number of times you can do this per inning. Overall, it probably works out to close to a wash.
“A pitcher may change to another position only once during the same inning; e.g. the pitcher will not be allowed to assume a position other than a pitcher more than once in the same inning. “
While the first half looks ambiguous, the second half is not. The player is in fact allowed to be a pitcher more than once in the same inning. A P, LF, P scenario is permitted, based on the e.g. wording.
Whether P, LF, RF, P is permitted based on the wording is not clear to me, since the LF to RF switch did not involve “the pitcher”.
I read this to mean that a pitcher can only leave the mound to assume another defensive position once per inning. If he’s in LF he’s no longer the pitcher, and could go to CF, RF, etc, but once on the mound the 2nd time he could not go to another position again until the next inning.
I think this is fairly new. I worked in amateur ball from 1978-90, we used the MLB rulebook, and this deosn’t sound familiar. There it was common place for someone already in the game to be the new pitcher, or the pitcher to take a defensive position.