Pitcher? Hitter? Clone the guy and have one of each?
by edwzipper on Monday, July 13th, 2009 at 06:58pm
Most of you will remember that Babe Ruth originally broke into the Major Leagues a pitcher. The original hefty lefty was quite a pitching star (click link for pitching stats) in his early years with the Boston Red Sawx. His best year was 1916 as he was 23-12 with 23 complete games of which 9 were shutouts. His 1.75 ERA led the league (during the dead ball Era) and his ERA+ of 158 was also tops. His HR per 9 innings was 0.0. That’s right in 323 innings the Babe allowed ZERO home runs. Not a bad year on the mound.
Now there is a current player that is also following an odd career course. Casey Kelly, a Red Sawx prospect, pitched a scoreless inning in yesterday’s Futures Game. And that is the last pitching he will do this year. He isn’t injured, far from it, for the rest of the season he will be playing SS. This is the guy who last year had to decide if he wanted to play QB at Tennessee or sign with the Sawx and now this year will pitch for half a season and play SS for the other half.
To quote the schitzo himself: “Once we get through this season, we’ll decide which side is going to be best for me and best for them,” Kelly said. “I’m not sure. I think I’ll have to see how everything works out on the shortstop side and what they want to do. It could be this season [a decision is made], but it could be a couple of more. I’m not sure.”
It’s one of the wonderful things about baseball. Just when you think you have seen everything, something completely unpredictable comes along.