Don Newcombe Channels Babe Ruth

Strategy aside, opposite arguments in the debate about whether the National League should adopt the DH rule so there is uniformity across the major leagues have been very much in play in the first two months of the 2015 season. On the one side, the month of May saw Mets pitchers Jacob deGrom and Noah Syndergaard both go 3-for-3 at the plate in a game, and Giants right-handed ace Madison Bumgarner hit a home run to help his own pitching cause in outdueling Clayton Kershaw. On the other side, the month of April saw Cardinals ace right-hander Adam Wainwright rupture his Achilles tendon trying to run out an infield popup, ending his season, just two days after Nationals ace righty Max Scherzer injured his thumb while batting. An angry Scherzer, a veteran of the DH American League, complained about NL pitchers having to bat for themselves, prompting Bumgarner to take issue with his comments that nobody really wants to see pitchers hit—a sentiment long popular with the "all-DH" crowd. Sixty years ago, in 1955, there was no such debate because there was no DH anywhere to be had. Had there been, Dodgers ace right-hander Don Newcombe would have been squarely on Madison Bumgarner's side, even if Bumgarner is ... a "Giant."

Don Newcombe Channels Babe Ruth

On May 30, 1955, in the second game of a doubleheader at Ebbets Field, Don Newcombe ran his record to 8-0 with a 2.86 ERA as he beat the Pittsburgh Pirates, 8-3. As satisfying as the pitching victory surely was, Newk might have been more proud of his excellent all-around day. Newcombe went 3-for-4 at the plate to raise his batting average to a robust .357. Who says pitchers can't hit? Two of his three hits were home runs. His two-run fourth-inning blast off Pirates starter Ron Kline with two outs and Gil Hodges on base vaulted the Dodgers ahead in the game, 3-2. He tagged Kline for another home run in the sixth to make the score 5-2.

Don Newcombe now had four home runs and seven runs batted in for the season. It was the second time in 1955 that Big Newk had hit two round-trippers in a game to help his own cause, the first time coming in his first start of the season against the defending-champion and arch-rival New York Giants. See the following article in my series on the 1955 season, sixty years ago: http://brysholm.blogspot.com/2015/04/60-years-ago-april-14-1955-enough-with.html

Newcombe was one of the best-hitting pitchers in the game, and 1955 turned out to be his most productive at the plate (even if not his best on the mound, although he wound up the season with a 20-5 record to lead the league in winning percentage as he also did with his 1.1 walks and hits allowed per inning pitched). Big Newk batted .359 on the year with seven home runs and 23 runs batted in. His on-base plus slugging percentage was 1.028. So potent was his bat, manager Walt Alston used Newcombe as a pinch hitter 23 times during the season, in which role Newk was 8-for-21 for a .381 average and drove in four of his 23 runs. All seven of his long balls, however, were in support of his personal pitching efforts.

Over the course of his career, Newcombe batted .276 as a pitcher with 15 home runs and 98 runs batted in. He struck out in only 14 percent of his plate appearances and had a .308 batting average for the times he did not strike out. His hitting prowess was such that Newcombe appeared in 106 games as a pinch hitter, batting .227 without any home runs but with 10 RBIs. Don Newcombe is in the argument about the best-hitting pitchers of all time. 

Historical comparisons for pitchers as hitters must start with The Bambino, George Herman Ruth. From 1914 to 1917 when Ruth was exclusively a pitcher, but also got into games as a pinch hitter, Babe batted .299 with 9 home runs and 50 RBIs, striking out in 16 percent of his plate appearances. One of those home runs was as a pinch hitter. His season-high as a pitcher was 4 home runs in 1915. Of course, these were the "Dead Ball" days.

Ruth had five more home runs as a pitcher in 1918 and 1919, the years he began his conversion from the mound to become a day-to-day regular. Leading the majors in home runs both years with 11 and 29, Ruth was inaugurating both his legend and a revolution in how the game was played. Once he moved to New York and became a full-time outfielder, Ruth pitched only five more games in his career, during which he hit two more circuit-clouts, giving him a total of 16 home runs (out of his 714) in the games he pitched. The Babe's last home run as a pitcher came the last time he took the mound—the final game of the 1933 season, in the bottom of a three-run fifth inning that gave the Yankees a 6-0 lead, after which Ruth the pitcher gave back five runs to the Red Sox.

