These days, it's fairly rare for pitchers to get big at-bats in games. What I really mean is that when the score is close late in a game, especially when there are runners on base, in most cases the pitcher up at bat will be removed for a pinch-hitter. In the National League, these situations are often avoided altogether by use of double-switches late in games to ensure that the pitcher will not come to bat unless there has already been a significant rally.

Sometimes, however, pitchers do bat with runners on base late in games. Most often, this happens in cases where the pitcher is actually a good hitter and may be a better option than any of the bench players (when adding in the consideration that he'll return to the mound to pitch the next inning) or very late in a game when the manager is loathe to relieve the pitcher and would prefer to take his chances letting him hit.

Here are the instances in the 2009 season when a pitcher batted from the 7th inning onwards with at least one runner on base and produced an RBI for his team.

Because of the rarity of this event, as we might expect, we see some strange instances on this list.

Here are some observations on this group:

• Indeed there are a number of good-hitting pitchers in this group, including Zambrando, Marquis, and Owings.
• Zambrano is the only player to do it twice this season and he managed to do it twice in the same game, which is pretty amazing. That must be a pretty memorable game for Zambrano. He got RBIs off Tim Lincecum and Randy Johnson and pitched a 3-0 shutout. Nice.
• Four of the RBI were bases-loaded walks, which can be blamed entirely on the pitcher (the one who was pitching, I mean, not the pitcher who was hitting.) The RBI walk by Mariano Rivera is especially egregious, given that it was only his 3rd career plate appearance.
• Owings got hit by a pitch with the bases loaded in the top of the 12th inning, a +19% WPA play, and batted in the eventual winning run.
• Perhaps the weird entry of all on this list is Adam Eaton's. He came to bat in the bottom of the 14th inning after having given up 3 runs in the top of the inning. The Rockies came to bat in the bottom of the 14th with just a 5% chance to win by the Win Expectancy measure. With 2 singles and a walk sandwiching an out, the Rockies loaded the bases but increased their chances to just 21%. Eaton batted and walked, driving in a run and pushing the odds to 34%. The Ryan Spilborghs hit a walk-off grand slam, adding in the extra 66% and giving the win to the Rockies. That means that despite pitching only one inning, Eaton had a -31% contribution to the win but at the plate he had a +13%.

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