Two-way players in the AL/NL and Negro Leagues from 1920-48

What I was interested in was finding guys who were good pitchers and good hitters. So I used Stathead to first call up all the Negro League players who had 1,000+ PAs and the all those who had 200+ IP (these are all career numbers).

There were 175 guys with 1,000+ PAs and 204 with 200+ IP. Of those, there were 8 guys that were on both lists.

Table 1

Player	PA	OPS+	IP	ERA+
Bullet Rogan	2376	152	1500	161
Cool Papa Bell	5405	126	309	98
Ed Rile	1703	132	748	130
Harry Kenyon	1312	97	521	86
Homer Curry	2146	125	526	77
Martín Dihigo	1640	138	402	141
Ray Brown	1391	103	1468	147
Ted Radcliffe	1329	89	410	121

Remember that 100 is average, so there were 3 guys who were well above average at both: Rogan, Rile and Dihigo. Then there was Bell who was a very good hitter and almost an average pitcher. Brown was a slightly better than average hitter while being a very good pitcher.

What about the AL/NL from 1920-48? One issue I don't have a good answer for is how many IP and PAs to use for the minimums in the AL/NL. We have stats from alot more games for them. I don't know what a comparable level would be. Cool Papa Bell was the only batter with 5,000+ PAs in the Negro Leagues and the most IP was 1,603 by Andy Cooper. So I just used the same levels for the AL/NL (which for them is not alot of playing time).

There were 622 guys with 200+ IP and 726 guys with 1,000+ PAs. Of those, there were 41 on both lists.

Table 2

Player	PA	OPS+	IP	ERA+
Wes Ferrell	1345	100	2623	116
Johnny Cooney	3675	87	795	106
Schoolboy Rowe	1004	87	2154	111
George Uhle	1468	86	2992	105
Red Lucas	1608	85	2542	107
Red Ruffing	2084	81	4344	109
Chubby Dean	1186	79	685	80
Bucky Walters	2148	69	3100	116
Burleigh Grimes	1424	59	3489	109
Clarence Mitchell	1092	56	1739	98
Bob Smith	1794	54	2246	100
Dolf Luque	1116	52	3017	120
Sad Sam Jones	1270	46	3261	106
Tom Zachary	1214	46	3056	107
Lon Warneke	1080	46	2782	119
Ted Lyons	1729	45	4161	118
Freddie Fitzsimmons	1264	36	3223	112
Claude Passeau	1051	35	2719	113
Willis Hudlin	1006	33	2613	102
Earl Whitehill	1451	31	3564	100
Charlie Root	1192	28	3197	111
Herb Pennock	1186	28	2932	111
Eppa Rixey	1209	25	3175	116
Bump Hadley	1147	25	2945	105
Waite Hoyt	1382	22	3656	112
Larry French	1198	22	3152	114
Tommy Bridges	1144	19	2826	126
Carl Hubbell	1397	18	3590	130
Rube Walberg	1005	15	2644	107
Bill Lee	1099	13	2864	106
Jesse Haines	1214	12	3203	109
Bobo Newsom	1417	11	3660	107
Paul Derringer	1357	9	3645	108
Red Faber	1117	9	2909	119
Dazzy Vance	1106	9	2933	126
Mel Harder	1315	7	3426	113
Lefty Grove	1580	6	3940	148
Dutch Leonard	1039	6	2753	120
Guy Bush	1003	3	2722	104
Danny MacFayden	1008	-3	2706	101
Lefty Gomez	1024	-7	2503	125

I sorted them by OPS+ to show that there was only one guy who was even an average hitter. That was Wes Ferrell who had an OPS+ of 100. Maybe he is the only two-way player here. There are 5 others with an OPS+ of at least 80, so that is, perhaps, respectable.

I calculated the harmonic mean of OPS+ and ERA+ to get an average that rewards balance. A high score, above 100, to me means a guy who was good at both. It would be hard to get above 100 and not reached some minimum level of production at both.

