Remembering 5 Of The Greatest Hitting Pitchers Of All Time
In today's issue, we look back at some highlights of pitchers hitting, including five hurlers from the 20th century who swung the bat far better than their pitching peers.
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Pregame Pepper
Did you know…
. . . As of the 2022 season, the universal designated hitter was officially permanently implemented in both leagues. Thus, there are some pitcher hitting “lasts” under the old system that we want to acknowledge.
Last pitcher to hit a home run: Logan Webb on Oct. 3, 2021, for the San Francisco Giants in a game that helped seal the Giants’ National League West title.
Last pitcher to get a hit: Zack Greinke for the Houston Astros in Game 5 of the 2021 World Series. It came as a pinch-hitter, no less, as he got into the game to take the spot of fellow starter Framber Valdez in the lineup and smoked a line drive to right field in the fourth. Greinke’s hit was the Astros’ hardest-hit ball of the game at 105.9 mph, and it was the first pinch-hit by a pitcher in the postseason since 1923.
Last pitcher to hit a grand slam: Daniel Camarena, a relief pitcher for the San Diego Padres. This momentous occasion occurred on July 8, 2021, against Max Scherzer. It was the first home run Scherzer had ever allowed to a pitcher, and it was Camarena’s first career hit.
Leading Off
The Golden Age Of Hitting Pitchers: 1920-1960
By Russ Walsh
Note: For the purposes of this research, I used OPS (on-base percentage plus slugging percentage) to determine prowess at the plate and 1,000 plate appearances as a measure of longevity. The OPS was chosen as the best single measure of a player’s offensive contribution to the team. I chose 100 plate appearances because I wanted to include only pitchers who were, first and foremost, successful pitchers who happened to be able to hit.
Now that the era of pitchers hitting for themselves has officially ended (the notable exception being Shohei Ohtani), I thought it might be fun to dive into the history of pitchers hitting in the Major Leagues. A search on Stathead quickly revealed that of the top 30 hitting pitchers all-time, 28 of them started their Major League careers before 1950. The two post-1950 pitchers on that list were Vernon Law (1950-1967) of the Pittsburgh Pirates at No. 24 and Bob Forsch, who pitched for the St. Louis Cardinals and Houston Astros from 1974-1989 at No. 28. The other thing immediately noticeable on the Stathead list was that most of the great hitting pitchers played the bulk of their careers between the years 1920 and 1960.
Some exceptions should be noted. Prior to 1920, during the Dead Ball Era, George Mullin of the Detroit Tigers, Jesse Tannehill of the Pirates and Boston Red Sox, and Al Orth of the Philadelphia Phillies, Washington Senators, and New York Yankees had career batting averages in the .250+ range, and their OPS may have been adversely impacted by the dead ball. A few other modern-day pitchers were good hitters as well, including Bob Gibson of the Cardinals, Steve Carlton of the Cardinals and Phillies, and Don Drysdale of the Los Angeles Dodgers. Madison Bumgarner of the San Francisco Giants and now Arizona Diamondbacks, may come to your mind, but he has a career batting average of .172 and an OPS of just .524, not enough to be listed among the best.
Despite these exceptions, however, the Golden Age of Hitting Pitchers was undoubtedly between 1920 and 1960. Here are five of the very best.
Wes Ferrell
Ferrell, who pitched for 15 seasons from 1927-41 for six different teams and won 193 games, is arguably the best hitting pitcher of all time. He slashed .280/.351/.446 for an OPS of .797 in 1,345 plate appearances. His best (hitting) season was 1931, when he hit .319 with nine home runs and a whopping .994 OPS. Ferrell was so good as a hitter that he was called on 164 times to pinch-hit. His pinch-hitting average was .215.
Pitching for the Red Sox on Aug. 12, 1936, Ferrell beat the Philadelphia Athletics, 6-4. He also drove in all six Red Sox runs in the game with two home runs and a single. The home runs were hit in consecutive at-bats in consecutive innings, the third and fourth. The fourth inning home run was a grand slam. On both home runs, Wes’ brother Rick, who was catching the game, was on base. Ferrell hit two home runs in a game five times. On April 29, 1931, Ferrell, pitching for the Cleveland Indians, no-hit the St. Louis Browns, 9-0, and went 2-for-4 with a homer and four RBIs.
