Why Are Left-Handed Hitters Considered Low Ball Specialists?
- Thread starter mfried
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I'd be curious to see if there's any effect when you break it down by LHH who are also lefty throwers vs. those who are righty throwers.
If you want to sort the players we'd be more than happy to look into it.
Why do you think the throwing hand matters?
Why do you think the throwing hand matters?
As a throw right/bat left player my whole life (played through college), and definitely a low ball hitter, everything that follows here is completely anecdotal and full of bias, but...
As a right hand dominant batter from the left side, your dominant hand is obviously your bottom one. As such, the natural tendency is to "pull" the bat through the zone, and the natural weight of the bat and the weaker top hand means that the barrel comes through level with, or lower than the hands, with a bit of lag. That makes it very difficult to get to pitches that are high in the zone, but very naturally covers the low end.
With a right hand dominant, righty batter, the dominant top hand leads to a swing that is a bit more like swinging an axe, starting high and driving down and through the ball/tree. A strong top hand controls the head of the bat more, leading to a level, or slightly down, swing, as opposed to an uppercut.
An easy way to feel this is to take one-handed swings on a tee, or soft-toss. Swing with the bat in your right hand from the left side and you can feel how easily the barrel drops. If you switch to one-handed swings from the right side, it feels very comfortable to drive down on the ball, partly because your hand is 4-5 inches higher up the bat.
Fascinating post. It does seem very plausible that a cross-dominant hitter would have different biomechanics than someone batting on their natural side. I would speculate that cross-dominant batters are (1) better at pushing the ball to opposite field since their stronger hand is at the bottom of the bat, and (2) make better contact at the expense of a bit less power.
I'd be curious to see the .com folks break out cross-dominant hitters. I'd guess that almost all of them bat lefty (alas, not my son who despite my best efforts writes left-handed but bats right), but there may be too much noise for them to systematically effect the results of all left-handed hitters.
I'd be curious to see the .com folks break out cross-dominant hitters. I'd guess that almost all of them bat lefty (alas, not my son who despite my best efforts writes left-handed but bats right), but there may be too much noise for them to systematically effect the results of all left-handed hitters.
Could any of this perceived preference for low inside pitches be that this is the location they're most exposed to? Coming up, most pitchers are right handed and save for those few who have a true over-the-top delivery, most have arm slots somewhere between that and 3/4. Would the normal trajectory of such a delivery bring many more pitches into this zone, especially in HS, college and the lower minor leagues when you're facing pitchers with less command of their arsenal?
The B-Ref batting "season finder" lets you specify batting side and throwing hand - an easy place to get a list of Bat L/throw R and Bat L/throw L guys.
Here's 2015 Bat L / Throw R: http://www.baseball-reference.com/play-index/share.cgi?id=pV4ko
And 2015 Bat L / Throw L: http://www.baseball-reference.com/play-index/share.cgi?id=b89hF
Completely anecdotal here as well but I am also a cross dominant hitter (The worst kind too: Throw Left/Bat Right) and down and in has always been a happy zone for me. Throughout my career it was always really easy to get my hands and the bat head in on those pitches to drive. I always assumed it was because my dominant hand was the bottom one.
I would add that since batters run to first and not third, lefties have natural movement and better flow and follow through to their swing. They swing and finish toward first. For a righty, he at some point has to physically stop his swing and change direction to run to first. I'm guessing when you look at enough gorgeous lefty swings (Williams, Will Clark, Griffey, etc) you begin to convince yourself (absent the expertise of iayork) that lefties are crushing low and inside pitches. In reality you may be seeing what looks like a more natural movement when they do it.
We've got iayork and get to watch Mookie Betts. Stats and scouting nice and cozy.
We've got iayork and get to watch Mookie Betts. Stats and scouting nice and cozy.
Thanks, I've saved those and when I have time will take a look at their batting preferences.
I'm a Bat L/Throw L, and I've always been most comfortable hitting low pitches. I have no idea why. It just feels better and more natural to have my arms lower. My coaches always had to remind me to keep my hands up so I didn't just drop them immediately and pop up all the high pitches. I think I was trying to hit like Mo Vaughn, who would drop his hands like crazy in the loading phase, but somehow made it work. Ted Williams did it too. I would guess that a lot of natural lefties need to be coached out of dropping their hands too much unless they have insane reflexes and can make up for it. Even watching Chris Davis tonight, he doesn't drop his hands quite as much as those guys, but he still drops them a bit. Mark Trumbo, who's hitting right after him, is able to keep his hands higher.
