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PxP: MythBusters
by elcroata on May 18, 2011 8:20 AM PDT
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I know it's only wiffleball,
but I’m a righty and to lefties, I like to throw a lot of sliders that look like they’re going to be over the inside corner, but break down and in towards the shoetops.
Good article, of course!
"OK and now everybody who said 'game over' at some point
GO KNEEL IN THE CORNER!" - elcroata
I am positively jealous of the fact that grown-ups play wiffleball somewhere
(well other than on Athletics offense)
And thanks, of course.
2011 Oakland Athletics: We have Cy Young pitchers and make yours look like it, too
Because of the center field camera angle, when a lefty turns on a ball down and in
it LOOKS like they absolutely crush the ball.
Also I’d be interested to see how this is broken down for HR hitters (Thome, Howard, Dunn, Fielder, Ortiz) vs slap hitters or “gap” type hitters (Ichiro, Juan Pierre, Barton even)
Official Athletics Nation Rotating Tagline Editor - Pam liked my old sig better.
My thoughtful watermelon is easily mistook for an early American catapult.
Or perhaps
because every time a lefty does hit one there, everybody and their mother says: “See, that’s why you don’t throw down and in to lefthanders!”?
2011 Oakland Athletics: We have Cy Young pitchers and make yours look like it, too
Sure does seem so
2011 Oakland Athletics: We have Cy Young pitchers and make yours look like it, too
Interesting Article
I think that lefties are a bit better on pitches inside. i mean, quite a few lefties have good pull power, so it makes sense. Of course, they can still hit stuff in the center of the plate, and muscle up on it pretty well, too.
Wait a sec.
Couldn’t this just mean that pitchers all know that lefties crush down and in pitches, so they’ll never throw there unless it’s a hard to hit pitcher’s pitch?
by danmerqury on May 18, 2011 9:47 AM PDT reply actions 1 recs
I'd also like to see the breakdown between
pitches thrown by left/right-handed pitchers to lefties. Are lefties seeing comparatively more inside pitches from lefties than from righties? In which case, are the left-handed batters more prone to fail? I suppose the same could be said for inside pitches from right-handed pitchers to right-handed batters. Would be interesting to compare the two.
Don't you realise you'll find next monday or next Tuesday/Your golden shoes day
by PDXAthleticsfan on May 18, 2011 9:58 AM PDT up reply actions
Highly doubtful
First, the distribution of the pitches to the lefthanders and to the righthanders is basically the same. Have a look:
and
That’s 2 percentage points or less of deviation for each area.
Second, what would pitcher’s pitch be in such a case? We can not really expect that pitchers would save their best stuff exclusively for going down and in, so I guess you are assuming that pitchers are being finer and going exclusively for the edges there. That’s not the case either. If I were able to do a heat map in R (obviously 5 minutes is not enough to install and learn it) I’d show you one. That not being the case, here are the centers of gravity for each of the nine zones:
2011 Oakland Athletics: We have Cy Young pitchers and make yours look like it, too
Interesting.
But I was thinking more on the lines of pitch type, not location. What’s the distribution of fastballs in that down and in zone, if you don’t mind?
What are you expecting?
I can run the data again tomorrow, but what do you think it could be? Fewer fastballs?
2011 Oakland Athletics: We have Cy Young pitchers and make yours look like it, too
Ooooooooooooook
I’ll check tomorrow. But only because I like you and you masochistically rec my posts.
2011 Oakland Athletics: We have Cy Young pitchers and make yours look like it, too
As promised - the last one
And it’s not that either. Fastball percentages decrease gradually as we go down in the zone, but not more inside than anywhere else. And, they do so for RHB as well, who actually see fewer FB down and in than LHB.
2011 Oakland Athletics: We have Cy Young pitchers and make yours look like it, too
This is absolutely Incredible...
I’m a LH batter and throughout my whole life I’ve loved down and in pitch. In little league I even used to ask my teammates to pitch it there when I wanted slug it.
It wasn’t until I was 14 before someone said “It’s because you’re a lefty.”
My coaches, (and my former minor leaguer friend) said that it’s because it’s the pitch from RHP that you can see for the longest amount of time.
I’m interested to see if there’s a split between RHP to LH hitters and LHP to LH batters. My guess is that LHP will fire inside on LH batters with more frequency and the data reflects that.
