Orioles’ switch-hitters run counter to baseball’s trend: ‘I have 2 brains’

Ryan Fuller has taught hitting to 5-year-olds and currently coaches major leaguers. He’s worked with hundreds of aspiring hitters, but he’s never successfully converted one into a switch-hitter.

Fuller, the Orioles’ co-hitting coach, has two skilled switch-hitters on his team, Adley Rutschman and Anthony Santander, but they hit from both sides long before Fuller ever coached them.

As a private hitting instructor and high school coach in Connecticut, Fuller has plenty of experience with aspiring switch-hitters, but none that continued.

“It was the younger-age kids, usually the fathers, expressing more interest in switch-hitting than the actual player because they knew if they would be good at that skill, it was so unique there would be more opportunities in the future,” Fuller said. “However, once they found failure and struggle in one side of the plate, it was really hard to stay at it from both sides of the plate.”

Among the best switch-hitters in baseball history are: Mickey Mantle, Chipper Jones, Tim Raines, Pete Rose. Eddie Murray, and Roberto Alomar. Murray, Alomar and Raines are former Orioles in the Hall of Fame.

There are other excellent switch-hitters in baseball — Cleveland’s José Ramírez, Cincinnati’s Elly De La Cruz and the Mets’ Francisco Lindor — but they don’t have much company.

A glance at this weekend’s active rosters shows only about 40 switch-hitters in baseball. Last year, switch-hitting reached a 50-year low, and despite the Orioles having two All-Stars, it’s no wonder that there aren’t more.

“Maintaining one swing is hard enough as it is,” Rutschman said “Two swings is completely different. You’ve got to double the workload. It provides its advantages, but it’s also difficult to maintain.”

Over his three seasons, Rutschman is a better hitter right-handed (.289 through Saturday’s game) than left-handed (.258) with more power left-handed (37 home runs in 1045 at-bats) than right-handed (14 in 402 at-bats)

Like many young players, Rutschman fooled around with switch-hitting but became serious about it as a freshman in high school.

“I was like, ‘Do I really want to do this?’” Rutschman said. “Because at that time, a lot more right-handed pitchers and left-handed was my unpredictable side at the time, so I’m like, ‘OK, I have to commit to this because right-handed at the time was my dominant side still.’ Just decided to commit to it in my freshman year in high school and went from there.”

Anthony Santander, whose 38 home runs are the most in Orioles history for a switch-hitter, began switch-hitting around the same time, when he was a 15-year-old pitcher in Venezuela.

“To be able to find another tool to show to the scouts,” he said. “My agent, at the time, told me we have to find another tool. ‘Let’s do something from the left side.’ I think he did a good job [convincing] me to take some swings from the left side.”

While Rutschman is hitting much better from the right side this season (.349 versus lefties; .225 against righties), Santander’s numbers are about the same (.239 as a right-hander with 27 homers in 351 at-bats; .227 with 11 homers in 132 at-bats).

Watching Rutschman and Santander has made Fuller marvel. Those 5-year-olds or high schoolers couldn’t emulate his Oriole switch-hitters.

“There’s never been somebody who stuck to it the whole way,” Fuller said. “They’d do it for a little amount of time.”

Fuller thinks he knows why the number of switch-hitters has dropped.

“It is so hard to match up just from one side against these pitchers,” he said. “I have an appreciation for it even more now that I see it every day.

“If you’re a one-sided hitter, you do all your work righty, and that’s enough for the whole day. These guys have to do the right side and the left side every single day looking for the matchups they’re going to face that night. It’s just unbelievable what they can do at this level.”

Ken Singleton, another exceptional switch-hitter, and Murray helped lead the Orioles to two World Series and were key members of the last Baltimore team to win in 1983.

“Eddie and I for a period of five years, I would say, we were the best switch-hitting duo in baseball history,” Singelton said.

Singleton was a natural left-hander when he began playing.

“I started out as a left-handed hitter, and I even threw left-handed,” he said. “At the age of 5 and 6, all the other kids were throwing right-handed and hitting right-handed. I tried to do that, and I could do that, too. In the playground, during stickball games, my team was the Giants, and when it was Willie Mays’ turn in the lineup, I’d hit right-handed and when it was [Willie] McCovey’s turn, I’d hit left-handed.

“In Little League, I just hit right-handed all the time until I got to the Bronx Federation when I was 15 years old. I was fooling around one day in batting practice hitting left-handed. My coach said: ‘There’s a right-hander pitching today. Why don’t you hit left-handed in the game?’ I hit two home runs, and from now on, ‘you’re a switch-hitter.’ That’s how I gained the attention of the scouts because I could hit from both sides of the plate.”

For some skilled hitters, they can try switch-hitting later. Singleton said it was Cal Ripken Sr. who taught Murray, one of just five players with 3,000 hits and 500 home runs, to switch-hit.

“It was a late development, but he turned out to be one of the best ever,” Singleton said. “I think the earlier you start, the better you’re going to be because it feels more comfortable to do it.”

Singleton, who’s retired after more than two decades broadcasting Yankees games, lives in Maryland much of the year and often drives up to New Jersey to see his teenaged grandson play.

“I tried to get my grandson to do it. He’s a left-handed hitter, but he just didn’t feel comfortable right-handed, but I know he can do it,” Singleton said. “He hits lefties and righties well, but one day, I told him, ‘you’re going to face somebody like Randy Johnson, and you won’t feel as comfortable.’”

Not every player is comfortable as a switch-hitter. Take Cedric Mullins, who hit from both sides at the beginning of his major league career. After hitting just .147 with one home run in 95 at-bats as a right-handed hitter, Mullins decided to hit just left-handed, his natural side. In 2021, he became the first Oriole to hit 30 home runs and steal 30 bases in the same season.

“I think it was pretty obvious the numbers weren’t there, especially at the big league level,” Mullins said. “It was really hard. Not my natural side, not facing as many lefties, so reps were low. Two different swings in general. If it wasn’t clicking, it was going to be a struggle to get it going. I had moments where it was good. The majority of time, it wasn’t where it needed to be … I haven’t taken a right-handed swing since.”

Colton Cowser, who’s a natural left-handed hitter, seems to be a hitter whose power and speed ould benefit from switch-hitting.

“Growing up, I would always mess around, and I’d talk to my hitting coach.” Cowser said. “He’s like ‘No. you don’t need to. You already throw right-handed, and you hit left-handed. That’s the dream pretty much.’ I never considered it.”

Orioles manager Brandon Hyde was a right-handed hitter as a minor league catcher, and he’s been showing his 16-year-old son Colton, a promising high school player in Sarasota, how to hit from both sides.

“He’s been trying for two years now,” Hyde said. “This fall, he’s going to implement it in games. It’s going to be a little late, but we’re giving it a shot. He’s naturally a right-hander and right-on-right in today’s world is so hard to do at the high level. It’s just so much easier from the opposite side, but it’s going to take a lot of work, and he’s working hard at it.”

Santander knows how hard it was, and how difficult it is to maintain.

“It’s not easy to be a switch-hitter especially when you don’t have the same mechanics,” he said. “I remember Chipper Jones hit almost the same from both sides, but most of the switch-hitters don’t look the same from both sides. I’m one of them and I say, ‘I have two brains because it’s two different angles.’

“They have to think different. Having a different approach. It’s tough. To stay consistent as a switch-hitter, you have to be able to do the same amount of swings from both sides because if something happens and you only work from the left side, and now you’re stuck from the right side. You have to deal with that all year long.”