The Pitcher as Fielder

This article was originally published in SABR’s The National Pastime, Winter 1987 (Vol. 6, No. 1).

 

Several members of the Texas pitching staff were sitting in the clubhouse one afternoon discussing the importance of fielding. They were quick to agree with Los Angeles manager Tommy Lasorda’s assertion that a good­fielding pitcher can help himself win another two games a year. “It’s really very simple,” said Burt Hooton. “It’s a question of a pitcher’s very function: not putting too many runners on base.”

“As soon as you release the ball,” put in Dave Schmidt, “you’re a fielder.”

“When Ed Halicki was with the Giants,” said Charlie Hough, “he was told he’d be sent down after his next start. Then he found himself protecting a one-run lead in the ninth. Somebody hit a liner at him, and he barehanded it and threw to first for a double play. He went on to win the game. He wasn’t sent down.”

“Fernando Valenzuela is the best I’ve ever seen at fielding grounders hit right at him,” said Hooton. “Unlike most of us, he gets his glove all the way down. He’s not as great at covering first.”

“But that’s the most important thing a pitcher can do on defense!” said Dave Rozema.

Hence, the critical and evocative drill that starts every spring training. The play is the very essence of spring: grounder to first, pitcher covering. It’s as simple as three to one.

“It’s gathering time, like a class reunion,” says former major league pitcher Jim Kaat (see sidebar below). “All of a sudden, you’re in the home room, with nineteen or twenty pitchers talking about what happened during the winter.”

And working on the 3-1 play, it’s a drill pitchers practice before they work a single game, a play they repeat until they see it in their dreams. That’s because Lasorda and the Rangers were right about pitchers winning games with their gloves, and there’s probably no play they make more often than the 3-1 putout.

The drill takes longer than any other because of the number of players involved. All the pitchers-veterans, rookies, minor-leaguers up for a quick look-participate, along with three or four first basemen. A weathered coach bats out grounders.

“It’s a more difficult drill for the pitcher than for us first basemen,” says Chris Chambliss, who starred for the Indians, Yankees and Braves, “because none of them run it as often as each of us does. They’re not as accustomed to the play. Besides, during the game they’re thinking of getting the batter out, and I’m thinking of playing defense.”

Games can turn on how fast a pitcher reacts. “I learned to break for first on any ball hit to the right side of the infield,” says Kaat, who won more Gold Gloves (16) than any pitcher. “When a hitter beats a pitcher, nine times out of ten it’s because the pitcher didn’t get a jump.” Kaat used to head for a spot ten to fifteen feet down the line from first base. Then he’d turn sharply left and race parallel to the line. If all went well, he’d catch the first baseman’s toss a couple of steps ahead of the base. Then he’d look for the base and touch it with his right foot to avoid colliding with the runner. “If you practice it enough,” says Kaat, “you’ll get your footwork down like a hurdler.”

Of course, the play is not as simple as the neat 3-1 on our scorecard. For one thing, the throw doesn’t always go from first baseman to pitcher. A bunt or slowly topped grounder can be fielded by either player. (If both converge on the ball, the second baseman should cover first, but for some reason, he rarely participates in the spring-training drill.) Also, the first baseman’s throw to the pitcher may not be perfect. “I look for bad throws because I know I can handle the good ones,” says Phil Niekro of the Braves, Yankees, and Indians. Niekro also doesn’t panic about tagging the bag. Pitchers usually err when they look for the base before they have the ball.

The play looks simple enough when the ball is hit sharply to the first baseman, who then flips an underhand throw, chest-high, to the pitcher a couple of steps before he reaches the bag. Things start getting complicated, both in practice and games, when a ball is hit any distance to a first baseman’s right. An underhand toss won’t get the job done in such instances; the throw must then be sidearm or overhand and may not be right on the money.