If not, I’ve totally going to have to second guess myself.
Great post and totally rec’d
by OnlybuyBeaneJerseys on May 18, 2011 11:12 AM PDT reply actions
A little advice
The info is very good and revealing, but you don’t want to second-guess yourself too much as a hitter, at least when you’re at the plate.
Also, some people are better at hitting that pitch that’s down and in. You might be one of them. In my teens I very briefly played around with trying to switch-hit and it certainly FELT like the way I swung was good for hitting that particular pitch. I was always reminded of how Will Clark’s swing looked when I thought about it. Granted, I wasn’t much of a hitter regardless.
If you still hit and can get access to a pitching machine, I’d have it set to throw you pitches around different parts of the zone and really see where your contact area feels best, then go from there. That’s the time to think a little more and work on things.
Last of the Ninth - Photography
Great Post
As another left handed hitter (not a very good one), the few hits I used to get seemed to be pitches that were down.
What I’ve always wondered is how many left handed hitters throw right? I do but always figured it was unusual.
The greenmachine
My 5 year old does that.
Official Athletics Nation Rotating Tagline Editor - Pam liked my old sig better.
My thoughtful watermelon is easily mistook for an early American catapult.
The real weirdos are the guys that throw left and bat right
Of course, one of them was pretty successful at it.
by Glorious Mundy on May 18, 2011 11:34 AM PDT up reply actions
And the picture they used was of him with the Padres?
Okay, at least he played about 11.5% of his career there…
Last of the Ninth - Photography
meant to be a reply to Glorious Munder
ludwick is bat R throw L
Jason Giambi, Eric Chavez,
Players who bat left and throw right are a little uncommon, but not so rare.
Sweet is the lore which Nature brings; / Our meddling intellect
Mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things:— / We murder to dissect.
i wouldn't even say uncommon
of the 4 LHBs on the a’s, half throw right. all three of their switch hitters throw right as well.
looking at the angels, abreu is their only LHB and he throws right. all 6 of their swicth hitters also throw right.
I would actually think that's MORE common
but I have no idea if it is or not.
I remember a few kids who were natural lefties when i was growing up and they learned to hit right handed first, because it would be easier to go to lefty later and switch hit.
Official Athletics Nation Rotating Tagline Editor - Pam liked my old sig better.
My thoughtful watermelon is easily mistook for an early American catapult.
Jeremy Giambi
is a natural lefty who hit RH as a youngster. I assume his father started him that way for exactly that reason, though in the long run he ended up hitting LH all the time.
Sweet is the lore which Nature brings; / Our meddling intellect
Mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things:— / We murder to dissect.
I also would have ask him why he didn't teach his kids to slide at home
Put a bird on it
by Future Ed on May 18, 2011 6:36 PM PDT up reply actions 1 recs
A good percentage of left handed hitters are right handed.
It’s to do with having your dominant hand being the one on top, guiding the bat – rather than the dominant hand providing all the power.
I messed around with it in cricket for a while – I’m right handed. It does make hitting the ball easier, but it just didn’t feel right to me, I lost all my technique.
"Nah, you look like Elijah Wood." - danmerqury
Isn't it also the fact that
more defensive players (aka hitters) need to be right-handed to properly play their position?
C, 2B, 3B, and SS
all 3 OF positions and 1B are perfectly fine.
Official Athletics Nation Rotating Tagline Editor - Pam liked my old sig better.
My thoughtful watermelon is easily mistook for an early American catapult.
Yup
Here is the historical distribution of lefthanders:
2011 Oakland Athletics: We have Cy Young pitchers and make yours look like it, too
I wonder why there's less left handed left fielders than right fielders.
How bizarre.
"Nah, you look like Elijah Wood." - danmerqury
I'm confused
It’s when you’re hitting on your natural side (i.e. a lefty hitting lefty) that your dominant hand is on top. Does one hold a cricket bat upside down relative to a baseball bat?
by Glorious Mundy on May 18, 2011 4:41 PM PDT up reply actions
Depends what you mean by 'on top'.
The hand closer to the bat head is the ‘bottom hand’ in cricket parlance.
"Nah, you look like Elijah Wood." - danmerqury
Ah, that explains it
Just one more cultural difference to be aware of.
by Glorious Mundy on May 18, 2011 5:18 PM PDT up reply actions
It has more to do with the fact
that it pays off to hit left-handed. Otherwise you would see the same split the other way around, too.
