Lefthanded 3rd Basemen?

[Mackus]

They absolutely do.

If you're RH, go stand at first base and take grounders and make the throw to third. That's the same thing a SS or 3B would do.

It creates extra motion by making the field step accros his body to make the throw. It just doesn't work.

I'm saying compared to a lefty catcher throwing to 3B, not compared to a righty at SS or 3B.

[Mackus]

Wedge says it's not that big of a deal. Of course everything happens faster in the majors. But I think a good, athletic catcher with footwork could make it work well enough. Obviously we're not talking about a lefty version of JR House or Matt LeCroy here.

I'm talking about a lefty version of a standard catcher. I can believe that a lefty version of Ivan Rodriguez would probably be fine, but still obviously not as good as a righty version of Ivan Rodriguez.

But your standard average catcher, take that guy and add in the time to turn his entire body for any throw to 3B and get out of the way of the batter (if its a right-handed hitter) and I have little doubt that it would significantly impact their odds of throwing out a runner at third. If an average righty catcher can throw out 30% of runners at 3B (random guess) then I wouldn't be surprised if an average lefty can only throw out half as many or worse, and I think the attempts against a catcher with that poor of a percentage would skyrocket, increasing multiple times over.