Slightly Better than Replacement Level
In the earlier days of baseball two-way play was fairly common. The mound being closer, batters being able to call out the pitches they wanted, and more made it an era where players could pitch and be a position player more frequently. These circumstances are what gave us a player like Bob Caruthers. Good old […]
Tommy Byrne was 13 seasons into his professional baseball career when he made the switch from a pitcher who pinch-hit from time to time to a full-fledged two-way player. It makes perfect sense that he would adopt two-way play in 1954 in the Pacific Coast League. At the time the PCL was an independent league […]
As far as my research can glean Wes Ferrell only had one legitimate two-way season. He did a lot of pinch-hitting throughout his career, but only one season where he was a bonafide pitcher and position player. He may have also been a two-way player in a 1928 season in the minors, but there aren’t […]
Granny Hamner already had a long and successful Major League Baseball career before he ever tried his hand at two-way play. There was really no reason for Hamner to play two ways. Yet in his age 33 season he found himself pitching and for the final two years of his career he played enough on […]
There’s not much I could say about Babe Ruth that hasn’t already been said. Too many articles and books have been written about his baseball career and life in general. Babe Ruth remains to this very day a titan in not just the baseball landscape but the popular culture of America. He did spend some […]