I was reading this article about the Twins-Diamondbacks game yesterday and there is a comment that goes like this:
“Hunter – the only right-handed hitter in the Twins’ lineup – ended an impressive duel between two talented young pitchers, Santana and Brandon Webb.”
It does sound odd that there is only one right-handed batter in the lineup, but how rare is it really? I’d imagine that only one left-handed batter would be much more common. Do teams make a conscious decision to get left-handed hitters in the lineup?
Is there any advantage to having only lefthanded batters? ie. get to 1st base more quickly, advantage against right handed pitchers (who are more common I’d guess)?
I can’t recall seeing an ALL-lefty lineup, but as a kid in New York, I used to see MOSTLY lefty lineups all the time. Yankee Stadium has a short right field fence (it used to be even shorter), so the Yankees have long filled their roster with left-handed pull hitters. It was common to see 6 or 7 lefties in the lineup when the Yankees played at home.
Even when you’re not playing in a Stadium that favors lefties so blatantly, it can make sense to load your lineup with left-handed hitters. In general, right handed pitchers have an advantage against right handed hitters, while left-handed pitchers do better aginst left-handed hitters. If the opposing pitcher in today’s game is right-handed (as most pitchers are), a manager will usually want as many left-handed hitters in the lineup as possible.
Lefthanded hitters are less common that righthanders (just like in the general population), so it’s rare that a team will have nine to fill out a lineup.
It’s also considered poor strategy. Since most batters hit better with a pitcher of the opposite hand, an all-lefty lineup would have trouble if the other team uses a lefthanded pitcher. Most teams ideally want a mix of righties and lefties batting
It also helps the opposing team’s relief pitching, especially nowadays. Most teams have a left handed pitcher who specializes in getting out left handed batters. They can bring this guy in for several batters and get them out. If it was a mix of lefties and righties, they would have to pull him when a righthanded batter was due up.
The other hitters weren’t all necessarily lefties. The article might have said there was only one right-handed hitter in the lineup. But how many of the others were switch-hitters, batting today from the left-hand side? How many of them would have turned around, had a pitching change been made?
That, I think, would be pretty common, and it can be learned. Mickey Mantle was trained by his father to switch-hit, and he did it fairly well.
I would say an all left-handed lineup at the start of a game almost never. You might occassionally run into it late in the game.
I looked at the ML rosters at espn. If the roster details are correct, only about a quarter of present major teams could field an all lefty lineup and all of those would require one or more serious out of position placements defensively. (I’m assuming a team would not use a left-handed batting pitcher in a fielding position).
A lot of LH bats in the lineup would usually indicate several switch hitters.
