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November 20, 2009

Early Career Splits

Drilling Down

by Tim Kniker

There’s one advantage about being a fan of a franchise that never makes the postseason: I have much more off-season time to obsess about the following year. For Royals fans, one of the main questions over the last few years has been what do they have in Alex Gordon. Probably unfairly, people were labeling him as the next George Brett immediately after being drafted. On the other hand, a perennial All-Star is not too much to ask for a player who was picked second overall and considered the best college hitter that year.

When you watch him in numerous games, the one thing that pops out is how uncomfortable Gordon looks against southpaws, and the stats back this up (.217/.288/.365). Against righties, he has a slash line of .264/.349/.436 which is not as good as one would hope, but still serviceable in a Joe Randa kind of way. On the flip side, one of the Royals’ newest acquisitions, Josh Fields, has an extreme split the other way: .285/.367/.580 against lefties, while just .206/.280/.348 against righties. I find myself hoping that these young hitters can figure it out against same-side pitchers, since they have demonstrated some hitting prowess against the opposite side. But is this an accurate assessment of the situation? This thought process led me to a bigger question: do young hitters who have extreme righty/lefty splits improve more in their peak years because they begin to figure out same-side pitchers better? Or are the young hitters who show minimal splits better hitters who improve equally against both.

To begin the analysis, I looked at the set of hitters in the past twenty years who met the following criteria:

They accumulated at least 1200 plate appearances by their age-27 (inclusive) season, which I defined as their "Early" years
Had at least 1600 plate appearances between their age 28 and age 31 season inclusive, which I defined as their "Peak" years

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5 comments have been left for this article.

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Moneyball16

(36446)

Nice article.

For those that want more info on platoon splits and how much regression they need here is an unfiltered article Nate did 2 years ago when he was getting ready to implement the PECOTA cards with platoon info. http://www.baseballprospectus.com/unfiltered/?p=669

Just thought Id share that cause this article reminded me of it and platoon splits have always been very interesting more me.

Nov 20, 2009 15:10 PM

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bjfrankfort

(8273)

Nice article and very interesting. You allude to selection bias in the essay and I think it is very likely that selection bias is at play here. Perhaps you could assess this by lessening the criteria for PA in the "peak" years.

Nov 21, 2009 09:59 AM

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Tim Kniker

BP staff

(42100)

Actually, I may address a selection bias another way. Determine what percent of players in each group (High,Mid,Low) did not achieve the PA cutoff in their peak years.

Nov 21, 2009 10:13 AM

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Rany Jazayerli

BP staff

(4849)

I love the subject material, because I've long wondered the same thing. The strange thing is that I always thought that players with *reverse* splits as a youngster were more likely to develop, in that having already proven that they could hit same-side pitching, it would be easier to learn how to hit opposite-side pitching.

(Granted, my thoughts on the subject were heavily impacted by one player - Jeff Kent hit .217/.291/.370 vs. LHP as a rookie, .249/.321/.455 vs. RHP. The following year he hit .230/.277/.291 vs. LHP, .287/.338/.511 vs. RHP - all 21 homers he hit were against right-handed pitchers. That was a fun Strat card. He then developed into a borderline Hall of Fame candidate that no one saw coming.)

Anyway, I think that if you are going to pursue the subject further, you really need to separate LH and RH batters, because it would not surprise me at all if the effects are different for the two. Left-handed hitters suffer from a dearth of exposure to same-side pitching until they reach the pros, and therefore they frequently struggle against southpaws early in their careers. I'd love to see whether a LH batter that struggles against southpaws is more or less likely to improve than a LH batter that hits LH pitching from day one.

Nov 21, 2009 13:29 PM

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Chiefsnark

(21820)

Good article. Brings to mind a question I've had in the back of my mind for a while.

I would think that if a player has a lot of trouble handling opposite-side pitchers, one way to deal with this would be to stick him in the batting cage and have an opposite-side pitcher throw to him for hours--not the same pitcher, of course. But over an extended period the batter should start to be more comfortable with pitches from that side.

I can't recall hearing of this being done, so I imagine there's a reason why it isn't. Does anyone know what that reason is?

Nov 22, 2009 08:34 AM

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