St. Louis Cardinals: Why Left-Handed pitchers still matter

My esteemed colleague J.T. Buchheit has brought some great statistics to bear. Indeed, it may seem almost irrefutable. But here is my best argument as to why left-handed pitching is still important for the St. Louis Cardinals.

St. Louis Cardinals fans should be concerned about the Cardinals’ failure to develop, scout, trade for, and ultimately staff, left-handed pitching, and here’s why:

I am not aware of Alexander Cartwright’s counterclockwise base-running rule being repealed.

It may sound like a joke, but think about it. Football, soccer, basketball, hockey, golf, tennis, or bowling, if you were watching on TV, and there were no uniform numbers, you would not be able to notice whether the TV station had flipped the “reverse image” or not. Not true with baseball.

To disregard the horse-sense of managers like Casey Stengel and Tommy Lasorda, that handedness matters, represents the final triumph of analytics. How do we know that the analysts have it right and that there is not some factor they forgot to add-in? The short answer is: we do not know, for sure.

The horse-sense theory is not just that left-handed pitchers get left-handed batters out when the money is on the line. It is also the fact that left-handed pitchers are disruptive to the opponent. It is similar to bringing in a relief pitcher with a different pitching motion or pitch repertoire to disrupt the opposing batters. With the St. Louis Cardinals present rotation, the opposing batters will hardly ever have to adjust to the release point coming from the first base side of the mound.

Note that the positive effect of the left-hander to the team might not be while the left-hander is still on the mound but after he is off the mound and the batters need to adjust. That would not show up in stats.

It is also disruptive in the context of a three-game or four-game series. Having all right-handed pitchers on the starting staff means that a team about to play a series against the Cardinals could use their AAA shuttle to bring up an extra pitcher or left-handed hitter, knowing that right-handed bench strength will not be at a premium.

The left-hander in baseball has come a long way since the 19th century when left-handed pitchers were almost non-existent.

Gone are the days of Rube Waddell, who had a reputation to go with his left-handedness of being a screwball who chased firetrucks and brought a bulldog mascot to the park, to Eddie Plank who threw in a “cross-fire motion he called a ‘slant ball,’ landing his right leg on the first base side of the pitcher’s mound and then throwing across his body” just to get the ball to the plate

Gone are the days of Jack Dunn the owner of the minor league Baltimore Orioles taking a risk on a couple of over-hand throwing left-handers named George Ruth and Robert Grove. Left handed pitchers aren’t rare commodities now, they are just part of the game.

This moment in time when left-handers are going extinct on the St. Louis Cardinals since the trading of Jaime Garcia (remember him?) for right hander John Gant, since the trading of young prospect Marco Gonzales for some extra bat timber in Tyler O’Neill and since the flaming out of Tyler Lyons, Kevin Siegrist, and, barring a comeback, Brett Cecil … is a watershed.