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Wednesday, May 29, 2013
17 Players Who Began Their Careers At Positions We Forgot They Played
8. Raul Ibanez, catcher
I’ll be honest. I had no idea he was once a catcher until I heard it recently on an ESPN baseball podcast. Heck, I had no idea he was ever young. He’s one of those guys who seems like he was 35 at birth.
Jose is an Absurd Sultan
Posted: May 29, 2013 at 01:50 PM | 83 comment(s)
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Tags: bert campaneris, cesar tovar, hall of fame, multiple positions
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1. McCoy Posted: May 29, 2013 at 02:41 PM (#4454697)Isn't the profile usually pitcher/SS?
I guess casual fans don't realize that virtually every major league first baseman played other infield positions, usually third, in the minors. Thome and Bagwell and McGwire aren't unique in that way. A guy actually getting drafted as a first baseman is a lot more rare, I think.
Foxx was actually a decent catcher, defensively. He played regularly as a catcher for stretches of the 1935 and 1940 (when he was 32!) seasons. I'm sure he could have been a major league regular at the position, although his hitting may have suffered. His problem was that the Athletics also came up with Mickey Cochrane at exactly the same time, and one of them had to move.
Yeah, definitely. They almost have to be left-handed for that to happen (Keith Hernandez), and even then they're likely an OF or a pitcher.
Its not that difficult.
I thought it was weird to find out Hal McRae began as a 3B with the Reds.
Ron Gant and Danny Tartabull began as 2B. George Brett began as a SS his first pro season.
I just remarked the other day how I had no idea Pedro Guerrero played CF for the Dodgers.
Surprised he didn't even mention all the hitters turned pitchers - Dave Stieb, Al Fitzmorris, Tom Burgmeier, Troy Percival, Trevor Hoffman, Joel Peralta, Rafael Soriano, James McDonald, Sean Doolittle.
Not for left-handed pitchers :)
We had two extremely talented kids in my Little League who were left-handed pitchers, one of whom eventually played pro ball in Italy and was a semi-pro player in Pittsburgh for a long time after that. He played CF and 1B when not pitching.
-- MWE
I think there was some debate about which way Zack Greinke would go too. Nick Markakis and John Olerud as well.
Wasn't Pat Burrell a 3B in college?
James McDonald, mentioned above, I believe was drafted as a pitcher, switched to outfield for a while when his arm got hurt, and then moved back to pitcher.
Its the very first sentence of the piece and the picture accompanying it.
Admittedly I scrolled past the intro and went right to the actual list.
If Hernandez was a righty he almost certainly would have come up as a 2b/ss, likely landing at 3b eventually...
Steve Garvey- and he came up as a 3B- and if you'd ever seen him play you would realize how mindboggling that was - not that he was a statue, if he had an average arm he likely could have been a passable 3b until his 30s, but he had a worse arm than Johnny Damon, I'm not sure he could reach the 1B from 3rd on the fly...
Jim Thome came up as a 3B
That would really have to be a separate list as it's pretty common, no?
Doolittle is particularly amazing to me; he went practically straight from constantly injured first baseman struggling in the minors one day to ass-kicking major league reliever the next. And he brings it in the mid-90s; even for a lefthander it has to be rare for a kid with that great an arm to be playing first base.
Kenley Jansen was the starting catcher for the Netherlands in the 2009 WBC, and by the end of 2010 he was the Dodgers' closer.
I found one for Tom Gordon that described him as a light hitting shortstop (sound familiar?) and the scout was unsure he could ever hit his way to the big leagues. Oh and by the way, he also pitches.
Now to check bbref to see if I'm remembering the Rob Nelson-McGwire dynamic correctly.
edit: I was close. McGwire looked like he was in a time share with Nelson and they played him at third to get him in the lineup more and to spell Lansford. Random players on that 87 As team: Ron Cey, Reggie Jackson, Alfredo Griffin, Tony Bernazard, Jose Rijo, Gary Lavelle, Johnnie LeMaster and Brian Harper. Probably should have held onto Brian Harper.
Edit to add because I just noticed: The last pick in the round Thome was taken was a third baseman from USC named Rodney Peete.
Wait, what?
He had the arm strength.