A 3-1 play figured in the most exciting Series finale ever played. The Yankees were leading the Pirates 7-5 in the eighth inning of the 1960 Series’ seventh game, with Pittsburgh runners on second and third and two outs. When Roberto Clemente hit a chopper to the right of first baseman Moose Skowron, a standard 3-1 should have ended the inning. Unfortunately for the Yankees, Bobby Shantz, the best-fielding pitcher of his time, had been replaced by the sluggish Jim Coates. When Coates was slow covering first, Clemente was safe, a run scored and the stage was set for a three-run homer by Hal Smith. The Pirates eventually won 10-9. Yankee fans are still fuming . over manager Casey Stengel’s decision to replace Shantz with Coates.

Fielding would be tough enough for a pitcher if the 3-1 play were all he had to make. It’s not. The pitcher has to break to his left fast enough to cut off a drag bunt down the first base line; if the ball gets by him, it’s invariably a hit. Sometimes the 3-1 play doesn’t occur because the first baseman doesn’t get to a slowly hit ball in the hole. The second baseman does, and the play goes to the pitcher, 4-1. Another corollary to the 3-1 play is the 3-6-1 double play. The first baseman fields a ball in the hole and throws to the shortstop covering second. With the first baseman out of the play, the shortstop then relays to the pitcher covering first. In this case, the pitcher somehow catches the ball as he’s looking back over his left shoulder. Then he has to find the bag. Strange things can happen. On May 24, 1985, Hough induced Boston’s Rich Gedman to hit a double-play ball with the Rangers leading the Red Sox by one run in the ninth, one out, and men on first and third. Gedman hit a one-hopper to first baseman Pete O’Brien, who threw to shortstop Curtis Wilkerson covering second. Then Wilkerson relayed to first. Hough caught the ball, stepped on first to end the game-and tripped over the bag.

Most of the time a pitcher’s fielding is no laughing matter. There’s often a direct correlation between good fielders and big winners. Consider some of the most respected fielders to pitch in the last ten years. Tom Seaver. Jim Kaat. Fernando Valenzuela. Phil Niekro. Ron Guidry. By no coincidence, all of them may be Hall of Fame candidates.

Here’s what a pitcher can do to help his team win a game. On June 28, 1974 the Cubs were leading the Expos 2-1 in the ninth, with Montreal runners on first and third and one out, when Ron Hunt tried to lay down a suicide squeeze bunt. He popped it up along the first-base line, and Cub pitcher Rick Reuschel dove for the ball and caught it just a few inches off the ground. Then he threw to first to double up a runner and end the game. Not for nothing is Reuschel considered the best-fielding active pitcher in baseball.

Here’s what a pitcher can do to win a big game. In the fifth game of the 1964 World Series, the Cardinals’ Bob Gibson, a righthander who always twisted toward the first-base line on his follow-through, was hit on the buttock by a liner off the bat of the Yankees’ Joe Pepitone. The ball caromed over to the third-base line. After spinning around Michael Jackson-style, Gibson ran the ball down, retrieved it, and threw out Pepitone in what became the game’s pivotal play. “It didn’t seem like much at the time, but I still don’t know how I did it,” says Gibson. Other pitchers often contribute to losses by dropping throws from their first baseman. That’s what happened to the Cardinals’ Dave LaPoint in the 1982 World Series.

The only play a pitcher is likely to make as often as the 3-1 putout is the throw to first, second or occasionally third on a bunt situation. It’s a play that doesn’t come easily. After all, the pitcher is accustomed to being totally in charge before throwing the ball. Look at him out there: standing on the rubber, taking a deep breath, assuming the proper grip, throwing when ready. Suddenly, the ball’s in play and he must field it, turn, sight the base and throw quickly-all without getting a good grip on the ball. Often his throw is hurried. Often it’s off. In one of baseball’s strangest ironies, the man who holds the ball and initiates the action comes unglued.

“On a bunt situation the most important thing is the first three steps,” says Kaat. “Coming off the mound, the pitcher should take three strong strides. The closer he gets to the ball, the smaller his strides should be, so that he can get his body under control. While listening to his catcher tell him which base to throw to, he should get his hand up to the throwing position as quickly as possible. That way the fielder he’s throwing to can see the ball, and the pitcher can make a better throw. Finally, he should spin off his back foot and take a little crow-hop before throwing. That gets his body under control and his momentum going toward the base.”

