Wes Ferrell: Baseball's Greatest Hitting Pitcher

One of the biggest stories in the 2007 baseball season was Barry Bonds chasing Hank Aaron for the all-time lead in homeruns. Since Barry Bonds is now the all-time leader in homeruns that also makes him the outfielder with the most career homeruns.

There are several other positions where the all-time leader in homeruns is pretty easy to guess. Mike Piazza became the all-time homerun hitter among catchers not too long ago and Jeff Kent became the all-time homerun hitter among second basemen.

Mark McGwire remains the first baseman with the most career home runs, Alex Rodriguez now has the most home runs at the shortstop position and Mike Schmidt is the third baseman with the most career homeruns.

All of those guys are pretty easy to guess, but do you know who leads all pitchers in home runs hit? (Only including players that only played pitcher in their career.)

If you guessed Wes Ferrell then you are correct. Wes Ferrell was a part of a very successful family of baseball players that included his older brother Rick and younger brother George.

Wes Ferrell started his Major League career with the Cleveland Indians at the age of 19. Wes Ferrell had seven very successful seasons in Cleveland before moving on to Boston for three more seasons and then jumped to Washington, the Yankees, the Dodgers and the Boston Braves.

Wes Ferrell has 38 career home runs, more than any other pitcher. Wes Ferrell's single season high was 9 home runs. Wes Ferrell is considered to be the best hitting pitcher of all time and had a career batting average of .280.

Wes Ferrell didn't start so many games just by hitting though. To start as long as he did he had to be a good pitcher and for a period of time he was a great pitcher.

In 1928 Wes Ferrell was demoted down to the Majors but when he came back in 1929 he immediately showed dividends. In 1929 Ferrell went 21 - 10 including 18 complete games. Ferrell followed that up with records of 25 - 13, 22 - 12, 23 - 13 and 11 - 12 in his remaining seasons with Cleveland.