Pitchers and Hitting

by
June 9, 2009

In 25 plate appearances, Jamie Moyer has more walks (6) than some regular positional players. In fact, Moyer’s .348 on-base percentage is impressive when his .067 batting average is taken into account. As you can guess, Moyer leads all pitchers with at least 20 plate appearances in bases on balls. Bengie Molina, Cristian Guzman, Miguel Tejada, Marlon Byrd, and Jeff Francour are within two walks of Moyer’s range. Congratulations guys, a 40-something-year old pitcher is doing a better job at drawing a walk than you are.

Some other tidbits from when pitchers hit…

Livan Hernandez has struck out the lowest percentage amount of any pitcher. Mike Pelfrey has the second lowest percentage. I guess the Mets preach contact to their pitchers. Paul Maholm is striking out 63% of the time. Josh Johnson and Moyer are the other two pitchers with more than 60% strikeouts.

Carlos Zambrano has the highest ISO at .529, Micah Owings isn’t too far behind at .242, and Yovani Gollardo is the only other pitcher over .150. I guess the National League Central has a penchant for finding pitchers with capable hitting abilities. Tons of pitchers have only singles to their credit this season.

The absolute worst hitting pitchers, as measured by wRAA: Wandy Rodriguez (-6.5), Randy Wolf (-6.1), and Ryan Dempster (-5.5). Meanwhile, only three pitchers have positive wRAA: Micha Owings (0.4), Carlos Zambrano (0.3), and Mike Hampton (0.3).

The Marlins have the worst hitting staff in the NL while the D-Backs and Phillies have the best – I guess they have to do something to make up for the poor starting. Click here to view a png of the rest of the NL’s placement as of last night.

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Bill B.
16 years ago

Surprised that Wolf is hitting so poorly — he was always a threat when he was a Phillie. Not surprising that the Phillies have the best collective hitting corps of pitchers. Cole Hamels in particular can really hit for a pitcher.

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