Recycled Batteries

At the seventh annual Saberseminar this past weekend at Boston University, attendees were entertained and informed by the event’s emcee, Chicago White Sox play-by-play announcer Jason Benetti. Periodcally, Benetti would make note of a “Recycled Battery” receptacle in the lecture hall. He asked if anyone had extra batteries to dispose of, and then started asking attendees who their favorite recycled battery was, explaining that he was looking for pitcher and catcher pairings that played together on more than one team.

(I chimed in with R.A. Dickey and Josh Thole, for example).

With that as my inspiration, I churned through the Retrosheet game logs to find all such duos through 2016. It turns out there have been more than *900* such “batteries” in history. I’m not going to list all 900+ here, but I WILL provide the list of those pitcher/catcher pairings that have been together on a record three different teams. (These are starting pitcher and starting catcher pairings in at least one game).

The record for a starting pitcher matching up with the most different catchers on more than one team is five, held by Mark Langston and Lou Kretlow. Here is the list of those pitchers with at least four different catchers on more than one team:

The record for a catcher getting paired with the most pitchers on more than one team is Muddy Ruel, with 15 different pitchers, as follows: