Addressing the Left-Handed Problem

The opportunity to move the pitching staff in the directions of lefties-that-get-lefties-out was there, but Dombrowski didn’t take advantage. The impression I’m getting is that he’s not sold on the whole idea, nor is Jim Leyland. What they want is lefties that get everybody out, or righties that can do the same. A lefty that can’t get righties out might appeal to some, but not here. This does make a lot of sense, if you can gather the right pieces. The reason is simple: unless you love real LOOGY bullpen management, your lefties see more right-handed hitters than left. Brad Thomas saw lefties only 43% of the time last year, Phil Coke 44%, Daniel Schlereth 39% and Fu-Te Ni 38%. Aside from Ryan Perry, all of our relevant righties saw more left-handed hitters than those guys did – topping at 57% for Justin Verlander. Your pitchers are invariably going to see a lot of whatever batters they can’t get out.

Verlander, Scherzer and Porcello have done a decent job of getting lefties out too. Over his career, Verlander’s L-R OPS split is .705 to .659, most of which is due to walking more lefties. Last year it was .636 to .623. He’s definitely getting lefties out, which is very important given how many of them he sees. Scherzer’s career L-R OPS split is .737 to .689, and last year it was .667 to .737 – he wasn’t just better against lefties, he was a lot better against lefties. Rick Porcello‘s carrer L-R OPS split is .767 to .718, comparable to Verlander and Scherzer. I’m less enthusiastic about Porcello than most, but if he never becomes a true top-of-the-rotation starter it won’t be because lefties are crushing him.

That leave two slots out: So… aside from our acquisitions – two moves need to be put in context here: Jeremy Bonderman is almost certainly gone, and Armando Galarraga (if he makes the team at all) is now no more than organizational depth. Sure, both are righties but that isn’t the critical fact. They’re both slider guys and they both have unusually large L-R splits. Over his major-league career Armando Galarraga has held righties to a .679 OPS but allowed an .850 OPS to lefties. Now, that .679 is awfully good – but put the two together and you get an awfully mediocre pitcher, who is especially ill-suited for the AL Central. Over his career Bonderman’s L-R OPS split is .825 to .704, almost as bad as Galarraga. That’s not the worst of it, though… Bonderman used to be a power pitcher (with a great slider), now he’s not. It looks as though this might be causing his L-R split to widen: it was .905 to .673 in 2010. Again, .673 against righties is great – but put the two together… With these two out of the rotation, we could be looking at improving our splits through subtraction.

Unless we’re being led astray by what the Tigers tell the press, it looks almost certain that these two rotation slots will be taken by Brad Penny and Phil Coke. Penny is a righty, but he’s not a slider guy. He throws a hard fastball, a splitter, a curve and a change. That makes a difference: over his career his L-R split is .730 to .754. That’s not a typo – righties have hit better off him than lefties have. There are health concerns with Penny, and it remains to be seen how he will fare against AL hitters but putting him in the rotation definitely improves our L-R balance. Phil Coke is an actual, real left-handed pitcher. He has been fantastic over his career against lefties, allowing only a .617 OPS. He hasn’t been that bad (thus far) against righties either, allowing only a .697 OPS. There is some reason to believe that he can be a lefty starter that does just fine against right-handed batters, and if it turns out that he can’t he may not keep that rotation slot for long. Sometimes difficulty in getting righties out (for a lefty) is reflected in a high BABIP – and not one due to bad luck. Coke hasn’t allowed a high BABIP to righties. The other way such a difficulty can be reflected is more walks and fewer strikeouts, which has been an issue for Coke. The reason that his overall numbers haven’t been too bad against righties is that he seems to get a lot of groundballs and hence double plays against them.

Joaquin Benoit fits the same mold as Brad Penny. He IS a righty, but he’s no Galarraga. Over his 10-year career, his L-R split is .692 to .746 – better against lefties than righties. He does throw a slider, but he has a good changeup – so he’s not reduced to a one-pitch pitcher against lefties. He’s a move in the right direction, given how the Tigers use relievers and are going to continue to use relievers. Brad Thomas saw a lot of righties, despite an appalling .632 to .885 L-R split. It’s a good bet that he’ll be our primary lefty out of the ‘pen next year. Here’s hoping he never sees a right-handed bat. The same goes for Fu-Te Ni, with an equally bad .622 to .834 split. Daniel Schlereth doesn’t have much of a major league record to go on, but given how he pitched in Toledo last year we can expect his L-R split to be something like Wild Thing with vs. without glasses. So… the reason that our bullpen lefties look like a weak group isn’t the pitchers themselves, it’s how we use them. If we signed someone like Will Ohman and made him throw to righties 60+% of the time, he’d look awful. If we use Brad Thomas like other teams use their LOOGYs, he’ll look fantastic. Will we? Time will tell. For the rest, what the Tigers need is relievers that are so good that a significant L-R split doesn’t mean that they simply can’t get the other side out. Zumaya is near unhittable for righties, but lefties only put up a .730 OPS against him. He doesn’t need to be pulled for someone like Brad Thomas. The same goes for Jose Valverde – a .664 OPS allowed to lefties, which is more or less a prerequisite for a legit closer. Ryan Perry is a question mark. He was awful against lefties as a rookie in 2010 and then saw fewer lefties than anyone else in the pen in 2011. But he was much better against those lefties in 2011 than against righties, not just a little better but MUCH better. So much, in fact, that he inverted his career splits to make it show that he’s harder for lefties to hit. This is a little odd, because he’s a fastball/slider guy – you would expect him to be a lot harder on righties. Maybe he rarely pitched against quality left-handed hitters in 2011. Either way, despite last years numbers I wouldn’t feel comfortable calling him a righty that gets lefties out.

The gist of all this, if you haven’t gotten it already, is this: we haven’t signed any lefties, but we are definitely making offseason moves to address the need to do a better job getting lefties out. Part of this is addition by subtraction, we are dumping the two starters least able to do that. And though we have only signed righties, we are signing righties that do not have any trouble with left-handed hitters. In the bullpen, problems remain – and they are made worse by the loss of Coke – but we can probably change things just by making better use of the personnel that we have.