Pitchers batting in a non-9th lineup spot - 1897-1909

When creating queries for my seasonal lineup databases, I started creating some different ones just out of curiosity of certain stats.

One of these was the pitchers batting in a lineup spot other than the 9th spot.

Here is the number of occurrences by year:


Here are the totals by League, Team, and Year::

NL:

Team	1897	1898	1899	1900	1901	1902	1903	1904	1907
BLN		10								10
BRO	49		7			17	1	3		77
BSN	1	1				1	1			4
CHN	82	6	1			1				90
CIN					2	19		5		26
CL4	1									1
LS3	1									1
NY1		15	3	1	2					21
PHI		1		1						2
PIT		3				1	1			5
SLN	4		1				2		7	14
WSN	1	11	61							73
Grand Total	139	47	73	2	4	39	5	8	7	324

AL:

team	1901	1902	1903	1904	1905	1906	1907	1908
BLA	1	6							7
BOS							1		1
CHA		4			1	1			6
CLE		1							1
DET				9		1			10
NYA			1		1		1		3
PHA				5				4	9
SLA		1				2	2		5
WS1	2	5					1		8
Grand Total	3	17	1	14	2	4	5	4	50

You can see from this summary that the main years with pitchers batting out of the 9th spot were in the 1897-99 time period.  I do not have the data for pre-1897 to compare, but I will discuss two of these years.

1897:

Two teams make up 94% of the total - The Chicago Colts and the Brooklyn Bridegrooms

The Colts had Cap Anson in his last year at the helm and he apparently decided to have his catchers bat in the 9th spot a majority of the games (82 of the 138).   The main 2 catchers in that slot were Malachi Kittridge with 39 starts in the 9th spot and Tim Donahue with 38 starts.  In fact, Anson, himself, had 4 starts in the 9th slot as a catcher early in the season!   

It should be of no surprise that Kittridge (lifetime .219 BA and 39 OPS+ in 1897) was in that slot.  Donahue was a bit better, but not much (53 OPS+).

The main pitchers that Anson had in the 8th spot were 

1. Clark Griffith  - 22 times, once in the 7th spot;  .235, 21 rbis, 67 OPS+

2. Danny Friend - 19 times, .284, 72 OPS+

3. Walter Thornton - 11 times, .321, 106 OPS+  (Thornton also played in the OF 59 games)

4. Jimmy Callahan - 10 times, .292, 86 OPS+ (Callahan also played in the field, 30-2b, 21-of, 18-SS)

5, Buttons Briggs - 10 tiumes, .160, -2 OPS+ (ok, maybe Anson should have had Him batting 9th)

As you can see, for the most part, having the Colt pitchers batting 8th was the smart move.

For Brooklyn, Germany Smith started in the 9th spot 45 of the 49 times a non-pitcher did.  Smith was easily the weakest hitter on the Bridegrooms with a .201 BA and a 32 OPS+.

The pitchers who batted ahead of Smith were the following (all in the 8th spot):

1. Brickyard Kennedy - 16 times, .272, 18 rbi's, 74 OPS+

2. Harley Payne - 11 times, .236, 11 rbi's, 47 OPS+

3. Jack Dunn - .10 times, .221, 17 rbi's, 34 OPS+  (Dunn, of course, later in his life was significant in Babe Ruth's career)

4. Chauncey Fisher - 9 times, .203, 47 OPS+

Again, for the most part, moving Smith down to the 9th spot and having the pitchers in the 8th spot seemed to be the right move.

1899:

The other year/team I want to profile is the 1899 Washington Senators, in their last year in the National League.  This team finished 11th in the league, ahead of the woeful 20-134 Cleveland Spiders.  They also had the emerging slugger and former pitcher, Buck Freeman, who slugged 25 homers (and threw in 25 triples as well). 

Manager Arthur Irwin apparently decided to start the season with a different twist, having his 2nd baseman, Dick Padden hitting 9th and his pitcher, Frank Killen, bat 8th.   Irwin continued this arrangement for the most part through June 22nd.  He briefly did it again at the end of August. 

During the 61 games that the Senators had their pitcher batting 8th,  Dick Padden, .277, 93 OPS+, batted in the 9th spot 39 times (20 at 2b, 19 at SS).  The other primary non-pitcher occupant was leftfiedler, Jack O'Brien, 10 games, .282, 91 OPS+.  

