Baltimore Orioles: Position Players Turned Into Pitchers

Aug 11, 2015; Seattle, WA, USA; Baltimore Orioles pitcher Mychal Givens (60) throws against the Seattle Mariners during the sixth inning at Safeco Field. Mandatory Credit: Joe Nicholson-USA TODAY Sports /

Mychal Givens of the Baltimore Orioles looks like a success story as a position player turned pitcher, but he is not the first reliever in O’s history to have done this.

I suppose for all of us, our primary knowledge of players is most profoundly affected by our memories of what we were personally able to see. Unless we are a research type of person who has spent time looking at old reels of baseball players of the generation or two before us, those players and their accomplishments are mostly just names and numbers on a page.

I remember as a young baseball fan how older people would talk about comparing the players I grew up watching in the Robinson / Palmer / Powell / Blair era with those of the decades before. I couldn’t relate much to the conversation. But now 45-50 years later, I guess I’ve become that guy.

My first memories of the Baltimore Orioles that developed into an immediate love for the game and team was in the mid-60s. Among the regular relievers who made appearances for the Orioles was Dick Hall.

In an era where ballplayers were not routinely as big as they are now, Hall was among the very tallest at 6’6”. His delivery was anything but pretty, throwing from an awkward sort of “short arm” style. He said of his own style, “The best description I’ve heard of what I look like on the mound is a drunken giraffe on roller skates.”

But it was effective. Hall was a control specialist with numbers that are excellent by modern standards at 1.5 walks per nine innings in his nine years with the Orioles. Over that span of 342 games he was 65-40 with a 2.89 ERA. But the most impressive number is his WHIP of just 1.005, which is (according to a recent article in Fangraphs) the lowest in franchise history. To give a sense of this, that is actually the exact same number that Darren O’Day has for his career (though he is on track to end up possibly registering a lower franchise record than Hall, being right now at 0.939 in 273 games).

But here is the part of the story that I did not remember, mostly because I was either not yet born or too young to recall it. Dick Hall started out as a position player (in 100+ games), particularly in center field. He was age 30 in 1961 in his first season with the Orioles. Prior to that he had already logged five years in MLB as a position player turned starting pitcher.

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When once asked why he made the switch to pitching, he simply said, “Because I couldn’t hit.” He had pitched and played center field at Swarthmore College and was chosen by the Pirates to be a position player. He struggled, and while playing winter ball in Mexico made the switch and was lights out in the minors. But then Hall had mixed results in the majors, was traded to Kansas City, and later to Baltimore. It was with the Orioles that he became ultimately a very successful relief pitcher.

Hall battled back from a plethora of injuries over the course of his very long career. Tendinitis limited his appearances in the second half of the 1966 season and he did not appear in the 1966 World Series (that included three complete games in the four-game sweep). However, in 1969 he appeared in the first ever American League Championship Series game against the Twins and was the winning pitcher that day. Hall was a part of all three Orioles World Series teams from ’69-’71.

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So Mychal Givens is not the first and only player to make such a change … in his case from shortstop to relief pitcher. And the early returns are looking very positive. In 30 innings he walked just 1.8 per nine frames, while striking out 11.4, and his WHIP was an outstanding 0.867. Keeping that up is going to be very difficult, but there is nothing to cause one to think that he is on anything but a positive trajectory for good success.

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