Switch-hitting: a hidden benefit?

[Brad K]

OK, I get it now. Pitcher rating splits.

But something else. There's a couple of LHBs who I consistently get better than historical performance from because I show them a lot less LH pitching than they saw real life. This works well with lefties because they tend to do a lot worse than righties against same side pitching.

So unless the game AI plays a RHB the same as a LHB the same as a switch then overall performance WILL be different.

However I am really curious if ratings reflect the career splits I posted above.

[Argonaut]

Yeah, I'm sure if you micromanage splits you can get better overall performance from a batter. Of course I often see a heavy split platoon player paradoxically hit his "wrong" side better in a given year. Probably random variance and a bit of confirmation bias.

Can't check on Josh Bell's split ratings at the moment. But interesting aside: I know Joey Gallo actually hits LHP a bit better than RHP. He's better against righty starters, but so much better against lefty bullpen guys that it skews his lifetime splits. Career .841 OPS against RHP, and career .861 OPS against LHP.

But because of the way OOTP works, I bet Gallo is not so good against lefties in the game. Instead of smashing LHP relievers, they'll probably shut him down. Maybe some food for thought for my Gallo thread.

[greenOak]

The issue is that if pitcher rating splits give an inherent advantage to hitting from the right side of the plate, then that must be accounted for when creating the different batting ratings vs left and right handed pitching. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. The OP can't really tell us whether it is or isn't. All it tells us is that there is in an inherent advantage to hitting from the correct side of the plate.

Looking at Francisco Lindor (a switch hitter) in the standard setup, we can see that his ratings (BABIP / AVOID K / GAP /POWER / EYE) are 106 / 117 / 148 / 144 / 97 from the right side, and 103 / 122 / 147 / 140 / 107 from the left.

His right side ratings correspond to a .296/.358/.547 expected slashline, while his left side ratings correspond to a .295/.365/.540 slashline. However, we can expect him to outperform both of these since he always hits from the correct side of the plate. Thus, if we wanted Francisco Lindor to actually average .905 (in a supposed neutral major league environment), we would have to lower his ratings slightly. Who knows what the developers actually want his expected stats to be. If they're intended to be slightly higher than .905, they're likely set correctly.

[greenOak]

Originally Posted by Argonaut

Yeah, I'm sure if you micromanage splits you can get better overall performance from a batter. Of course I often see a heavy split platoon player paradoxically hit his "wrong" side better in a given year. Probably random variance and a bit of confirmation bias.

Can't check on Josh Bell's split ratings at the moment. But interesting aside: I know Joey Gallo actually hits LHP a bit better than RHP. He's better against righty starters, but so much better against lefty bullpen guys that it skews his lifetime splits. Career .841 OPS against RHP, and career .861 OPS against LHP.

But because of the way OOTP works, I bet Gallo is not so good against lefties in the game. Instead of smashing LHP relievers, they'll probably shut him down. Maybe some food for thought for my Gallo thread.

And yeah in the case of Gallo, the ratings are likely wrong. His ratings against LHP correspond to a .892 expected OPS, while his ratings against RHP correspond to a 1.010 expected OPS. Also, given the way he bats we can expect this difference to widen.

P.S. Players appear to consistently underperform this expectation. For example Josh Bell has an expected OPS of .927 which is about 50-60 points higher than he actually performed in OP's tests.

[Brad K]

The question for me is whether the addition of "real" splits in the XX is actually real. (As mentioned elsewhere I need a new computer to run the new version so don't have it.)