Why do we need to focus on lefty hitters?

[wildcard]

It depends on the hitter.   If a RHB hits righties and lefties well he is a good asset to the team.

[Sports Guy]

42 minutes ago, btdart20 said:

Where did you find this?  How did other AL East parks play (since those teams would heavily influence OPACY numbers too)?

Odor, Santander, and Adley are the only LHH with significant PAs.  Other than Adley, our lefties didn't hit well (Santander leaned below-average as a LHH in 2022).  

Plus, Vavra and Gunnar's limited PAs had their home stats significantly off their road stats.  Is that OPACY?  SSS?  Growing pains?  TBD?

There's voodoo in those park effects!

But sure, upgrade bats where you can regardless.  

They are one the baseball savant website.

And while I know Os players had the majority of at bats there, these are numbers for every lefty hitter in OPACY.  It stands to reason exactly what Drungo said...More homers for lefties but less everything else.

Its not a good go the other way with power park for lefties anymore.

[btdart20]

1 hour ago, Sports Guy said:

They are one the baseball savant website.

And while I know Os players had the majority of at bats there, these are numbers for every lefty hitter in OPACY.  It stands to reason exactly what Drungo said...More homers for lefties but less everything else.

Its not a good go the other way with power park for lefties anymore.

Yeah, I saw you said that.  I just couldn't find it myself.  I finally did so I could play with the filters/stats myself. 

Statcast Park Factors | baseballsavant.com (mlb.com)

As part of playing around with it, I flipped it to raw counts to do a y/y compare.  There were about 300 more batted balls for LHH in 2022 than 2021.  And about 300 less batted balls for RHH.  Maybe a conscience effort by teams to get more LHH PAs?  Including by Elias/Hyde?

At first blush, it looks like the RHH was impacted by the O'Canyon as evidenced by the over 50% drop in HR and drops everywhere else.  And LHH stats were impacted less as evidenced by "only" a 35% drop in HR while increasing in other categories (1B, 2B, 3B).

	2021 - LHH	2021 - RHH	2022 - LHH	2022 - RHH
HR	91	186	59	92
1B	260	621	348	574
2B	98	181	107	153
3B	6	12	7	8

But I didn't settle there...  No sir.  An honest man who doesn't like playing games with "lies, damn lies, and statistics"!

League wide numbers were down.  But in theory, that would impact all parks equally.  And personnel fluctuation too (especially for a team in transition like the O's have been over the last 3+ years).  And maybe our pitching improvements had some impact as well.  All of those (and many other factors) would take way too long for an hour of me geeking out. 

But what about that 300 batted ball changes?  LHH had more balls in play overall, so naturally their raw counts should improve and conversely for RHH.  In 2021, LHH hit a HR/batted ball at a rate of 0.068 (or 6.8% of the time) while RHH posted a 0.064).  In 2022, LHH hit a HR/batted ball at a rate of 0.0355 (3.55%) while RHH were 0.036.  Both LHH and RHH saw an increased rate of 1B.  Both LHH and RHH decreased in 2B (LHH decreased by a greater rate).

	2021 - LHH	per B/B	2021 - RHH	per B/B		2022 - LHH	per B/B	2022 - RHH	per B/B
HR	91	0.068	186	0.064		59	0.036	92	0.036
1B	260	0.195	621	0.215		348	0.210	574	0.226
2B	98	0.073	181	0.063		107	0.064	153	0.060
3B	6	0.004	12	0.004		7	0.004	8	0.003
Hits	455	0.341	1000	0.346		521	0.314	827	0.326
Batted balls	1336		2887			1661		2537

I came to the table 'expected' to see LHH numbers justified.  I don't see that.  However, we clearly see managers getting a statistically significant more PAs to LHH than in the past.  I still suspect it's a question of how good those LHH's are as much as park factor.  

[oriole]

I feel like it is very common to see a left handed hitter hit into the shift. Without the shift, those turn into hits. This seems like it’s going to make an enormous difference. Chris Davis is probably planning his come back as we speak. 

[Frobby]

13 minutes ago, oriole said:

I feel like it is very common to see a left handed hitter hit into the shift. Without the shift, those turn into hits. This seems like it’s going to make an enormous difference. Chris Davis is probably planning his come back as we speak. 

What would you consider enormous?   Do you think BA for LHH will increase by more than 10 points?

[oriole]

45 minutes ago, Frobby said:

What would you consider enormous?   Do you think BA for LHH will increase by more than 10 points?

Would I be crazy for thinking it’s a legitimate possibility? The shift has been a vacuum for years. I can’t say anything definitively obviously but I’m expecting it to be significant. 

[DrungoHazewood]

54 minutes ago, Frobby said:

What would you consider enormous?   Do you think BA for LHH will increase by more than 10 points?

In the minor leagues where they tried the shift ban the change in BABIP was too small to be detected.  I think LHH will see their averages go up by a few points.

They're not banning the shift altogether, they're limiting the infield shift.  I fully expect some extreme outfield shifts against the most pull-heavy hitters.  My guess is that Joey Gallos and the like will see their averages as a group go from .210 to .220 or .225. For everyone else it won't be noticeable.

MLB batting average was .243 this year.  Next year, absent any other changes, it'll be .246.

But the little devil sitting on one of my shoulders is whispering something about juicing the ball a little to "prove" the shift ban helps offenses.

Edited November 4, 2022 by DrungoHazewood

[Frobby]

5 minutes ago, DrungoHazewood said:

In the minor leagues where they tried the shift ban the change in BABIP was too small to be detected.  I think LHH will see their averages go up by a few points.

