Now, let’s get into the circumstances of it, because they take some of the shine off the weirdness of it, while putting some other weirdness on it.

063/.139/.063, as he went just 2-for-32 as a hitter in his rookie season. That took his season line for 1962 down to. With the Yankees trailing 1-0 on September 29, 1962, Bouton was sent up as a pinch-hitter in the third inning and struck out against White Sox pitcher Juan Pizarro. Yet, in one 1962 game against the White Sox, he was manager Ralph Houk’s choice for a pinch-hitter. On the hitting side of things, Bouton was not great. He was even good enough to be an All-Star, getting a couple MVP votes in 1963. While he’s probably most known for the book, Bouton was still a pitcher, and a pretty solid one. Pretty much all of that is down to him being the author of his book “Ball Four.” Bouton’s diary of his 1969 season with the Astros and the Seattle Pilots also touched on his Yankee career, and not all of it was totally flattering. It’s from that group that we can find maybe the worst pinch-hitter in Yankees history.įor a guy who was mostly a back end of the rotation starter for just a handful of years, Jim Bouton is a fairly well-known figure in Yankee history.

Then there are the players that did stick around longer, and put up some impressively bad batting lines by getting just a handful of hits. In all of those cases, those players only played a handful of games in pinstripes, and very well might’ve gotten a couple hits had they stuck around longer. There are many players who appeared as a pinch-hitter for the Yankees and also went 0-for-whatever over the course of their Yankee careers. It’s in those situations where you can get some moves that look funny in a box score. Often, clubs will send in a new player just to get the starter out of the game. However, that’s far from the only time players get sent up a pinch-hitters.

When you think about a pinch-hitter, you probably imagine a team sending up a guy who, for whatever reason, was on the bench that day for a key at-bat in a game.

Ball four bouton