He was tall and lanky and ran surprisingly well, strong arm, he had the physical tools to be a good defensive OF
but he was absolutely terrible at every position, bad hands, bad instincts, despite having a strong arm, despite having pitched in college his arm was worse than useless, seriously, it was not so much that he couldn't control where he threw the ball it was more a matter of he didn't know WHERE to throw the ball- "do I throw to the cutoff man? Do I throw ahead of the runner, which runner, should I throw the ball home or to 2b??? He'd have a play on a runner at 3rd, and he wouldn't make it simply because he either didn't even try, or he'd make up his mind too late to try to get the runner.
So he was an absolute disaster in the OF, but was athletic enough and had a strong arm, so sticking him at 1B probably looked like a waste, so they tried 3B...
If Hernandez threw right-handed, would he be in the Hall of Fame? He was an outstanding defensive first baseman, so it's easy to see him being an average or better third baseman. In addition, his hitting numbers look better at third than they do at first. I suppose his biggest problem is that he hit like a good leadoff man or traditional #2 hitter, but voters expect first baseman to have big HR/RBI numbers.
It's a generalization to be sure, but pretty much every right handed thrower in the organization was tried at third. Most were better at it than Jim Ray Hart.
"17 Websites That Are Contributing to the Buzzfeedification of Online Journalism"
Harmon Killebrew's first MLB games were at second base. It's not that crazy that guys who eventually became somewhat-minus slugging third basemen were originally shortstops or second basemen; that's just the direction of slide along the "defensive spectrum." It becomes crazy in retrospect when you imagine the horrors of your 40ish DH out in the middle infield :)
Doolittle was the #1 starting pitcher for a very good UVA baseball team, when he was there. He had pitched successfully at a very high level (what would we call a very good college team equal to- high A, maybe?) before, and i was surprised they turned him into a 1B (although he was a heck of a hitter in college, too).
in a few years, albert will be on there i guess.
Graig Nettles, one of the greatest defensive 3Bs ever was a 2B in college and his first year in the Minors.
He was slow with respect to running speed, but his reflexes/first step were shockingly quick (a bit of a disconnect actually, how could someone who was so quick have such a slow top speed?)
However, the Twins had another prospect who looked like a 2B and made the majors first (Rod Carew), so the Twins moved Nettles to 3b...
Carew was a much faster runner than Nettles, but wasn't such a hot 2b defensively- I strongly suspect that Nettles would have been a better defensive 2B than Carew- but that's just a what if.
Then the next day he saw Mantle taking infield practice, and was never more relieved, Mantle may have been the best pure athlete he'd ever seen on the diamond, but he was no kind of shortstop.
I remember one game towards the end of his career, where some sort of catcher-related emergency happened. He volunteered to be the bullpen catcher to warm up relievers.
Danny Ainge, Drew Henson.
JS-LF: Kingman was the bane of my existence--what an unappealing ballplayer. I dimly recall one game in which the Mets tried to play him at 3B, and the opposing team just started trying to drop bunts down the line, and they had to shift him back over to 1B. He may have been the worst defensive player I have ever seen.
Jason Giambi was drafted as a SS as well--maybe Cleveland could stick him out there for an inning? That would be fun.
I guess I am old enough that a lot of the specifics in TFA are more "Well yeah!" than "Huh?" If Chipper had not hurt his knee, he might have been a decent SS. So might Mike Schmidt--just think, if not for a high school knee injury, he might have been the man to transform the shortstop position.
I am convinced that by sharing a bottle of bourbon with me upon his arrival at the Arizona instructional league after signing, throwing up all night and dropping every pitch that I threw in BP (or at least the ones that I somehow threw for strikes) in full view of the assembled minor league coaches that I helped get Chili out from behind the plate.
Bourbon - is there anything that it cannot do?
Yeah, pretty much.
- Mel Ott (yes, he was)
- Sid Gordon
- Hank Thompson
- Bobby Thomson
- Orlando Cepeda
- Jackie Brandt
- Felipe Alou
- Manny Mota
- Jose Cardenal
- Cap Peterson
- Ken Henderson
And, of course, Hart and Kingman.
(You know, somebody should write an e-book about this phenomenon ...)
Everybody spent time at third in the 60s and 70s (and beyond). Killebrew, Allen, Perez, Bob Robertson, George Scott! (61 starts in 1970), Driessen (I'd forgotten about that one), Earl Williams, Deron Johnson, Tenace (13 starts in 77).
Here's one I never heard about. Yaz got 2 starts in 1964 and 27 starts in 1973.
