Built-In Advantage: For All Lefties?

Just over a week ago, research was released by an engineer professor at Washington University, David Peters. The article was for a web site publication for the university, not a scholarly journal, but it was enough to draw the attention of the Baseball Hall of Fame.

What does Peters conclude? Something that may not be all the surprising to those who watch and research baseball regularly: lefties have a big advantage in most areas. Peters' first question: how did the Hall of Famers do? Here's the results: 13 out of 61 enshrined pitchers are left-handed, which is more than twice the number of lefties in the regular population. Position players? 71 Hall of Fame position players batted right-handed, 59 left-handed, and eight were switch-hitters. Among the left-handed hitters are some of the game's greatest names: Babe Ruth, Ted Williams, Ty Cobb, Stan Musial, Barry Bonds, Ken Griffey, Jr., Tris Speaker, Shoeless Joe, Willie Keeler, George Sisler, Tony Gwynn, Eddie Collins, Wade Boggs, Rod Carew, Mickey Cochrane and George Brett.

What is the reason? Peters claims that baseball is set-up naturally as a game for lefties to dominate. As a right-handed hitter swings, his momentum carries him the wrong way--toward third base. A lefty, already standing roughly 5 feet closer to first base, swings and naturally spins in the correct direction. This means, Peters says, that the lefty travels the 90 feet to first roughly one-sixth of a second faster than the righty. The obvious result is that this tends to produce more hits and a higher batting average.

And, of course, because most pitchers are right-handed, the left-handed hitter also tends to have a match-up advantage. Peters claims that "you get depth perception" as a lefty, whereas, as a right-handed batter facing a right-handed pitcher, the right-hander actually has to pick up the ball visually as it comes from behind the pitcher's left shoulder, which leads to the loss of split-second timing to pick up the ball.

Peters points out that, according to retrosheet.org, left-handers hit .272 against right-handed pitchers last season. Righties vs. righties hit .261. Against left-handed pitching, righties hit .281, lefties just .251. But there were 122,053 at-bats against right-handed pitchers last season, nearly three times as many as the 45,730 against lefties. Of course, he has a few counterexamples, the main disadvantage being a catcher who throws left-handed. Peters also points out that only 22 of 138 position players in the Hall were "pure" lefties, meaning that they hit and threw left-handed.

Peters' article isn't really anything too terribly new in that it isn't exactly sabermatric research, but in pulling from the Hall and from basic statistics, a clear trend does exist indicating that there is a bias for lefties. This, besides the more mathematical explanation, should suggest that organizations should consistently value left-handed hitters and pitchers. Organizations do tend to value lefties, but often it seems just for having one in the bullpen just for lefty-lefty specialty match-ups. They don't seem to value left-handed hitters as much, because they focus too much on the struggles of many lefties against left-handed pitchers without looking at the big numbers and the sample size.

In other words, if someone like Ron Gardenhire did a little basic research, the way Peters did, he might find out that in the long run, it's better to value a left-hander hitter like Jason Kubel (as well as Joe Mauer) being in the lineup as much as possible over getting obsessed with match-ups and smaller sample sizes. Granted, some lefties just plain cannot hit left-handed pitchers (Jacque Jones anyone?), but Kubel and Mauer aren't necessarily those kinds of hitters. Rather than "protecting" them and replacing them with right-handers like Craig Monroe, it might be helpful to adopt a central philosophy that similarly values lefties all across the board.

However, once again, too much probably shouldn't be read into this, since the study is not too in depth and is based of the examination of some math, some oberservations, some stats, and at that, some select ones from very talented players. Despite this, I think it is a point worth considering in what makes up the larger philosophy of both fans and organizations.

* For those paying attention, there have been some interesting developments with regards to Francisco Liriano. The left-hander started the day by making news through his agent, filing a grievance against the Twins for not calling him up from the minors after three straight starts without allowing a run, believing they did so to avoid arbitration for another year. It's probably not a good sign that the Twins' possible ace might be a little unhappy, but it is a good sign that he had yet another great start last night, going eight innings while giving up a seven hits and one run while striking out eighth and walking none. It's probably about time they just call him up and be done with it. Hopefully that means goodbye to Brian Bass and a permanent bullpen trip for Livan Hernandez.