2011 Oakland Athletics: We have Cy Young pitchers and make yours look like it, too
Well perhaps in baseball there's the added advantage of platoon splits,
but having your dominant hand guide the bat does make it easier to hit things.
For example; my friend, who is very good at golf, was told the exact same thing by his golf coach i.e. that if the golf coach had started coaching him at a younger age he’d have taught him to hit right handed (he’s a leftie) because it allows you to have more control.
"Nah, you look like Elijah Wood." - danmerqury
Remember Reggie Smith of the Dodgers?
Reggie threw right and was a switch hitter. He had a higher average from the right side but more power from the left. One writer referred to him as Clark Kent from the right side and Superman from the left. Back in the Pleistocene when I was playing sandlot ball, I threw right and tried switch hitting. I felt that I could control the bat better from the right side, especially on high pitches, and slam the low pitches from the left side. The left-handed power felt like a nice, low tennis backhand.
This would be interesting to me as a research topic, but focusing on individual batters may be more important.
Lurkers of the world UNITE!
Thanks for the data.
He does have a slightly higher slugging average from the left side.
Lurkers of the world UNITE!
Thanks
Here is the breakdown of throwers/batters according to handedness:
Some more interesting stuff on lefties and righties can be found here, in case you missed it back then. Basically you see that righthanders have an incentive to learn batting left-handed, because most pitchers are righthanders.
Also, can someone explain to me why AN(SBN) resizes this table and makes it all blurry. The original (and the source for this comment) is here and is much sharper. It is a little annoying.
2011 Oakland Athletics: We have Cy Young pitchers and make yours look like it, too
Btw. that "2010 status" actually means 2006-2010
2011 Oakland Athletics: We have Cy Young pitchers and make yours look like it, too
SBN resizes pictures, and it's annoying.
As long as you take care to make sure it doesn’t blow off the edge of the screen (duh), then go into HTML mode, and replace “….tbb_medium.jpg” with “tbb.jpg”.
I do that
But that works on FanPosts only, right?
2011 Oakland Athletics: We have Cy Young pitchers and make yours look like it, too
Oh, I guess it was preview only
2011 Oakland Athletics: We have Cy Young pitchers and make yours look like it, too
nice post
though id be interested to see the data for pitches outside the zone as well.
for me, the dogma has always been that lefties are better than righties at “golfing” pitches off their shoe tops over the fence. ive always rationalized that as an effect of the relative prevalence of left hand hitters who are right hand dominant (vs right hand hitters who are left hand dominant). something about the mechanics of leading with their strong arms allows hitters better pull power on shoe top pitches.
other than vlad, i just cant picture many other RHHs doing that. more graphs please?
Thanks
This is an interesting theory and so far the one that makes most sense, as there are indeed more RH who bat left than the other way around.
I am done with graphs if you don’t mind, but I did look at the data you asked for. The problem with it is that the pitches that are both bellow and inside the strike zone don’t really get hit that often, so we suffer from small sample sizes.
In 2010 only about 100 such pitches were put in play by lefthanders, and around 300 by righthanded batters. It’s really a too small sample size to make any conclusions on, but nevertheless, here are the results:
LH/RH
AB: 104/299
1B: 18/56
2B: 11/29
3B:0/0
HR:3/13
AVG: .308/.328
SLG: .500/.555
2011 Oakland Athletics: We have Cy Young pitchers and make yours look like it, too
I was ecstatic about your comment
until I read the second sentence!
JK, thanks
2011 Oakland Athletics: We have Cy Young pitchers and make yours look like it, too
I would rec you, but I'm disappointed at the lack of Kari in this post.
"Nah, you look like Elijah Wood." - danmerqury
Ooops, sorry, my bad
Here, to make it up to you – I asked my niece to draw her for you
2011 Oakland Athletics: We have Cy Young pitchers and make yours look like it, too
Funny thing, though
I knew of the show, but have never seen it. So guess what happens?
About one hour after I write this article with “MythBusters” in the tittle, I had my fire fighting refresh-training. And at one point, the guy starts talking about explosive mixtures and what does he do? He plays us an episode from MythBusters! Talk about strange coincidences.
