Late Monday evening it was being widely reported that the Dodgers had signed 32-year-old relief pitcher Pat Venditte to a minor league contract with an invitation to major league spring training camp.

Why is this big news, you ask?

Because Venditte is a switch-pitcher, or ‘switcher,’ as one ThinkBlue LA reader called him.

Now there’s something you don’t see every day.
(Image courtesy of Baseball_Reference.com)

If the name Pat Venditte sounds familiar to you, it well should. On June 5, 2015 he became only the fifth ambidextrous pitcher in the 148-year history of major league baseball, although you have to go back over 124 years to find the last one. In fact, there have actually been four pitchers known to have thrown with both hands but all of them were in the 19th century: Tony Mullane in 1882 and again in 1893, Larry Corcoran in 1884, Elton Chamberlain in 1888 and George Wheeler in 1896.

In 2015, Venditte became only the fifth switch-pitcher in MLB history to appear in a major league game and the first since 1995. (Photo credit – Michael Zagaris)

On September 28, 1995 in the second-to-last game of his 15-year major league career, former Montreal Expos pitcher Greg Harris also pitched one game from both sides of the mound against the Cincinnati Reds, but did so more as a novelty than anything else. (He is listed as a right-hander on his Baseball_Reference page). In that game, Harris issued one walk and induced three fly ball outs to the four batters he faced. He pitched again the following night but did so exclusively as a right-hander. The Expos lost both of those games but Harris did not factor in the decision in either game.

Venditte, who was drafted by the New York Yankees in the 20th round of the 2008 MLB First-Year Player Draft out of  Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska, appeared in 41 major league games as a relief switch-pitcher – 26 with the Oakland A’s in 2015, eight with the Toronto Blue Jays in 2016, and seven with the Seattle Mariners also in 2016. In those combined 41 games he posted a 2-2 record and 4.97 ERA, with his first MLB win coming on August 30, 2015 while with the A’s in an interleague game against the Arizona Diamondbacks at Chase Field. In his combined 50.2 innings pitched at the major league level, Venditte allowed 32 runs on 46 hits (including eight home runs), while walking 23 and striking out 42.

Venditte was traded to the Philadelphia Phillies in 2017 but spent the entire season at Triple-A Lehigh Valley, posting a 9-5 record and 3.36 ERA in his 69.2 innings pitched for the Iron Pigs.

Although the exact details of Venditte’s minor league contract were not revealed, he figures to be an immediate fan-favorite when Dodgers spring training camp opens on March 23, 2018 at Camelback Ranch in Glendale Arizona.