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November 19, 2009

Checking the Numbers

The 2009 Platoon Split Awards

by Eric Seidman

Earlier this month, we added several new statistics reports to the site, a few of which specialize in performance splits, compiling batter performance against righties and lefties, pitcher performance in platoon splits as well, and the numbers accrued for each group at home and on the road. I outlined how to use the reports and the types of information they contain last week, but with awards season in full bloom, it felt like the perfect time to delve into the various facets of platoon splits and crown a few winners of our own. Some of the numbers I will use here are not yet on the actual reports, the same of which can be said for the handedness of the individual subjects being split, but they will certainly be incorporated in the near future.

Before moving on, perhaps a brief review of platoon splits—mainly their purpose and what should be gleaned from their usage—is in order, much of which is fleshed out in an article I penned back in July titled Contextual Platooning. It's well understood that hitters perform worse against their same-handed brethren than they do when opposed by pitchers of the opposite hand, the effects of which are more pronounced for lefties, given that southpaws only account for approximately one-quarter of a batter’s plate appearance in a given season. With the recent prominence of lefty specialists, that percentage of total plate appearances could rise, but it tends to hover right around this mark. Therefore, when evaluating how a batter performed, we cannot measure him in relation to himself if the goal is to be, well, accurate. Instead, we must compare his performance in a split component to the average performance in that specific split.

That summer article focused primarily on Ryan Howard, noting how his 2006-08 Raw EqA was better than or right in line with the league-average Raw EqA for hitters against same-handed pitchers. Extending that idea, each of the four splits carries their own averages, which will serve as the comparative basis for individual performance in this evaluation. It's very important to remember that the utility of platoon-split performance is limited due to the small samples of plate appearances under investigation each season as well as the innate fickleness. The data is interesting, but decisions about a guy's talent level should not be made on the basis of, say, Randy Ruiz’s 100 plate appearances against righties this past season, just as too much pride should not be invested in how effectively Raul Ibanez tore apart fellow left-handers in his 167 trips to the dish this season.

With that out of the way, the methodology here was rather simple: calculate the REqA for each player against both types of pitchers, calculate the weighted average REqA for the four different splits (R-R, R-L, L-R, L-L), and use the delta from individual to average as a means of issuing rank. For splits involving left-handed pitchers, the minimum amount of plate appearances was set to 100, while it rose to 275 when righties were on the mound. Without further ado, here are the ten best righties this past season with fellow righties toeing the rubber:

                Bats                                  REqA
Hitter         vs. RHP    PA     AVG    OBP    SLG   Delta
Albert Pujols     R      515    .324   .435   .645    .326
Hanley Ramirez    R      478    .352   .423   .591    .271
Derrek Lee        R      498    .308   .382   .604    .234
Kevin Youkilis    R      418    .304   .404   .560    .228
Manny Ramirez     R      344    .295   .427   .536    .222
Matt Holliday     R      485    .322   .390   .555    .207
Troy Tulowitzki   R      442    .307   .376   .566    .200
Alex Rodriguez    R      388    .289   .402   .529    .192
Miguel Cabrera    R      508    .327   .380   .556    .191
Ryan Zimmerman    R      533    .298   .361   .545    .166

This seems like the usual suspects as far as this writer is concerned. Well, aside from maybe Derrek Lee, who appeared to be on the schneid for the last couple of seasons to everyone outside of Chi-town. Lee also came closest to Pujols in terms of his ISO, with a .296 to Albert’s .321, while the rest of the Big Ten members ranged from Cabrera’s .229 to Tulo’s .259.