Thank You, M's fans

by Matt Swartz on Aug 27, 2010 4:13 AM PDT

A couple weeks ago, I posted a FanPost on this site asking for which lefty and switch-hitting sluggers on your team had regularly faced The Infield Shift, and which sluggers in your division your team regularly shifted against. I also posted the same information at the other 29 SBNation.com blogs. Overall, the 30 websites shocked me with how helpful they were, providing over 400 comments and an excellent list of hitters to run the tests that I needed to run.

I finally published the article at Baseball Prospectus today. It is called "The Clutch and The Shifted." I asked that this article not be subscription-only, so that everyone who helped me with it can read it. Feel free to email me about it you have any questions, and I'll do my best to reply if you comment here (though keeping up with 30 blogs was challenging!.

Anyway, as part of my study, I also got the list of right-handed sluggers who hit over 20 home runs at some point between 1993 and 2010, so I will post your teams' three lists below in case you were curious. Thank you again to all who helped.

LHB

Russell Branyan
Raul Ibanez
John Olerud
Ken Griffey
Paul Sorrento
Tino Martinez

RHB

Jose Lopez
Adrian Beltre
Richie Sexson
Jose Guillen
Bret Boone
Edgar Martinez
Mike Cameron
Alex Rodriguez
Jay Buhner
David Bell
Russ Davis
Mike Blowers

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Comments

I thought the team was trying to get LH power to succeed at Safeco. Historically, that seems to be failing.

If you separate this list pre-2001 and post-2001, it’s saddening.

by yuniform on Aug 27, 2010 7:59 AM PDT reply actions

Branyan/Ibanez...

had pretty good power put out here. Bret Boone was very successful because he hit a ton of homers to the right side. Edgar Martinez was another like this. The reason a lot of Bavasi’s “left handed sock” didn’t work out was because they were bad in the first place.

by dkulich on Aug 27, 2010 8:25 AM PDT up reply actions

It would seem that a random spaghetti approach

would have yielded better results for that decade’s lefty power hitters. And it’s not like there weren’t gobs of those guys available.

It’s really pretty pathetic. We’re essentially handcuffing ourselves since we have an extreme, asymmetrical pitcher’s park, yet we refuse to build our offensive unit to suit it (except for this year’s attempt, which basically said “If Safeco is so hard on right-handed power hitters…then our solution is…umm…get hitters without power so the park effect is minimized?”).

If I was a hungry man with a gun in my hand and some promises to keep...

by misterjonez on Aug 28, 2010 8:15 AM PDT up reply actions