Why Can't You DH for the Catcher?

The day before yesterday, a pretty peculiar thing happened on the baseball field between the Cleveland Indians and the Tampa Bay Rays. Rays manager Joe Maddon mistakenly listed both Ben Zobrist and Evan Longoria at third base. Longoria was intended to be the designated hitter, but since he's the regular third baseman, Maddon probably just automatically penciled him in at 3B without thinking about it.

(For all the talk of his intellectualism, I think this happens a lot with Maddon. For instance, he accidentally penciled in Dan Wheeler a lot during the World Series when Dan Wheeler obviously was a walking nightmare, at least in my mind. He might not have been that bad, but I was too busy screaming.)

Now, here's what happened: when the Rays took the field in the top of the first, Zobrist went out to third, and pitcher Andy Sonnanstine went out to pitch. There were nine people on the lineup card in the game. But, because Longoria had been listed as playing 3B and had not taken the field, he was scratched from the lineup as a DH, because in all other respects, the Rays had fielded a legitimate nine-man team. Because of the arcane rules of baseball, this meant that Andy Sonnanstine, the pitcher, batted #3 in the order. To give you an idea how unusual that was:

After going hitless in his first two at-bats, Sonnanstine had an RBI double to left during a five-run fourth that put Tampa Bay ahead 7-3.

Sonnanstine became the first pitcher in the starting lineup of an AL home game since Ken Brett of the Chicago White Sox batted eighth on Sept. 23, 1976. The previous pitcher to pick up an RBI in an AL home game was Texas' John Wetteland on Aug. 16, 1997, at the New York Yankees.

But it doesn't stop there. Consider:

• Sonnanstine was also the first AL starting pitcher to bat higher than eighth since Cesar Tovar hit leadoff for the Twins on Sept. 22, 1968, in an asterisk-special kind of game in which his actual mission was not to pitch, but to play all nine positions.

• So since Tovar wasn't really a pitcher, Sonnanstine was the first AL starting pitcher to bat higher than seventh in the non-asterisk division since Gary Peters did it for the White Sox on May 26, 1968.

• And just so you know, the only other AL pitchers to bat higher than eighth in a starting lineup over the past 55 years, according to baseball-reference.com's fabulous Play Index, were Don Larsen (three times) for the Yankees in 1957, Bob Lemon for the Indians (once) in 1957, Tommy Byrne (three times) for the Yankees in 1955 and Mickey McDermott (10 times) for the Senators in 1954.

• And who was the last AL starting pitcher to hit an RBI double in a noninterleague game? Bert Blyleven, who doubled off Dan Neumeier on Oct. 4, 1972, the final day of the pre-DH era.

Isn't that great? Pitchers are usually so godawful at batting that the American League doesn't even let them bat, and the National League never lets them bat anything other than ninth. And not only did Sonnanstine acquit himself, he laced a double this season before Vlad Guerrero or Rocco Baldelli did. Sure, part of it was luck, but who cares? Usually pitchers are so bad that they're only fun by dint of giving "bad" a miss and shooting for "transcendentally shitty." Washington Nationals outfielder Adam Dunn even stylizes himself as a kind of connoisseur of pitchers' terrible hitting. He describes teammate Miguel Cabrera's batting attempts as looking like "he's trying to club baby seals":

"Cabrera and Barry Bonds when he was going good -- those are two guys whose at-bats I would never want to miss," Dunn said.

What are Cabrera's odds of recording a hit this season? Dunn thinks it's less likely than the average Joe's getting hit by lightning or winning the lottery.

"How about winning the lottery five times in one year?" Dunn said. "That would be more appropriate."

See? These guys are fucking terrible at hitting. Which brings me to someone else entirely: Tampa Bay catcher Dioner Navarro.

Navy (pronounced like "knobby" but with a vee sound) is a good guy. He always seems happy to be at the ballpark. He's got a good arm, and blocks the plate pretty well. Also, despite the fact that sabermetrics show that there's not much to the idea that the opposing team's average is really at all affected by which catcher is calling the game, I still feel like he calls a good game. The worry with Navy is that his hitting's no damn good. For example:

Batting Average: .179 (last among AL hitters)
OBP: .205 (last among AL Hitters)
SLG: .241 (next-to-last among AL hitters)*
___________________
* — For those not up to speed:

OBP: On-Base percentage. This is the number of times he successfully hits or walks. Basically, Navy isn't hitting, and he isn't drawing walks. That OBP is horrible.

SLG: Slugging. This is how hard he's hitting the ball. Which is to say, not hard at all. To give you an idea of a very, very great slugging percentage, look at Barry Bonds' from the insane 2004 season: .812. So basically to have one of the greatest power-hitting seasons in history, Navy wouldn't have to be just twice as good as he is now. He'd have to be roughly four times the hitter. And that's before getting back to that OBP. Looking back at that season, Barry got on base two out of every three times he came to the plate. Navy gets on base almost exactly once every five times. That is not good.

By the way, I apologize for putting this in these very black-and-white terms by comparing two players at either end of the hitting spectrum, but I have a terrible headache, and the thought of doing this in a more reasonable way made it worse.
___________________
Now, Navy could be worse. He's not in the top 40 in grounding into double plays (he's at 41, with 4), but then again he bats lower in the batting order, where it may be less likely that there are men on base for him. He also strikes out about once every six times he's up. In terms of counting stats, at his current rate, he's on pace for six home runs this season, with 100 hits and 20 doubles. Again, these aren't numbers to be thrilled about.

So, why not let Sonnanstine bat when it's his turn to pitch, and have Zobrist or Longoria be the designated hitter for Navy? I know what you're gonna say: that's against the rules. 

And you'd be right. But what's the down side to petitioning Major League Baseball to let this happen? Sure, you might shatter Navy's confidence and then—what?—he's going to bat worse? You accidentally get a few thousand extra fans showing up to the freak show? Under normal circumstances, with another sport, I'd say there was a perfectly logical reason why you can only substitute for one position on the field. But this is MLB: arcane, stupid, atavistic, proud of it beyond any value.

The position is the designated hitter. He hits. He's designated for the job. He's not "designated hitter solely for the pitcher." I like Navy. He seems like a good dude. I want him to stick around and throw runners out, but every five nights, when Sonnanstine's pitching, let's get someone to hit for Navy and see what happens a couple times. Because right now he's really terrible at it.