WARNING!! Annual OT Baseball Thread 2011!! Open at Your Own Risk!

[BillyMac]

Originally Posted by grunewar

Forty-one of the trips to the plate during Hernandez's streak have come in games in which he was pitching, the longest single-season streak of plate appearances without a strikeout by a big-league pitcher since Orel Hershiser failed to strike out in his last 46 plate appearances of the 1993 season.

I love it when pitchers in the National League do well, relatively speaking, at the plate. I also love it when they are occasionally asked to pinch hit, or pinch run, or are even asked to play a field position for a few innings. In my opinion, this is a lot more exciting than the American League with their pitching-only pitchers, and hitting-only designated hitters.

Hall of Famer Walter "Big Train" Johnson won over 400 games, had over 100 shutouts, and also hit 24 career home runs, had 255 career RBI's and had a career batting average of .235. Middle infielders today, with those hitting statistics, would be making millions of dollars a year. In 1968, Hall of Famer Bob Gibson, another good hitting pitcher, hit for almost as high an average (.170) as opposing batters hit off him (.184). Don Newcombe, and Don Drysdale, were also pretty good hitting pitchers.