This is one of those cases when the reason (for the most part) for the switch is somewhere in the Washington Post or Sporting Life, because on the surface it doesn't make alot of sense.

The pitchers who batted 8th were:

1. Gus Weyhing - 18 games, .206, 38 OPS+

2. Bill Dinneen - 16 games, .303, 84 OPS+

3. Dan McFarlan - 10 games, .186, 45 OPS+

===============================================================

A couple other items worth mentioning -

In 1902, the "all-time" worst hitting non-pitcher, Bill Bergen, hit 9th 18 times.  Surprisingly, he hit 9th only a handful of times the rest of his career.  If anyone was meant to hit 9th, it was Bergen, who was well known in his time for his phenomenal fielding.

Also, in 1898, Cy Seymour, then still primarily a pitcher who walked and struck out a great deal of hitters (for the time), batted outside of the 9th spot as a pitcher 12 times - 2nd - 3 games, 4th - 5 games, 5th - 4 games.   A sign of things to come for this pitcher, then outfielder who nearly had a triple crown in 1905 for the Reds.

Lave Cross

In the previous post I mentioned that there were 2 players that were the main "toughest to strike out" in this era.
I profiled Willie Keeler, and now I will profile the other the player, Lave Cross.

Not many times will one associate Cross with this category.  He was mainly known as a solid fine thirdbaseman with the National and American League Philadelphia teams.  Cross was also briefly a member of the infamous 1899 Cleveland Spiders, before he made the mistake of playing too well and was (rescued) recalled to St. Louis.

One can see from the existing B-R data that Cross had a good record in the K category - 7 in 593 at-bats in 1894 and 8 in 589 at-bats in 1895.   He continued this in through the 20th century.

His totals:

1897 - 15 k's in 344 at bats
1898 - 8 k's in 602 at bats
1899 - 3 k's in 557 at bats
1900 - 5 k's in 522 at bats
1901 - 6 k's in 424 at bats
1902 - 4 k's in 559 at bats
1903 - 17 k's in 559 at bats
1904 - 9 k's in 607 at bats
1905 - 12 k's in 587 at bats
1906 - 17 k's in 494 at bats
1907 - 6 k's in 161 at bats


His BK+ numbers show just how

1898 NL - 444 (2nd)
1899 NL - 991 (2nd)
1900 NL - 557 (2nd)
1901 AL - 459 (2nd)
1902 AL - 809 (1st)
1903 AL - 326 (2nd)
1904 AL - 744 (1st)
1905 AL - 517 (1st)
1906 AL - 300 (3rd)

Keeler and Cross were 1-2 (or 2-1) in 1898, 1899, 1900, 1903, 1904, and 1905.  They both led their respective leagues in 1902 (Keeler - NL, Cross - AL)



Here are the leaders for all seasons, 1897-1909:

	Best BK+ [lowest K rate/G, min 100 g] (K's)
	NL		AL
1897	Keeler	595 (5)
1898	Keeler	731 (4)
1899	Keeler	1487 (2)
1900	Keeler	814 (4)
1901	Keeler	1052 (5)	Dungan	786 (4)
1902	Keeler	397 (13)	L Cross	809 (4)
1903	Beckley	325 (13)	Keeler	463 (12)
1904	Wolverton	561 (7)	L Cross	744 (9)
1905	Dobbs	325 (14)	L Cross	517 (12)
1906	Leach	251 (20)	Keeler	1148 (5)
1907	Evers	325 (16)	Elberfeld	599 (8)
1908	Ritchey	308 (13)	T Jones	262 (21)
1909	Bridwell	344 (14)	Lajoie	271 (18)

Wee Willie and BK+

I have spent most of the recent posts talking about individuals related to high strikeout totals, but I am one who enjoys exploring the extreme ends of the bell curve.   As a result, I want to take this post to talk about a couple of players that showed a great propensity for Not striking out.  

The first is quite well known for this asset - Wee Willie Keeler.   Keeler's "hit'em where they ain't" approach is legendary, but, for the most part, the data was not there in regards to strikeouts.

Bob Davids compiled a list of Keeler's strikeouts by year a number of years ago.  I was fortunate to get a copy of this a couple of years ago from John Schwartz.  Of course, his numbers lined up well with mine (of course!), and I found a few more (as had the late Mr. Schwartz).

