Left-handed pitchers underperform

I hate left-handed pitchers because they always seem to suck.

I pulled some data and I think there's a problem

All Right-Handed pitchers who pitched in my game last season had PREDICTED ERA of 4.37 and all left-handed pitchers had PREDICTED ERA of 4.45.

All right-handed pitchers who pitched in my game last season had ACTUAL ERA of 3.99 and all left-handed pitchers had ACTUAL ERA of 4.39.

Further 70% of left-handed pitchers had a higher ACTUAL ERA than PREDICTED ERA while only 38% of right-handed pitchers had ACTUAL ERA higher than PREDICTED ERA

It looks more like your data shows RHP's to be more effective than predicted, while LHP's are about as expected. Perhaps the number and quality of RH batters was greater than expected. Historically I think lefties get about 1/3 of all PA's, but maybe someone has real-life data.

I am not sure i totally agree with this, my current nationals team has 3 starting left handers and all three have era's under 3.00 and are destroying my right handers...

What I've noticed is that I can't seem to find a good LHP relief specialist. Currently, my best performing starter is a lefty with WHIPs of .82 vs LH, .97 vs. RH; but all my other LHP starters and relievers fare better against righties. I think it's been that way for all six years of one-pitch mode games. Also, my lineup seems to struggle against LHP's, but I'm not certain of that.

I went round and round on this issue with another member of my league. We're in 2025 so it's almost all fictional players and he said lefties sucked because there wasn't enough left handed hitting in the league.

Turns out he was right. Don't have the numbers handy anymore but the # of left handed hitters on the MLB rosters of Outahere compared to the real life MLB was lower by a significant margin.

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Originally Posted by cfeedback

I went round and round on this issue with another member of my league. We're in 2025 so it's almost all fictional players and he said lefties sucked because there wasn't enough left handed hitting in the league.

Turns out he was right. Don't have the numbers handy anymore but the # of left handed hitters on the MLB rosters of Outahere compared to the real life MLB was lower by a significant margin.

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Interesting...I'll look into that next

Anyone have the IRL numbers???


In my sim I have:

Switch hitters 14%
Left-Handed 20%
Right-Handed 66%

This represents every batter that got a plate appearance during the season
My league is fictional and simmed from 2009 until 2040

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Originally Posted by filihok

Anyone have the IRL numbers???


In my sim I have:

Switch hitters 14%
Left-Handed 20%
Right-Handed 66%

This represents every batter that got a plate appearance during the season
My league is fictional and simmed from 2009 until 2040

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Anyone who started a BBM dynasty with the current rosters should at least be able to give the numbers for the current players, no?

Man, I looked everywhere for this data, but couldn't find it. I know I deleted the spreadsheet I had but thought maybe the conclusions were available in my chat logs. Can't find it. All I remember is that our league totals had a significant higher % of righties than the real MLB.

[17:30:26] RemNAIHF: current MLB outahere totals. 99 lefties, 2.75 average per team. 324 righties, 9 average per team. 80 switch hitters, 2.2 average per team.

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Originally Posted by cfeedback

Man, I looked everywhere for this data, but couldn't find it. I know I deleted the spreadsheet I had but thought maybe the conclusions were available in my chat logs. Can't find it. All I remember is that our league totals had a significant higher % of righties than the real MLB.

[17:30:26] RemNAIHF: current MLB outahere totals. 99 lefties, 2.75 average per team. 324 righties, 9 average per team. 80 switch hitters, 2.2 average per team.

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Those numbers give:
Switch-16%
Left-20%
Right-64%

Well, predicted ERA is pretty much not useful at all. It isn't taken into account in any rating. I think given that, it's a fair assumption that predicted ERA is not used in the sim, as every other stat save for wins/losses does change a rating. So, I'd look at other factors, such as comparing predicted K rates and such.

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Originally Posted by HoustonGM

Well, predicted ERA is pretty much not useful at all.

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I see that you are right. The R2 for Predicted ERA and Actual ERA is around .003. Should have checked that earlier.

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It isn't taken into account in any rating. I think given that, it's a fair assumption that predicted ERA is not used in the sim, as every other stat save for wins/losses does change a rating.

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This is the reason that I chose ERA. Players with similar ratings don't seem to perform the similarly.

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So, I'd look at other factors, such as comparing predicted K rates and such.

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I think I'll do this when I get a chance (unless someone else is bored and beats me to it). Sim a season a hundred or so times with all right-handed pitchers. Track wins and runs allowed. Edit all the pitchers to be left-handed. Compare.

After 150 seasons each:

The 2009 LA Dodgers with all pitchers right-handed have averaged 89.52 wins
The 2009 LA Dodgers with the exact same pitchers all left-handed 85.76 wins

You are basically trying to see if the fact that the pitcher is left handed (with identical predicted stats) is the sole reason that he performs worse than a right-handed one, correct?

If so, shouldn't you adjust all batters to have equal splits against RHP and LHP. It does stand to reason that since the majority of MLB is right-handed, your all left-handed pitching would not fare as well as their right-handed counterparts, which might explain the variance.

This is obviously a byproduct of their being many more right handed batters than left handed batters. Also, just from my experiences, there are more lefty-mashers who can't hit righties than there are the opposite.