The Era of Position Players Pitching
Yesterday, toward the end of an absolute thrashing at the hands of the Twins, the Mariners sent Carlos Ruiz to the mound. That’s notable for the fact that Ruiz is a catcher, and not a pitcher, and yet Ruiz pitched, and he even registered a strikeout! He also walked two guys and coughed up a homer. Not supposed to pitch. Did pitch. It happens.
It’s actually been happening kind of a lot. The day before, the tables were turned, and as the Mariners were maiming the Twins, the Twins sent out Chris Gimenez to pitch. A few days before, the Padres used Erick Aybar. The day before that, the Phillies used Andres Blanco. The day before that, the Twins used…Chris Gimenez. A week before that, the Twins used Chris Gimenez. And on, and on. It used to feel special when a non-pitcher would pitch. It’s still more fun in a blowout than the alternative, but some of the shine has come off the apple.
It’s not too hard to figure out why. These appearances were special because they were rare. They’re still not common, but they’ve become more common than they’ve been. Baseball right now finds itself within a number of eras, but among them, this is the era of position players pitching.
I’m not the first person to point this out. In fact, I’ve even written about this subject before. It hasn’t exactly happened in the shadows, since a non-pitcher pitching still gets social media all atwitter. It’s just that now baseball is on another record pace. Here is a plot of year-to-year non-pitcher pitching appearances since 1967. I’ve manually removed guys like Rick Ankiel, Brooks Kieschnick, and Christian Bethancourt, because they don’t belong with the others.
The highest number in the observed time window: 2015’s 27. At 14, 2017 is already more than halfway there, despite not being halfway through the regular season. Of course, there’s an easier and better way to analyze this information. There are more teams now than there used to be. And, there have been some partial seasons. So I’m going to show you a plot of this expressed as a rate basis, with relief appearances as the denominator.
These are all, of course, very, very small numbers. This season would stand as a record high, yet the actual rate is 0.23%. That is, one out of every 428 relief appearances has involved a position player. And yet, a high is a high. The previous high was 0.18%. So, on the one hand, that’s a difference of just 0.05 percentage points. On the other hand, that’s also a difference of 31%. Position-player-pitching appearances are 31% higher than they ever were before.
One of the problems of analyzing anything based on a small number is that fluke events can skew things. We’re talking about 14 non-pitcher pitching appearances in 2017, but Chris Gimenez has made five of them. Five times, the Twins have asked the catcher to pitch, and that’s extraordinary. That’s already a single-season high for a non-pitcher over the last 50 years, and the Twins have another 101 games to play. I might as well note that Gimenez pitched in three games before this season, giving him a career total of eight appearances. That’s also the high for a non-pitcher over the last 50 years. Things are weird, but Gimenez is very weird, and that second part influences the first.
But you can understand why this would be a trend. Why this would be more than a random statistical fluke. Gimenez aside, why might non-pitcher-pitching appearances be going up? Because, as has long been established, starters are throwing fewer innings, and relievers are also not pitching as much as they used to.
Starters have dropped all the way to 5.58 innings per start. Relievers have bounced back a little, at 1.08, up from 2015’s 1.01, but the rate is still far lower than before. Starters don’t go as long. Relievers don’t go as long. To partially compensate for the latter, there might be more relievers now than before, but you also have issues of prioritization and preservation. Position players work almost exclusively in blowout losses. Working in a blowout might leave a pitcher less available the next day, when the leverage should be higher. And, an inning pitched by some utility bench guy is an inning not put on a hard-throwing reliever’s elbow. Position players seldom hurt themselves, because they’re not throwing as hard as their bodies could conceivably let them. And besides, the position players who pitch tend to be mediocre, anyway.
Altogether, it’s not surprising that we’re seeing what we are. And, again, it’s still not a daily occurrence to see a non-pitcher coming in to pitch. This Mariners/Twins series has been an anomaly. Hitters pitching is still fun, from the fan perspective, and it partially salvages what would otherwise be a lost viewing experience. Now there’s one more thing I’d like to share. How effective have position players actually been? A table:
| Decade | IP | RA | ERA | H/9 | HR/9 | BB/9 | K/9 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1970s | 25.7 | 9.47 | 9.47 | 11.6 | 2.1 | 5.6 | 4.2 |
| 1980s | 70.7 | 7.51 | 7.26 | 11.3 | 1.5 | 6.4 | 3.3 |
| 1990s | 52.0 | 7.27 | 7.10 | 10.6 | 0.9 | 9.3 | 3.3 |
| 2000s | 49.0 | 9.55 | 9.37 | 12.1 | 1.8 | 6.4 | 3.5 |
| 2010s | 120.3 | 6.51 | 5.83 | 10.7 | 2.2 | 4.3 | 2.7 |
They suck. They suck and, because these are blowout situations, they’ve sucked without the opponents even really trying. Not that hitters just take at-bats off or anything, but you could expect less focus when the game is in hand. Less focus, and also more bench substitutions. They suck — but! Look at the stats for this decade. They’re lousy, in that there are lots more walks than strikeouts, and nearly as many home runs as strikeouts, but we’re dealing with position players combining for a 5.83 ERA. That’s the mark over more than 120 innings since 2010. Since 2010, Zach Stewart has posted a 6.82 ERA. Eddie Butler has posted a 6.12 ERA. Alex White, 6.03. Sean O’Sullivan, 6.02. Those names are the names of actual pitchers. Butler and White were first-round draft picks. Those actual pitchers are surely better pitchers than this group of utility guys, yet the results haven’t so much reflected it. Something to think about.
