Reflecting On the Era of AL Pitchers Batting

Lately there’s been a good amount of discussion regarding the National League adopting the designated hitter. To try and gain control of the runaway conversation, Rob Manfred has recently indicated no changes are on the horizon, but it really does just feel like a matter of time. I don’t need to go through all the reasons, but I do suspect change is inevitable. Whether it’s two or five or 20 years from now, the NL will probably have the DH, and everything’s going to be fine. The globe is going to be warming, perhaps uncontrollably, but the game of baseball’s going to be fine. Fans adjust, as they always do.

Because I grew up a fan of an AL team, and of a team with an awesome DH, no less, you can imagine where I stand. That being said, when the DH extends into the NL, I’m going to miss pitchers hitting. I don’t know if I’m going to miss the actual event, but I’ll miss the numbers, and I’ll miss the rare surprises. As far as the numbers go, I love that plate appearances in the major leagues are given to athletes with minimal training. It’s the closest we can come to knowing how we might perform if we were asked to bat. And I’ve really loved the AL sub-group. I’ll miss the reality of pitchers hitting in general, but I’ll especially miss AL pitchers trying to give it a go.

Because of interleague play, AL pitchers have had to hit. Of course, because AL pitchers have had to hit, it’s not like they’ve gotten literally zero training. But they practice hitting even less often than NL pitchers do, so it should come as little surprise AL pitchers have annually performed worse at the plate. Maybe, in some small part, the NL is selective for pitchers who are better hitters, but teams usually don’t really care about that. This shouldn’t need very much explaining.

The AL line never crosses the NL line. It comes real close a couple times, but the lines never intersect, over 19 years since interleague play was introduced. So the conclusion is irrefutable: AL pitchers have been worse hitters. It shows up in just about every stat. Embrace the numbers we have, because there’s no guarantee we’re going to have them very much longer, if the DH continues to pick up momentum.

It’s established AL pitchers have been worse. Now for something fun and completely and utterly meaningless. AL pitchers have been terrible, overall, but even within a group of terrible performers, there’s a spread. Sometimes, pitchers have been successful. Sometimes, a team’s pitchers have been successful. Consider, say, last July:

Aaron Nola has been a big-time prospect. He’s an important part of the rebuilding project the Phillies have going on. Nola showed flashes of great talent in the past regular season, but even if he goes on to make the Hall of Fame, he’ll forever know the first run he allowed in the major leagues was a solo dinger by AL pitcher Nate Karns. That’s a clip from Nola’s big-league debut. Nola got stuck with the loss because the Phillies fell 1-0. It was the 18th AL pitcher home run of the interleague era, and the first since 2011. (About a month later, Daniel Norris went deep against Jon Lester in Chicago. The wind was blowing out.)

Last year, the Rays got a pitcher dinger. The Tigers also got a pitcher dinger. Over the whole era, which teams have been the best and the worst in terms of pitcher hitting? Here you go, and I already warned you this was meaningless:

The Brewers get an asterisk because they left the AL in 1998. The Astros get an asterisk because they joined the AL in 2013. Every other team has at least 400 pitcher plate appearances, and the Rangers have gotten the best overall production, with a .165 wOBA. Leaving the Brewers out, the A’s have gotten the least production, with a .097 wOBA. Just for the sake of reference, that’s a 68-point difference, and last season, there was a 68-point difference between Mike Trout and Jose Altuve. It hasn’t been about walks and strikeouts; rather, Rangers pitchers just have a 99-point advantage in BABIP.

What if we introduce some context and leverage? Here’s the same plot, but this time of Win Probability Added:

Again, you can ignore the Brewers and the Astros. By this measure, the Mariners have gained the most, or maybe it would be better put if I said they’ve lost the least. Mariners pitchers have a batting WPA of -4.6, while Yankees pitchers have a batting WPA of -7.2. I’m not real comfortable saying Mariners pitchers have been two and a half wins better — I prefer saying Yankees pitchers have been two and a half wins worse. Obviously, spread over 19 years, that doesn’t mean very much at all, but it’s still fun that the teams haven’t all arranged themselves at exactly the same baseline. There are tiny little advantages and disadvantages, and every Mariners fan can tell you about Felix Hernandez’s grand slam. Mariners pitchers lead the AL in RBI, by four.

There have been just four AL pitcher stolen bases, and before Joe Kelly stole a base in 2014, you have to go all the way back to Kenny Rogers in 2002. There have been those 19 home runs, but the Indians own five of them, while no other team has had more than two. The Brewers, Astros, Twins, Angels, A’s, and Yankees haven’t yet had an AL pitcher homer in the interleague era. The Brewers don’t care anymore, but the others are presumably running out of time.

We haven’t seen the end of AL pitchers at the plate. Even given the most accelerated timeline possible, they’ll get their turns in 2016, and most of them are going to suck. Specifically because they’re going to suck, few down the road will miss how it feels to watch a pitcher in the box, but in time this’ll be a data set that’s all finished updating. We’re going to get to the end of something, and viewed just so, that something has been impossibly beautiful.