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July 19, 2008

Why lefties have an easier time of baseball

I've often wondered why lefties are considered very valuable in baseball. I know that experience in playing against people of similar handedness matters, that's a major reason why left handedness is more common in violent societies (Handedness frequency over more than ten thousand years).

However, it seems that that explains only part of the left-handed advantage. Take a look at this except from a Newsweek interview.

Although only one in 10 civilians are left-handed, one quarter of Major League Baseball players are southpaws. That's no accident, says Washington University aerospace engineer David Peters, who has used math and physics skills to confirm that lefties have a considerable advantage on the diamond. Of the 40 players in Tuesday's All-Star game, 18 are either left-handed batters or switch-hitters
...

NEWSWEEK: You argue that left-handers have a distinct advantage in baseball. Why?
David Peters: Twenty-five percent of players are left-handed, where in real life only 10 percent [of people] are left-handed, so that's proof that they are two-and-a-half-times better. There are several reasons why. One reason is that the left-handed batter is closer to first base, so he's got a couple steps advantage trying to beat out a grounder. Over the course of a year, he's going to beat out a few more. Also, as he swings, his momentum is turning him toward first base. But that is not the biggest advantage. The biggest has to do with the angle of the ball. Three quarters of pitchers are right-handed. A right-handed batter has to look over his left shoulder and the ball is coming at quite an angle. The offset of your eyes gives you depth perception. So when you're looking over your shoulder, you have lost the distance between your two eyes quite a bit, so you have lost that 10th of a second to see the ball. That's why batters switch hit.

Is the inverse also true?
A left-handed hitter facing a left-handed batter means double trouble. First, it's coming over his shoulder, but second, he hasn't seen that many left-handed pitchers, because he's mostly learned from right-handed pitchers.

Posted by OneEyedMan at July 19, 2008 9:34 AM

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