As part of a game-turning eight-run eighth inning against the Chicago Cubs on Sunday, Arizona Diamondbacks right-handed pitcher Ryne Nelson achieved a rare feat in this, the era of the universal DH. He not only came to the plate as a batter, but he also notched an RBI single that pushed the D-backs’ lead from one run to two.
Here’s a look at Nelson’s knock off Eli Morgan:
That left Nelson’s bat at a respectable 89.8 mph (never mind that it was a chopper with a launch angle of -17 degrees), and it gave Arizona some breathing room in what turned out to be a 10-6 win for the hosts. As Sarah Langs notes, Nelson thus became the first pitcher to get a hit in the universal DH era — i.e., since 2022 — not named Shohei Ohtani (and also excluding position players who pitched). Nelson did have 216 plate appearances as a collegian at Oregon, albeit with little success, but he’d never batted as a professional until Sunday.
At this point, the reader may be wondering how Nelson, a pitcher, wound up batting in the year 2025. It all started in the seventh inning, when Arizona manager Torey Lovullo moved Ketel Marte from the DH to second base. Garrett Hampson had been the second baseman, but he’d been lifted in the home half of the sixth for a pinch-hitter. By rule, because the D-backs moved their DH to a position afield, they lost the DH and had to let their pitchers bat.
Lovullo double-switched his new pitcher lower in the lineup coming out of the seventh, but that spot still came up in the eighth thanks to all those runs. At that point, Lovullo was out of pinch hitters on the bench, and thus Nelson got the call in the absence of more appealing and more conventional options. So, yes, that’s the rare confluence of events necessary in order for a pitcher (not named Ohtani) to bat in the age of the universal DH.
Consider it an unlikely capstone on what was an unlikely game. Going into that bottom of the eighth inning, the Cubs were up 6-2 and, per basic win expectancy, had a 95.6% chance of winning the game. Those toppled expectations mean that the D-backs managed a split of the four-game series.
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