Under a microscope, all of baseball boils down to the mechanics of the at-bat. Is the pitcher/batter left-handed or right-handed? What is the starting pitcher’s pitch count? What are the balls and strikes for the current batter? Are there runners on base and in scoring position? We can go on and on.
Some teams do well against right-handed shooters and others do well against left-handed shooters. In some rare circumstances you get a team that hits both equally, they are usually called World Series champions at the end of the season, like the White Sox in 2005.
The natural thing to do when you lose a game in baseball is to analyze the loss to see how you can improve in the next game. It also makes you more likely to work the count in your next game. All of this seems to suggest that if you lose a game to a right-handed pitcher, you’ll want to face a right-handed pitcher in your next game. By keeping the same pitcher’s orientation, your hitters have a better chance of getting comfortable. As you change facing, your hitters have to readjust.
We looked at teams that lost and found that when faced with a starting pitcher with the same shot orientation, they have about 5% more value against the odds than if the shot orientation changed.
This little bit of information is a really good nugget of information that I like to use to add to my systems. Of all the managers I’ve seen over the years, Bobby Cox of the Atlanta Braves is the mastermind of the pitching-hitting dynamic. He puts his pitchers in positions to win. He watch out for pitching changes from him before game time.
