Examining Dan Uggla’s Reverse Platoon Split
April 11, 2012 at 3:34 pm by Franklin Rabon under Atlanta Braves
A platoon split is the extent to which a player hits better against an opposite handed pitcher. The familiar idea that right handed batters hit left handed pitchers better and left handed batters hit right handed pitchers better. Thus, a reverse platoon split is when a player hits same handed pitchers better than opposite handed pitchers. Dan Uggla is known to very mildly have one of these reverse platoon splits, as he hits right handed pitchers slightly better than he does left handed pitchers.
This has always been something of a mystery from Dan, as reverse platoon splits from right handed batters are typically very rare. From time to time you see them from left handed hitters (eg Kelly Johnson), but that seems mostly to stem from the fact that, on average, right handed pitchers are more skilled than their left handed counterparts (see Tango’s The Book for an explanation on this, basically it boils down to there naturally being fewer left handed pitchers, so, in order to get the number that MLB wants, you have to dig deeper in the quality pool, though its a complicated argument with a lot of subtle points that are beyond the scope of this article). With right handed hitters, it’s much harder to understand the how and why it happens when it does happen.
So let’s look at the numbers, shall we: (all data from 2009-present and courtesy of ESPN Stats & Information)
Hard = Fastball, sinker, cutter, splitter
Soft = Change up, curveball, slider, knuckleball
| OBP | Slg | wOBA | BB% | BABIP | Swing% | Miss% | Chase% | HR% | HR/FB % | |
| LHP | 0.343 | 0.435 | 0.342 | 13.6 | 0.262 | 41.6 | 27.7 | 22.8 | 5.1 | 16.2 |
| RHP | 0.345 | 0.482 | 0.355 | 10.9 | 0.293 | 42.4 | 27.3 | 21.9 | 5.8 | 16.4 |
| LHP Soft | 0.241 | 0.228 | 0.220 | 9.4 | 0.242 | 43.6 | 39.1 | 26.5 | 1.0 | 4.3 |
| LHP Hard | 0.418 | 0.616 | 0.438 | 16.3 | 0.277 | 39.9 | 17.0 | 19.0 | 8.6 | 22.2 |
| RHP Soft | 0.275 | 0.386 | 0.288 | 8.5 | 0.265 | 41.6 | 41.4 | 23.0 | 4.6 | 16.5 |
| RHP Hard | 0.394 | 0.561 | 0.408 | 12.0 | 0.311 | 43.3 | 16.0 | 21.3 | 6.8 | 16.3 |
| % Soft LH | 46.1 | |||||||||
| % Soft RH | 45.2 |
Just looking at the RHP v. LHP numbers doesn’t shed much light, while Dan’s numbers are better against RHP, all the peripheral numbers seem similar. He actually walks more against LHP, he swings, misses and hits homeruns at about the same rate, so what’s going on? We see his BABIP (batting average on balls in play, ie excluding strikeouts and homeruns) is higher against RHP. Usually something like this would often be chalked up too bad luck, as it’s rare for a player to have splits at all for BABIP, and especially not reverse splits. However, these numbers are over way too many plate appearances to be bad luck.
As we can see, Dan’s real problem is that he has major troubles against left handed off-speed pitches. Dan is actually better against left handed fastballs than any other category of pitch, from either handed pitcher. When we combine these two, Dan is so much worse against left handed off speed that it comes out that overall he is slightly worse against left handed pitchers, despite how good he is against LHP hard pitches. Thus in actuality, it’s not particularly accurate to say that Dan is worse against lefties, as much as he’s just really terrible against lefty off speed stuff. He misses a lot, and makes a lot of weak contact, yet he swings at these pitches very slightly more than any other type of pitch.
These findings indicate that Dan should probably do all that he can to get fastballs from lefties, even more so than righties. He should probably swing at more first pitches against lefties, hoping to get a fastball, and if he gets behind in the count he’d most likely just be better off trying to work a walk, rather than even offering at off speed pitches from lefties, which he is highly likely to either swing and miss at or just make very weak contact with. Currently, Dan only swings at 34% of first pitch fastballs from LHP. I’d like to see that number a bit higher, closer to the 50% range.
Here is a heat map describing how often Dan swings at 0-0 ‘hard’ pitches from left handed pitchers:
He should definitely be swinging at more than 50% (green) of hard pitches in that middle region in 0-0 counts. That’s almost inexcusable, given how well he hits hard pitches against LHP. That middle region for hard pitches should be much closer to 90%+ on the first pitch, when he should be expecting a fastball.
