Designated Hitting Families

My dad came up with the idea for this post during last night's Brewers-Twins game. Prince Fielder, the son of former slugger Cecil Fielder, was Milwaukee's DH. Knowing Cecil often filled the DH role on his teams, my dad wondered which father and son had combined for the most games as a designated hitter.

Since the DH rule has only been around since 1973, there haven't been that many fathers and sons who could have both been designated hitters. There have been twenty-one fathers who spent at least one game at DH with twenty-five sons who also spent at least one game as a designated hitter. In addition, there are fourteen other families who had a father and son both play after 1973 but who didn't each spend time as a designated hitter. I'll list the fathers and sons who both spent time as a DH below first and then follow that with the combinations that didn't both DH. Note I've summed the three numbers for the families with two siblings that both were DH's.

Most Games as a DH for a Father/Son Combination
Through June 27, 2008

Rank	Father (DH Games)	Son (DH Games)	Total DH Games
1	Hal McRae (1427)	Brian McRae (19)	1446
2	Cecil Fielder (535)	Prince Fielder (11)	546
3	Tom Grieve (195)	Ben Grieve (105)	300
4	Jerry Hairston, Sr. (125)	Jerry Hairston, Jr. (33) Scott Hairston (3)	161
5	Tim Raines, Sr. (131)	Tim Raines, Jr. (5)	136
6	Tony Perez (82)	Eduardo Perez (50)	132
7	Bobby Bonds (81)	Barry Bonds (39)	120
8	Gary Ward (101)	Daryle Ward (14)	115
9	Ken Griffey, Sr. (14)	Ken Griffey, Jr. (74)	88
10	Sandy Alomar, Sr. (30)	Roberto Alomar (25) Sandy Alomar, Jr. (14)	69
11	Gary Matthews, Sr. (39)	Gary Matthews, Jr. (22)	61
12	Dave May (23)	Derrick May (11)	34
13	Buddy Bell (24)	David Bell (1) Mike Bell (0)	25
14	Dave Duncan (10)	Shelley Duncan (10) Chris Duncan (4)	24
15	Tony Gwynn, Sr. (15)	Tony Gwynn, Jr. (1)	16
16	Dennis Werth (12)	Jayson Werth (3)	15
17	Jose Cruz, Sr. (12)	Jose Cruz, Jr. (2)	14
18	Bob Boone (1)	Bret Boone (4) Aaron Boone (2)	7
19	Johnny Jeter (3)	Shawn Jeter (3)	6
20	Fred Kendall (2)	Jason Kendall (3)	5
21	Ed Crosby (1)	Bobby Crosby (2)	3

Of the sons on this list, only eleven haven't played so far this season. In fact, Daryle Ward is playing as a DH for the Cubs while I post this so his number is already out of date. That's why there's a "Through June 27, 2008" up on top, though. :)

As promised, the families who have played since the start of the 1973 season that didn't manage to have both generations DH (yet) are as follows:

• Felipe and Moises Alou
• Jesse and Josh Barfield
• Jeff and Sean Burroughs
• Jerry and Jeff DaVanon
• Bill and Brandon Fahey
• Randy and Todd Hundley
• Don and Keith Kessinger
• Clyde and Damon Mashore
• Dave and Cody McKay
• Manny, Andy, and Jose Mota
• Tony Pena, Sr. and Tony Pena, Jr.
• Pete Rose, Sr. and Pete Rose, Jr.
• Steve and Nick Swisher
• John and Dusty Wathan
  

Lowest SLG by a DH, minimum 400 PA

I meant to post this yesterday but was attacked by some computer gremlins. Now that they're taken care of I want to turn attention to designated hitters who weren't good at hitting for power. A number of the guys on the lowest batting average and lowest on base percentage lists kept their jobs because they were capable of mashing the ball. By looking at the lowest slugging percentages, we should be able to find the designated hitters that were, essentially, slap hitters.

