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ncap99 · 09-19-2021, 11:21 PM

I still think the primary reason this type of strategy exists is the imbalance of stats and where the thresholds are for productivity.

The basic premise of lefty cheese is to force your opponent to use right handed hitters by starting lefty pitching, then suppress right handed offense in your home park while inflating them for left handed hitters and running as many of those as possible. The most obvious counter to this strategy is to run left handed hitters to take advantage of the favorable offensive factors for lefties, even against left handed pitching.

The problem is there are very few cards that have good enough stats to be effective. You're better off running a righty hitter into suppressed ballpark factors most of the time. There are so many cards like Carl Yastrzemski who have such a huge drop off that it more than counters the benefits of the park factors, in particular with left handed hitters. Arky Vaughan, Joe Morgan, Jason Giambi, Oscar Charleston, Mel Ott, Enos Slaughter, Bill Dickey, etc...the list goes on and on. There are almost no lefty hitters that don't lose 15-20% of their stats against lefty pitching. Switch hitters like Rose, Wander Franco or Raines don't help, as they will turn and bat right handed playing into the park factors.

So basically to beat lefty cheese you either have to cheese them right back, beat the odds when playing them in their home park, or have home field advantage and win at home. You can't "counter" it because the cards don't exist to do that effectively, and because the difference between 95 avoidK and 85 avoidK or 100 contact and 90 contact are so huge it more or less turns the card into garbage. If you were to take two cards - one with 100 contact and 100 avoidK and one with 90 contact and 90 avoidK, you won't get 90% of the hits and 10% more strikeouts - one card will hit .300 and the other one will hit .220. If that doesn't come with enormous power and incredible defense (like a Schmidt for example) the card isn't worth playing at all.

As more cards get added you'll see different strategies emerge. Righty cheese is a thing now with cards like DiMaggio, Robinson, Luke Appling, etc that are righties who CAN hit righties. So you do the same thing as lefty cheese, except you play your righties-who-can-hit-righties lineup, force the other team to use mostly lefty hitters then suppress offensive for lefties. I still don't think this is a counter to lefty cheese though, as it doesn't actually help you beat it on the road against a lefty cheese team.

At least at the start of people doing it, it was somewhat of a calculated risk and not easy to pull off. You were missing out on some real quality right handed starters and having to start lefties who were clearly worse to pull it off. There was a reason guys like Noodles, Hubbell and Reuss were insanely expensive. Guys like Johan Santana were in rotations. Now the last few big releases added such a huge amount of very high quality lefty starters it is super easy to run a lefty cheese rotation without much drop off in starter quality, which means you're not going to get roasted as bad on the road.

09-19-2021, 11:21 PM	#4
ncap99 Major Leagues Join Date: Mar 2021 Posts: 319	I still think the primary reason this type of strategy exists is the imbalance of stats and where the thresholds are for productivity. The basic premise of lefty cheese is to force your opponent to use right handed hitters by starting lefty pitching, then suppress right handed offense in your home park while inflating them for left handed hitters and running as many of those as possible. The most obvious counter to this strategy is to run left handed hitters to take advantage of the favorable offensive factors for lefties, even against left handed pitching. The problem is there are very few cards that have good enough stats to be effective. You're better off running a righty hitter into suppressed ballpark factors most of the time. There are so many cards like Carl Yastrzemski who have such a huge drop off that it more than counters the benefits of the park factors, in particular with left handed hitters. Arky Vaughan, Joe Morgan, Jason Giambi, Oscar Charleston, Mel Ott, Enos Slaughter, Bill Dickey, etc...the list goes on and on. There are almost no lefty hitters that don't lose 15-20% of their stats against lefty pitching. Switch hitters like Rose, Wander Franco or Raines don't help, as they will turn and bat right handed playing into the park factors. So basically to beat lefty cheese you either have to cheese them right back, beat the odds when playing them in their home park, or have home field advantage and win at home. You can't "counter" it because the cards don't exist to do that effectively, and because the difference between 95 avoidK and 85 avoidK or 100 contact and 90 contact are so huge it more or less turns the card into garbage. If you were to take two cards - one with 100 contact and 100 avoidK and one with 90 contact and 90 avoidK, you won't get 90% of the hits and 10% more strikeouts - one card will hit .300 and the other one will hit .220. If that doesn't come with enormous power and incredible defense (like a Schmidt for example) the card isn't worth playing at all. As more cards get added you'll see different strategies emerge. Righty cheese is a thing now with cards like DiMaggio, Robinson, Luke Appling, etc that are righties who CAN hit righties. So you do the same thing as lefty cheese, except you play your righties-who-can-hit-righties lineup, force the other team to use mostly lefty hitters then suppress offensive for lefties. I still don't think this is a counter to lefty cheese though, as it doesn't actually help you beat it on the road against a lefty cheese team. At least at the start of people doing it, it was somewhat of a calculated risk and not easy to pull off. You were missing out on some real quality right handed starters and having to start lefties who were clearly worse to pull it off. There was a reason guys like Noodles, Hubbell and Reuss were insanely expensive. Guys like Johan Santana were in rotations. Now the last few big releases added such a huge amount of very high quality lefty starters it is super easy to run a lefty cheese rotation without much drop off in starter quality, which means you're not going to get roasted as bad on the road.