How about those pitchers at the plate!

[Legacy25GT]

Yesterday afternoon Jeff Suppan came through not only on the mound, but also once again at the plate when he singled to lead off the 5th inning before he was eventually sacrificed home on a Corey Hart flyball. This got me wondering if they're doing something different with the pitchers during batting practice or something. Obviously its still a small sample size, but our 5 starters are putting up a very impressive batting line: .250 BA / 0.250 OBP / 0.417 SLG, which includes a homerun by Gallardo, a double by Suppan, 4 RBI's and 3 Runs scored. I guess my question is, are the pitchers taking a different approach, and if so what are they doing different, or do we just chalk this up to a small sample size.

[Scooter1027]

I don't know if the pitchers are taking any kind of different approach, I just think that this year we have a good group of hitting pitchers. Gallardo and Parra have always flashed the ability to hit, and Looper comes over to us from St. Louis where he hit .254 last year. Suppan has had a couple poor hitting seasons with us, but had some success in the past (heck, he hit .293 with Pittsburgh in 2003, and had two .200+ seasons with St. Louis). Historically, and surprisingly to me given his overall athleticism, Dave Bush has been the worst hitter of this bunch (career .133/.147/.166 with 1 BB / 57 K).

 

I think you take Sheets out and put Gallardo in, and the overall perception of our pitchers' ability to hit is going to climb significantly.

[Ennder]

Looper, Parra and Gallardo are all pretty good with the bat. So we have lost a lot of crappy hitting pitchers over the last years and gained good hitting ones.

[sbrylski]

In case you're wondering, our pitchers are currently hitting .240 / .240 / .400 / .640, which projected out to last season's pitcher ABs of 322 would net ~30.1 runs created. Last season our pitchers netted ~11.7 runs created. Rough numbers and estimations, and situational hitting (bunting) is relatively important for a pitcher, but better hitting pitchers should net a win or even two or more by themselves.

[razzzorsharp]

Ben Sheets is missing, so we got that.

[TSack27]

And Todd Coffey got down his first sacrifice bunt, leading to a very important insurance run yesterday!

Helping their own cause is going to be important this season, as I see more 6-5 games than 2-1 games this year.

And a little part of me has always wondered if pitchers running the bases has a negative carryover effect to their next inning on the mound. If any group could round up that kind of statistical analysis, it would have to be the Brewerfan.net crowd [insert gauntlet throw down logo herehttp://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/wink.gif]

[Never Outhustled]

In case you're wondering, our pitchers are currently hitting .240 / .240 / .400 / .640, which projected out to last season's pitcher ABs of 322 would net ~30.1 runs created. Last season our pitchers netted ~11.7 runs created. Rough numbers and estimations, and situational hitting (bunting) is relatively important for a pitcher, but better hitting pitchers should net a win or even two or more by themselves.

Thanks for the work, I was wondering. As we posted our reasons why this team could be a contender this year, our improved pitcher hitting wasn't brought up, but maybe it should have. We would be talking to no end about a player transaction that made us 1-2 wins different.