Position players are still bad at pitching, and they’ll never be good at it. Being good isn’t the point. Just showing up and eating an inning is the point, because there are innings that need to be eaten, and there are relievers that need to be saved and protected. This is a trend, and this is an era, and I’m not sure when it might slow down. Every reliever now seems to throw 96, and there’s no sense in making a guy go out and do that if a result has been decided. And so managers can be expected to turn to their bench. Nobody quite has the stomach to forfeit.
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.
Maybe Chris Gimenez belongs in the Brooks Kieschnik category.
I recently met Jesse Orosco. He came into my bar on a very slow day. He came in, just to use the bathroom. He was happy to be recognized in southern California. The all time leader in relief appearances came into relieve himself! Lol.
With starters going fewer and fewer innings, I wonder if fewer teams have room for LOOGYs, Left handed one out guys.
Chris Gimenez has pitched in 8 major league games in his career. That’s one fewer than Adam Johnson, the #2 overall pick for the Twins in 2000.
Twins have been absolutely brutalized on FanGraphs the last couple of days lol
ANy pace or rate assessment of this year has to be taken in context. I don’t know this for sure but there have to be far, far fewer position player pitching appearances in September when rosters expand. In that context, the season is effectively halfway over already
BTW, my favorite position player pitching fact is that Josh Wilson pitched in games for 2 separate teams in 2009 (DBacks and Padres) and pitched for 4 different franchises in his career (Rays and Tigers as well)
Yes, that was an oversight on my part. Presumably this never happens after rosters expand.
I am really shocked that 5’6″ Alexi Amarista pitched for the Padres, once in 2015 and 2016.
I know that some hitters actively lobby for mop-up duty. I wonder if any hitter has ever declined the offer from his manager? I wonder if any position player has ever been pressed into service against his will?
God forbid they became injured, can you imagine Scott Boras (among others) on the other end of the phone if that were to happen.
Well, the article does mention that these guys tend to be the more marginal hitters on the team. The truly valuable guys probably aren’t considerations until late in their careers. Ichiro and Wade Boggs did make late career pitching appearances. If mid 2000’s A-Rod or Jeter were super eager to pitch, I doubt Torre would let them.
Was it Jose Canseco who hurt himself while pitching? That was 1993. I think after that, most teams are wary of putting a current all star hitter on the mound. I can’t think of another current all star hitter who has pitched in recent years, and that is something I pay attention to.
Blue Jays lost Goins for awhile after he pitched against Cleveland last year. I’m sure Boras wasn’t worried though.
But that was kind of a different situation. It wasn’t in a blowout game, it was in a extra inning game so I’m willing to bet he was trying much harder than the usual position player.
God forbid I ever picked up the phone and Scott Boras was on the other end! Nightmares are made of such stuff.
Here is an interesting article on Jose Canseco’s pitching appearance. Apparently, Jose suggested this to his manager early in the season, and the manager cleared it with Rangers brass, including George W. Bush. And Jose continued playing for several weeks before the elbow popped.
I wonder if these guys typically take the next day off after pitching an inning? I guess it depends, and a lot of these guys wouldn’t have played the next day anyway.
I remember D’Angelo Jimenez pitching a scoreless inning and a third in 2002 or something. The Padres thought about using him more, but he never pitched again in the big leagues.
https://miscbaseball.wordpress.com/2010/08/07/kevin-kennedy-explaining-why-he-had-jose-canseco-pitch-in-1993/
This trend will continue until the next serious arm injury to a position player, I’d imagine.
What a time to be alive.
What a wacky data table. The hr/9 rates are lowest in the 90’s, which is the thick of the Steroid Era. The k/9 is highest in the 70s and lowest in the 2010’s! Could this be due to the gap in velocity? I’m assuming position players threw as hard in the 70s and they do now (low 80s, typically), but the regular pitchers didn’t throw nearly as hard.
The problem is that there is no good way to document how hard position players throw. Some players try hard and others don’t see the need. You got Dean Anna basically just lobbing the ball at 70 mph; you also have Mitch Moreland slinging at 91 mph and mixing in a legitimate slider, and then there’s lifelong knuckleballer Danny Worth.
And it is also the era of the 8 man bullpen.
The fact that these two eras are occurring simultaneously is very telling about how pitchers are used.
I believe that position players pitching should become mandatory if one team falls behind the other team by 8 or more runs, except in places like Colorado. Why, because position players pitching is awesome, that’s why. Also, I think Harper could put up an ERA below 5 consistently. He’s touched a 100 MPH several times from right field on flat ground.