Examining Pitcher Splits
A look at seven pitchers that struggled in certain hitter handedness matchups, and thoughts about what they can do in 2024 to improve.
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Things change a lot for a pitcher depending on where the batter they are facing is standing.
RHB vs. LHP: .256/.321/.430, .331 wOBA, 22.1% K%
LHB vs. RHP: .244/.318/.412, .324 wOBA, 22.3% K%
RHB vs. RHP: .243/.307/.407, .313 wOBA, 23.5% K%
LHB vs. LHP: .231/.303/.359, .297 wOBA, 24.0% K%
Pitchers have a big advantage when facing a hitter of the same handedness as them, as you can see there by the big differences in wOBA. This isn’t news to anybody, but it’s worth seeing the numbers on.
That means that to be a consistently good pitcher in the Majors, you have to be able to get both sides of the plate out. And it might even be worth downgrading some of these SPs in our ranks if we spot a big problem on this front. We quite often see teams stacking lefties or righties against pitchers that have these splits issues, so the problem can somewhat compound itself. After you have the problem, it gets exploited by the competition. We’ll highlight some of these names below, but first, let’s get a little more setup information.
What Pitches Work Where
I used xwOBA for each pitch type in each matchup here to get a picture of this. Here’s the data for right-handed pitchers:
So the way to neutralize lefties is with non-fastballs. Now, hitters have the most success against fastballs overall, so there’s a bias here, but you can see the two best situations for hitters are being left-handed while facing a right-handed fastball. Lefties have a lot more trouble with the changeup, slider, curveball, and sweeper. All of those marks come in under a .300 xwOBA.
Looking at left-handed pitchers:
Pretty much the same thing here.
When the hitter has the splits advantage, the best thing to do is limit your fastball usage. You can never just scrap the fastball outright, things just don’t work like that, but it’s really key to have a reliable breaking or off-speed pitch that you can keep in the hitter’s mind. So I suspect with a lot of these names below, we’ll be seeing fastball-heavy guys. But in all honestly, I don’t know that for sure right now, I haven’t even looked up the names yet!
We’re looking inside the top 300 or so ADP here to keep things as interesting and relevant as possible.
Bryan Woo
OPS vs. RHB: .493
OPS vs. LHB: .931
This is big of a difference as you’ll ever find. Woo got booty slapped by southpaws. He went for just a 19% K% and walked 12% of them. They had very little trouble getting balls in the air against him, and that rarely turns out well.
The reason for it is just about what we expected. Less than 12% of Woo’s arsenal was made up of non-fastballs last year, and even against lefties he only raised the slider+changeup usage to 13%.
So that’s not a good sign moving forward. The good news is that he was completely dominant against righties (30.4% K%, 4.2% BB%, 53% GB%), and he’s young (24) and fresh enough to improve drastically on that slider and/or changeup to better handle lefties. It’s hard to imagine this wasn’t a focal point for his off-season, but developing a decent pitch when you have to throw it against Major League hitters is obviously much easier said than done. We haven’t seen him yet this spring, but it’s something to keep a close eye on as he faces lefties early on.
Bryce Miller
OPS vs. RHB: .549
OPS vs. LHB: .915
Woo and Miller have so often come up together this off-season, it’s starting to feel like they’re just the same guy. Miller gave up a 12.3% Brl% to lefties last year with that high OPS, and he only struck out 18.4% of them.
It’s the same root cause here, with Miller being way over-reliant on his four-seamer last year. Throwing 58% four-seamers to lefties is just not going to work at the highest level. Not only is it generally a more easily hit pitch, it compounds as well because above 50% usage, a hitter can just sit on it.
There’s more good news for Miller here than Woo, because we did see a conscious effort from him to reduce the four-seam usage as the year went on:
It seems like something really changed at the end of July for him.
If we look at how he attacked lefties from August on:
FF: 53% (down from 64%)
SL: 20% (up from 18%)
CH: 12% (up from 9.5%)
ST: 9% (up from 5.1%)
SI: 6% (up from 1%)
53% is still probably a bit too high, and it didn’t even work in the short-term (lefties had an OPS of 1.101 against August 1st), but it was really good to see the change, and it’s also good to see that he has four different options to mess around with. And we’ve even heard some talk about a splitter making entering the picture this year.
Given all of this, I feel a lot better about Miller’s chance to correct the problem this year as compared to Woo, but it’s still a reason to cool some of the jets I’ve lit on Miller in these pages this off-season.
Grayson Rodriguez
OPS vs. RHB: .667
OPS vs. LHB: .835
It’s a list of young budding stud SPs, I guess! Maybe this is a testament to how important this is to figure out. If you’re getting crushed by one side of the plate, you don’t stay in the league very long!
