A Useless Summary of Position Players Pitching
Andrew Romine isn’t a pitcher, and yet, on Sunday, Andrew Romine pitched. So did — in another game — Chase d’Arnaud. Two days before that, Charlie Culberson took the mound, and so did — in another game — Andrew Romine. Scott Kingery and Roman Quinn pitched the day before that. Brandon Dixon pitched a few days before that.
I’m sure you’ve read by now more than enough summaries of how position players are making more and more appearances on the mound. It’s already happened 14 times in August alone, a month that isn’t even two-thirds complete. This is apparently just a part of the game now — rare, but no longer rare and so exciting. Some people still like it. Some people are troubled. Just in general, from the simplest perspective, it’s probably not good to have pitching done by non-pitchers.
I’m not here to make any suggestions. I’m not here to conduct any meaningful analysis. I just figured we’ve had enough position players pitching that we might as well take a quick look at some numbers. What’s actually taken place so far in 2018? Here are teams sorted in descending order of innings thrown by non-pitchers. You also see the total runs allowed by those position players.
The Diamondbacks and Brewers lead the way, at 6.1 innings. Viewed another way, I guess you could say the Diamondbacks and Brewers are in last place. Five teams haven’t yet had a position player pitch — the Pirates, Tigers, Yankees, Red Sox, and Rockies.
Now here are teams sorted in descending order of innings thrown by non-pitchers against them. You also see the total runs scored against those position players.
The Dodgers are in first, having batted for eight innings against non-pitchers. Over those eight innings, they’ve scored eight runs. Five teams have yet to face a position player pitching — the Pirates, Tigers, Giants, White Sox, and Mariners.
At last, here are team run differentials, considering only innings thrown by position players for and/or against:
In what we’ll simply refer to as “stupid baseball,” the Nationals are the winners, having outscored their opponents by six. The Dodgers have outscored their opponents by five. At the other end, the Phillies are running away with things. While they’ve scored three runs against position players, their own position players have combined to allow 14, yielding a run differential of -11. On the plus side, those runs are basically pointless, since almost every single position-player pitching appearance comes when the game has already been decided. The Phillies’ overall run differential might be 77 runs worse than the Braves’, but at least part of that can be ignored. When position players pitch, it’s hardly regular baseball.
Two teams remain who haven’t yet seen a position player pitch for or against. Those teams are the Pirates and Tigers. For those clubs, at least, the act might retain some of its novelty. There’s still another week and a half before rosters expand, and position players stop doing this. We’ll see if the two ballclubs hold out.
Jeff made Lookout Landing a thing, but he does not still write there about the Mariners. He does write here, sometimes about the Mariners, but usually not.
Roy Hobbs was known to pitch.
Why
why anything
It says right there in the title: “useless”
There is no why.
There is only Jeff.
You had me at useless.
Can we get another chart with WPA to show that these are really useless innings?
Thanks!
pretty sure there was an article along this front recently? I’ll see if I can find it
update: here it is! https://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/has-position-player-pitching-reached-its-peak-or-nadir/
Position players pitching is just an acknowledgement that even without a game clock, there is still such a thing as garbage time in baseball, and expending a limited resource (bullpen arms) for the sake of appearances is counterproductive to long term success. My hunch (and it’s only a hunch, recent trend notwithstanding) is the optimal number of non-pitcher innings is much higher even than what we’re seeing now.
Curious if the Yankees brain trust has something against it though.
You save a bullpen arm, but you are expending a bench player. I strongly suspect that a position player who pitches is even more likely to take the next day off then a bullpen pitcher, and that he’s more likely to be injured.
I don’t think this is happening this year by coincidence, 10 day DL is new, and you can send a guy down and call him back up any time you DL someone, or in 10 days without DLing someone. They’re using more pitchers for shorter appearances, because they have more roster flexibility between games, but when things go wrong during a game they run out of pitchers far faster than they would with longer appearances.
The Yankees had Chasen Shreve on the roster for quite some time so he ended up with the garbage innings. It is also the reason they traded Adam Warren as he was too good to be wasting his time with low leverage situations. Now they have Sonny Gray in the bullpen for all their “who cares” needs.
To be slightly more serious, position players pitch mainly because the bullpen is severely taxed, which usually means either the starters are not giving enough innings and/or the bullpen is pitching poorly. The Yanks have a great bullpen and a good enough starting rotation such that this is not necessary.
Does anyone else see a light-blue bar between the red and blue bars, even though there actually isn’t one?
No, but I’m pretty sure it’s really there.
I want to see more of this. I want pitchers to hit, Molinas to run, and DH’s to pitch. I’ll never get tired of it, like Manute Bol three pointers. Some highlights of my base ball spectating life has been a Bob Gibson grand slam, 42 yo Jim Kaat SB and Jose Canseco knuckle ball.
When the Nats were recently winning 25 to 1, they sent out Kelly in the 9th to finish the game. He gave up 3 runs, threw his mitt to the ground and stared at the dugout. He was released for his insolence.
Now, he might have been thinking, why the hell am I out here ruining my career determining era or fip or xfip in garbage time? You can imagine that from his perspective, sending Michael Taylor out for the inning to give up six runs in exchange for three outs would have been preferable. He might have a point.
As an aside, I am a fanatic fan of position player pitching and of pitcher batting. It sets some sort of perspective on the exceptional skill of the fully qualified pitcher and batter. Except when scherzer bats. That’s just embarrassing for pro hitters.
Now obviously they would never throw Harper, but his 14-15 yo pitching was something to be seen. Sitting 95 with a 50CV-60+FV breaking ball and a right on right change that made you think you were seeing things.
On another aside has anyone ever thought if he stayed at his true position of catcher and the Nationals were instead of running out whoever currently occupies their catcher had the best hitting catcher by far in the game?
How often do position players pitch on the happy side of a blowout though?
This is something I’ve often wondered. It needs to happen more often, I’m sure.
Not often, but a team tends to run through more pitchers when they are giving up 12 runs than when they are giving up 3.
Now just for fun, what do the graphs look like when you include Ohtani?
Amazing to me that before the season Kingery was so valuable that they signed him to a big league contract rather then send him down, and now he is so useless they actually pitch him in games.
So they’re about as useless as most pitchers (or non-hitters) trying to hit.
I thought this would be an analysis trying to find the best pitching position players, to give them a sort of “King of the nerds” crown. I would genuinely be interested in reading something like that. I remember seeing Ichiro pitch around 90 with sink and thinking “maybe in another world…”
Let’s make an estimate of what would happen if a team of only position players pitched to a team of only pitchers. #TeamDeePGordon
Would the fielders be pitchers or position players?
LF: Mark Trumbo
CF: Shin Soo Choo
RF: Nelson Cruz
3B: E5
SS: Hanley Ramirez
2B: Miguel Cabrera
1B: Kendrys Morales
C: Victor Martinez
The Nationals being the best at stupid baseball for 2018 seems about right.