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June 30, 2005

Crooked Numbers

Left Wing Conspiracy

by James Click

Towards the end of last season, I was digging up some data involving platoon splits and noticed that back in the 1980s and early 1990s, the number of lefty-lefty matchups was a lot higher than it is now. That led to an article showing that left-handed pitchers are pitching a significantly smaller percentage of the available innings (or PAs) than they were just 10 to 15 years ago. In 1991 nearly 34 percent of PAs were against LHPs; in 2002, it was under 24 percent.

The article prompted interest from a few people in baseball who were doing studies with regards to handedness and performance. We talked about why there are only "crafty" left-handed pitchers and not righties (unless you count Greg Maddux) and why baseball's most aesthetic swings (including Will Clark, Ken Griffey Jr., and Ben Grieve) were all performed by southpaws. But mostly, we talked about whether or not there's an inherent advantage provided to one hand or the other when it comes to baseball players.

For example, check out the top 30 batters in career VORP, 1901-2004:

Rank    Name                  VORP     Bats     Throws
----    ------------        ------     ----     ------
1       Babe Ruth           1564.4       L          L
2       Barry Bonds         1406.1       L          L
3       Ty Cobb             1396.3       L          R
4       Stan Musial         1277.0       L          L
5       Lou Gehrig          1246.3       L          L
6       Rogers Hornsby      1234.2       R          R
7       Ted Williams        1205.0       L          R
8       Hank Aaron          1192.1       R          R
9       Willie Mays         1110.2       R          R
10      Tris Speaker        1105.0       L          L
11      Eddie Collins       1080.2       L          R
12      Jimmie Foxx         1071.0       R          R
13      Honus Wagner        1037.9       R          R
14      Mel Ott              934.1       L          R
15      Mickey Mantle        911.1       S          R
16      Frank Robinson       907.1       R          R
17      Charlie Gehringer    892.0       L          R
18      Joe Morgan           876.7       L          R
19      Frank Thomas         806.4       R          R
20      Rickey Henderson     800.4       R          L
21      Jeff Bagwell         787.6       R          R
22      Cal Ripken Jr.       776.3       R          R
23      Pete Rose            769.5       S          R
24      Mike Schmidt         768.2       R          R
25      Wade Boggs           757.2       L          R
26      George Brett         757.1       L          R
27      Rafael Palmeiro      751.9       L          L
28      Eddie Mathews        748.8       L          R
29      Harry Heilmann       746.0       R          R
30      Carl Yastrzemski     722.9       L          R

If you're looking at their batting hand, that's 16 lefties (53 percent), 12 righties (40 percent), and two switch-hitters (seven percent). By throwing hand, that's seven southpaws (23 percent) and 23 people like me (77 percent). (It's clear that there's a difference between players who are truly left-handed and those who simply hit from the left side. For the purposes of this article, we'll refer to players who throw left-handed as "true left-handers" as opposed to left-handed or switch hitting batters.) Depending on who you talk to, the worldwide percentage of people who are left-handed is between eight and 14 percent, meaning that of the top 30 batters of all time, two to three times as many are left-handed than the general populace.

Of course, baseball is a game that seeks out players with an advantage; southpaws have long captivated scouts and executives because of their rarity. Thus, baseball boasts a much higher percentage of both "true left-handers" and batters who learned to bat from the left side. In 2005--excluding switch hitters--35 percent of the PAs have gone to left-handed batters. The percentage of regulars (players accumulating at least 450 PAs in a season) who are lefthanded has hovered between 36 and 38 percent for the past 15 seasons. And yet 53 percent of the top 30 hitters of all time are left-handed. At the very extreme, there appear to be a disproportionate number of elite left-handed hitters.