And Batting 9th, Starting At D.H.,…
Posted by Steve Lombardi on October 2, 2009
Jose Molina started at D.H. for the Yankees, batting 9th, in their game of October 2, 2009. This got me wondering as to who holds the record for most times appearing in a starting line-up, as a D.H., while batting 9th. To get the answer, I used Baseball-Reference.com's Play Index Batting Game Finder and set the controls for:
"Batting #9, Played: DH, as Starter, (requiring PA>=0), sorted by greatest number of games"
And, here's the answer to that query - showing guys who have done it at least 4 times, to date, in their career:
Games Link to Individual Games +-----------------+-----+-------------------------+ Nick Johnson 27 Ind. Games Orlando Palmeiro 21 Ind. Games Jerry Hairston 19 Ind. Games Mike Young 18 Ind. Games Dave Collins 13 Ind. Games Jeff Davanon 10 Ind. Games Bob Bailey 10 Ind. Games Ray Knight 9 Ind. Games Midre Cummings 9 Ind. Games Dave Bergman 9 Ind. Games Jim Dwyer 8 Ind. Games Reggie Willits 7 Ind. Games Rick Leach 7 Ind. Games Jason Dubois 7 Ind. Games Larry Sheets 6 Ind. Games Rick Peters 6 Ind. Games Scott Livingstone 6 Ind. Games Glenallen Hill 6 Ind. Games Jay Gibbons 6 Ind. Games Jack Brohamer 6 Ind. Games Travis Snider 5 Ind. Games Tim Laudner 5 Ind. Games Jonny Gomes 5 Ind. Games Esteban German 5 Ind. Games Shelley Duncan 5 Ind. Games Eric Crozier 5 Ind. Games Bernie Williams 4 Ind. Games Guillermo Quiroz 4 Ind. Games Jose Morban 4 Ind. Games Pete LaForest 4 Ind. Games Garry Hancock 4 Ind. Games Dave Engle 4 Ind. Games Shawon Dunston 4 Ind. Games Bernie Carbo 4 Ind. Games Bob Brower 4 Ind. Games Tom Brookens 4 Ind. Games
Who was the very first batter in big league history to do this? Why...that would be Kurt Bevacqua back in 1973. So, the next time you see someone, in a big league game, starting at D.H. and batting 9th...just tell them that they're pulling a "Bevacqua."
October 2nd, 2009 at 11:14 pm
[...] Nick Johnson did it 27 times while he was with the Yankees – which, by the way, is the major league record for most times appearing in a starting line-up, as a D.H., while batting 9th. [...]
October 3rd, 2009 at 1:52 am
not only did Molina bat 9th in that game. So did the Rays DH Fernando Perez.
October 3rd, 2009 at 8:07 am
Yup!
This was in my inbox this AM, BTW: How about that in two of the 3 games in history where both club's DH hit 9th, CC was the loser and didn't make it through the 3rd either time?
How'bout that!
October 3rd, 2009 at 8:09 am
Another look at this data, by games:
http://bbref.com/pi/shareit/5WpBK
October 4th, 2009 at 2:24 pm
There was a time around the late 1970s/early 1980s when some AL managers put a decent hitter at #9 to string him together with the top of the order. Tony LaRussa was doing this for a while with St. Louis, with the pitcher batting 8th or maybe even 7th. In fact, I wondered if he was still doing this because of the Chris Carpenter performance the other day, but Carpenter was batting 9th. The Brewers also did this ini some games last year.
I wonder if there have been any interleague games at AL parks in which the NL's DH was someone who was normally a bench player and was inserted into the 9-hole to avoid disrupting the rest of the batting order.
October 4th, 2009 at 10:40 pm
if you search the game logs for DH's starting, batting 9th, for NL teams, facing AL teams, on the road, you get this list. 37 Games, most of which are not great names and probably fit this. There have been 5 games this season like this, 2 of them by a Dodger, Mitch Jones, with 8 career games under his belt.
October 5th, 2009 at 9:02 am
I did some research a year or two ago in which I attempted to relate defensive position to position in the batting order. The two most unusual players of our time were Jason Kendall leading off while playing catcher (447 times at the time of my research) and Jeff Kent batting cleanup while playing second base (1,224 times).
And while this is HIGHLY subjective, I theorized that the most unusual AL batting order by defensive position would look like this: C - 1B - DH - 2B - SS - 3B - RF - LF - CF (just don't ask me to explain or defend my methodology!)