The key for Dan against LHP is basically not swinging at off speed pitches, but instead he currently swings at those pitches at the highest rate of all categories from either handed pitcher: 43.6%. Luckily for Dan, LHP don’t throw him soft pitches significantly more than RHP do (46.1% v. 45.2% respectively). If they did, he may be in a lot more trouble.
If Dan has the ability to recognize off speed pitches (not a given), I’d like to see his swing percentage against left handed off speed closer to 30%. I think if that happened, we’d begin to see his reverse platoon split against lefties disappear entirely, as his outstanding performance against left handed fastballs began to take over. If that’s possible for Dan (a big if indeed), we may very well have solved many of our issues against LHP without making a panicked trade.
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Nice article! I too noticed that the splits weren’t that different in just the hand of the pitcher, but the split for fast lefty pitches is absolutely jumping off the page.
It would seem to me that Dan should look to swing on both the first pitch and the second pitch as most pitchers and scouts have this information as well and will likely try to get the count in their favor early so to allow for a constant diet of off-speed pitches the remainder of the at-bat.
Excellent analysis. Question–To what extent do you think other teams are aware of this information?
I would say some have to be. However, I don’t know how much it goes into most pitchers’ active preparation. Given the negligible difference in pecrecntage of soft pitches thrown to Uggla for LHB and RHB, I’d say that while some may be aware of it, it isn’t actively being implemented by many pitchers.
Just remember Chuck James who said that he pitched to every batter, regardless of who they were, or what handedness they were, the exact same. While Chuck sounded dumb for admitting this, that actually seems to be the way a very large number of pitchers actually pitch.
Great analysis.
“However, these numbers are over way too many plate appearances to be bad luck.”
That’s the only part that gets me. Uggla’s amassed so many PA throughout his career, part of me just feels like he is what he is, as stupid as that sounds. He’s had more success when using the approach he used after the first couple months of the 2010, right?
I’m not sure if it was Peter or Ben who wrote the article last year about how Uggla needed to strikeout more, and I’m not even sure I’m being accurate with the main sentiment of that piece. But I think it was something along the lines of Uggla needing to wait on his pitch instead of making so much contact, like he used to in Florida.
I wish it were that easy to just tell him, hey Dan, don’t swing so much against lefties when it’s slow stuff. When I go to Turner Field on Friday, maybe I’ll write that on a sign for him to read in the on-deck circle.
Yeah, that’s why I tried to repeatedly say “if possible” with the ‘recommended’ changes in approach. I dont know that Uggla can recognize the difference between an off speed pitch very well, which is probably a lot of his problem. If he can’t recognize the difference, then he can’t change all that much.
However, there are a few minor changes he could make. Not taking as many good first pitches from lefties might be one change he could make. That’s more about approach than pitch recognition.
The article you were referring to was written by Kevin.
Good question, and to what extent do you think the Braves know about this?
I hope the hitting coaches read this. Great analysis!
Great article, Franklin. Is the information you provided in this article available to anyone? If so, from where were you able to get all this information? I’d love to look at this same type of information (heat maps, Swing% against off-speed pitches from lefties vs. Swing% against off-speed pitches from righties etc.) for other Braves hitters.
The source I used is proprietary information that we are provided from ESPN Stats & Info (meant to include that in the post) because of our affiliation with ESPN’s Sweetspot Blog Network. I think fangraphs has something like it, but I have no idea how to use it.
I’ll check out Fangraphs then and see what I can find. Thanks.
Any info on his line drive % splits? Since we know he hits RHP better, perhaps a higher LD% against RHP would explain the BABIP split. I’d like to think a linedrive has a better chance of finding a hole somewhere vs. weak contact.
They roughly follow the same trends with the soft/hard issue as his other stats do. I left them out because GB/LD/FB rates are only really reliable over really large samples, due to a number of issues, and when dividing them up over pitcher handedness and pitch type, the sample sizes got to the highly unreliable level.
Gotcha. That makes sense. Thanks for the follow up.
Great analysis to take to the ball park tonight. Thanks.
Can’t we just trade the guy and bring up someone from the minors to play LF and put Prado back where he belongs and use Wilson when Chipper needs a day off?
huh? A) we probably can’t trade him because of his contract. B) he’s still a very good player. C) our minor league outfielders are pretty craptastic and nowhere near ready for the major leagues.