Owings and his Hitting

[dipset]

I saw this guy micah owings 4 hit game with the 2 homers and i saw that he hit another homer yesterday. It seemed kind of odd to me that pitcher could launch a ball 440 feet. So i looked into it and i guess this guy hit 70 homeruns in high school. He batted 660 as a soph with 21 homers and batted 450 as a junior with 25 homers. In case people dont know much about high school baseball teams only playe around 30-35 games. CRAZy

[masterpinky0509]

He's clearly a talented hitter, he also played in the field in college and had some pretty ridiculous numbers. He's the new Zambrano/Willis/Schmidt in terms of power-hitting, good-hitting pitchers.

[RyanK]

He's the new Babe Ruth in terms of power-hitting, good-hitting pitchers.

fixed it for you

[StlSluggers]

Wow... I didn't know about those HS numbers. That's sick!

[BitterDodgerFan]

why don't players who have both talents play both roles? i'd love to see those guys play the field and hit even if once in a while.

[Bloody Sox]

why don't players who have both talents play both roles? i'd love to see those guys play the field and hit even if once in a while.

There are a few issues:
- I'd guess that the biggest problem is that teams wouldn't want their pitchers to do any throwing except pitching. Even at 1B you'd need to throw some.
- In addition, teams want to protect their pitching talent by minimizing how much running they'd do, along with sliding and to a lesser degree risking being hit by pitches.
- They could allow some throwing on that day that falls exactly between starts, but that'd only be one extra hitting day. A guy who only hits twice every 5 games isn't going to be as effective as a guy who hits 4 of every 5 days.
- In the AL, you could obviously use the DH to remove the throwing risk... but a team would need to make that leap into believing that a guy could help them on offense that much to let him do it.
- If an organization took the leap and let a pitcher hit, they'd need to groom him in the minors to know he could handle it. Thus, they'd have to identify the guy early and have him hit and pitch all the way through the system.
- Lastly, if an AL team let a pitcher hit on days he pitched, they'd need to forfeit the DH - which would be OK I suppose if their DH was not that good, but not as useful as if the DH could be used in place of a weak hitting catcher or middle infielder.