There are other defensive jobs a pitcher must familiarize himself with. Like backing up third or home if a play is being made there. The idea is not to stand near the catcher or third baseman, but near the fence; that way, a pitcher can reach overthrows that kick to the side as well as those that go through the fielder. This is the sort of little­-appreciated defensive work that wins games.

Holding runners on base is another defensive skill the pitcher must master. Actually the term “pickoff” is mis­understood. The idea isn’t as much to pick off a runner as it is to keep him close to the base. To put it another way, a pitcher who picks off fifteen runners a season but allows thirty to steal may not be as valuable as a pitcher who picks off two or three but allows none to steal.

Not that a pickoff can’t be useful. Tied 3-3 with the Blue Jays, the Orioles were forced to use a reserve infielder, Len Sakata, as their tenth-inning catcher. Three Toronto players reached first. None stole second, or even tried to. Tippy Martinez picked off each one.

White Sox great Wilbur Wood would throw to first so many times the runner would be lulled to sleep. Most often the key ingredient isn’t the throw to first as much as the quick throw home. The pitchers who do this best are those who don’t waste time. They come to the “stop” position on their windup with their weight on their back foot, so they won’t have to rock back before throwing. And they minimize the leg kick and throwing motion. A pitch that reaches the plate in 1.2 seconds or less won’t yield many stolen bases because the average catcher can get the ball to second in 2.0. The total of 3.2 is quicker than most baserunners with a lead can get from first to second.

Finally, there’s the business of handling grounders like any other infielder. Hall of Famer Whitey Ford was so adept at fielding balls up the middle that his shortstop and second baseman could play unusually wide of the bag. In short, Ford affected the entire Yankee infield. Tom Seaver often takes thirty minutes of fielding practice, working not only on catching the ball but making the difficult turn-around throw to second. The most difficult fielding play a pitcher makes on grounders is the high bouncer hit over his head. Bob Gibson made one of these back-to-the-plate plays, turned almost all the way around in mid-air and threw a basketball chest pass to first. Hall of Fame pitcher Dizzy Dean called it the best fielding play he ever saw. “You have to think about the ball being hit to you, want it,” says White Sox scout Bart Johnson, a former big-league pitcher. “Then you have to know what to do with it. Look at how well-trained the Detroit and Bal­timore pitchers are; after they’ve fielded the ball, they get rid of it as quickly as anyone.”

All of which is mere prelude to the real blood and guts of fielding the pitching position: staying alive. Let Johnson describe the starkness of it all. “We pitchers always get a kick out of third base being described as the hot corner,” he says. “Hot corner? If the third baseman crept in fifty feet from home plate, people would say, ‘He’s nuts: He’ll get harelip.’ We pitchers are fifty feet from home every time we follow through!”

Every pitcher has been hit on some part of his anatomy by a line drive or hard-hit ground ball. Most escape without serious injury. All live in fear of experiencing the same fate as Cleveland’s Herb Score. Once boasting a fastball reminiscent of Bob Feller’s, Score was hit in the face in 1957 by a line drive off the bat of the Yankees’ Gil McDougald. Score was never the same again. Nor was the White Sox’ Wood after his kneecap was shattered by a Ron LeFlore liner in 1976.

