Pinch Slugging Teams

This year’s Cardinals have already hit 10 pinch home runs, putting them on pace to smash the team record of 14 for a full season. In anticipation of this result, this post takes a look at the teams that St. Louis may pass on that team pinch-home run list.

More on pinch home runs after the jump.

Here are the teams currently with more pinch-home runs in a season than this year’s Cardinals.

Rk ▴ Tm Year Pinch-Hit Home Runs
T-1 ARI 2001 14
T-1 SFG 2001 14
3 CIN 2006 13
T-4 ARI 2007 12
T-4 LAD 2000 12
T-4 NYM 1983 12
T-4 CIN 1957 12
T-8 SDP 2014 11
T-8 COL 2004 11
T-8 NYM 1997 11
T-8 CIN 1996 11
T-8 COL 1995 11
T-8 SFG 1987 11
T-8 BAL 1982 11
T-8 SFG 1977 11
T-8 PHI 1958 11
T-17 STL 2016 10
Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Play Index Tool Used
Generated 6/7/2016.

Only the 1982 Orioles on this list are from the AL, a fact made less surprising given that all but two of these teams were from the DH era. In that 1982 season, 60.6% of PH appearances were in NL games, a proportion that has grown to 74.1% of PH appearances for 2015 coming in non-DH games.

Despite their prowess in pinch home runs, only one of these teams (the 2001 D-Backs) was a pennant winner, though two others (the 1982 Orioles and the 2001 Giants) were just a season away from claiming that prize. That’s not too surprising as pinch-hitters are mostly employed by teams when trailing in a game, especially in the late innings (and, of course, teams that trail in the late innings usually lose). As an example, of 100 pinch-hit home runs in 2015, only 28 were hit by teams when leading in a game.

This year’s Cardinals already had 9 pinch home runs by the end of May, a pace matched only by the 2001 D-Backs. Of the other 16 clubs, only the 2001 Giants had even 5 pinch home runs before June. The Redbirds fast start was aided by having 3 players hit a pinch home run on April 8th against the Braves, the most in any searchable game and likely the most ever. A week later, St. Louis had two pinch home runs against the Reds on April 15th to become the only searchable team to have multiple games in the same season with multiple pinch home runs.

Some of the most outstanding individual feats of hitting pinch home runs came from players on these teams, starting with Dave Hansen whose 7 pinch home runs for the 2000 Dodgers broke Johnny Frederick‘s long-standing record of 6 pinch homers for the 1932 Dodgers (unlike Frederick, Hansen would have that record to himself for just one season as the Pirates’ Craig Wilson duplicated Hansen’s feat the next year). Right behind Frederick with 5 pinch homers are Mark Sweeney of the 2004 Rockies and David Dellucci and Erubiel Durazo, both for the 2001 D-Backs. John Vander Wal, with 17 career pinch home runs, is the only player with a pinch home run for more than one of our teams, tallying four for the 1995 Rockies and one for the 2001 Giants.

All of these teams had at least two players with multiple pinch homers, led by the 1977 and 2001 Giants, and the 1982 Orioles, each having four players with at least a deuce. Among these teams, the most players with a pinch home run are 9 by the 2001 Giants and 2006 Reds and the fewest are 4 by the 2001 D-Backs and 1958 Phillies (which, not coincidentally, are also the only teams in the group to have three players with 3 or more pinch homers).

Of the 198 pinch home runs by these teams, only 9 (4.5%) were grand slams and only 6 (3%) were walk-offs. That’s a bit worse than the majors totals for 1974 to 2015 of 6.1% grand slams and 4.9% walk-off. Here are some more markers of the 3921 pinch home runs over this period.

