"...most batters are right handed..."

That was a phrase from a baseball book review I was reading online today. The reviewer wrote that as he discussed a seeming lack of left-hand-throwing catchers in baseball.

He just sort of threw that out there as part of his argument.

But then, a couple of lines later, I went back and reread that. Wait a minute. "...most batters are right handed..." How much is "most"? 95%-5%? 55%-45%?
Is that even true? OK, well, yeah, probably. I guess. It makes sense. I mean, there are more right-handed people walking around, no?

But, can that automatically be taken to mean "...most batters are right handed..."? Especially when you're building upon that as a premise for the next piece of your argument? That seems to be fallacious (or, at the very least, sloppy) logic. I mean, by the unscientific eyeball-test, I see an awful lot of lefty batters coming to the plate as I watch games.

So I got to thinking, is there an efficient, one-stop-shopping way to see those numbers? Lefty bats vs. righty bats vs. switch-hitters? Some website or other statistical database somewhere?

/pointing at you, Fili, Mr. Fangraphs/

/pointing at you, HGM, Mr. BBTF/

/anyone else? Bing? Rongar? etc., etc...? (no offense if I left you out)/

Right now I'm running a historical sim, but I'm not sure if there's an easier way to tap the Lahman DB. After 1901-2008, I'm just gonna check "sortable stats" and see how the L/R thing balances out. Seem valid enough? Thoughts?

They recently did a study on the handedness of batters and how it corresponds to what position they play on THT. I'd find it for you, but I need to go take a shower, and I'm sure fili or HGM knows exactly what I'm talking about as well.

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Originally Posted by YEAH DAAAAWG

They recently did a study on the handedness of batters and how it corresponds to what position they play on THT. I'd find it for you, but I need to go take a shower, and I'm sure fili or HGM knows exactly what I'm talking about as well.

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Thanks for that heads-up, YD.

I'll troll around a bit myself, and see if I stumble onto it.

Just made a quick stop to espn.com & saw that last year there were:
355 left handed batters with at least 1 plate appearance
762 right handed batters with at least 1 plate appearance
97 switch hitters with at least 1 plate appearance


Obviously, this may not be totally accurate as far as % of righties V % of lefties when it comes to batting, but I think it's close enough to get the point across



As far as correlation between bat handedness & position, that's obviously far beyond espn's scope & not something I see myself trudging around looking for (sorry)

Well, I just looked at Roy Halliday's splits. He's a right handed pitcher, and he led the majors (IIRC) in IP, which is why I picked him.

And out of 987 plate appearances, 566 of them were againt right handed batters.

While certainly not exactly what you're looking for, this would indicate that probably at least 55% of all batters are right handed. So, it's probably somewhere between 55 and 60 percent right handed, with the rest being left and switch.

Ah, OK, EtotheP, it's actually slightly over 60% then. About 63%.

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Originally Posted by etothep

Just made a quick stop to espn.com

As far as correlation between bat handedness & position, that's obviously far beyond espn's scope & not something I see myself trudging around looking for (sorry)

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No, Etothep, that's great. No "sorry" needed, of course.

It wasn't my intention to send any of you guys on a pointless scavenger hunt to satisfy my curiosity.

I'm no good at culling statistical answers from the various stat sources online, especially compared to the "l33t skillz" BBM crowd found here. :)

I was curious if it was even possible to have those numbers at your fingertips, without having to sift through team after team, one at a time.

And thanks for those numbers, BTW.

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Originally Posted by OldFatGuy

Ah, OK, EtotheP, it's actually slightly over 60% then. About 63%.

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I'm willing to bet, OFG, those numbers, if correct, are a heck of a lot closer (as far as L/R split) than the writer of that review would have expected.

Here are the articles I was referring to:

Bats left, throws right
Catchers
Third basemen
Second basemen
Shortstops

EDIT: I don't think it's exactly what you're looking for, but I think it's relevant at the least.

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Originally Posted by YEAH DAAAAWG

I don't think it's exactly what you're looking for, but I think it's relevant at the least.

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No, YD, that's great stuff.

Thank you.

Reading now...

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Originally Posted by StreetMedic

I'm willing to bet, OFG, those numbers, if correct, are a heck of a lot closer (as far as L/R split) than the writer of that review would have expected.

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it's closer than I expected to be honest...I was thinking it would be around 70% righties

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Originally Posted by StreetMedic

No, YD, that's great stuff.

Thank you.

Reading now...

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No problem :). They're very good, interesting articles.

Just noticed they put up the next (and final?) article in that series earlier this week.

Bats right, throws left

Baseball-Reference MLB-wide splits:

There were 107,863 plate appearances by right-handed batters, and 79,768 plate appearances by left-handed batters.

I'm late to the party...

And Ohms introduced me to Ms. Fangraphs, just to give credit where credit is due.

Looks like this graph that YeahDaaawg posted says about 55% of batters are purely right-handed.

http://www.hardballtimes.com/images/...Handedness.PNG

One thing to keep in mind when looking at Houston's splits is that even though the numbers (57% right-handed vs 43 left-handed) are relatively close that's due to the higher (assumed) number of right-handed pitchers which leads to most at bats by switch hitters coming from the left side.

Now, that wouldn't have any effect on L vs R handed catchers as they don't care why the batter is batting right-handed, just that he's in the damn way a bit more if the catcher is left-handed.

I was thinking that I had heard about 10% of people are left-handed, which wikipedia confirms, though other googles get answers from 2 - 30%. But if the more common 10% is correct then left-handedness is highly represented in the MLB.

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Originally Posted by filihok

I was thinking that I had heard about 10% of people are left-handed, which wikipedia confirms, though other googles get answers from 2 - 30%. But if the more common 10% is correct then left-handedness is highly represented in the MLB.

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But the thing is that there are plenty of baseball players who are right-handed in everything else they do, but bat lefty. There may be more "natural" lefties in baseball than in the general population, because of a success bias towards left-handers, but there's really no way to measure that. The only thing that's recorded is what side of the plate someone stands on, not in which hand they hold their fork.

Which is why...

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there are more right-handed people walking around

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...isn't as important as it may seem.

One case I can think of is Ichiro. His father made him become a left handed hitter as a kid because he said if you hit from this side you're already closer to first base. He still does throw right handed though.

Good points