Barry Zito Forever

Staring Down Conventional Wisdom

Sabermetrics is defined by Bill James as "the search for objective knowledge about baseball."

I’ve been wanting to write something about sabermetrics for a while. The A’s pride themselves at looking at things objectively and trying to find ways to succeed that other teams may have missed. Terry Gross on NPR asked Michael Lewis, the author of Moneyball, if he thought it was sad that a player could be reduced to only his numbers. Michael Lewis almost choked answering the question: “no, what’s sad is the idea that the Yankees can just buy a championship. Low budget teams succeeding because they are smart is great.” Amen, brother.

I had some ideas about players stats I was going to provide as evidence that I could use a spreadsheet and unearth something Neyeresque or Gleemanlike and profound about predicting the value of a player or outcome of this season. I didn’t get that done yet, but I did come up with something. Quick, what do these players have in common?

Ryan Ludwick, Indians
Cody Ross, Tigers
Jason Lane, Astros

One thing is they are all on the 40-man roster of a major league team, another thing is that they all play outfield, but the unique thing is that they all throw left-handed and bat right-handed. The only position players in the majors who do that. Why some people are left-handed and most right-handed, roughly 10%/90%, isn’t fully understood. Probably even less understood is why some people do some things one handed and other things with the other hand. Barry Zito, like me, throws and bats left, but writes and plays guitar right-handed. But I am a 38 year old from Minnesota without a curveball.

Most baseball people know they like one hand or the other for certain situations and to get the most out of baseball, one might choose to do the opposite, throw right and bat left, like my first baseball hero, Rod Carew. I don’t think people choose at all, cause as a 2nd grader I was given my father’s glove, he’s a righty, and I realized I could play better if I caught the ball in the glove then took the glove off to throw, a la Jim Abbott. I am interested in how the A’s having 3 left-handed starters while the Red Sox and Yankees have none will play out in 2004. I was interested when lefties went 1-3 in the Masters in ‘03 (Mike Weir, Phil Mickelson) and 3 of the top 7 in the ’04 FBR in Phoenix (Flesch, Weir and Mickelson)

Conventional wisdom might say baseball should select against someone who throws left and bats right, it certainly says left-handed throwers shouldn’t play 2b, ss, 3b or catcher. There are no major leaguers who throw left-handed and play any of those positions. But if there was a lefty with a glove like Ozzie Smith, don’t you think he could get over the difficulty of throwing across his body some of the time? Turning a slightly trickier double play? Fielding a bunt from 3rd base? Conventional wisdom sends that guy to center field. Vin Scully says he thinks the only reason there aren’t more left handed catchers is that when kids start playing little league, the team has 1 catchers glove for the team and it is a right handed glove.

Anyone know the best player ever who throws left and bats right? Rickey Henderson. Career leader in walks, stolen bases and runs, over 3000 hits. He’s been able to overcome his unfortunate handedness pretty well.

There may or may not be any value in reassessing our dogmas on handedness, but sometimes conventional wisdom is wrong. That’s the A’s bread and butter, reexamine everything. It’s cool and great and in a perfect world we’d all love the A’s and hate the Yankees. But according to the great philosopher, Yogi Berra, “If the world was perfect, it wouldn’t be.” How can you argue with that?

Tuesday, February 17, 2004