North Shore Tavern Mound Visit: The best of Pirates pitchers hitting

It was an inevitability, but now it is official. The designated hitter is coming to the National League.

Reflecting on it, it’s fairly odd that pitchers hit again in 2021 after the DH was adopted for the abbreviated 2020 season, but the baseball purists got one more year to watch what were, by and large, terrible at-bats.

They were particularly terrible for the Pirates last year, finishing with a .072/.110/.098 slash line, all second-to-last in the senior circuit behind the Marlins. It was a – can we call this a departure from the norm? Since 1900, Pirates pitchers have a .424 OPS, the best out of any National League club. There, that’s a useless piece of information you can use in idle conversation.

In honor of the DH coming to the National League and the very real possibility that the last Pirate pitcher has swung a bat (Bubba Chandler and potential two-way players notwithstanding), let’s take a moment to honor great moments and performances in Pirates pitchers hitting. 

MOST CAREER HITS: WILBUR COOPER, 269

Cooper played 13 seasons with the Pirates from 1912-1924, posting an ERA+ over 100 in 11 of those seasons. While you wouldn’t consider a .240 batting average and .576 OPS as particularly good, it’s more than enough for a pitcher. And since pitchers made more starts a century ago than they do now, Cooper had plenty of opportunities to swing a bat and picked up 269 hits in his career. 

For curiosity’s sake I also took a look at who had the most hits in the 21st century, and it’s Zach Duke with 49. 

MOST CAREER RBIs: VERN LAW, 90

The 1960 Cy Young winner, Law holds a couple hitting records for Pirates pitchers, including home runs (11) and extra-base hits (53). It shouldn’t be a surprise then that his extra-base pop (well, by pitcher standards) resulted in more RBIs than any other Pirate pitcher.

I went by when RBIs became an official stat in 1920. Going by Stathead’s database, Cooper did drive in 93 runs in his career, but the majority of those came before the stat was properly documented. Law gets the win by virtue of potentially bad 110-year-old bookkeeping.

HIGHEST CAREER OPS (min. 100 PA): CLAUDE HENDRIX, .736 

Hendrix pitched three years for the Pirates from 1911-1913, compiling a 2.71 ERA over 648 ⅓ innings. He was no slouch at the plate either, recording an impressive .736 and 104 OPS+ over 272 plate appearances. In 1912, he hit .322 over 126 trips to the plate. That’s really good, even if he was no Erv Brame, who hit a franchise best .353 in 1930 (min. 100 PAs again). 

After three years with the Pirates, Hendrix wanted a raise to $7,500, and when the team didn’t give it to him, he left the team. See, even in a section about pitcher batting averages you can’t escape baseball labor disputes.

LOWEST CAREER OPS (min. 100 PA): IVAN NOVA, .079 OPS

For three years, Nova was a fine back of the rotation pitcher for the Pirates who had a couple stretches of brilliance on the bump. But as a hitter, he stunk. After spending his entire career in the American League before being traded to the Pirates, Nova had trouble getting bunts down and almost always jogged to first. 

In 2018, Nova had one hit in 53 at-bats, which was a .019 batting average. That’s the worst batting average in franchise history from anyone with at least 50 at-bats, barely edging out his 2017 campaign where he hit .020.

GREATEST WPA PLAY: EMIL YDE, .537 ON JUNE 25, 1924

Win Probability Added (WPA) ignores who is up at bat and looks solely at a situation. In reality, if you need to rely on your pitcher at the plate late in the game, you have a much lower chance of winning than if you had the first baseman in the same spot, but WPA ignores that and weighs each hitter equally. 

So gather round while I tell you the tale of Emil Yde. On June 25, 1924, he came up with the bases juiced and two outs in the bottom of the ninth, trailing by three. He delivered, doubling home all three runs to tie the game, improving his team’s chances of winning by 51.1%. 

Five innings later in the bottom of the 14th, Yde came through again with a two-run walk-off triple to win it. That had a WPA of .537 and went down as one of the craziest finishes in early history.

GREATEST CWPA PLAY: VERN LAW, 6.54% IN GAME FOUR OF THE 1960 WORLD SERIES

The “C” stands for championship, so it’s the same mindset as WPA, but on a greater scale. Which play gave a team a greater chance to hoist the trophy? As you would expect, these moments consist mostly of World Series and playoff games. 

Trailing 1-0 in the top of the fifth in game four, Law roped a double to plate a pair and give the Pirates the lead. They went on to win that game four by one run and even the series up at two apiece. Even in the middle inning of the middle game of the series, that increased the Pirates’ World Series chances about 6 and a half percent.

Coincidentally, in game seven, Law reduced the cWPA by 9.99% when he grounded into a second inning double-play. In the history of hitters pitching, there was only one instance of a pitcher hurting his team’s championship probability more (Dizzy Trout’s ground out in the top of the ninth in a tied game seven in 1946).

THE BUNT KINGS: DENNY NEAGLE (16 IN 1996), BOB FRIEND (112 CAREER)

While not ideal, oftentimes the most productive at-bat a pitcher could have would be just to move the runner up another base. This requires no further explanation. Neagle laid down 16 successful bunts in 1996 and Friend moved the runners over 112 times. That had to have counted for something.

HIGHEST EXIT VELOCITY: WIL CROWE, 110.7 MPH

Wil Crowe had two hits in 35 at-bats in 2021. He wasn’t a huge threat at the plate, but on Sept. 5 in Chicago, he got a hold of a belt-high Zach Davies sinker and roped it 110.7 mph.

The only other pitcher to get a base hit on a ball hit that hard last season was Shohei Ohtani.

MOST HARD CONTACT: FRANCISCO LIRIANO AND STEVEN BRAULT, 22

Perhaps it’s a bit anticlimactic to end this way because Liriano and Brault would probably be everyone’s choice when asked who was the best Pirates pitcher hitter over the last decade. But considering Liriano played in about a year and a half in the Statcast era with the Pirates while Brault played his whole career in it, I’d give bonus points to the elder southpaw. 

Brault, however, will always have this 441-footer against the Rockies, the longest batted ball in recorded history for a Pirate pitcher:

The designated hitter is going to bring a lot more offense to the game, but there is something magical about a pitcher home run. They’ll remain fun memories to keep from when the league played two different styles of game.