Historical Platoon Splits Discussion

[Sultan_1895-1948]

What about if Ted's career slugging is 200 points lower, etc. Will it change people's perceptions of his echelon amongst the all time greatest hitters?

His status as an elite "pure hitter" could already be questioned, by some, due to his approach at the plate. In regards to this, I think even if he's right at the expected norm, a hitter like Ted needs to be held to a higher standard; so I would say yes, it could change perception. If most lefties, even mediocre ones, were able to get him out, on say, sliders low and away because he took the stubborn approach he did...well then. Especially at home...taking that ball the other way over the wall should have been like clock-work. Until they bust a two-seamer in on ya, lol.

By the way Chris. Always nice to see you start a thread and attack it with genuine curiosity and passion.

[brett]

His status as an elite "pure hitter" could already be questioned, by some, due to his approach at the plate. In regards to this, I think even if he's right at the expected norm, a hitter like Ted needs to be held to a higher standard; so I would say yes, it could change perception. If most lefties, even mediocre ones, were able to get him out, on say, sliders low and away because he took the stubborn approach he did...well then. Especially at home...taking that ball the other way over the wall should have been like clock-work. Until they bust a two-seamer in on ya, lol.

By the way Chris. Always nice to see you start a thread and attack it with genuine curiosity and passion.

Again, I know that someone posted Ted's career left handed results, and he was about .328 and .594 if I remember right, and I think .360/.650 against righties.

[csh19792001]

Again, I know that someone posted Ted's career left handed results, and he was about .328 and .594 if I remember right, and I think .360/.650 against righties.

Who, when, where, and what was the source? This is what we have for more than half of Ted's career. (See post 9)

.334 .473 .607
.297 .422 .473

[brett]

Who, when, where, and what was the source? This is what we have for more than half of Ted's career. (See post 9)

.334 .473 .607
.297 .422 .473

I will search for it. I think it was maybe 6 months ago or so.

[leecemark]

--Teddy's career line is higher than his line vs RHP only in the back half of his career, as presented above. The math works on Brett's numbers.

[brett]

I may have been remembering home/road splits from this thread, but Ubi seemed to be claiming to have complete L/R splits. Let's ask him. One other thing is that it may be possible that only real good lefties got to pitch against Boston in Fenway.

http://www.baseball-fever.com/showthread.php?t=66002&highlight=williams+lefty+righty+split&page=17

[csh19792001]

--Teddy's career line is higher than his line vs RHP only in the back half of his career, as presented above. The math works on Brett's numbers.

So you're willing to accept it just because it adds up, with no verified source?

[csh19792001]

I may have been remembering home/road splits from this thread, but Ubi seemed to be claiming to have complete L/R splits. ]

I don't see Ted Williams' actual career splits anywhere, just vague hints from Ubi about scraps of information from here and there.

[leecemark]

So you're willing to accept it just because it adds up, with no verified source?

--I don't know that its correct, but it does add up to something reasonably close to Williams career line. The numbers you present do not add up. Or would not add up to his career line anyway. They may well be correct for part of Williams career - which is unfortunately the decline portion.

[Ubiquitous]

- LH hitters generally have much larger platoon splits than RH hitters. Mostly I would assume because they have so many fewer opportunities to work against same handed pitchers as they are coming up.

In order for a left handed pitcher to start games he must be able to get right handed hitters out. If he can't then he won't start nor will he probably be used as a normal reliever either, he'll be the dreaded LOOGY. Considering that LH pitchers must fight against the platoon split against the more common right handed hitters it is quite an accomplishment to be a regular major league starting pitcher and left handed. Consequently left hand hitters when they do face these pitchers tend to be at a much stronger disadvantage then there brethren who are right handed hitters. Which is why generally speaking all but the very best left handed hitters get sat against left handed starters. Which on the flipside makes the accomplishment of the LHP all that much greater. As Tangotiger once said, imagine what Randy Johnson's career would look like if he was right handed and he had to only suffer a platoon disadvantage 45% to 50% instead of suffering against it 88% of the time.

I don't see Ted Williams' actual career splits anywhere, just vague hints from Ubi about scraps of information from here and there

I honestly don't know how I can make it any plainer to you. I've posted detailed break downs numerous times and have explained what it is that you are looking at in the Smith data many times.

