Platooning Your SP

[GotowarMissAgnes]

Watching the Orioles the past few years, I've noticed one of their main weaknesses as a team has been their awful ability to hit lefties. Even some of their RH hitters struggle. While most of us try to spot many of our starting pitchers to get their best games and many of us try to limit starts against the best hitting teams, I don't think many of us recognize that the best hitting teams against lefties, can differ from the best hitting teams against righties.

So, here's how teams rank (using OPS) against lefties:

Team Aggregate Stats: 2007
RK TEAM OPS
1 Florida 0.971
2 NY Mets 0.925
3 Toronto 0.879
4 NY Yankees 0.847
5 Tampa Bay 0.835
6 San Diego 0.833
7 Philadelphia 0.815
8 San Francisco 0.815
9 Milwaukee 0.806
10 Atlanta 0.776
11 Detroit 0.764
12 Texas 0.752
13 Cleveland 0.75
14 Seattle 0.746
15 Boston 0.739
16 Baltimore 0.728
17 LA Dodgers 0.718
18 Houston 0.715
19 Kansas City 0.702
20 Colorado 0.696
21 Oakland 0.688
22 LA Angels 0.676
23 Washington 0.668
24 Pittsburgh 0.651
25 Chicago Cubs 0.644
26 Cincinnati 0.635
27 Minnesota 0.634
28 Arizona 0.611
29 St. Louis 0.607
30 Chicago Sox 0.555

[GotowarMissAgnes]

And against righties:

Team Aggregate Stats: 2007
RK TEAM OPS
1 Atlanta 0.812
2 Philadelphia 0.809
3 NY Mets 0.793
4 Florida 0.789
5 Milwaukee 0.789
6 Boston 0.777
7 Chicago Sox 0.776
8 Minnesota 0.774
9 Cleveland 0.76
10 Chicago Cubs 0.755
11 NY Yankees 0.739
12 Toronto 0.736
13 LA Angels 0.733
14 Tampa Bay 0.729
15 Cincinnati 0.727
16 Seattle 0.727
17 LA Dodgers 0.717
18 Arizona 0.715
19 Baltimore 0.714
20 San Diego 0.708
21 St. Louis 0.708
22 Colorado 0.704
23 Kansas City 0.701
24 Texas 0.699
25 Detroit 0.692
26 Houston 0.684
27 Pittsburgh 0.665
28 Washington 0.651
29 San Francisco 0.646
30 Oakland 0.634

[schmidty]

Great table! But you do realize, in the example of BAL, that the OPS for lefties is actually HIGHER than that for righties (at least for the 2007 limited data set). BAL just sucks against all pitchers, period.

Now the White Sox ... that's a massive split!

[GotowarMissAgnes]

Great table! But you do realize, in the example of BAL, that the OPS for lefties is actually HIGHER than that for righties (at least for the 2007 limited data set). BAL just sucks against all pitchers, period.

Now the White Sox ... that's a massive split!

On all of these numbers, remember, it's only for about 20 games so far.

Last year the O's had a .725 versus lefties and a .777 versus righties. As a result, the O's were 54-59 versus righties and 16-33 against lefties. The Sox were 59-38 versus righties and 31-34 versus lefties. Their OPS was .841 versus righties and .742 versus lefties.