I'm going to make this a pretty long list, simply because giving the lowest thirty seasons for slugging percentage also gives you all the seasons of .400 or below. (EDIT: After reading the comments on the link Baseball Think Factory gave this entry, I realized I forgot to detail qualifiers for the list. The following are players who appeared in at least 75% of their games on the season as a designated hitter according to the B-R Play Index. Sorry for the confusion.):

1. Ken Singleton, 1984, .289
2. Carlos May, 1976, .333
3. Mitchell Page, 1979, .335
   
4. Alvin Davis, 1991, .335
5. Billy Williams, 1976, .339
6. Hank Aaron, 1975, .355
7. Tommy Davis, 1975, .357
8. George Bell, 1993, .363
9. Greg Luzinski, 1984, .364
10. Dave Parker, 1991, .365
11. Gates Brown, 1973, .366
12. Reggie Jefferson, 1993, .372
13. Tommy Davis, 1974, .377
14. Tony Oliva, 1975, .378
15. Ken Singleton, 1982, .381
16. Paul Molitor, 1998, .382
17. Edgar Martinez, 2004, .385
    
18. Jeff Burroughs, 1983, .387
19. Al Kaline, 1974, .389
20. Willie Horton, 1978, .389
21. Rico Carty, 1979, .390
22. Dwight Evans, 1990, .391
23. Harold Baines, 1992, .391
24. Tommy Davis, 1973, .391
25. Andre Thornton, 1986, .392
26. Don Baylor, 1987, .392
27. Jose Vidro, 2007, .394
28. Hal McRae, 1981, .396
29. George Brett, 1992, .397
30. Deron Johnson, 1973, .400

It's not altogether surprising so many of these seasons took place in the 1970's and 1980's. Slugging percentage league-wide was lower than fans today are accustomed to: in the first ten seasons of the DH, AL slugging percentage topped .400 all of three times. The AL slugging percentage hasn't dropped below .400 since 1992. That makes Seattle special in a dubious way; the Mariners are the only team to have a full-time DH since 2000 make the list, and they did it twice (Martinez in 2004 and Vidro in 2007)!

Regardless of the time he played in, Ken Singleton's all-time low mark is perversely impressive. It's hard to slug .289 and get 400 PA in a season, much less without playing impressive defense to back it up. Opening the search to all positions since 1973, only 144 players amassed 400+ PA in a season while slugging lower than .300. They were preponderantly shortstops, with the rest mainly second basemen and catchers. To show how rare it is, consider that 6,614 seasons of 400+ PA have been recorded since 1973. In either case, rare or not, the fact the second-lowest finisher had a .333 slugging percentage makes Singleton's mark stand out even more. I would say he holds one of the esoteric "unbreakable" records.

Lowest OBP by a DH, minimum 400 PA

This is along the same lines as the last post, only now I'm using on base percentage because it's a better measure of how a player avoids making outs. The restrictions are the same: 400+ PA and 75+% of games as a DH.

For fun, I'll list the top (bottom?) twenty seasons:

1. George Bell, 1993, .243
2. Dave Kingman, 1986, .255
3. Ken Singleton, 1984, .286
4. Lee May, 1978, .286
5. Dave Parker, 1991, .288
6. George Bell, 1992, .294
7. Lee May, 1979, .297
8. Alvin Davis, 1991, .299
9. Reggie Jackson, 1984, .300
10. Jeffrey Leonard, 1989, .301
11. Eddie Murray, 1994, .302
12. Willie Horton, 1978, .303
13. Andre Thornton, 1985, .304
14. Josh Phelps, 2004, .304
15. Dave Parker, 1989, .308
16. Dave Kingman, 1985, .309
17. Reggie Jefferson, 1993, .310
18. Sammy Sosa, 2007, .311
19. Carl Everett, 2005, .311
20. George Brett, 1993, .312

George Bell and Lee May are the only two players in MLB history to post an OBP under .300 in more than one season as a full-time DH.