2011 Oakland Athletics: We have Cy Young pitchers and make yours look like it, too
What an encore
I think I did more graphs for the comments section than for the post itself. You guys are lucky that I am currently developing the dynamic measurement for my tunable lasers, meaning that the measurements are long and I can slip one or two of these while the instruments work for me.
Anyway, due to the popular demand, here is the split how often lefties and righties went where on the left-handed batters:
Pretty similar, with 1.6 percentage points being the biggest discrepancy. But it surely doesn’t seem like the right-handed pitchers are being shyer about throwing down and in to lefties than their counterparts.
2011 Oakland Athletics: We have Cy Young pitchers and make yours look like it, too
by elcroata on May 19, 2011 5:40 AM PDT reply actions 1 recs
Thanks - totally not what I was expecting!
Don't you realise you'll find next monday or next Tuesday/Your golden shoes day
by PDXAthleticsfan on May 19, 2011 10:09 AM PDT up reply actions
Not what I'd expect either
Thanks for doing the extra effort to show that’s not the case!
The only other guess I would have is that maybe lefties tend to crowd the plate more than RH batters. So the inside pitch to the lefty is actually really tight and the middle of the zone pitch is more like the inside pitch. (I’m thinking Bonds)
Not that I don’t believe you, it’s just I’ve thought my whole life LF batters love that pitch. This research has really made my head spin.
by OnlybuyBeaneJerseys on May 20, 2011 10:02 AM PDT up reply actions
I think a lot of the reason for the "lefties dominate down and in pitches" belief is just confirmation bias.
If your belief is that lefties crush down and in pitches, every time they do your belief will be reaffirmed, while every time they fail to, it’ll be forgotten and dismissed as “the pitcher getting away with one” or some other such rationalization.
by UrgentMirth on May 20, 2011 10:19 AM PDT up reply actions 1 recs
I agree with the confirmation bias hypothesis.
This seems like exactly the sort of belief where confirmation bias wouldapply. Even more so if the camera angle supports such a bias in TV viewers, as mikev suggested.
Sweet is the lore which Nature brings; / Our meddling intellect
Mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things:— / We murder to dissect.
Awesome post
OT: Tunable lasers? The EE in me is very curious on your project.
Btw you have the most productive down times. I usually just go for passive time killers (streaming tv shows, etc) between intense concentration, I admire the hard work you put in.
If I’m misinterpreting sarcasm, I apologize.
Thank you
No, that was not sarcastic – I really do develop measurement algorithms for various optical instruments and one of them is tunable laser source. And in certain stage of development I have to take repeated, rather lengthy readings of equipment and this time I squeezed some AN research in between :)
2011 Oakland Athletics: We have Cy Young pitchers and make yours look like it, too
your chart on slugging percentage got me thinking...perhaps a suggestion for your next PxP...
do the a’s hitters have smaller sweet spots than the average major leaguer? asked a different way, why do the a’s players consistently slug less than their peers? do they stink at hitting? do they have bigger weak spots than their peers that are being exploited by pitchers?
the artist formerly known as inbillywetrust
Always thankful for ideas
Although I first want to finish up the A’s pitchers one that’s been a draft for a while now. But might come back to that!
2011 Oakland Athletics: We have Cy Young pitchers and make yours look like it, too
well, i always appreciate your work and look forward to seeing your A's pitchers article.
the artist formerly known as inbillywetrust
Great article
your “Mythbusters” should be a running front page segment. If nothing else, you could devote your time to debunking 96% of what Joe Morgan says in any given telecast – this post has surely served that function.
Nice work!
As a lefty, my only little league double was a fastball down and in. (no triples or homers)
I’m trying to think of plausible reason(s) why either this belief could be founded in some way in fact, or, if not, how such an incorrect belief took formation.
For some reason, the idea still ‘seems right’ to me, though appearing to be quite disproved here. I’ll mull it over for the next couple of days.
My son!
Man of the Crazy Sink.
Also related to a certain GasCan.
I'M A GIRL
The gnats hate your research and will do everything possible to disprove it. Here's Schierholtz' homerun:
Those guys are such bad sports.
Get out the time-fracture wickets, Hobbes! We're gonna play Calvinball!
Here's the home run that Prince Fielder hit on Friday to win their game in the 14th inning.
By the way, that ball finally landed this morning.
Official Athletics Nation Rotating Tagline Editor - Pam liked my old sig better.
My thoughtful watermelon is easily mistook for an early American catapult.
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