Player Not Accumulating Experience at Position in Profile

[Matt Arnold]

They will play there as a 0, but keep in mind, it's not like that means that literally every play to them will turn into a hit or an error.

[Syd Thrift]

Originally Posted by NoOne

heh, that must have been it when i'd see it occasionally.

you'd always have to swing around to set feet properly if moving to their right. I could see a negative effect, but i don't think it should be completely zeroed out. at 3b, you'd mostly be going toward 1b (maybe?) to catch a ball and that does get your feet in right direction. backhanding is no more difficult just because you are moving left. and for that matter, if moving right as a righty, your left arm turns your body the wrong way too. you can't reach to your right with your left hand without turning your entire body that way. well, you could, but you'd look like a gump out there.

this seems like groupthink of traditionalists.

I sort of agree, a little bit, kind of, but the fact remains that the last time a southpaw played 3rd base with any regularity was the 19th century. Literally zero left-handed players have played 3rd except in emergency situations - okay, and Tony LaRussa played his pinch-hitter Mike Squires there as a late-inning replacement for several games in 1983 and 1984 - since I believe the 1880s.

It's interesting to note that catcher is the same; if anything, catcher is even more extreme. Now, I agree that the explanation provided is crap, but there is actually a really good and very simple explanation. The thing that unites catchers and third basemen is the need for an arm strong enough to whip the ball across the infield in time to catch baserunners. If you're coaching a high school baseball team and you have a kid who throws left and has a strong enough arm to play third base, what are you going to do with him? I'll give you a hint: you aren't going to waste him at third base, not when he's got a gun like that. You're going to teach him to pitch instead. A good left-handed pitcher at that level can completely neuter left-handed batters in ways that RHPs don't have the same effect on like-handed batsmen. There are a variety of stated reasons for this but really what it comes down to is that at that level LHBs rarely see LHPs and just plain aren't prepared for pitches that look like they're going to hit them but then break over the plate. Hell, nowadays, with kids playing organized baseball sometimes starting at 6 or 7 years old, it's unlikely that they'd even get as far as HS without having been converted years before.

Us left-handers make up roughly 5-10% of the population but deliver roughly one third of the pitches thrown in an average major league baseball season. We're over-represented by 3 to 5 times in the big leagues and this carries all the way down the minors. It's already the case that lefties on average don't throw as hard as righties. Basically, coaches grab any lefty with a passable arm and make them pitch way before we even see them doing it, and over time we've gotten the old wives' tale about having to turn to throw, etc.

[Matt Arnold]

Originally Posted by Syd Thrift

I sort of agree, a little bit, kind of, but the fact remains that the last time a southpaw played 3rd base with any regularity was the 19th century. Literally zero left-handed players have played 3rd except in emergency situations - okay, and Tony LaRussa played his pinch-hitter Mike Squires there as a late-inning replacement for several games in 1983 and 1984 - since I believe the 1880s.

It's interesting to note that catcher is the same; if anything, catcher is even more extreme. Now, I agree that the explanation provided is crap, but there is actually a really good and very simple explanation. The thing that unites catchers and third basemen is the need for an arm strong enough to whip the ball across the infield in time to catch baserunners. If you're coaching a high school baseball team and you have a kid who throws left and has a strong enough arm to play third base, what are you going to do with him? I'll give you a hint: you aren't going to waste him at third base, not when he's got a gun like that. You're going to teach him to pitch instead. A good left-handed pitcher at that level can completely neuter left-handed batters in ways that RHPs don't have the same effect on like-handed batsmen. There are a variety of stated reasons for this but really what it comes down to is that at that level LHBs rarely see LHPs and just plain aren't prepared for pitches that look like they're going to hit them but then break over the plate. Hell, nowadays, with kids playing organized baseball sometimes starting at 6 or 7 years old, it's unlikely that they'd even get as far as HS without having been converted years before.

Us left-handers make up roughly 5-10% of the population but deliver roughly one third of the pitches thrown in an average major league baseball season. We're over-represented by 3 to 5 times in the big leagues and this carries all the way down the minors. It's already the case that lefties on average don't throw as hard as righties. Basically, coaches grab any lefty with a passable arm and make them pitch way before we even see them doing it, and over time we've gotten the old wives' tale about having to turn to throw, etc.

Yeah, it's not always just that "it's harder to do in-game", but because of some of those other criteria.

Like, another reason it's rare to see a LH catcher I've heard is because very few if any companies actually make a LH catchers mitt, and even fewer HS/College/little league/etc... teams would have one too. So if you throw left-handed and want to catch, you will almost 100% need to provide you own, very likely very expensive, gear.