Lowest AVG by a DH, minimum 400 PA

This was the idea that led to my long post about designated hitters. I wanted to see which players at an offensive position had managed to put up the worst batting averages in a single season. Certainly batting average is not the best way to measure a player's offense but it's fun to see guys with low averages (so long as their not on your team, I suppose).

Baseball-Reference's Play Index doesn't separate statistics from a season into statistics by position, so in order to get full-time DH's I merely had it look for players that spent 75% or more of their games played at DH. I may have missed a couple players, but when coupled with the 400 PA qualifier, the 75% restriction means I should have caught all the guys whose role was to fill the DH slot pretty much every night.

Here are the ten seasons by designated hitters with averages at .230 or below:

1. Dave Kingman, 1986, .210
2. Billy Williams, 1976, .211
3. Gorman Thomas, 1985, .215
4. Ken Singleton, 1984, .215
5. Jonny Gomes, 2006, .216
6. George Bell, 1993, .217
7. Alvin Davis, 1991, .221
8. Reggie Jackson, 1984, .223
9. Greg Vaughn, 1995, .224
10. Andre Thornton, 1986, .229

The highest OPS put up by any of those guys was .780 by Gorman Thomas. Ken Singleton had the only sub-.600 season, winding up with .575.

Designated Hitters

I don't know about you, but whenever I picture a designated hitter, it's a thunderfooted, lumbering, home run masher. David Ortiz plays well into the conventional thinking of a quality DH. The thing is, however, not all DH's are home run hitters. In fact, especially on bad teams, many times the DH is just whatever position player on the team needed a day off defensively. To wit, the Tampa Bay Devil Rays this year used 13 different designated hitters, with Greg Norton leading all players with 46 starts.

In order to try and verify the perception of designated hitters as pure mashers, I decided to use the league splits (Example: 2007 Major League splits) at Baseball-Reference.com to get data on DH performance since the DH rule was enacted in 1973. Since National League teams don't have to plan a roster spot for the designated hitter, I decided only to look at American League numbers. Since the advent of interleague play, the non-DH numbers are slightly skewed due to pitchers batting, but the effect shouldn't be too drastic.

First, let's look at the traditional, though flawed, measure of batting average to compare designated hitters to the rest of the league:

(click image to enlarge)


Alright, so we can see that traditionally designated hitters hit for a lower average than the rest of their AL counterparts. This seems to support the idea that DH's aim to hit for power rather than average. Note the sharp dropoff in 1985; this isn't the last time we'll note that particular season.

Now let's turn our attention to a hitter's main goal: avoiding outs. On Base Percentage helps us here, as it's a measure of a player's ability to, well, get on base and avoid outs.

(click image to enlarge)


Here we can see that designated hitters generally have been better at getting on base than the rest of the AL. This is especially apparent in the mid-to-late 1990's. Interestingly, for the first decade after the DH rule took effect the players in the DH role did not really distinguish themselves from the rest of the league. This graph also shows the mysterious dip in 1985.

So designated hitters get on base more than the rest of the league. Woohoo. If they really are so good at driving the ball, it should show up in their slugging percentages. Let's take a look:

(click image to enlarge)


So, every year since 1973 has seen slugging percentages by DH at least equal to the rest of the league. In many cases, designated hitters slugged much better than the rest of the league. It's beginning to become repetitive, but the one season the rest of the league caught up to their DH's was...1985! This chart confirms the idea of designated hitters being better than average at mashing the ball. In fact, the last two charts show the overall superiority of players used as DH's at hitting in general. Using OPS, or On Base plus Slugging, a metric giving a quick-and-dirty yet useful approximation of a hitter's value, we can see the value of designated hitters.

(click image to enlarge)


As we can see, and as we gathered from the last two charts, designated hitters have a higher OPS than the rest of the league virtually every season. The only expection, obviously, was 1985. What exactly went on that year, anyway?

