The Southpaw Curse: It's Pure Bollocks
By David Welch - Editor at-large
04/02/2005
In the first century B.C., Julius Caesar decreed that extending the right hand would be the accepted greeting among Romans. Later, the New Testament would have among its text something to the effect that God will return among us and banish all those to his left and grant those to his right the inheritance of his kingdom. Even modern society still carries a nasty ‘ole bias against lefties. The French word for left is still gauche. Weird comments come “from leftfield.” The Vatican has never chosen a left-handed Pope.
Some think Hal Richman and the brain trust in Glen head, N.Y. have the same anti-lefty prejudice. Lefty starters, the argument goes, always get ripped in Strat-o-Matic replays. This debate came up recently when a manager I know told me that drafting lefty starter Scott Kazmir when outfielder Jeremy Reed was available was a mistake. That’s debatable for a number of reasons. But the logic goes that in leagues with fewer than 30 teams—this one has 26—it’s easy to find righty bats to stack against a lefty starter. So they will always get pounded.
The logic is sound enough. Strat is a game in which some smart platoons can help score a lot of runs. But does it condemn lefty starters to high ERAs?
Near as I can tell, the answer is no. I took stats from two different Strat leagues, one with 26 teams and one with 30. I compared the replay ERAs of righty and lefty starters over two seasons. Neither was significantly less effective at hitting or beating the real life ERA.
Here was my methodology. I took starters from the 2002 and 2003 seasons with at least 80 innings pitched. The Strat manager had to have used the pitcher primarily as a starter. Relievers’ replay stats can be very inconsistent for a number of reasons, so I excluded relievers. I also weeded out any inverted starters—that is, lefties who are better than righties or vice versa. Those pitchers can counter the cards of platoon players. I also took any pitcher pitching in Coors Field out of the sample. That silly ballpark just queers the stats too much.
I then decided that a pitcher within .40 runs per nine innings of his real ERA had delivered a performance that was on par with his stats from the MLB season. In other words, he gave you what you paid for. Anything higher or lower than .40 runs per nine innings from the real-life ERA was a serious over- or under-performance.
Of the 74 lefty starters I examined, 17 of them, or 22.9%, pitched better than their real life ERA by at least .40 runs per 9 innings. Among 113 righties, 29 of them, or 25.7%, pitched better than expected. On that score, lefties did perform worse.
But lefties were able to hit par, or within .40 points of it, 41.2% of the time, compared with 35.4% for righties. Add it up and lefty starters either hit par or beat their real-life ERA 64.1% of the time. Righties did that 61.1%. This doesn’t mean lefties are actually better. I view a 3 percentage point variance to be barely significant. The point is that lefties do not appear to get hit any worse than right-handed starters.
I do have one disclaimer. In leagues with 18 teams or fewer—and we have some readers that play in these leagues—the results might be different. In leagues like that, we’re talking about all-star lineups. And it’s easier to stack a nasty lineup of right-handed hitters against a southpaw starter.
At any rate, there doesn’t seem to be a disadvantage to left-handed starting pitching. In fact, the real killer for pitchers is taking them out of a pitcher-friendly ballpark and into one that allows the big long ball. Stratogists’ own Mike SanClemente had Randy Johnson throwing in Coors in 2003 (off the 2002 MLB stats). He allowed a neck-snapping 57 homers—more than double his regular season total. His ERA went from 2.32 to a replay of 4.34.
Even less ridiculous parks can give you a bum replay. Moving Andy Pettitte from Yankee Stadium to Great American Ballpark helped balloon his ERA to 4.87 from 3.27 in real life. I’d worry about a ballpark hurting my pitchers more than avoiding lefty starters.
Good fielding also makes a big difference. One year, I had career cards from Kirk Rueter, Omar Daal, Elmer Dessens and Michael Tejera. I won 103 games that year, with strong defense across the board. All of my lefty starters managed to hit their real-world performance in my Strat season, or beat it very nicely. The one starter who didn’t meet or exceed expectations? Ace righty A.J. Burnett. But Jon Lieber did. Leather helps your pitchers.
Unless some stronger evidence comes across my desk, I’ll take the best starter whether he is a lefty or not. But here’s a helpful hint: If you have a manager in your league who believes in the Southpaw Curse, it’s time to deal. If he wants to unload Johan Santana or a rookie like Scott Kazmir at a discount, make the move. This is one case where mankind has been wrong for more than 2000 years.
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