I will give the numbers first and then discuss them:

1897 - 5
1898 - 4
1899 - 2
1900 - 4
1901 - 5
1902 - 13
1903 - 12
1904 - 12
1905 - 13
1906 - 4
1907 - 10
1908 - 10
1909 - 6
(1910 - 1, already documented)

Fortunately, Keeler played in the New York market for most of this time period, and as a result I was able to document well over 95% of his total games (mostly from New York Evening Telegram and New York Evening World play-by-play accounts).

Some of these years just stagger the mind in their "low-ness".  

The 2 strikeouts in 1899, which I wrote about in my BRJ article (#36) on 1899 strikeouts is simply amazing.

To quote myself :) , "Keeler's two strikeouts occurred on April 17 (Brooklyn's 2nd game of the season) at the hands of Boston's rookie sensation, Vic Willis (in his major league debut) and May 6 (Brooklyn's 19th game) against Boston's Kid Nichols.  After that, he did not strike out again for the remainder of the season."  This is with 136 of his 141 games documented (97%).

As a result of this feat, I wanted to figure out a way to show just how incredible this figure was.   I devised a new "stat" which I called "BK+".   It is similar to OPS+ and ERA+ in that it gives an index of how much better or worse a player is from the average (average being 100).  In this case, I used strikeouts per game.

To give you an example, using Keeler's 1899 season, Keeler had 2 strikeouts in 136 documented games, a rate of 1.48%.

The overall individual strikeouts per game average was 21.9% (3,494 documented strikeouts in 15,920 documented player games).

As a result, Keeler's BK+ = (0.219/0.0148) * 100 = 1,487.  

His strikeout rate was 14 TIMES BETTER than the league average. 

Granted that if one was to use at-bats in the calculation, it would be more precise, but my databases are not set up with documented at-bats and I calculate it based on documented information.  Once the data is in a source that has the projected/adjusted strikeouts and actual at-bats, a refined BK+ calculation could certainly be done.

Even in an era of lower strikeout totals, he dominated the BK+ category:


Here is his year by year BK+ with ranking:

1897 - 595 (1st)
1898 - 731 (1st)
1899 - 1,487 (1st)
1900 - 814 (1st)
1901 NL - 1,052 (1st)
1902 NL - 397 (1st)
1903 AL - 463 (1st)
1904 AL - 496 (2nd)
1905 AL - 491 (2nd)
1906 AL - 1,418 (1st)
1907 AL - 412 (2nd)

The leaders were limited to players with 100 games or more.

Keeler's 1901 and 1906 seasons I feel deserves special mention as well. 

In 1901, as has been mentioned previously, the National League implemented the foul strike rule, in essence counting a strike on any ball that was fouled off.  Prior to this, if a player fouled off a pitch, it was, in essence, a non-pitch.   A player could foul off pitches to their heart's content and be no worse in the ball-strike count.
So players who were capable of making contact, could drive a pitcher crazy and not be penalized.   This did not sit well with everyone and especially with those who didn't like the old Baltimore Orioles (my speculation) as 2 of the experts at fouling away pitches happened to be old Orioles (Keeler and John McGraw).  One of my many side projects is to do a more in-depth study of the foul strike rule, the evolution of it coming into being and its impact beyond the stats.

Anyway, the introduction of the foul strike rule in the National League in 1901 had a dramatic impact on strikeouts league-wide:   Total k's went from 2697 to 4241, a 57% increase.   This changed seemed to affect everyone, except one fine Brooklyn individual, our hero, Mr. Keeler. 

As I have documented above, Keeler only struck out 5 times all season with a BK+ of 1,052.   The second place finisher in BK+ in the 1901 NL was Claude Ritchey with a BK+ of 199 and 28 strikeouts.  Keeler's number "5 Times Better" than the 2nd place finisher.

In 1906, while Billy Maloney was setting fan records across the river in Brooklyn, Keeler was dominating again in BK+.   His BK+ of 1,418 was more than 4 times better than the 2nd place finisher, Nap Lajoie, who recorded a very respectable BK+ of 305 (19 k's)


I will go more into BK+ leaders, both good and bad,  in a subsequent post, but Billy Maloney's record setting 118 strikeouts in 1906 produced a BK+ of 49. 

His doc k's per game rate was 77.5% while the league average was 38%.   His rate was just over twice as bad as the league average thus the number just under 50.

Incidentally, Maloney's BK+ of 49 is not the "record" for the era - that belongs to a well traveled player who, incidentally, would have been perfectly suited for the DH era - Tommy McCreery.