George Uhle
A 200 game winner, George Uhle spent most of his 17-year Major League career (1919-1936) with Cleveland and Detroit. While he lacked Ferrell’s power, Uhle was a consistent hitter and batted .289 in 1,513 plate appearances. He also hit .253 in 206 pinch-hitting opportunities.
On May 24, 1929, while pitching for the Tigers against the Chicago White Sox, Uhle tied a Major League record for a pitcher by getting nine at-bats. He had four hits in the game, pitched twenty innings, and picked up the victory when he singled to lead off the 21st inning. He was then pinch-run for by Emil Yde, who scored the game winner.
Uhle’s finest day at the plate came on Aug. 19, 1923 at Dunn Field in Cleveland, when he led the Indians to a 16-3 rout of the Athletics. Uhle went 4-for-5 with two doubles and five RBIs.
Schoolboy Rowe
Despite losing two prime years to service in World War II, Lynnwood Thomas Rowe, known as “Schoolboy,” managed a productive 15 years in MLB, mostly with the Tigers and Phillies. He won 158 and lost 101 with some good Tiger teams and some poor Phillies teams.
Rowe had three seasons where he hit over .300 with at least 100 at-bats. He hit a very respectable .269 in 114 pinch-hit at-bats. On Aug. 14, 1935, he went 5-for-5 with a double and a triple as the Tigers walloped the Washington Senators, 18-2. On July 22, 1939, Rowe mashed a grand slam off the Athletics’ Nels Potter to lead the Tigers to an 11-10 victory. In 1934, Rowe hit .303 with two home runs. Both of his homers were game winners, one in the ninth and one in the 11th.
Don Newcombe
“Big Newk” began his career as a teenager in the Negro Leagues before being signed by the Brooklyn Dodgers and eventually making his Major League debut in 1949. His career record was 153-96. He was the top pitcher on the multiple pennant-winning Dodger teams of the 1950s, but he never won a World Series game. Newcombe’s finest year at the plate was 1955 when he slashed .359/.395/.632 with a 1.028 OPS and seven home runs. For his career he hit .268 with a .697 OPS.
The left-handed-hitting Newcombe had two home runs and three runs batted in to help the Dodgers beat the New York Giants on April 14, 1955, at the Polo Grounds. He homered in consecutive at-bats against the Pirates’ Ron Kline on May 30 that same year. And then on July 15 he went 4-for-5 with a double, a home run, and three RBIs as the Dodgers defeated the Cardinals, 12-3.
Red Ruffing
Hall of Famer Charles Herbert “Red” Ruffing toiled for 22 years in the Major Leagues, mostly with the Red Sox and Yankees. His is a story of two contrasting careers. After compiling a 39-96 record in seven years with Boston, Ruffing became one of the top pitchers in the league with the Yankees, going 231-124 with the Bronx Bombers.
A consistently fine contact hitter, Ruffing hit over .300 eight times in his long career. He hit .374 in 99 at-bats in 1930 with the Yankees. Lifetime he hit .269 with a .695 OPS. He hit .267 in 242 pinch-hitting at bats. On Sept. 14, 1930, Ruffing had two doubles, a triple, and four RBIs as the Yankees beat the Tigers, 10-3. On June 17, 1936, Ruffing went 4-for-5 with two home runs as the Yankees routed the Indians, 15-4. His SABR biography shows Ruffing holding a bat, perhaps as a tribute to his hitting prowess.
These are my top five hitting pitchers from the Golden Era. Others deserve consideration. Red Lucas, Bob Lemon, and Carl Mays would belong on any top ten list from the period. Some might want to include the greatest pitcher of the era, Walter Johnson, a fine hitter who had a .235 average over a staggering 2,324 at-bats in his long and distinguished career.
Russ Walsh is a retired teacher, diehard Phillies fan, and student of the history of baseball with a special interest in the odd, quirky, and once in a lifetime events that happen on the baseball field. He writes for both the SABR BioProject and the SABR Games Project and maintains his own blog The Faith of a Phillies Fan. You can reach Russ on Twitter @faithofaphilli1