ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — Consider this an ode to ineptitude. A memorial for the miserable.
The Rays are playing their first games in a National League ballpark under the universal designated hitter rules this week, which means pitchers’ bats have been permanently silenced.
This is progress, I suppose, and probably long overdue. Bucs fans do not pay to see Tom Brady making a tackle, and Rays fans don’t need to see Corey Kluber swinging a bat.
Still, I think the game loses something when pitchers’ bats are laid to rest. Ninety-eight percent of the time, a pitcher’s plate appearance can be a painful thing to watch but, every so often, you get something funky. Something unique. Something magical.
Every couple of decades, you get Esteban Yan.
Yan was a mostly forgettable relief pitcher for those early Devil Rays teams but on a June afternoon in New York in 2000 during the first at-bat of his Major League career — on the first pitch he ever saw — he knocked a ball over the leftfield wall at Shea Stadium.
Pure magic.
So, before moments like that are forever assigned to the darkest reaches of baseball’s record books, let us pause and appreciate the inglorious history of Tampa Bay’s sweet-swinging pitchers.
There have been 34 hurlers who combined for 58 base-hits in a Rays uniform. They weren’t always pretty, but they were nowhere near the worst of their brethren.
In fact, among American League teams from 1998-2021, the Rays had the fourth-highest OPS among pitchers. (If you subtract Shohei Ohtani from Anaheim’s totals, Rays pitchers were actually the third best in the AL behind Minnesota and Cleveland.)
There have been goofy moments, naturally. But there have been historic moments, remarkably.
Take May 17, 2009, for instance. The culprit was never definitively pinned down — manager Joe Maddon insisted on taking responsibility, although he may have been covering for his coaches — but the Rays accidentally turned in a lineup card that included both Evan Longoria and Ben Zobrist at third base.
The plan had been to use Longo as the designated hitter, but the miscue went unnoticed in the Rays dugout. Not, however, in the other dugout. Cleveland manager Eric Wedge waited until the Rays took the field to point it out to the umpires. The result was the Rays had to forfeit the DH, which meant pitcher Andy Sonnanstine was hitting third in the starting lineup.
At the time, he was the first pitcher to be in the starting batting order for an AL team since Ken Brett hit No. 8 for the White Sox in 1976.
The best part was that Sonnanstine was not a bad hitter. He’s tied with James Shields for the most career hits by a Rays pitcher with seven. Sonnanstine hit .292 in 24 at-bats with the Rays and, sure enough, stroked an RBI double in the fourth inning of Tampa Bay’s 7-5 win against Cleveland that day.
Sonnanstine would later recount the story of pitching coach Jim Hickey informing him of the lineup blunder.
“(He) came down and told me I was going to have to hit,” Sonnanstine said. “I corrected him and told him, ‘I get to hit.’”
Sonnanstine also has the only hit by a Rays pitcher in the World Series, but he did not strike the biggest blow among his hitting-challenged mates. That unlikely honor belongs to Nate Karns.
Karns was a rookie with no hits in his previous five trips to the plate when the Rays played at Philadelphia in 2015. Aaron Nola was making his Major League Baseball debut for the Phillies and had put up two scoreless innings when Karns led off the third. Swinging away on the first pitch — notice a trend here — Karns sent a line drive over the leftfield wall.
The Rays ended up winning 1-0, making it the first game in interleague play to be won 1-0 on a pitcher’s home run. Karns is one of 26 players whose only hit of their big-league career was a homer.
“The best 10 seconds of my life,” Karns described his slow trip around the bases.
As for the worst-hitting Rays pitcher of all-time? Well, that’s subjective, of course.
If you require minimum standards for plate appearances, you might argue it was Alex Cobb, who was 1-for-17 in his time at Tampa Bay. If you go strictly by sight, you might consider Matt Garza, who went 0-for-9 with eight strikeouts as a Ray.
But I prefer to think of the worst-hitting Rays pitcher to be a classic duel between a pair of All-Stars. David Price went 2-for-28 with 13 strikeouts in a Tampa Bay uniform. Chris Archer matched that .071 average by also going 2-for-28 with 13 strikeouts. So how to distinguish them? Price got two walks, boosting his on-base percentage to .133. Archer, alas, had but one walk and a .103 on-base percentage.
All in all, Rays pitchers had a .126 batting average with just those two home runs in their 24 seasons of hitting in NL ballparks.
So is it time to tell the hitters to take a seat? Yeah, probably. But won’t you be thrilled the next time a manager screws up or runs out of options and a pitcher has to save the day with his bat?