  • 21% were hit in Sep/Oct (May is the next highest month with 18%), a result of expanded rosters creating more substitution opportunities
  • 62% came in the 8th inning or later
  • Despite the preponderance of pinch home runs coming late in the game, they were equally distributed between low (< 0.7 LI) and high (> 1.5 LI) leverage situations, with 39.5% in each of those buckets and the rest (21%) in moderate leverage situations
  • 78% were hit when trailing or tied in the game
  • 54% were hit with men on base
  • 0.3% were inside the park
  • Again illustrating the preponderance of pinch home runs in NL games, there were more hit in the dead air of the Astrodome (26 seasons) than in the launchpads of the Skydome (26½ seasons), Kingdome (23 seasons) or Metrodome (28 seasons)
  • the Cubs have hit and allowed the most pinch home runs of any team
  • the Royals have hit the fewest and allowed the second fewest pinch home runs of the 28 teams debuting before 1998
  • despite debuting only in 1998, the D-Backs have hit more pinch home runs than 11 other clubs and allowed more than 8 other teams
  • Lefty batter Matt Stairs hit 23 pinch home runs, all of them against right-handed pitching. Those home runs were hit for 8 different teams, the most (7) for Philadephia where Stairs played just 115 games at age 40-41. Stairs also has one post-season pinch home run, one less than career leaders Chuck Essegian, Bernie Carbo, Jim Leyritz and Eric Hinske.
  • Right-handed reliever Jeff Reardon allowed 20 pinch home runs, 7 more than any other pitcher in the period. Not surprisingly, all but one of those pinch homers were hit by lefty batters (Reardon’s platoon breakdown for non-PH home runs is very different, with only 47% hit by lefties). Reardon has also allowed the most post-season pinch homers with two, tied with Mark Guthrie.
  • Pinch home runs were almost equally distributed between left-handed (50.8%) and right-handed batters (49.2%). Right-handed pitchers allowed 69% of pinch home-runs, 70% of those when the batter had the platoon advantage. For left-handed pitchers, the platoon disadvantage was more pronounced with 92% of pinch homers against southpaws hit by right-handed batters.
  • Two searchable players (Roger Freed and Carl Taylor) have hit a walk-off pinch grand slam with two out and down 3 runs. The .906 and .902 WPA scores were the biggest of both of their careers.
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oneblankspace
oneblankspace
8 years ago

The 1982 Orioles just missed the postseason. They were tied for the division lead with the Brewers after 161 games and they played each other to end the regular season.

Steven
Steven
8 years ago

I was at the game when Carl Taylor hit his walk-off pinch grand-slam, in 1970. Cardinals 11, Padres 10. At the other end of the decade, Roger Freed hit his, also for the Cardinals, against Houston.

no statistician but
no statistician but
8 years ago

Doug: The most ancient team on the list, the 1957 Redlegs, are a fascinating group. As for pinch hitters, it includes two of the most storied, Smoky Burgess and Jerry Lynch, but also, in a pinch so to speak, Bob Thurman and Ted KLu. Among them they accounted for 10 pinch HRs. Burgess was alternating catching duties with Ed Bailey that year (34 HRs out of the #2 position, down from 40 the previous year, in which parenthetically speaking the team tied the ML record of 221). Lynch was just getting into the PH racket that would see him become… Read more »

Richard Chester
Richard Chester
8 years ago

Egged on by a local newspaper Reds fans stuffed the ballot boxes for the All-Star game and something like 7 members of the team were voted as starters. Commissoner Ford Frick ruled that Hank Aaron and Willie Mays would replace two of those starters. Stan Musial was the only non-Red who was voted onto the team. Red players Johnny Temple, Roy McMillan, Frank Robinson, Don Hoak and Ed Bailey all started.

Kahuna Tuna
Kahuna Tuna
8 years ago
Reply to  Doug

Commissioner Ford Frick “discontinued” fan voting after the 1957 game, citing ballot-box abuses. All-Star votes were cast only by players, coaches, and managers through 1969.

Regarding the two All-Star Games played yearly from 1959 to 1962, according to Wikipedia, “[t]he second game was added to raise money for the MLB players’ pension funds, as well as other causes.” Nothing about appeasing the fans.

Voomo Zanzibar
8 years ago

The WHIP of the 5 Cubs’ starters (through 11 or 12 games)

0.927
0.937
0.963
0.966
1.079

Kahuna Tuna
Kahuna Tuna
8 years ago

Today the Cardinals tied the single-season team pinch-homer record. Jeremy Hazelbaker hit #14 in a 9-0 win over the Phillies.