“Marcus Thames did exactly what you should do as a pinch hitter: on the first good pitch you see, jump all over it.” — Rod Allen, FSN-Detroit color announcer, May 5, 2008

Cliché: “The best pinch-hitters are very aggressive fastball hitters.”
Verdict: False
Why: The idea that a pinch hitter should swing early stems from the false understanding of the pinch hitter as a man who comes up in a key situation with one job: to drive in a baserunner. This is a flawed conception because of the very status of the pinch hitter himself. If he is relegated to first-man-off-the-bench duties, he must necessarily be worse than any other options at his position. Furthermore, although we can safely assume he is situationally better than the batter he replaces (not a foregone conclusion, however), he is likely to be worse than the starting position player who is on deck. Therefore, why strive for an all-or-nothing plate approach when there is likely to be a better batter waiting in the wings in the event of a mere base on balls?

Jeff Pentland, hitting coach for the Seattle Mariners, expresses one flawed justification for this fallacy perfectly:

“When you come off the bench, the pitcher thinks you[’re] cold. That’s why they’ll see a lot of fastballs. Your best pinch-hitters are very aggressive fastball hitters. Generally speaking, the best pinch-hitters don’t let the first one go. They’re able to make good contact early. That’s a big key, so you don’t get into breaking ball counts.”

Locked up in this explanation are a few assumptions. First, the assumption that a pitcher is fresh and is throwing fastballs for strikes. Second, the assumption that batters who are “very aggressive fastball hitters” don’t get as cold or have as much trouble catching up to fastballs immediately off the bench. Third, the assumption is present that pitchers (and managers) don’t realize this, and therefore won’t adjust their strategies according to the approach of the hitter entering the game. Ultimately, the last part of this comment belies the absurdity of holding up one-dimensional fastball hitters as the epitome of pinch hitting. If any batter off the bench were talented enough to hit a big league breaking ball, who would choose Marcus Thames over him? Furthermore, if Edgar Renteria is on deck with two outs, who would send up a Thames to hack away at the first pitch he sees, rather than employing the best option to try to work a walk and give the superior hitter an opportunity?

In reality, the definition of the ideal pinch hitter as an aggressive, dead red hacker is an inversion of causes. Due to their limited ability, aggressive mistake-hitters are often relegated to pinch hitting duties, where they sometimes experience modest success. To say that their limited style is therefore more desirable than the ability to wait for a pitch to hit or draw a walk strikes me as an exercise in placating the sensitive egos of the Thames, Monroes and Dobbs‘ of the world, rather than a legitimate search for baseball truth.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 7th, 2008 at 6:32 pm and is filed under Managing, Platitudes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.