[csh19792001]

Schrodinger's Bat:The Irreducible Essence of Platoon Split

by Dan Fox

http://danagonistes.blogspot.com/2007/11/irreducible-essence-of-platoon-splits.html

[AstrosFan]

http://www.insidethebook.com/c06.shtml

If you're interested, The Book has a full 30 page chapter devoted to studying the platoon effect, among other strategies used in baseball.

[Paul Wendt]

Left Hand share of innings pitched

Here is an article that I posted at the Hall of Merit, a copy with two insertions in square brackets. The preface displayed in small size here is something I will happily delete here if anyone confirms one of the 1910 or 1910-1919 numbers. Someone else had reported lefty pitchers starting 35% of AL 1910s games, altho it's possible he meant to say all games against the Tigers.


89. Paul Wendt Posted: January 24, 2009 at 09:27 PM (#3059815)
Using lahman5.4 (1871-2006) I don't see extremes anything like you two guestimate and calculate. [for the 1910s]

1910
AL: 23.0% of pitcher starts (289 L, 964 R, 3 missing)
NL: 18.4% of pitcher starts (229 L, 1013 R, 0 missing)

Will anyone confirm or correct those details for 1910?

==
== what follows relies on the same data, I know, and some methods, I think
== so what follows must be doubted for now
==

Left-hand pitchers worked about 15% of innings in NA 1871 (more than 98% of innings known); barely 1% in 1872 (many missing hands); no innings in NL 1876 (more than 99% known).

Left-hand pitchers first surpassed 5% of NL innings in 1879 and 10% in 1880 (J Lee Richmond) . . . 15% [of NL innings] in 1886, 20% and 25% in 1887 . . . yet worked barely 5% in 1891(!) Yet 15% and 20% shares were the rule including 20% in 1900 when there were only eight MLB teams who concentrated "all" the most desirable players. In 1901 the lefty share of innings was about NL 17% and AL 26%.

left-hand pitcher share of innings (all major leagues)
1876-1881: ~ 7% ( 6.8% with 1.3% missing)
1882-1892: >15% (15.4% with 8.5% missing)
1893-1900: ~19% (18.5% with 3.0% missing)
1901-1909: ~22% (21.6% with 0.4% missing)
1910-1919 : 25.4% (25.4 with 0.02 missing)
1920-1929 : 26.9%
1930-1939 : 22.9%
1940-1949 : 24.0%
1950-1959 : 27.8%
1960-1969 : 29.2%
1970-1979 : 31.5%
1980-1989 : 31.0%
1990-1999 : 28.2%
2000-2006 : 25.9%

Those shares are not equal to the frequencies for any particular batter or team, of course.

[Paul Wendt]

. . . So the first thing I realized is that teams must really try to use all of their right handed batters against lefty pitchers, even average ones, while right handed pitchers faced a pretty consistent near 50% split. Even Pedro has faced 46% right handed hitters in his career.

This is a big deal. For one, it means that left handed starting pitchers do not face the general population of major league hitters.

By rough count about 70% of starting pitchers are righty and 30% are lefty.

Don't infer from the "near 50% split" that righties face the general population, although with more rh than lh pitchers it must be closer to the general population, if we describe all populations by shares of playing time.

How do you count switch-batters? Do you mean "right-hand batters and both-hand batters who are batting right against this pitcher" (a lefty)? So Pedro's 46% righty means 54% lefty?

Re aggregate pitching hand,
just above I have posted some shares of all innings pitched which are shares of all outs (and must be close to the shares for all batting outs).

[Floyd Gondolli]

So, this topic always interested me.

I first looked at splits for 35 different seasons, from every era (random years) since 1914. The league platoon splits for LHH vs. RHP vs. LHP was 108/87 for the years I sampled, for what it's worth.

I don't know of a way to sort tOPS+ using Stathead for careers (GiambiJuice, for example, do you?).

In any case, looking at a bunch of different players I know struggled vs. LHP and vice versa, here's what I came up with:

Screenshot 2023-09-30 at 12.03.40 PM.png

And here are some LHH hitters that fared quite well vs. LHP:

Screenshot 2023-09-30 at 12.04.53 PM.png

Thoughts/input? Thanks everyone!