Baseball-Reference also has an interesting split statistic called tOPS+. This statistic compares how DH's compare to the numbers for the whole league. Anything over 100 means they were better than the rest of the league in terms of OPS, while anything less than 100 means they were worse. You might say this chart is a re-hashing of the last one, but it gives an impression of the degree to which DH's were better than the rest of the league. Finally, tOPS+ has a pretty simple formula for this chart: 100*((DH_OBP/AL_OBP) + (DH_SLG/AL_SLG) - 1).

(click image to enlarge)


It turns out that ever since roughly 1991 those DH's have been much better than the rest of the league. The expansion year (for the NL) in 1993 saw a dip in DH dominance, but other than that the designated hitters have exceeded 110 every season. Who could have figured that 1985 was the only year since 1973 that DH's were worse than the rest of the league? Anyone?

To recap, we've determined that DH's generally hit for worse average (swinging for the fences?), get on base more (walked because they represent a power threat?), slug better, and put up higher OPS numbers than the rest of the league. If they truly are swinging for the fences because they're home run hitters, might it show up in their strikeout percentage (strikeouts over at bats)? I think it might, but let's appeal to the chart:

(click image to enlarge)


Well, well, well, it turns out these guys are free swingers. While strikeout percentage overall has gone up since 1973, it's gone up faster for designated hitters. For the last dozen years, one out of every five at bats by a designated hitter has been a strikeout (as opposed to two out of eleven for the rest of the league). Pretty neat stuff.

Finally, there's one more statistic that might tell us whether designated hitters are swinging for the fences. I'm referring to home run percentage, or home runs over at bats. This should give us a final clue to the power displayed by designated hitters. Here we go:

(click image to enlarge)


So, perhaps obviously, it turns out that designated hitters do hit home runs at a higher percentage than the rest of the league. Just eyeballing it, it seems as though the HR% for the average DH is 4/3 that of another average position player. That's pretty cool.

I may have just spent a significant amount of time telling the world what it already knew: designated hitters are better hitters than the rest of the American League. It took some time for patience and/or other on-base skills to develop, but the slugging percentage, strikeouts and home runs were always there. If nothing else, I hope this lengthy post brought the fact designated hitters in 1985 suffered a dip in numbers compared to the rest of the league. I'm not really sure why that is, but in hopes someone sees something, I'll list below the batting lines for every player to spend 50 or more games at DH in 1985. Thanks for reading this marathon entry!

Name	Age	Team	G	AVG	OBP	SLG	OPS
Ron Kittle	27	CHW	57	.250	.305	.526	.831
Hal McRae	39	KCR	105	.264	.355	.459	.814
Jeff Burroughs	34	TOR	74	.267	.377	.433	.810
Gorman Thomas	34	SEA	133	.215	.330	.451	.781
Don Baylor	36	NYY	140	.232	.332	.432	.764
Cliff Johnson	37	TEX	103	.264	.337	.425	.762
Larry Sheets	25	BAL	93	.262	.323	.418	.741
Mike Easler	34	BOS	130	.259	.320	.411	.731
Reggie Jackson	39	CAL	52	.196	.335	.387	.722
Roy Smalley	32	MIN	56	.244	.348	.372	.720
Ted Simmons	35	MIL	99	.265	.325	.390	.715
Dave Kingman	36	OAK	149	.233	.301	.404	.705
Andre Thornton	35	CLE	122	.235	.301	.400	.701
Jorge Orta	34	KCR	85	.263	.310	.384	.694
Al Oliver	38	TOR	59	.253	.276	.376	.652
Len Matuszek	30	TOR	52	.220	.265	.319	.584

The only thing that struck me as curious was Reggie Jackson's bizarre split as RF/DH (.286/.378/.555 in 325 PA vs. .196/.335/.387 in 206 PA). He spent slightly more time as a designated hitter late in the season but overall his starts are pretty mixed up.