Leave Them In? A Look at 2021’s Pinch Hitters

You’ve seen it before. In ESPN leagues it’s that little red exclamation point. In Ottoneu, it’s a red X. It means your guy isn’t in the starting lineup tonight and you have a decision to make. Do you sub him out for your replacement level bench guy? Or, do you roll the dice, leave your “not in the starting lineup today” player in, and hope he comes in with a big at-bat off the bench?

With all the incredible Shohei Ohtani magic that we, as baseball fans, have been blessed with this season, I was drawn to a book on my father’s bookshelf, Babe: The Legend Comes to Life, by Robert W. Creamer. When writing about Ruth’s early career as a two-way player, Creamer writes, “Ruth was not a good pinch-hitter. In his career he had 13 pinch-hits in sixty seven at bats, for a puny .193 average. Ty Cobb was as bad; his career totals are almost identical with Ruth’s: Sixty-nine pinch at bats, 15 hits, a .217 average.”

I’ve always thought it must be very difficult to have been sitting on the bench, enjoying your day off, and then suddenly thrust into a game. Shaking off the stiffness that comes from sitting on a plank of wood for six or seven innings to go out and perform against the greatest pitchers in the world seems pretty tough. That thought, and Creamer’s writing, made me look at who has performed when coming off the bench this season and how they compare to replacement-level players. The goal of this analysis is to determine whether or not some players should remain in your daily lineups because of their pinch-hit value. 

To start, I used Baseball Savant to look for hits coming from players who have ‘Non Starting Pos Player?’ flagged. Then, I calculated those players’ batting averages and slugging percentages in those at bats. Lastly, I limited that dataset to qualified hitters with at least five pinch-hit at-bats. Given all of that, here are the top 20 players based on batting average and slugging (sortable):

Among all hitters in this group (51), the batting average is .230 and slugging is .382. What’s probably the most revealing and useful are the simple at-bat totals. These sample sizes are too small to determine who is and who is not a good pinch-hitter, but you can see who appears in pinch-hit situations more often. If you see that Garrett Hampson is not starting, you can assume he’s still likely to pinch-hit at some point. But, is Hampson’s pinch-hit at-bat better than a bench player’s three or four at-bats?

For comparison, I looked at players with over 100 plate appearances and an accumulation of two WAR or less. I don’t think it makes sense to compare starters and zero WAR players. Realistically, you have players on your bench that are above replacement. Here’s the comparison between pinch-hitters and fantasy replacement level players:

This may be a foolhardy approach. For example, my definition of fantasy replacement level players included a productive hitter like Josh Donaldson who has been a staple in my lineup (when not nursing a calf muscle) in recent months. It would depend on how deep or shallow your league is to determine what a good definition of a replacement-level player, or more simply put, a bench player, actually is. However, this analysis has shown that with these definitions, you’re more likely to get production out of your bench hitter than rolling the dice with a pinch hitter. Even Ruth and Cobb had a hard time.

No one likes to see the red X or the red ! right before the first pitch. But no one likes to see a home run hit by a player left on the bench. As we near the end of the season, every little bit matters. Taking the time to check how your player has performed in pinch-hit situations in the past can give you another tool to make decisions when managing your roster.