Our pitchers as hitters; article

[Gregory Pratt]

Great article: There comes a time when a man has to show what he's made of, and that time has come for White Sox pitchers. With the team playing three games in Cincinnati beginning tonight, the pitchers once again will be asked to grab a bat. Judging from their previous plate efforts, the results won't be pretty. But they've been practicing. They just might surprise us.

 

Take Bobby Jenks, for instance. Jenks digs the long ball. Just lay it in there nice and easy and watch him muscle the ball into the stands.

 

"It's batting practice,'' the closer said. "I'm not going to try and hit line drives. It's a piece of cake -- home runs.''

 

Every pitcher fantasizes about hitting a ball out of the park, and Javier Vazquez experienced the joy last season with the Arizona Diamondbacks.

 

 

 

ONE HITTER

Having played seven seasons in the National League with Montreal and Arizona, Javier Vazquez is by far the most experienced and accomplished batter of the White Sox' five starting pitchers.

 

Pitcher AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI AVG

Javier Vazquez 426 31 91 10 2 1 24 .214

Freddy Garcia 36 0 7 1 0 0 2 .194

Jon Garland 12 0 2 0 0 0 1 .167

Mark Buehrle 21 1 2 0 0 0 1 .095

Jose Contreras 14 0 0 0 0 0 0 .000

 

 

 

Most home runs by a pitcher (season): Wes Ferrell, 9, 1931 Indians.

 

Most home runs by a pitcher (career): Ferrell, 37.

 

"Hitting a home run as a pitcher is better than throwing a shutout,'' he said. "You feel so good when you hit it.''

 

Vazquez is the most experienced hitter on the Sox' staff with 426 at-bats. Including the homer, he has 91 hits, which translates to a .214 batting average. A couple of position players in this town would kill for that average.

 

"I was a pretty good hitter when I was young,'' Vazquez said. "I used to play shortstop and second base, and I hit a lot. But since I was [a teenager], I started concentrating more on pitching.''

 

Pitchers have been getting a free pass at the plate for years, particularly in the American League, where they have been supplanted by the designated hitter. As Jon Garland pointed out, a few trips to the batting cage can do only so much for their swings.

 

"You have to take it with a grain of salt,'' said Garland, who has three sacrifice bunts and two singles in his career. "They give us a couple of days of batting practice. It's kind of hard.

 

"[Jenks] can hit one out in batting practice, but if you put him in the box against a pitcher, he might look like a T-baller out there. National League pitchers probably take batting practice three or four days a week, which makes a real difference.''

 

Don't be stupid

 

 

 

If hitting coach Greg Walker were to list his goals for the pitchers during the nine games they'll have to bat -- the Sox also visit the Pittsburgh Pirates on June 27-29 and the Cubs on June 30-July 2 -- he might scribble these words: Don't hurt yourself. Please.

 

"The last thing you want them to do is go out there and get a blister on their hand,'' Walker said. "Don't put a finger out there when you're bunting and break a finger or something stupid like that. And don't overswing and pull a rib-cage muscle.''

 

Brandon McCarthy, who has all of two career at-bats (and no hits), both in a game last season against the Cubs at Wrigley Field, likes taking his cuts. But bunting is another story.

 

"I hate bunting,'' McCarthy said. "I don't like sticking my hands and face out there. And I certainly could get a lot better at it.''

 

The worst hitter on the pitching staff? According to McCarthy, that has to be Jenks. Sure, he sent a few balls into the stands during batting practice. But more often than not, he whiffed.

 

"[Jenks] is awful,'' McCarthy said. "It's pretty tough to strike out when someone is throwing batting practice, but he swung and missed three or four times. He stinks. He said at one point that he could hit a home run off me, and I told him if he had 1,000 at-bats, he still probably wasn't hitting the ball out of the infield against me.''

 

Jenks, a .000 lifetime hitter (he was hitless in two World Series at-bats), took issue with McCarthy's assessment: "He can't hit his way out of a paper bag, and he's talking [bleep] about me?''

 

Yet Jenks is content to confine his homers -- or whiffs, as the case might be -- to batting practice.

 

"They don't want me hitting in a game,'' he said. "The only chance of that is in an eighth-inning or ninth-inning stint, and I'm sure they'll try to avoid it, if possible. If I'm hitting, it probably means I screwed up in the ninth and have to go back out there in the 10th, so that's not a good thing.''

 

Neal Cotts hasn't forgotten his only big-league hit.

 

"It was a double, and it came in Montreal,'' Cotts recalled. "But more times than not, if we're in there, we're going to be bunting. So that's more important than the hitting.''

 

Athletes and non-athletes

 

 

 

Good thing, too. First-base coach Tim Raines has watched the pitchers take their cuts and is not overly impressed.

 

"We have some athletes and we have some non-athletes, but I'm not going to name names,'' Raines said. "Garland is a good athlete. A guy like [Vazquez] is able to hold his own. Buehrle? He's not very good. He's not going to make the other team worry when he's at the plate. But bunting-wise, he'll be OK. That's all we're concerned about.''

 

In 2003, Buehrle helped his own cause with an RBI single in a 7-6 victory against the Cubs at Wrigley. Although he hasn't had a hit since then, that still puts Buehrle one up on Freddy Garcia, who is 0-for-7 in his Sox career. Yet Garcia's teammates say he is one of the Sox' better-hitting pitchers.

 

"They lie,'' said Garcia, who did manage two sacrifices last season. "I have good power in batting practice, but it's different hitting in batting practice and games.''

 

They were all great all-around athletes once. As kids, they were the best hitters on their teams. Or so they say.

 

"I'm not good [now],'' said Jose Contreras, who is hitless in 14 career at-bats. "But when I was 15 and I played third base, I hit a lot of home runs.''

 

Matt Thornton was once a .300 hitter. As a member of the Sox, he has inspired the Thornton Shift.

 

"I used to hit home runs to left-center,'' the lefty reliever said. "But now [my teammates] make fun of me because I pull everything. So what they do is have the left fielder playing center field and the third baseman playing on second base. [Third-base coach] Joey Cora said to me the other day, 'Go the other way one time. Can you?' And I said no and just kept pulling the ball.

 

"I'm just bad at hitting. But I can bunt.''

 

Last season in Colorado, Cliff Politte faked a bunt and then swung away for a single. He eventually scored as part of a six-run eighth inning that helped the Sox put away the Rockies 15-5.

 

Politte, who was placed on the 15-day disabled list June 5 with a sore shoulder, could be activated by the time the Sox play the Pirates and Cubs. Let's hope so. You never know when an extra bat will be needed.

 

"The pitchers have gotten some results,'' Walker said. "But realistically, the majority of them are overmatched -- and rightfully so.''