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Saturday, May 29, 2010

Pitchers batting not 9th

By Tangotiger, 11:47 AM

I sent Gabriel a list of pitchers who were in the batting lineup other than 9th, since 1952. Here’s his observations:

Here’s the story behind Andy Sonnanstine batting 3rd - in an AL game, no less, and forcing Longoria to the bench.

http://scores.espn.go.com/mlb/recap?gameId=290517130&teams=cleveland-indians-vs-tampa-bay-rays

And then Tovar was a Campaneris gimmick:

Tovar
p,c,1b,2b,ss,3b,lf,cf,rf

Johnny Lindell is interesting too. He was out of the majors for three years before making a comeback as a starting pitcher at age 36. And that’s everybody who has batted below 1st-5th in the last 60 years.

On interesting thing to look at - average career batting stats of pitchers batting in each slot by decade.

I like this too:

Pitcher batting 8th

1950s - 69+ (i assume there are a lot of missing games in the 50s)
1960s - 0
1970s - 2
1980s - 0
1990s - 76
2000s - 350

Pitcher batting 7th

1950s - 33+
1960s - 1 (Drysdale)
1970s - 1 (Steve Renko)
1980s - 0
1990s - 1 (Charles Nagy)
2000s - 2 (Dontrelle x2)

Pitcher batting 6th

1950s - 15+ (Mel Parnell x3, Willard Nixon x4, Mickey McDermott x3, 5 others)
1960s - 1 (Gary Peters - not a great hitter, but better than the shortstops of the time, except not Aparacio, who batted 8th)
1970s - 1 (Frank MacCormack - this is a lineup error like the Sonnanstine issue)
1980s - 0
1990s - 0
2000s - 0

I don’t know where the holes are in the boxscores, but it appears that the pitcher batting 6th stops in 1953. Pitcher batting 7th and 8th stops in 1957.

(9) Comments • 2010/05/29 • Sabermetrics • Talent_Distribution

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May 29, 2010
Pitchers batting not 9th