That search also turns up a couple of the more absurd ones going the other way. Enos Cabell at 1B of course but did you know the 67 Phils actually gave Tony Taylor (career OPS+ 88) 43 starts at 1B?
I'm old enough to remember Amos Otis playing third for the Mets.
Of course, the Mets thirdbaseman situation during the period is legendary.
DB
- Sid Gordon
- Hank Thompson
- Bobby Thomson
- Orlando Cepeda
- Jackie Brandt
- Felipe Alou
- Manny Mota
- Jose Cardenal
- Cap Peterson
- Ken Henderson
And, of course, Hart and Kingman.
And, a few years later, Joel Youngblood.
Yeah, everyone knows that. IT WAS IN AMADEUS!
As mentioned, it's logical for players to be tried at the toughest defensive positions they can conceivably handle until they fail, but it baffles me that anyone thought clumsy slowpokes like Thome and Posada even had a chance to become middle infielders. I know they were more agile then than they were later, but still.
As Bill James (among others) has noted, second base was a chronic sore spot for the Braves in 1953. They traded six players and $100,000 to the Pirates for Danny O'Connell (who flopped) after the 1953 season, and then found themselves trading for Schoendienst at the 1957 trading deadline. When Red got tuberculosis in 1959, the Braves tried seven different players there, none of whom started more than 45 games. The 1960s were more of the same - Chuck Cottier, Frank Bolling, Woody Woodward. It's not much of an exaggeration to say that the Braves wasted most of Aaron's career for want of a second baseman.
-- MWE
My fantasy teams over the years have done quite well because I could use Danny Tartabull at second base or Mark McGwire at third or Kevin Mitchell at short, etc.
Trying to remember recent examples of this but they are escaping me at the moment...
I've been in dice leagues where it was a leg up to play Ott at 3B or have Foxx catch. Goes against the spirit of the thing, but hey, those guys were great ballplayers. In a way it's not much different from playing Derek Jeter for an entire career at SS :)
I recall those days. Him and Jeremy Reed were the future of the Mariners!
Really? He was never really exclusively a catcher, but he was primarily a catcher for a while in the big leagues when he first came up.
I agree that a lot of those in the list are pretty boring. "Third Baseman X used to be a shortstop!" Well imagine that...
When I was a kid my friend had that Ethan Allen spinner baseball game and we spent a LOT of time playing it. We would draft teams from the cards he had and landing Babe Ruth was such an enormous advantage. Obviously Babe was ridiculously good but when you could stick him in as your pitcher rather than some generic pitcher who couldn't hit worth a damn...well we made it so the guy who the coin flip for the first pick would get Ruth then the next guy would have the next three picks just to try to even things out.
Of course, there's Bryce Harper drafted as a catcher -- although he didn't play a professional game there.
From that era, too, Ted Williams pitched in high school, and Jackie Jensen in college. Unlike Musial, neither pitched in the pros (though Williams threw an emergency two innings in 1940).
Oddly enough, since I just mentioned him, one reason to play DiMaggio at 1B was to get young phenom Jackie Jensen into the lineup.
This is interesting - what constitutes failure? For instance, at this point I pretty strongly think Jesus Montero should never catch another game again, and should be made a DH for the rest of this year and trained to play 1B, and be a DH/1B only from here out. He's not good enough a catcher to risk ruining his bat over; let him concentrate on hitting.
I could be wrong but I feel that a guy should always play the toughest defensive position he can handle--but if his bat potentially has a lot of value, tend toward moving him to an easier position if he's struggling in the field and at the plate. If you expect a guy's bat to be most of his value in the majors, let him focus most of his energy on hitting.
Really?
He was the Matt Wieters of his day, he was supposed to be the "next Johnny Bench" (1st overall pick in 1985)
then he was a starting catcher for 5-6 years...
Thome was tall for a shortstop, and not graceful, but as a kid he had a shortstop's arm. He was an acceptable ML third baseman for several years (including on a really strong pennant-winning team in 1995).
Here's a 1992 baseball card of Thome (I swear it's not a 1992 Albright). He was a trimmer guy than one would think.
Tim Wakefield.
Mark Hendrickson, Brian Jordan.
Danny Ainge, Drew Henson.
Pat White.
My fantasy teams over the years have done quite well because I could use Danny Tartabull at second base or Mark McGwire at third or Kevin Mitchell at short, etc.
Trying to remember recent examples of this but they are escaping me at the moment...
Pujols. BJ Upton. Marques Colston. Pedroia.
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