Harmonic mean = 2*OPS+*ERA+/(OPS+ plus ERA+)

In the table below, "Harm" is the Harmonic Mean.

Table 3

Player	OPS+	ERA+	Harm
Bullet Rogan	152	161	156.4
Martín Dihigo	138	141	139.5
Ed Rile	132	130	131.0
Ray Brown	103	147	121.1
Cool Papa Bell	126	98	110.3
Ted Radcliffe	89	121	102.6
Homer Curry	125	77	95.3
Harry Kenyon	97	86	91.2

The Negro Leagues have 6 guys above 100 here. Now the top 8 for the AL/NL where the scores are generally lower with only one guy topping 100.

Table 4

Player	OPS+	ERA+	Harm
Wes Ferrell	100	116	107.4
Schoolboy Rowe	87	111	97.5
Johnny Cooney	87	106	95.6
Red Lucas	85	107	94.7
George Uhle	86	105	94.6
Red Ruffing	81	109	92.9
Bucky Walters	69	116	86.5
Chubby Dean	79	80	79.5

Then I ranked all the Negro League batters with 1,000+ PAs by OPS+ and found how many of them in the top 47 had pitched a fairly large number of innings. I used the top 47 since that included Homer Curry, who had an OPS+ of 125 from the group of 8 in Table 3. He is at the bottom end of the hitters among the good hitting pitchers from that list. There was one guy tied with Curry at a 125 OPS+, Lennie Pearson (they were tied for 46th).

Table 5 shows that 10 of the top 47 hitters in the Negro Leagues pitched at least 70 innings.

Table 5

Player	OPS+	PA	IP	ERA+
Bullet Rogan	152	2376	1500	161
Ed Rile	132	1703	748	130
Homer Curry	125	2146	526	77
Martín Dihigo	138	1640	402	141
Cool Papa Bell	126	5405	309	98
Cristóbal Torriente	158	2647	179	91
Steel Arm Davis	131	1727	82	82
Oscar Charleston	184	3962	80	86
Roy Parnell	136	2444	72	201
Johnny Davis	137	1091	70	66

For the AL/NL, I found the top 50 in OPS+ with 1,000+ PAs since the bottom 5 of that group all had an OPS+ of 129 (and 50 is fairly close to 47).

Table 6 shows all the guys from the top 50 hitters in the AL/NL who pitched any innings. There are only 6 and only 1 pitched as many as 70 innings. The good hitters in the AL/NL hardly pitched at all. The blank cell for ERA+ means that guy gave up zero earned runs and an ERA+, which is relative to the league average, could not be calculated. 

Table 6

Player	OPS+	PA	IP	ERA+
Lefty O'Doul	143	3643	77	83
Babe Ruth	208	9294	31	78
Jimmie Foxx	163	9677	23	261
Ted Williams	196	4618	2	116
Jack Fournier	144	4340	1
Ty Cobb	143	4797	1

Table 7 shows how many of the top 45 in ERA+ in the Negro Leagues with 200+ IP had an OPS+ of at least 100 in  500+ PAs. I went with the top 45 because that gets us down to the 121 ERA+ of Radcliffe from Table 3, making him the lowest of the good pitchers from that table. He was actually in a tie for 45th with Rube Curry at a 121 ERA+.

Table 7

Player	ERA+	IP	PA	OPS+
Bullet Rogan	161	1500	2376	152
Martín Dihigo	141	402	1640	138
Ed Rile	130	748	1703	132
Leon Day	133	609	653	119
Nip Winters	128	1114	706	108
Hilton Smith	142	921	536	108
Ray Brown	147	1468	1391	103

So we can say that 7 of the top 45 pitchers in the Negro Leagues were above average hitters since their OPS+ was above 100.