They're not banning the shift altogether, they're limiting the infield shift.  I fully expect some extreme outfield shifts against the most pull-heavy hitters.  My guess is that Joey Gallos and the like will see their averages as a group go from .210 to .220 or .225. For everyone else it won't be noticeable.

MLB batting average was .243 this year.  Next year, absent any other changes, it'll be .246.

But the little devil sitting on one of my shoulders is whispering something about juicing the ball a little to "prove" the shift ban helps offenses.

BABIP has been very low the last three years, hovering between .290/.291.  That’s independent of strikeouts and homers, so any thoughts on why?  It can’t be just the shift, because teams have been shifting a lot for 5-15 years now.  

[btdart20]

1 hour ago, Frobby said:

BABIP has been very low the last three years, hovering between .290/.291.  That’s independent of strikeouts and homers, so any thoughts on why?  It can’t be just the shift, because teams have been shifting a lot for 5-15 years now.  

A partial explanation is hitters trying to elevate the ball more.  Fly ball hitters tend to have lower Babip than ground ball hitters.

[LookinUp]

22 hours ago, DrungoHazewood said:

But how does it matter?  I think that, generally, tailoring your hitters or your pitchers to your park is a whole lot of nothing. The Red Sox never win because they have a bunch of RH power hitters to take advantage of the Green Monster, they win because they have better players.  Most of the Sox' best players in history haven't even been right-handed.  The Yanks used to have a canyon out in LC/CF, but they won with fairly balanced lineups that included righties DiMaggio, Gordon, Bauer, Skowron, McDougald, Howard, Lazzeri, and Mantle was a switch hitter.

Now, if they want to try to have essentially a 2nd CFer playing left to cover the extra ground out there, I think that's a workable strategy.  But otherwise you just get the best players you can and play ball.

I don't know the answer to your question, but I'm not assuming that it doesn't matter and I am assuming that it's fairly easy for the O's to model how much it matters in the aggregate (e.g., in OPACY and away).

Will it be orders of magnitude difference? I doubt it. Maybe it comes down to choosing one equally priced option over another, or maybe there's more to it. I don't know, but I do think that it's a significant enough difference that it will affect the O's roster building decisions.

[Just Regular]

2 hours ago, Frobby said:

BABIP has been very low the last three years, hovering between .290/.291.  That’s independent of strikeouts and homers, so any thoughts on why?  It can’t be just the shift, because teams have been shifting a lot for 5-15 years now.  

I would guess pitches becoming more ferocious in the aggregate some of it.    

To embellish for effect, do Rhapsodos rate anywhere on the scale of Candy Cummings figuring out he could make that ball bend if he spun it just so?

I know Drungo's a move the mound back guy but the thought of that messes with stuff too deep in my reptile brain.    Lower it, sure.     Limit Clubs pitcher roster moves to 2-3 per month and make Jordan Lyles richer, go for it.

I do have popcorn ready to see how much teams put 2023 Austin Hays where 2022 Rougned Odor stood against Joey Gallo types.    In that alignment, do you think Jorge Mateo could get from the edge of the infield dirt to the warning track near the foul pole if Gallo manipulated his swing to loft one down the left-field line?    Maybe Gunnar or Mullins would be fast enough to range for some of those too....no 3-way collisions after 50 yard sprints please!

[DrungoHazewood]

 

4 hours ago, Frobby said:

BABIP has been very low the last three years, hovering between .290/.291.  That’s independent of strikeouts and homers, so any thoughts on why?  It can’t be just the shift, because teams have been shifting a lot for 5-15 years now.  

3 hours ago, btdart20 said:

A partial explanation is hitters trying to elevate the ball more.  Fly ball hitters tend to have lower Babip than ground ball hitters.

I think that's part of it, that flyballs have ticked up a few percentages the last 3-4 years, while HR/FB have gone down each year since 2019.  

There might also be a component of more and more max-effort pitchers who are harder to hit. Top relievers have always had lower BABIPs than average. Today's starters may have more in common with 1970s relievers than the starters of 20, 30, 40+ years ago.  And they're followed by 3-5 innings of max-effort, one-inning relievers.

[Just Regular]

I'm curious to see how precisely shift ban codifies when infielders can move.    

When can Jorge Mateo cross to the other side of 2B?    Not until bat hits ball, or before?    Is the out of bounds line the north/south point of the bag or the east/west point of the bag?

I think bat hits ball is fairest - starting to imagine unintended consequences, if the deadline was pitcher wind up, or ball out of pitcher's hand, for guys who pull 98% of their ground balls, there could be dumb stuff like the shortstop shuffling sideways during the windup and/or flight of pitch, disrupting the calm of the batter's field of view.

Maybe in time it'll just get to eight hula hoops like on the TV graphic when they introduce the fielders.

 

[Oriole1940]

Due to the Orioles bad record vs Left Handed Pitchers, the real question that s/b answered is  can he hit Lefties for a decent BA  and OPS.    

[jerios55]

On 11/3/2022 at 10:29 AM, Frobby said:

Absolutely correct.  In 2022:

RHB v. RHP .700

RHB v. LHP .737

LHB v. RHP .708

LHB v. LHP .647

So I'm not sure the best way to answer this, but I wonder if the reason Elias focuses on LHB early is that a good LHB is truly harder to find.   The numbers here are quite skewed in favor of righties,  but how about the top 10 for each side?  Knowing RHB are deeper position (assumption on my part based on above), I could see that part of the math when drafting.