coming into the 2024 season, kiké hernandez had a career era of 81.00 thanks to an appearance in 2018 in which he surrendered three runs and recorded only one out. over the course of the 2024 campaign, hernandez lowered his era to 9.64 by appearing in four games and allowing two runs over 4 and a third innings of work. in one of those games, hernandez was 3 for 4 with a couple of rbis and so became the dodgers' best two-way player of the season. i expect that to change next year.
seeing kiké on the mound multiple times in 2024 reminded me of russell martin who also made four relief appearances for the dodgers in a single season (2019). it also made me wonder who the first dodger position player to take the mound might have been.
i looked back at player rosters on baseball reference and found that danny heep, one of the "stuntmen", pitched in relief for the dodgers in 1988. in honor of that achievement, i added a 2017 topps buyback card of heep to my collection
it is the silver version of the "rediscover topps" buybacks in case you were wondering. in his lone relief appearance as a dodger (he would take the mound again in 1990 for the red sox), heep pitched two innings and gave up a two-run home run to ken caminiti in one of them.
i kept looking, and i believe that the first los angeles dodger position player to make a relief appearance (and the only one prior to heep), was jim hickman. hickman has a card as a dodger in the 1967 topps set, but i decided to share this recent pickup instead
anyway, after hitting for dick egan in the 7th, hickman was called upon to pitch the 8th and 9th innings in a june game against the giants back in '67, even though the dodgers were only down by five. he gave up two hits and one run in his two innings of work - the one run coming on a willie mays home run - and even got a single in the bottom of the 9th for good measure.
it will be interesting to see what comes of 2025 with shohei ohtani due to resume his role as a pitcher every fifth day. how much time off will the dodgers give ohtani and at what cost to their offense? and with kiké becoming a free agent, who will be dave roberts' first call from the bench to take the mound at the end of the lopsided games?
Joel Youngblood has a card as a pitcher.
ReplyDeleteI don't know if it's my imagination or not, but it seems like position players pitch way more often now. Feels like it happens every other day or so somewhere in the league in today's game.
ReplyDeleteI don't think it's your imagination at all. Back in the day pitchers went longer, so there were guys in the back of the bullpen who basically were there only for "mop-up" work, to pitch in games that had gotten out of hand, and they could go multiple innings. That doesn't exist anymore, so position players are pressed into service more often. They even had to impose rules limiting the practice.
DeleteA. Kiké had a very impressive year on the mound. Maybe Topps will hook up fans and give us a photo of him pitching in 2025.
ReplyDeleteB. Hickman kinda looks like a skinny version of The Rock.