Grandpa likes to talk about pinch hitters
I am not a grandpa, yet, but I have plenty of contemporaries that have grandchildren, so I am way past being old enough. When it comes to baseball, my fellow grandpa-aged friends are probably not discussing pinch hitters daily. However, if I mention the names of certain players — like Manny Mota and Rusty Staub, they will recall how good they were ALONG WITH remembering the pinch-hitting prowess of those great ballplayers. Fans may not reminisce about pinch hitters, but fear not, I will do it for you!
19th century baseball saw little use of pinch hitters. On August 10th, 1889, Mickey Welch, playing for New York (Giants), became the first pinch hitter in major league history — he struck out.
Almost Cooperstown is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and please follow or consider becoming a paid subscriber.
Once the National League signed on for the designated hitter, the end of the solely pinch-hitting specialist was signaled.
In 2024 the Baltimore Orioles led MLB with 44 pinch hits as a team. In 1995 Colorado Rockies John Vander Wal set the single season record for pinch hits with 28 himself. This was in a strike-shortened 144-game season no less! 12 Orioles recorded pinch hits for the team led by Ryan O’Hearn’s 7 hits in 18 ABs. Far from being a pinch-hitting specialist, O’Hearn had 494 plate appearances for the Birds last season.
MLB managers use pinch hitters very differently from the way they did prior to the DH being instituted in the American League in 1973. Prior to that, managers employed pinch hitters to bat for failing or tired pitchers, as well as lower-in-the-batting-order hitters who were all glove but no-hit players. After the DH started in the AL, AL managers no longer had to be conscious of the ‘double switch’. It was used to make a pitching substitution while at the same time placing the incoming pitcher in a more favorable spot in the batting order.
While they waited 26 years to finally institute the DH, the National League managers were thought to have the more difficult job of managing the lineup
Typically, pinch hitters don’t have high batting averages as they most often appear in a game in the later innings and face fresh armed relievers. As the best pinch hitters would always say, always being ready to hit is the biggest challenge for a bench player. Some did it better than others.
The pinch hitters with the most hits
Many baseball fans know Lenny Harris has the most pinch hits and the most pinch hit at-bats in a career. He has both records by significant amounts and while it’s not often discussed, Harris’ record has a good chance of standing the test of time. Here are the ones with the most:
Lenny Harris hit .269 for his career with an OPS+ of 80. He had more than 4,000 PA’s in his 18-year MLB career. He also had a career bWAR of 1.7 and 37 career home runs. Because Harris could play infield and some outfield at an average-at-best level, he was more useful than were he only able to pinch hit.
Besides Lenny, Grandpa would know Smokey Joe Burgess, Manny Mota, maybe even Greg Gross, and Matt Stairs, (who has the most pinch-hit home runs in MLB history), and the almost Hall-of-Famer Rusty Staub.
Rusty Staub, the only MLB player to tally 500 ore more hits for four different teams, was much more than a pinch hitter. With 2,716 hits, 292 homers, and 1,466 RBIs ‘Le Grand Orange’ has a legit claim to be HOF-worthy. I watched him play much of his career and he was a less-than-average outfielder — ok, almost a lousy outfielder carrying a career dWAR of -21. He had a good arm and was fundamentally sound, he was also a very slow runner.
Rusty played nine seasons in all for the Mets but his first four were as a near star-type player after he was traded from the Montreal Expos after the 1971 season. While Rusty was a six-time All-Star he never was an All-Star for the Mets. When he returned to the Mets in 1980 it was as a pinch-hitter extraordinaire and although those Met teams were not very good until 1984, late in the game Rusty always loomed as a threat to come in to hit and make things happen. I could go on and one about Rusty Staub.
Frank Johnson in Seamheads did a nice job noting that Staub’s pinch hitting was a small portion of his career ABs. Johnson created a statistic he calls “Phaverage” “a statistic called phaverage (pinch-hitting average):
This is not a traditional pinch-hitting average in which a hitter’s pinch hits are divided by the number of times he came to bat as a pinch-hitter; rather, it is a measure of how many hits in a player’s career total of hits were pinch hits. For example, Rusty Staub amassed 2,763 hits in his 23 seasons but only 100 were pinch-hits. As with Ichiro, pinch-hitting played a relatively minor part in his long career. 100 for 2,763 yields a phaverage of just .037
Though it would be wrong to characterize Staub as a pinch-hitter, it must be noted that he achieved a lot in those 100 pinch hits. He is in the record books for most consecutive pinch hits (8) with the Mets in 1983 (he is tied with Dave Philley, who did the deed with the Phillies in 1958). That same year Staub tied the major league record for most RBIs by a pinch-hitter with 25 (Joe Cronin got there first in 1943 with the Red Sox; Jerry Lynch of the Reds tied him in 1961, as did Jose Morales of the Expos in 1976). Given the fewer opportunities for pinch-hitters today, it is hard to envision a present-day pinch-hitter having an opportunity to drive home that many runs.
… That brings us to the all-time phaverage leader…drum roll, please…and the winner is Mark Sweeney! Of his 465 lifetime hits, 175 came as a pinch-hitter, giving him a phaverage of .377. Sweeney had a 14-year career (1995–2008), plying his trade with the Cardinals, Padres, Reds, Brewers, Rockies, Giants and Dodgers. His highest number of plate appearances was 291 with the Giants in 2006. In six seasons he failed to reach triple digits in PAs. His lifetime slash line was .254/.347/.387. I think it’s safe to assume his talent for pinch-hitting is what kept him in the game for so long. Five of his 42 lifetime home runs were in a pinch in 2004 with Colorado.”
I must admit I like the Phaverage thing.
Manny Mota was a marvel
Manny Mota spent the last six full seasons of his 20-year career receiving no more than 57 at-bats a season. From 1974–79, Mota played the field in just 17 games.
“There aren’t many hitters who can do what Manny can do,” Hall of Fame manager Walter Alston once said of Mota. “As long as I have known him, he hits better as a pinch-hitter than as a regular. He thrives on pressure.”
Mota played on three Dodgers pennant winners: 1974, ’77, and ’78. Manny batted .357 in 47 Pas in 1979 at age 41!
Pinch hitters are not Hall-of-Famers except…
The list of the top 20 that amassed pinch hits does not include future-HOFer Ichiro Suzuki, yet he holds the record for most pinch-hit ABs in one season (100) and the most games in which he appeared as a pinch hitter (109) both in 2017 while he was with the Marlins.
Thanks for reading Almost Cooperstown! This post is public so feel free to share it.
MLB rosters today do not afford keeping a player on the roster who can only pinch-hit. Even a one-dimensional DH can be problematic. While pinch hitting is fading away over time there was a Tiger game in 2024 in which manager AJ Hinch pinch hit for his number five hitter three consecutive times. Hinch is known for using pinch hitters more than any other manager in MLB.
With late-inning pitchers bringing their best stuff, pinch hitting is more difficult than it’s ever been. That’s probably the number one reason managers today shy away.
About the Author: Mark Kolier along with his son Gordon co-hosts a baseball podcast called ‘Almost Cooperstown’. He also has written baseball-related articles that can be accessed on Medium.com and Substack.com