One thing that always amused me was how much teams would overreact to a LHB. Everyone would start yelling and go into big defensive shifts and try to pitch me low and away, even though I was...not a big power threat. I was always more than happy to take a walk or try to flick a ball to left.
One thing that always amused me was how much teams would overreact to a LHB. Everyone would start yelling and go into big defensive shifts and try to pitch me low and away, even though I was...not a big power threat. I was always more than happy to take a walk or try to flick a ball to left.
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Might it also have something to do with the fact that a disproportionate amount of pitches thrown down in the zone are breaking in on LH hitters (because they're thrown by RHP and tend to run east-west rather than west-east), so LHH don't have the same risk that RHH do of rolling over on pitches down in the zone? Put differently, is it that LHH are really good at hitting low balls, or is it just that the way most low pitches run away from RHH, it's really that RHH are really bad at hitting low balls and LHH just benefit by comparison?
I am, of course, completely spitballing here.
I am, of course, completely spitballing here.
I think you've got it. Most left handed hitters are still right handed overall, so the stronger right hand/arm dominates. After that, the reasons you gave make sense, plus, the right arm is lower than the left anyway, so it can more easily guide the bat down to low balls and hit them hard, vs. RHHs going down after low balls with a weaker left hand.
The article on the .com linked above concluded "Looking at these charts, we can’t see anything in the numbers that would make us declare that left-handed hitters are better at inside and low pitches than their right-handed counterparts. This looks like a case that combines selective memory and repeated claims without evidence."
Why are you trying come up with explanations for an apparently non-existent phenomenon?
I didn't know it was non-existent because I didn't read everything in the thread. My bad. It still is surprising to me that the data came out equal because it is a non-symmetrical situation, i.e. LHHs mostly have their dominant hand on the bottom of the bat and RHHs do not. Maybe at the major league level, all hitters, whether right or left handed, have to be able to hit the low pitch, so the asymmetric part goes away. Joe Morgan would still like to come back and argue.
Not to answer for the poster above, but in my initial post I was responding to the initial question, which was asking about low pitches, not necessarily down and in. And I would argue that the phenomenon (the theory that LH batters are better low ball hitters) does exist, it just may not exist in terms of results. So, some of us are trying to explain why the theory persists.
Anyway, as with most things stats, a lot of what a player feels/knows about their swing won't necessarily be borne out in the numbers. To the analytical observer, that means those things are therefore irrelevant, at least in terms of in-game results (and I know of no analysts trying to pick apart out-of-game results).
I'm not going to argue that point, but that doesn't change what the guy standing at the plate thinks, at least in terms of going about the business of hitting a ball. The swings one takes during an actual game are a tiny fraction of the hundreds of thousands of swings taken in batting practice, in the cage, soft tossing, off a tee, etc..
You can tell a hitter all you want that the numbers show that they are not a good hitter of pitches in "x" zone, but if they consistently make good contact in that zone during the thousands of swings that "don't count", and in relatively controlled conditions - the results from the relative very few chances, and wildly varying conditions in-game are just meaningless noise to them.
So, it may be that left-handed hitters are, in fact, not better low ball hitters in any meaningful, in-game statistical way. For the statistical analyst, that's it - end of story.
For a player who knows he is more comfortable hitting low pitches 99% of the time he does it (ie, not in a game), that stat is pretty much irrelevant, unless he's going to try to lay off low strikes or something, and generally speaking laying off strikes isn't a great recipe for success. He will continue to say, and believe, he is a low ball hitter. And the people who cover the team will repeat it. And thus, we get another old-timey wisdom that can be struck down through analytics.
The aesthetics of a left handed hitter turning on a low pitch from a right handed pitcher and then naturally moving toward first is a thing of beauty in the game -- far more so than the analogue from the other side that then requires a total change of direction to start running to first.
No wonder their is selective memory and bias creating the sense that this (a statistically meaningful difference in production) is a real thing.
Also, aren't low pitches easier for everyone (lefty here)?
No wonder their is selective memory and bias creating the sense that this (a statistically meaningful difference in production) is a real thing.
Also, aren't low pitches easier for everyone (lefty here)?
No way. I can sting a low pitch but there's no way in hell I can get the nice extra-base launch angle that lefties put on it. If I try, it's a lazy pop-up.