There is no comparable table for the AL/NL. Not one pitcher from the top 46 (there was a tie) in ERA+ with 200+ IP and 500+ PAs had an OPS+ of at least 100. The highest was 74, from Walter Johnson. So we could say that the AL/NL had no good pitchers who were also above average hitters.

If I included all of the top 46 pitchers, Bob Lemon did have a 101 OPS+ but in just 301 PAs. The only other guy higher than Walter Johnson was Gene Bearden at 75 in just 97 plate appearances.

Also, the weighted average of OPS+ for the top 45 Negro League pitchers was 82.4. For the comparable AL/NL pitchers (the top 46 in ERA+), it was just 25.8. So the good pitchers in the Negro Leagues hit much better than the good pitchers in the AL/NL. [Update Aug. 27, 2022: I recalculated the weighted average for the Negro Leagues after removing the top 4 in OPS+, Bullet Rogan (152 OPS+), Martín Dihigo (138 OPS+), Ed Rile (132 OPS+) and Leon Day (119 OPS+). The collective OPS+ of the remaining 41 pitchers was 60.3, still much higher than for the AL/NL pitchers]

What about after 1948? Do we see some good hitting pitchers or good hitters who pitched? Table 8 shows the top 10 pitchers in OPS+ from 1949-77 with 200+ PAs for guys who played at least 50% of their games at pitcher (that is the 29 years immediately following 1920-48).

Table 8

Player	OPS+	PA
Ken Brett	96	362
Don Newcombe	85	988
Don Larsen	81	653
Clint Hartung	77	243
Bob Lemon	77	1029
Mickey McDermott	76	674
Earl Wilson	76	838
Tommy Byrne	75	578
Jack Harshman	73	513
Gary Peters	70	875

Since there are no pitchers with at least a 100 OPS+, we can say that there were no good hitting pitchers from 1949-77 in the AL/NL.

Were there any good hitters who also pitched from 1949-77? I looked at all the hitters with at least a 100 OPS+ with 1,000+ PAs. Only 7 of those guys pitched. They are below along with how many innings they pitched:

Stan Musial (0 IP-faced 1 batter)

Rocky Colavito (5.2 IP)

Dave Kingman (4 IP)

Jim Hickman (2 IP)

Matty Alou (2 IP)

Bobby Darwin (7 IP)

Cesar Tovar (1 IP)

So we can say that there were no good hitters who also pitched. Certainly none who pitched well or enough to really help their teams. Collectively they only pitched 21.2 innings.

Update Aug. 27, 2022: I had Stathead call up all the guys from the Negro Leagues who played at least 50% of their games at pitcher and had 200+ career PAs (102 guys). The weighted average of their OPS+ was 57.07.

For all the guys in the AL/NL from 1920-48 who played at least 50% of their games at pitcher and had 200+ career PAs (373 guys), the weighted average of their OPS+ was 29. If I restrict it to just the top 102 in PAs (to be comparable to the Negro Leagues), the weighted average of their OPS+ was 36.

 

So it seems that pitchers in the Negro Leagues hit better than the pitchers in the AL/NL, at least relative to average.

Update May 30, 2024: Only 44 of 373 guys from the AL/NL mentioned above had an OPS+ of 57 or higher (the weighted average of the Negro Leagues OPS+ was 57.07). So that is only 11.8% of the AL/NL pitchers hit at the level of the Negro League pitchers. 44 of the 102 Negro League pitchers were 57 or higher. That is 43.1% of 102. That is 3.65 times as high as it was for the AL/NL. The two highest in the AL/NL were Lemon 101 and Farrell 100. There were 11 in the Negro Leagues who were at 100 or higher.

Player	OPS+	PA
Lewis Hampton	136	541
Luther Farrell	127	743
Pat Scantlebury	122	217
Bill Gatewood	117	227
Emery Adams	115	352
Fred Bell	114	351
Hilton Smith	112	544
Nip Winters	108	690
Eugene Bremer	108	231
Frank Stevens	104	392
Ray Brown	101	1407