Like another weird thing I've heard is that a disproportionate number of Candian baseball players are left-handed hitters at least, because the natural hockey shot is actually left-handed for people who are right-handed, and thus it's easier to convert to trying to hit left-handed when you learn to shoot lefty.

But yeah, while it's harder to do left-handed, the truth is probably more in training and other factors than anything else. In a beer league softball you don't worry about putting a lefty at SS if they're your best fielder. I'm not going to throw out a runner at first even though I throw with my right hand if I can't actually run over and pick up the ball.

[olivertheorem]

Originally Posted by Syd Thrift

Us left-handers make up roughly 5-10% of the population but deliver roughly one third of the pitches thrown in an average major league baseball season. We're over-represented by 3 to 5 times in the big leagues and this carries all the way down the minors. It's already the case that lefties on average don't throw as hard as righties. Basically, coaches grab any lefty with a passable arm and make them pitch way before we even see them doing it, and over time we've gotten the old wives' tale about having to turn to throw, etc.

As my father often says "If you're left-handed, you have to prove you can't pitch."

[NoOne]

@syd

I'm a quasi lefty. I learned to throw overhand with my right arm, though. I bowl left-handed. i golf right-handed - which is arguably right handed, because your left arm is the most important part of a righty's swing. I can swing a bat well either way, but my eyes are better from the right side.

i throw like a girl from the left, lol... i bet i could learn, though.

in kindergarten, my teacher made my pick a hand. until that point i just swapped between my hands as they got tired. i had a "gi joe kung fu grip" on that pencil, you could say, lol.

if culture didn't push me to do one thing at a young age, i would have been very ambidextrous... i blame the lack of any free-thinking ability of the few teachers i encountered my first few years of life.

seriously, i had the worst 1st grade teacher. she had it out for me and i was too young and naive to recognize it. looking back it is obvious. it was a private school and my brother burnt some bridges before i even got there. this b%$ put me down in the tard room at some point. the first day there within 5 minutes the tard teacher walked me down to the principal office, had a discussion, then marched me back to my first grade room. at which point the teacher was set straight. (not "full retard", just the slow learners and people with speech impediments, and those with trouble reading but not related to intelligence)

she also didn't believe how many addittion/subtraction problems i got through on the timed tests. she made me re-do it after class, and i proved her wrong, yet again. i'm a veritable calculator with the decimal system, lol. i didn't get all A's until a bit later in my k-12 experience. i was incredibly bored in elementary school (first-fifth, then i woke up a bit.. still barely had to put forth any effort 6-12). i was even a good speller at one point... not so much anymore.

school's a horrible place for smart people.

what a horrible thing to do to an incredibly naive and, at that time, go with the flow kind of kid (maybe why i'm not so much that way anymore). i hope that b%#$ is rotting in the ground. a former nun that likely had a problem with men. she really didn't like the male gender, and it was obvious looking back on memories at some point, but that have since faded.

[NoOne]

Originally Posted by Matt Arnold

They will play there as a 0, but keep in mind, it's not like that means that literally every play to them will turn into a hit or an error.

i thought they could be 'decent' without a rating... or you are saying handedness is a different factor to consider?

e.g. a Righty without the minimum 'turn dp' still uses his IF range and strong arm better than other "0" rated 3b, all other factors the same?

or, have i misunderstood that too? if it doesn't even look at a righty's IF range and Arm strength without said position listed, then i'm spreading the wrong information around in other recent posts, lol. (not the only one, but may have also created others regurgitating same falsehoods)

[Matt Arnold]

Originally Posted by NoOne

i thought they could be 'decent' without a rating... or you are saying handedness is a different factor to consider?

e.g. a Righty without the minimum 'turn dp' still uses his IF range and strong arm better than other "0" rated 3b, all other factors the same?

or, have i misunderstood that too? if it doesn't even look at a righty's IF range and Arm strength without said position listed, then i'm spreading the wrong information around in other recent posts, lol. (not the only one, but may have also created others regurgitating same falsehoods)

You are mostly correct. I believe a 3B with too low a turn DP rating can still actually play quite effectively at 3B, despite showing as a 0. Basically, in some cases we calculate a "range-only" defense (for 3B, mostly a combo of range + arm). For a lefty, I believe that one will still return 0, whereas the righty without a DP value will still have a positive value there.

[NoOne]

okay good, i don't like to be the cause of spreading ignorance. LoL

i was going to have to find recent posts and retract statements.