We all know lefties hit better against righties and vice versa – you can see the difference, sometimes very big, in a player’s splits. Josh Donaldson of the Blue Jays is a popular example of this – you can see with both his wOBA and ISO splits that he crushes lefties in comparison to right-handed pitchers.
But you also have a couple odd cases, like Carlos Gomez of the Brewers, who hits righty but also hits right-handed pitchers better than lefties.
In general, however, righties still hit better against lefties and lefties hit better against righties. But which of those two is better? Do righties hit lefties better than lefties hit righties? Conversely, do righties hit righties better than lefties hit lefties? Thanks to our Trends tool, we can look this up in approximately three seconds.
| Hitter Hand | vs R | vs L | Diff |
|---|---|---|---|
| L | 0.19 | -0.31 | 0.50 |
| R | -0.03 | 0.24 | 0.27 |
According to Plus/Minus, lefties and righties hit their opposites pretty evenly (+0.19 and +0.24, respectively). The big difference can be found in how they hit their similars – righties perform just about where we’d expect based on their salary, whereas lefties have performed well below expected.
MLB DFS is probably the most daily game of all the DFS sports. Salaries don’t change drastically on a game-to-game basis, mostly because games exist just a day apart from each other. As such, a hitter’s salary isn’t going to be hugely increased or decreased based on their matchup – typically it’s right around the middle of the splits. That means with a lefty batter with major splits, you’re essentially overpaying for him against a lefty and probably underpaying for him against a righty.
The data shows that the biggest overpay is a lefty against a lefty. There are still outliers of course – Anthony Rizzo, for example, has had a pretty large Plus/Minus against all pitchers, no matter the hand – but in general, I’d really look to avoid that specific matchup.
Of course, you can easily click on any batter on the Lineup page and look at their splits.
