TLR's Slavish Devotion to L/R Splits

by Zack Morris on Jun 29, 2008 2:03 AM EDT Comment 6 comments

During the Royals game tonight, it was pointed out that the KC starter Kyle Davies has a reverse split; he is much more successful against lefties than righties. Yet Duncan, not Stavinoha, was the DH, despite Stavinoha's reverse split and higher success rate against righties.

Similarly, TLR keeps running Villone (who admittedly does get lefties out at a good rate) and Flores (who has struggled, to say the least) out there against lefties, while he has McClellan, who has been significantly tougher on lefties than on righties.

Tony doesn't get enough credit; he has been a consistently productive manager, and has this year's bucket of scrubs, MLB debut players, and retreads competing like no one thought they could. He has done all this despite the dramatic frequency of injuries to key players. However, his clinging to conventional wisdom without actually looking at the numbers seems detrimental to the club.

Anyone agree or disagree? Are there further examples of TLR ignoring numbers in favor of traditional baseball "wisdom" in this respect?

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Bill James' answer

I think he would say reverse splits don’t exist over time, and the “traditional wisdom” is correct.

Clearly there are special cases. I cringe every time TLR summons Flores for a L/L matchup… but that’s not because he’s wrong about the split. Flores just blows.

by baw on Jun 29, 2008 12:46 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

i think he would say that they sometimes do exist

but proving that Davies (or ludwick, for an example from the other end) HAS a true reverse split requires a sample size of LHB (or LHP for Luddy) significantly larger than what Davies has faced in his career. To predict future performance, you’d want to regress closer (but not completely) to the league average split rather than to Davies’ demonstrated performance. Tom Tango has an entire chapter devoted to this in his book “the book”.

[a hilariously self-aggrandizing title, but it’s really a good book ;) ]

KMac is likely going to regress against lefties for the same reason, although RHB can defeat LHB if they have excellent curve balls, which KMac does have. KMac also has a good slider, which can be effective vs lefties.

"If thats bad luck, lets DFA our luck away." -DriverZN

by SleepyCA on Jun 30, 2008 4:24 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

found this on BP

There have been 94 right-handed pitchers in the last 50 years who have thrown at least 1000 innings to both right-handed and left-handed batters, and of those, 19 have a reverse split.

That is pretty rare. One of the 19 is Jeff Suppan, who (as far as I can tell or remember) never displayed much of a reverse split as a Cardinal; another is Woody Williams, who sorta did.

I just have a hard time letting those splits convince me of anything predictive.

And for the record, here is a Bill James quote on the subject:

Over time, every hitter will hit better when he has the platoon advantage than when he does not. There may be an exception, maybe two exceptions. You see a lot of reverse splits or backwards splits in one-year data — lefties hitting better against lefties, etc. Over time, at least 99 percent of hitters are going to hit better when they have the edge, and certainly the difference is significant.

by baw on Jun 30, 2008 8:51 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

That's an interesting find

That first quote surprises me in a different way than it does you, I guess. That took the largest possible samples and it came out over 20% having a reverse. I figured it would be less. I’d classify that as rare, but not as much so as I would have thought.

To the point Zach, ahem… I mean “preppy”, is making – I’d prefer to see Tony resist the temptation a little more. It may be a matter of roster construction as much as anything though. As long as you had Flores up on the 25 man, Tony has to find a way to use him somewhere. The issue to me isn’t so much the usage as the fact he had a role at all. Villone scares me too, honestly, but he has been tough on lefties his whole career as well as this year.

The outfield is loaded with lefthanders. Ideally there would be some balance there. A staple of a TLR team has always been getting a good dose of AB’s for his bench. Now with the lefthanded heavy outfield, I think it starts to take on the guise of platoon management when, most likely, it is a case where the splits are simply the justification for what he would do anyway. We’ve got a pretty good group of 3 starters, at least right now. I’d like to see Tony stick with those 3 pretty regularly too, but that goes against everything he’s always done.

by Merry CRasmus on Jul 1, 2008 12:58 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

it's the other slavish devotion

that Tony has, that bothers ME.
I like the example baw gave, above. Tho’ I get irritated, or at least miffed, with TLR’s mania with L/R match-ups or otherwise ‘statistical’ decision making… he always has a good reason for what he does and I realize he is usually just ‘playing the percentages’—not that bad of a thing.
What annoys ME tho’ is his refusal to pull the plug on a guy he has convinced himself he likes (or that the ‘deserve’ to keep giving them chances). The Izzy fiasco of mid-season ‘06 still gives me nightmares.

by the Tewk on Jun 30, 2008 1:48 AM EDT reply actions 0 recs

On a tangent with this one

But I’ve been trying to sort out what to make of Villone. Righthanders, of course have had a field day with him this year. But I look at that BABIP and see it is .423. I’m not sure I’ve even seen any larger samples hold up quite like that. So is it a case where he is serving up meatballs, or is there a lot of bad luck in play there? The ISO is just .120, so hitters aren’t really knocking him around for extra bases with all these hits. I honestly don’t know exactly what to make of it all when it comes to Villone.

by Merry CRasmus on Jul 1, 2008 1:15 AM EDT reply actions 0 recs