More splits on him:
RHB: 26.9% K%, 6.1% BB%, 12.9% SwStr%, 45.6% GB%, 6.2% Brl%
LHB: 22.6% K%, 10.9% BB%, 13.7% SwStr%, 48.6% GB%, 8.9% Brl%
We have talked a lot about Grayson this off-season, but I haven’t broken this down yet. It was a strange year for him. He got sent down in the middle of the year and then came back and had a lot more success despite seeing his whiffs and strikeouts actually come down.
He did improve against lefties as the year went on though
First Stint: 1.118 OPS, .435 xwOBA
Second Stint: .653 OPS, .300 xwOBA
So that is excellent to see.
Overall pitch mix splits:
Second half:
He didn’t change anything pitch mix wise, seems like he just came in with better location and execution, and probably some more luck.
I think Rodriguez is going to be a stud this year, and while the 53% four-seam usage against lefties with the low GB% is a concern, given that he has the changeup and curveball and all the talent in the world, I think he’ll be able to figure it out. But we could see a bloated ERA if he gives up some poorly timed homers to lefties, that is more likely than not to be an issue for him given the dependence on the fastball.
Gavin Williams
OPS vs. RHB: .553
OPS vs. LHB: .791
Not a horrifying OPS here against lefties, but a big differential. It’s the same old story here, a young pitcher throwing too many fastballs to lefties in his first go around:
57% usage of the four-seamer, but he did show us three other options that used more than 10% of the time. The slider worked quite well in that limited usage with a 58% GB% and .193 xwOBA. We ideally want the changeup to improve to play off that heater, and it just didn’t go super well for him last year, he clearly didn’t have much command of the pitch.
Overall, he had a very nice 19% K-BB% against righties but a pathetic 8% mark against lefties. Much improvement needed here, but I’ll give him the thumbs-up here since he has the fastball velocity and these three other options to fall back on. I think he’ll figure it out.
Chris Bassitt
OPS vs. RHB: .572
OPS vs. LHB: .838
Finally a veteran! This was a problem for him in 2022 as well, but it hasn’t been a feature of his career in general terms.
Career:
vs. RHB: .642 OPS
vs. LHB: .710 OPS
He’s improved against righties the last two years (.582 OPS) but gotten worse against lefties (.792 OPS).
Few pitchers have more arrows in the quiver, but they’ve all been pretty dull against lefties these last two seasons. 2023 pitch mix splits:
So even with the big eight-pitch mix, 67% of those pitches are some form of fastball. His curveball just isn’t a whiffy one either, so I don’t know, maybe he won’t be able to figure out a way to save himself by having all of these options. He’s 35 now, so the stuff isn’t going to get any better.
I’m not a big fan of drafting the Bassitt-type this year (I kind of lump Merrill Kelly, Shane Bieber, and Jose Berrios in with him for older pitchers with lower strikeout ability), and this doesn’t help his cause whatsoever.
Nick Lodolo
OPS vs. RHB: .854
OPS vs. LHB: .480
Flipping around to the lefties now. And this is arguably even a bigger problem for the southpaw since most hitters come into that batter’s box to the left of the catcher (59% of PAs were against right-handed hitters last year, to be exact).
What you see above are numbers from 2022 and 2023, since Lodolo hardly pitched last year. He’s healthy(ish) now, so he’s someone we need to know about for fantasy, and I think the upside is outrageous with him.
Despite the high OPS, Lodolo has still posted a very strong 20% K-BB% against righties in his career with a 13.6% SwStr%, so Lodolo is a victim of some bad home run luck. The problem is we can count on that to continue as long as he pitches in Cincinnati, and the one pitch he has to neutralize the homer is the sinker - which he uses less against righties. But given that 20% K-BB%, I don’t see a real reason for concern here. I think if Lodolo is healthy, he’ll be dominant, there are just huge questions about if he can be healthy or not.
Andrew Abbott
OPS vs. RHB: .803
OPS vs. LHB: .496
Pretty small sample size here since Abbott has pitched just above one half of a big league season. He’s thrown 1,576 pitches to righties, not a ton, but it hasn’t been good. Just an 11.1% SwStr% and a 13.7% K-BB%. He is also the furthest thing from a ground-ball pitcher with a 35% FB% to righties (38% to lefties), the league average FB% is 26%.
50% fastballs there, and it’s not a very great fastball. The presence of the changeup, curveball, and sweeper here are quite encouraging though, so there’s certainly hope.
Abbott in general is a guy that seems to rely on deception. His Stuff+ is just 86, and he wasn’t a great command pitcher last year by any means (101 Location+, but a 37% Ball% and a 9.6% BB%). So I don’t feel very good about Abbott. He will have to make a lot of changes to succeed overall, but even if he does that, it’s hard to imagine him neutralizing right-handed power enough to post a very competitive ERA over a full year while the league is getting more and more looks at him.
And that will do it for the main names I picked out, but if you want to explore more on your own - check out my data here.