The players who hit the most home runs in major league careers exclusively as a pitcher, with the occasional pinch-hitting and rare fielding-position appearances, were Wes Ferrell (who surrendered four of the Babe's home runs) with 38, Bob Lemon with 37, Red Ruffing with 36, Warren Spahn with 35, and Earl Wilson with 33. Don Drysdale just missed 30 with 29. Lemon and Spahn were contemporaries of Newcombe's pitching generation. 

Wes Ferrell's most productive years with the bat were when he hit nine home runs in 1931, seven in 1933, and seven in 1935—probably his best year at the plate, since he also batted a career-high .347 and drove in a career-high 32 runs. One of his home runs in 1935 was as a pinch hitter. Ferrell, whose lifetime average was .280 with 208 RBIs, hit two home runs in a game five times. 

Red Ruffing, a direct contemporary of Ferrell's, hit .269 for his career with 273 runs batted in—the most by a pitcher since RBIs became an official statistic in 1920—and twice hit as many as four home runs in a season (4 in 1930 and 5 in 1936). Two of his career home runs were as a pinch hitter.

Bob Lemon, who failed to make the major league grade as a third baseman but had a Hall of Fame career as a pitcher, had a .232 lifetime average with 147 RBIs. He hit five home runs in 1948, seven in 1949, and six the following year. Lemon's only multi-homer game was in 1949. Two of his career home runs came as a pinch hitter.

The great southpaw (363 victories) Warren Spahn never hit more than four round-trippers in a single season (twice, in 1955 and 1961), did not hit much for average (a lifetime mark of .194), but does hold the mark for the most consecutive years with at least one home run by a pitcher—seventeen, from 1948 to 1964. Unlike the other top pitchers who could hit with unaccustomed power for a twirler, Spahn was rarely used off the bench to pinch hit.

Like Spahn, Earl Wilson's lifetime average was below .200 at .195, but he hit seven home runs in both 1966 and 1968, six in 1965, and five in 1964. Two of his career home runs were as a pinch hitter, and he had only one game in which he went deep twice.

But back to 1955. Newcombe's offensive outburst and triumph on the mound on May 30 made it 42 games down and 112 to go for the Dodgers. Their 32-10 record was the best in all of major league baseball and had them comfortably in front of their prime would-be competitors for the NL pennant—the Giants, who were 10 games behind in third place, and the Milwaukee Braves, who were 11½ games out in fourth place with a losing record. The Chicago Cubs were second, six back of Brooklyn, but nobody took them seriously. Indeed, while the Dodgers would have the best record in the NL in games played after May 30, the Cubs would have the worst on their way to a 72-81 record and sixth place.

The DH Impact on Managing Starting Pitching in the Two Leagues: A Brief History

The futility of Mets pitchers at the plate--who set a new record with their collective 0-for-64 to start the season before one of them finally got a base hit--helps to reinforce the opinion of probably at least half of all baseball fans that nobody wants to see pitchers hit and it is way past time for the National League, too, to adopt the Designated Hitter. On the flip side of offense, this Insight looks at the relative difference between the two leagues in the impact on starting pitching--particularly complete games--since the DH was introduced in the American League.

The DH Impact on Managing Starting Pitching in the Two Leagues: A Brief History

Coming into play in 1973, the DH was the American League's response to batters having spent most of the previous ten years greatly overmatched by major league pitchers. Reaching its apex in 1968--the Year of the Pitcher, when seven qualifying pitchers had ERAs under 2.00 and seven pitchers won at least 20 games--major league baseball was emerging from a hitters' dark age, including by drastically lowering the pitcher's mound, but the AL was lagging behind the NL in the recovery. The three previous seasons, 1970 to 1972, AL teams averaged 7 percent fewer runs, hit .245 compared to the NL's .253, and had a league-wide slugging percentage 12 percentage points lower than the .374 mark put up by NL batters. The offensive difference between the two leagues had been most pronounced in 1972, with the National League scoring 13 percent more runs and hitting for a much higher batting average (.248 to .239) and slugging percentage (.365 to .343). AL pitchers' contributions at the plate amounted to a .145 batting average and .182 slugging percentage, almost exactly the same as how NL pitchers fared at the plate in 1972.