Pitchers have their best and worst moments contending with these shots. Before fielding Luis Salazar’s sharp one-hopper early in 1985, Yankee reliever Dave Righetti made a 180-degree turn on his follow-through. Then he caught the ball between his legs. “All that was,” Righetti said truthfully, “was protecting myself.” Even more memorable was a play Gibson made on Orlando Cepeda. A Cepeda line drive shattered Gibson’s leg. Gibson picked up the ball and threw out Cepeda. Then Gibson was carried to the hospital. Talk about profiles in courage. For years there’s been a lively debate about how a pitcher should prepare for hard-hit balls at him. “You show me a pitcher following through in good fielding position and I’ll show you a pitcher who ain’t following through,” said Dean. Actually, there have been some pitchers like Seaver who naturally finish the delivery square to the hitter and glove held high. “It’s a delicate balance,” says Kaat. “You don’t want to alter a pitcher’s motion to the point where he isn’t throwing his best stuff, but you do want him to protect himself.” For his part, Kaat resisted the temptation to wear a huge glove. He might have better protected his face that way, but he probably would have restricted his mobility. Kaat wore a small but supple mitt and took his chances.

The bottom line is that every pitcher can protect himself only so much in the face of 150-mph liners. He needs some luck, too. That’s why pitchers think less about their hospital bill and more about the 3-1 drill. It’s straight­forward. It’s sociable. And it’s safe.

 

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THE POISE OF JIM KAAT

In 1959 a big teen-aged kid out of Michigan named James Lee Kaat ambled onto a major-league field for the first time, wearing the uniform of the Washington Senators. In 1983 a 43-year-old Jim Kaat played his last major-league game, for the St. Louis Cardinals. In between he made an excellent case for selection to the Hall of Fame. Kaat had pitched an unprecedented twenty-five years over four decades in the big leagues, won 283 games, helped to popularize the quick-pitch delivery, and revolutionized training methods by continuing to throw between starts. But Kaat will be equally well remembered for his fielding. He won 16 Gold Gloves-more than any other pitcher. He could make all the plays in the field, and he could explain how to do them, too. That’s why he went on to coach the Cincinnati Reds pitching staff in 1985.

“A pitcher’s got to be aware that almost every time the ball is hit, there’s someplace he’s got to be other than the mound,” says Kaat, who is now in broadcasting. “Ball hit to the right side: Cover first. A single: Back up the second baseman so that the first baseman can stay on the bag and prevent the runner from taking liberties. Base hit with a man on first: Back up third. Base hit with a man in scoring position: Back up the plate.”

Among the greatest-fielding pitchers of all time, you can make an equally strong case for either Bob Gibson or Jim Kaat. Gibson is celebrated for spectacular plays; Kaat prided himself on perfecting the more routine but also more frequent plays. No one made the 3-1 putout better. No one moved faster to his right coming off the mound. And certainly no one thought more intelligently about fielding. Asked which play he remembers most fondly, Kaat cites the three 3-1 plays he and Minnesota first baseman Harmon Killebrew made on the Dodgers’ speedy Willie Davis in a 1965 World Series game. He’s also proud of the many grounders that he turned into double plays.

Not that Kaat couldn’t make spectacular plays, too. He once raced over to the dugout to make a sensational grab of a foul ball his catcher had lost sight of. And a memorable series of events brought Kaat’s fielding to the world’s attention in the first place.

“There was a game in 1962 when I was hit in the mouth by a high-bouncing grounder,” he says. “The play cost me six teeth. The next time I pitched, two ground balls were hit back to me-sharp one­hoppers-and I got them both. People took note.” He won the first of his 16 consecutive Gold Gloves that year.

Like most of the good-fielding pitchers, Kaat was an excellent athlete. “Growing up, I was always one of the smaller kids, and I had quick reflexes and good coordination,” says Kaat, who excelled in basketball, golf and handball as well as baseball. “When I reached my full height (6’5″), I still had these qualities.” Of equal importance, Kaat had an agile mind. Long before it was fashionable, he was giving up red meat and stressing strength, flexibility, and stretching exercises in his training.

While other pitchers were haphazard in their fielding practice, Kaat rehearsed every play he’d have to make until it became second nature. And as a coach he made sure his pitchers did likewise. ‘We had a drill,” he says, “in which pitchers used a cloth-covered ‘Incrediball.’ They hit it at each other as hard as they can from fifty feet. It sharpens their reflexes.”

It’s obvious that Kaat’s influence on fielding will be felt long after the end of his playing career.