OOTP Developments Forums - View Single Post - Does "hitter type" actually affect anything?

gmo · 11-03-2003, 05:55 PM

In playing out games I was noticing it seemed like there were an inordinate number of opposite field home runs. My team's sluggers were predominantly listed as "pull" type hitters, yet I saw a lot of pokes going out the other way. Initially I just figured going to the opposite field was grabbing my attention so it appeared too common but nothing was really out of whack. Plus, I didn't really know what to consider "out of whack" since I was not very familiar with any directional hitting/fielding stats.

I assumed this had been examined, but searching on the board under hitter type, spray, pull, normal yielded only a couple explanations of what those types should mean. I still figure that somebody has done this before, but since you can with OOTP, I decided to experiment with a test league. I controlled all the fielder ranges, pitcher handedness, and batter handedness. I varied the hitters to be either all pull, all spray, or all normal. I looked at initially only outfield putouts since I wasn't sure what fielding stats to examine for IF and don't know of a way to account for anything beyond fielding stats. I found that regardless of hitter type the percentages of outfield putouts were constant for each OF position. In other words, whether all the hitters were pull, spray, or normal, RH hitters had ~31.5%, ~39.5%, and ~29% of OF putouts go to LF, CF, and RF respectively, and LH hitters had ~27.5%, ~38%, and ~34.5% of OF putouts go to LF, CF, and RF respectively.

Those numbers appear about right in the universal sense compared to one resource I found (http://www.baseballstuff.com/btf/sch...lding_opps.htm ) showing over a period LH pitchers having 27.9%, 39.7%, and 32.4% of OF outs by LF, CF, and RF respectively, and RH pitchers having 32.4%, 39.3%, and 28.3% of OF outs by LF, CF, and RF respectively. But shouldn't hitter type have some effect in the game? Is hitter type just eye candy? Does hitter type affect hits but not outs? Is examining it this way useless? Is my methodology flawed? Just curious.

11-03-2003, 05:55 PM	#1 (permalink)
gmo Hall Of Famer Join Date: May 2002 Location: Grand Forks, ND Posts: 2,788 Thanked 78x in 46 posts	Does "hitter type" actually affect anything? In playing out games I was noticing it seemed like there were an inordinate number of opposite field home runs. My team's sluggers were predominantly listed as "pull" type hitters, yet I saw a lot of pokes going out the other way. Initially I just figured going to the opposite field was grabbing my attention so it appeared too common but nothing was really out of whack. Plus, I didn't really know what to consider "out of whack" since I was not very familiar with any directional hitting/fielding stats. I assumed this had been examined, but searching on the board under hitter type, spray, pull, normal yielded only a couple explanations of what those types should mean. I still figure that somebody has done this before, but since you can with OOTP, I decided to experiment with a test league. I controlled all the fielder ranges, pitcher handedness, and batter handedness. I varied the hitters to be either all pull, all spray, or all normal. I looked at initially only outfield putouts since I wasn't sure what fielding stats to examine for IF and don't know of a way to account for anything beyond fielding stats. I found that regardless of hitter type the percentages of outfield putouts were constant for each OF position. In other words, whether all the hitters were pull, spray, or normal, RH hitters had ~31.5%, ~39.5%, and ~29% of OF putouts go to LF, CF, and RF respectively, and LH hitters had ~27.5%, ~38%, and ~34.5% of OF putouts go to LF, CF, and RF respectively. Those numbers appear about right in the universal sense compared to one resource I found (http://www.baseballstuff.com/btf/sch...lding_opps.htm ) showing over a period LH pitchers having 27.9%, 39.7%, and 32.4% of OF outs by LF, CF, and RF respectively, and RH pitchers having 32.4%, 39.3%, and 28.3% of OF outs by LF, CF, and RF respectively. But shouldn't hitter type have some effect in the game? Is hitter type just eye candy? Does hitter type affect hits but not outs? Is examining it this way useless? Is my methodology flawed? Just curious.