Could Joe Savery ignite two-way players in the Majors?
This past September, Joe Savery made his Major League debut for the Philadelphia Phillies, taking the mound in the eighth inning of an afternoon game against the Washington Nationals. The lefty faced only two batters, giving up a single and a sacrifice bunt before giving way to Brad Lidge.
At this point in his career, the Phillies hope the 25-year-old can develop into a quality reliever, and that he could win a bullpen role during spring training next year. But Savery isn’t an ordinary relief pitcher. He has the potential to change the way organizations develop players and think about their rosters, because he was both a successful pitcher and hitter in the minor leagues this season.
In the amateur ranks, many players have split time between pitching and playing a position in the field, but few have continued with both as professionals. Just to name several two-way college stars, Tim Hudson was an All-American during his senior season at Auburn for his play in center field as much as for his pitching. Likewise, many teams graded Nick Markakis as a first-round pitching prospect out of junior college. Just this year, the No. 2 overall pick in the MLB amateur draft was Danny Hultzen, who hit .309 while also starting 18 games as a pitcher for Virginia. Hudson and Markakis became one-way players upon turning pro, and Hultzen is expected to give up hitting as he works his way through the Seattle Mariners organization.
There are a few reasons teams insist top prospects either pitch or hit, but never both. The most compelling one is that playing baseball at the highest level is exceptionally difficult, and an individual player probably doesn’t have enough time to work on developing both sets of skills.
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While it may be true that a player with, say, All-Star pitching potential won’t reach that ceiling if he spends time working on fielding and batting, Savery is the perfect example of a player who can add value through versatility, because it’s known that his ceiling is limited.
He was a two-way star for Rice University, drawing attention in his freshman year with a .382/.471/.559 batting line and a 2.43 ERA with a 129/37 strikeout-to-walk ratio in 118.2 innings pitched. By his junior year, Savery was still an elite hitter, but spent most of the season working through a shoulder injury, and his pitching suffered dramatically. Though he finished with an 11-1 record and a 2.99 ERA, his strikeout total dropped precipitously and his walks jumped.
Even so, the Phillies made him the 19th pick of the 2007 amateur draft with the intention of using him as a pitcher exclusively. But, they soon found out, something was wrong. His velocity was down and through four minor league seasons he was never able to recapture the dominance of his freshman year at Rice.
By the end of the 2010 season, Savery had had enough. He requested a position switch and dedicated himself to becoming a full-time hitter.
What happened next surprised everyone. It wasn’t that Savery hit well. Splitting time as an outfielder, first baseman and designated hitter in the Florida State League, he hit .307/.368/.410. While solid, that’s nothing special for a 25-year-old in high-A, but it is certainly intriguing for a superb all-around athlete who hadn’t batted regularly in four years.
What surprised everyone was that Savery found the velocity he had lost after his freshman season at Rice. Two months into the season, his team went into the 19th inning of a game having exhausted all of their regular pitchers, so Savery took the mound. He pitched two scoreless innings, and more importantly, he hit 93 mph on the radar gun.
The rest of the season, Savery pitched more and hit less, and by September, the Phillies were impressed enough with his progress that they called him up to the big club for a cup of coffee. Savery has not yet batted in the Majors, but his success at the plate in the low minors presents the Phillies with the option of making him the first young two-way player in the big leagues in recent memory.
Given his mediocre minor league pitching statistics, it would be a surprise if Savery amounts to more than a middle reliever. But even if he’s a below-average reliever, would he be worth keeping on a roster if he could also hit and field well enough to be an occasional pinch hitter, corner outfielder or first baseman?
The 12th pitcher on a Major League staff will be expected to throw 30 to 40 innings per year, and most of those will be in low leverage situations. A fifth outfielder would get, perhaps, 150 plate appearances. On paper, having that kind of player would free a roster spot for someone who could help in a very specific way. An ace pinch hitter. A Rule 5 Draft choice. A pinch-running specialist. What kind of player would your team add to its bench if it had another roster spot? Imagine that player actually on your team, without having to give anything up of value, because they also had someone like Savery to hold down the end of the benches in both the bullpen and the dugout.
But Savery still has the potential to be better than that. What separates him from players like Adam Loewen and Rick Ankiel, who made it to the Major Leagues as pitchers but later returned as hitters, or Sergio Santos, who was a minor league shortstop before making it to The Show as a relief pitcher, is that Savery has not yet failed past the point of no return. Loewen’s injuries and Ankiel’s anxieties forced them from the mound, and it took years of work afterward to get back to the Majors. Meanwhile, Santos was such a terrible hitter in the high minors, even for a shortstop, that he was told his professional baseball career was over unless he became a pitcher.
Even the last two-way player in Major League Baseball, Brooks Kieschnick, is a bad comparison. Kieschnick bounced in and out of the Majors as a hitter until he went back to pitching at age 30, eventually playing two seasons for Milwaukee as a relief pitcher and pinch hitter. He, too, turned to pitching as a last-ditch effort to remain a viable Major Leaguer.
Savery is still young, and he has not washed out of either hitting or pitching. At the moment, the Phillies are probably well served finding out if he can be a key reliever, but they’d probably be best served by accepting that he might have a lower ceiling as a pitcher at the cost of finding out if he can hit well enough to be the team’s fifth outfielder.
Undoubtedly, there are players like Savery in every organization. And very likely, most of them are limited by the perceived wisdom that it’s just too hard to develop a pitcher if he’s also spending significant time in the batting cage.
We won’t find out if it’s possible for a Major Leaguer to be a two-way player until someone tries it, and the Phillies, with their vaunted starting staff and established starters in the field, should be an ideal environment in which to experiment. We know Savery will get opportunities to pitch, but he deserves chances to hit. The payoff of a freed roster spot is just too good to ignore. If he succeeds, position players with marginal MLB futures ahead of them will suddenly start clamoring to pitch, and instead of looking for just another arm, baseball executives might direct their scouts to dig up the next Joe Savery.
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