Tom Brennan - Could The Mets' Best Hitter Ever Have Been - a Pitcher?

Hammerin' Hampton

Before I start this article...

Feel free to post about the article - or write comments about whatever is on your mind about the Mets and Major League Baseball.  Let's get a discussion going.

ARTICLE: 

Of course, I am being a bit facetious with my article title here. 

Or am I?  You decide.

After all, the Mets had Mike Piazza as a hitter, who hit like thunderclaps on a stormy Miami afternoon.

But Mike Hampton?  What a hitter he was - and we'll never know just how good he could have been.  Why?

Minor league pitchers very rarely hit by the time Hampton became a minor league prospect in the 1990s.  

In fact, he was a mere 1 for 3 in the minors, but threw roughly 465 innings in the minors before he was called up.  He was a potentially lethal hitter - who never got to hit.  

Can you imagine what sort of MLB hitter he would have been if he hit a lot, as well pitched, in the minors?  If he got to hit between starts like Shoehei Ohtani did in Japan?

I'll just come out and say it...

He certainly could have been an All Star caliber offensive player, if he trained to be a hitter rather than a pitcher.

Hampton went .246.294/.356 in 725 at bats with 16 HRs and 79 RBIs in the majors.  He also drilled 22 doubles and 5 triples.

But he was a far better hitter than that indicates.  You see, with no on-the-training in the minors at the plate, he needed time once he reached the majors to adjust with the lumber.

He was only 27 for 163 (.165) after his first 3 full seasons in the majors.  Considering he never hit in the minors, why would that surprise anyone?  

I just did an article touching on that yesterday, indicating how extraordinarily difficult it is for pitchers today to hit major league pitching, considering they almost never come up to bat in the minors.

Imagine if Brett Baty got drafted by the Mets and someone said to him, "young man, pack your bags for NY."  And he asked, "Wheee!!! Once I get there, how do I get to Cyclone Park?" 

And they said to him, "Oh, no, you're not going to Brooklyn, you're headed to Queens and you'll be batting 5th for the Mets tomorrow, and for the rest of the season."

How would Baty have hit?  My guess. Not well at all.  After all, after a 5 game intro in the lowly Gulf Coast rookie league, his next assignment in rookie ball that year in 2019 was a level up in mid-rookie-league ball in Kingsport, where he hit  just .222 with 56 Ks in 42 games - and those he did that against were far from MLB pitchers he was facing.

And he was drafted, as a hitter, in the top half of the first round.  The ability to hit, for any human on the planet, takes time.  

Heck, look how Jared Kelenic struggled in the majors last year AFTER spending a couple of seasons in the minors.

The great Tony Gwynn, touched on by Reese Kaplan in his article yesterday, hit close to .350 in the minors, but he got close to 160 minor league games in before his major league debut.  He didn't go straight to the bigs, either.

I challenge anyone to hit major league pitching without a good chunk of minor league at bats under his belt.  Everyone would fail.

So it took Hampton a while to figure out how to hit against big league pitchers.   So it was no surprise he went went 27 for 163 with no homers early on.

I remember he caught my attention once at Shea Stadium with the Astros, before he became a Met.  He hit a ROCKET TO THE OPPOSITE FIELD IN RIGHT CENTER and legged it for a triple.  I thought, "This guy is a PITCHER?"

After the understandable early bat struggles, though, he was 151 for 562, which is .270.  He had time to learn to hit, even if only part time.

How many major league hitters could hit .270 over that period hitting only every 5th day?  Very few.  "Gee, it's hard to get my timing down playing like this," most would lament.

Mike as a hitter? He kept getting better.  After leaving the Mets, in 152 plate appearances for Colorado, he hit .315 with a .552 slug %.  

Numbers even Mike Piazza wouldn't sneeze at - and remember, Hampton hit on the road as well as Colorado in compiling those numbers.

If he had started out in the Mets minors, as only a hitter, my realistic guess is he never would have approached the greatness hitting of a Mike Piazza.  So few do.

Might he, though, have been one of the Mets' top 25 all time hitters?  I frankly don't see why not.  After all, after learning how to hit in his first few years in the majors, from 1998 on, as a part time hitter, he hit .270 in 561 at bats, with 20 doubles, 4 triples, 15 HRs and 68 RBIs.   I can think of quite a few current Mets hitters who wouldn't sneeze at compiling a season like that.

P.S. While Reese expounded on the greatness as a hitter of Tony Gwynn yesterday, his career on base % was .388.  Meanwhile, Brandon Nimmo, career?  .393.  

Chew on that if you are a Nimmo despiser.