[Analysis] Dave Hansen: The King of Bait-and-Switch Plate Appearances

Dave Hansen has more bait-and-switch plate appearances than anyone else in Major League history. I defined a bait-and-switch plate appearance as when a guy is called to pinch-hit but is then replaced by another pinch-hitter due to the other team bringing in a pitcher that is the same handedness as the original batter.

In case that was confusing, here’s an example: The Dodgers’ Dave Hansen (a lefty) is called to pinch-hit against the Expos’ Oil Can Boyd (a righty). Because the Expos want to have a platoon advantage against Hansen, they bring in Jeff Fassero (a lefty) to pitch. The Dodgers catch on to what the Expos are doing, so they try to get the platoon advantage in their favor by bringing in Mike Sharperson (a righty), without Hansen ever seeing a pitch. This then gives Hansen credit for appearing in the game without ever actually doing so.

The table below shows who pinch-hit for Hansen, the pitcher, and if the batter got a hit:

Over a fifteen year career, there were 63 times in which Hansen had a bait-and-switch plate appearance. The final stat line over those 63 bait-and-switch plate appearances was .271/.313/.305 with sixteen hits, two doubles, zero triples or homeruns, sixteen RBIs, eleven strikeouts, and three walks. That is a halfway decent stat line and the logic behind replacing Hansen with a righty batter makes sense as Hansen batted .188/.286/.293 against lefties for his career.

But that leads me to think that if Hansen had not been replaced with a pinch hitter in these plate appearances, how would he have performed? Out of the 48 pitchers that were pitching during his bait-and-switch plate appearances, Hansen ended up facing 23 of them at some point in his career for a total of 37 plate appearances. In those 37 plate appearances, Hansen hit .276/.405/.517 with eight hits, one double, zero triples, two homeruns, seven RBIs, six strikeouts, and seven walks. The table below shows the pitcher, plate appearances, at-bats, and hits for the pitchers that Hansen actually faced in his career:

Obviously, Hansen’s line outperforms the line of the guys that replaced him, but Hansen did not have nearly as many plate appearances as they did and both are relatively small sample sizes. And despite this, I think it still makes sense why the manager did this looking at Hansen’s career numbers against lefties, and they likely made the right call to pinch hit for him just about every time.