Introducing the DH made a big AL difference in the very first year. Offensive numbers were up substantially in both leagues in that year of 1973, but much more so in the American League. With designated hitters combining for more home runs than batters at any of the fielding positions, scoring was up in the American League by nearly 30 percent (compared in 11 percent in the NL); the league batting averaged increased by 20 percentage points in one year to .259; and the slugging percentage of AL batters was up nearly 40 points to .381. (NL batters collectively hit .254 with a .376 slugging percentage.)

The DH also had a profound and immediate effect on how managers used their pitching staffs. American League managers now had the option to keep their starting pitcher in the game for as long as he was effective, even if late in the game on the losing end of a pitchers' duel ... while in the National League, managers were still having to make the fraught decision about removing an effective pitcher--even their ace--for a pinch hitter late in a close game, especially if there were runners on base. The percentage of complete games in the American League jumped from less than 24 percent on average since 1960 to 32 percent in 1973, and stayed over 30 percent each of the next three years. Seven AL pitchers threw more than 300 innings in 1973, as would seven the year following. Even in the 'teens decade of the dead ball era, when more than half of all starts were complete games, neither league had that many pitchers throw 300 innings in a single season. In the National League, meanwhile, the percentage of complete games dropped from 28 percent the two previous years to 23 percent in 1973 and stayed at about that level each of the next three years. Only three NL pitchers threw 300 innings between 1973 and 1976, compared to 19 in the American League.

While the percentages began a steady decline in both leagues in the middle-late 1970s, the American League held a distinct advantage in complete game starts over the National League until the end of the 1980s--21 percent to 14 per cent in 1983, a decade into the DH era, and 16 percent to 10 percent in 1987, for example. Since the end of the mass disruption caused by the players' strike/owners' lockout in 1994-95, the two leagues have been in virtual sync in percentage of complete games even though, because of the DH, American League managers do not have to take into account the pitcher's spot in the batting order when contemplating a pitching change, while NL managers do. In 1996, AL pitchers completed 7 percent of their starts, compared to 6 percent in the NL; in 2000, both leagues completed 5 percent of their starts; and the American League has been between 3 and 4 percent and the National League between 2 and 3 percent since we entered the 21st century.

The unprecedented emphasis on pitch counts, specialization in the bullpen (and not just with regard to closers) and situational pitching changes has rendered the DH mostly irrelevant when it comes to starting pitchers going the distance. Except for the first ten years of the DH when the American League had a decided advantage, the percentage of complete game victories has been more or less equal, with the National League often marginally ahead of the AL in that stat.

Having a DH, however, probably has made a difference in the number and frequency of pitching changes. NL managers have consistently used more pitchers in non-complete games than their AL counterparts: NL managers made an average of 2.1 pitching changes per non-complete game start in the first ten years of the DH era, compared to 1.77 in the DH league; 2.56 compared to the AL's 2.47 in the 1990s; and 3.01 to 2.78 in the AL since 2000. National League teams have averaged more than three relievers per non-complete game (3.12, to be precise) in each of the last eight years, while the AL has reached the three-reliever threshold just once--in 2012. Perhaps somewhat surprisingly, starting pitchers averaged about the same ratio of innings-per-start most seasons in both leagues, with or without the DH.

The more significant indicator on the pitching staff-management impact of the DH is in the percentage of complete games that were losses. That number had been relatively stable at between 12 and 15 percent in both leagues since the beginning of the expansion era in 1961 and remained at that level in the National League through the 1970s. With the advantage of the starting pitcher not having to bat--so managers' decisions on pitching changes were based entirely on their starting pitchers' effectiveness and the game situation with the other team at bat--between 30 and 33 percent of complete games in the American League were losses in the first decade after the DH went into effect. The AL percentage of complete games losses has generally hovered between 25 and 30 percent since the mid-1980s.  Last year, complete games accounted for 4 percent of total victories in both leagues, but while 83 percent of NL complete games were in the "win column" (to quote Orioles radio play-by-play announcer Joe Angel), that figure was only 72 percent in the American League--meaning that having the DH allows AL managers to let starters pitching very effectively stay in the game to the very end, even if on the wrong side of the score, in hopes that a late rally would reward his efforts at keeping the game close with a victory.

The NL manager without the DH?  Well, much as he might prefer to keep an effective starting pitcher still within his pitch count in a tight game, the time inevitably comes in the late innings when he has to decide whether to pinch hit for his offensively-deficient pitcher in hopes of scoring the runs needed to tie or for victory.  And that, many baseball fans will argue, is reason enough for MLB not to go the designated hitter route in the National League.