Author: Peter Portero
Date: 2/21/06
Articles Category: Baseball
Under a microscope, all baseball boils down to is the mechanics of the at-bat. Is the pitcher/batter a left-hander or a right-hander? What is the pitch count of the starting pitcher? What are the balls and strikes to the current hitter? Are there runners on base and in scoring position? We can go on and on.
Some teams fare well against right handed pitchers and some against left handed pitchers. In some rare circumstances you get a team that hits both of them equally well, those generally end up as World Series Champions at the end of the season like the White Sox were in 2005.
The natural thing to do when you lose a game in baseball is to analyze the loss for how to improve in the next game. It also makes you more likely to work the count in your very next game. All this seems to suggest that if you lose a game to a right handed pitcher, you want to face a right handed pitcher your next game. Keeping the orientation of the pitcher the same, your hitters have a better chance to get comfortable. By changing the orientation, your hitters have to readjust.
We looked at teams off of a loss and found that when they go against a starting pitcher with the same pitching orientation, they have about 5% more value against the odds than if the pitching orientation switched.
This little tidbit of information is a very good nugget of information that I like to use to add onto systems of mine. Off all the managers I have seen over the years, Bobby Cox of the Atlanta Braves is the mastermind of pitching-hitting dynamics. He puts his pitchers in positions to win. Keep an eye out for his pitching changes before game time.
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