Best pinch hitters of all-time in MLB history

Pinch hitting can be an art. Today, we take a look at one view of the five best pinch hitters in MLB history.

Putting a list of the best pinch hitters in MLB history together is obviously a matter of weighing certain statistics. This means some data is more important than other data, and therefore, a swamp appears. Is the top pinch hitter clearly the player with the most hits? The most home runs? Or are there other considerations, such as the importance of the games played in, or the number of teams represented? Is it better to pinch-hit for one team or many? Let’s see…

5. Merv Rettenmund

Rettenmund is first in a very important pinch-hitting category, on-base percentage for MLB pinch hitters with at least 200 at-bats. His was .422. Note at this point: there must be philosophical arguments employed in choosing these top five players. OBP is important – period.

Rettenmund’s batting eye would likely earn him a starting job today since pitches seen has become such an important category it may pop up in your daily newspaper soon, right under the home run leader list.  Since he played between 1968 and ’80, however, Rettenmund only reached as many as 141 game appearances once, in 1971 for the Orioles. That year he made only nine pinch-hitting appearances, the last coming on June 25.

The rest of the time he manned one of the outfield positions that season. He could play all three. In 1971, “part-time player” Merv Rettenmund came in 19^th in the MVP voting for the American League championship team.

4. Smoky Burgess

And yes, it’s “Smoky,” not “Smokey.” The latter is a pretend bear. You must web-search this guy’s photos. Got one? Right – he looked like the bartender at your neighborhood hangout everyone calls a slob, but the guy could literally roll out of bed and get a hit. When he retired in 1967, he held the record for pinch hits at 145, which has since been eclipsed.

Burgess is on the list at no. 4 because once you get past the top three pinch hitters, things become very arguable. There is literally a clot of players who, by slicing and dicing stats, could be numbered an almost infinite variety of ways for rankings four through ten.

Some of the worthy contenders are John Vander Wal (most PHs in a season), Gates Brown (the AL leader in most career PH ABs, PH homers and career hits, all for Detroit), Jerry Lynch (.404 pinch-hitting for the “improbable” NL champion ’61 Reds), Manny Mota (career .300 as a PH with over 350 ABs), Mike Sweeney (second on the all-time pinch-hits list, 25 ahead of no. 3) and four guys with three career PH grand slams, including the fearsome Willie McCovey.

Burgess is also on this list because he’s perhaps the prime example among MLB pinch hitters of a guy who didn’t make his name primarily as a pinch hitter. He was a six-time All-Star Catcher, and led the NL three times in fielding percentage. There should be a top five player here who was not only a pinch hitter. MLB pinch hitters wouldn’t have jobs if it weren’t for the guys who weren’t hired primarily to pinch hit.

Next: #2, #3

3. Cliff Johnson

As Mike Goodpaster put it in 2016, “No player who has pinch-hit 300 times can come close to Johnson’s .876 OPS.” What is mildly interesting is Johnson’s ability to get on base and produce big hits only once translated into appearing more than 127 games in a season.

His overall OPS was a very decent .815, but the basic truth of Johnson’s career is that if it weren’t for the existence of the DH rule and his pinch-hitting, his career might well have been only six or seven years long. Instead, as he transitioned from an actual position player to DH and PH in the late ‘70s, he basically doubled the length of his career.

The philosophical argument for putting Johnson somewhere in the top three is as follows: The very best outcome of a pinch-hitter going to the plate, all things considered, is a home run.

Oh, the hitter’s team may be trailing badly, and one might argue that runners on base are needed, but a pinch hitter who provides a bomb never puts his team in a worse position. If need be, his team can send up a slap-hitting pinch hitter after his homer to start putting people on base.

Cliff Johnson held the record for PH home runs at 20 for 24 years after he retired.

2. Matt Stairs

During and after the Phillies 2008 championship season, there were t-shirts in Philadelphia that read “In case of emergency, use Stairs.”

Stairs hung around long enough and played for enough teams to establish the current career pinch-hitting record for HRs, 23. And this total doesn’t include his vital homer for the eventual World Series champion Phillies off LA flamethrower Jonathan Broxton in the ’08 NLCS.

Somewhat ridiculous is the fact 15 of Stairs’ PH homers were hit between the ages of 38 and 42. Also, while he was a younger player and an outfielder, he displayed a pretty fine arm. He was ranked in the top five several times for DPs from the outfield or a particular OF position, and in 1999 was third in the AL with 13 OF assists.

Additionally, anyone who heard Stairs as a TV analyst in Philadelphia (and paid attention) can verify that this guy as thought long and hard about the act of putting a moving bat and a moving baseball together. This has led to his positions as hitting coach in both Philly and San Diego after his stint in the broadcast booth.

Next: The Best!