To me, being a lefty baseball player has always made me feel like I have a bigger advantage over the players who are right-handed. There are not as many positions that a lefty would recommend playing in the infield, but there are definitely positions that lefties have the upper hand in. As explained by Robert Adair, everyone knows that a right-handed batter has more trouble hitting off of right-handed pitcher, and lefties have more trouble hitting off of left-handed pitchers (71). I find it a lot easier to hit off of right-handed pitchers, and I usually feel uncomfortable seeing a lefty on the mound. I'm not exactly sure why, but seeing a left-handed pitcher forces me to think more than any other situation in baseball.
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| My left-handed stance |
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| My right-handed stance |
Recently, I switch off between swinging on my left and right sides, depending on the situation (right vs. left-handed pitcher). Most of my power comes from my left side because it's my most used/comfortable swing. But, against lefty pitchers, I have a better batting average when I swing in my right-handed stance. I never really understood why, until Adair explained it: "the left-handed and right-handed pitchers throw from different angles" (73). After reading about this, I wondered how I never thought about this before. To any type of batter, a left-handed pitch will move left-to-right and a right-handed pitch will move right-to-left. This clearly creates an advantage because it's a lot easier to see a ball that is coming towards you rather than starting towards you and drifting away.
A small portion of baseball players believe that right-handed and left-handed pitching has the same effect on the batter regardless of the hitter's stance. Do you think that there's an advantage in hitting between right and left-handed players?
Adair, Robert Kemp. The Physics of Baseball. New York: Harper & Row, 1990. Print.
