Where Does Your Second-Best Outfielder Belong?

Why not play your two best defensive outfielders in CF and the side the given batter is most likely to hit the ball to. Does familiarity reading the ball slicing the opposite way from you and park knowledge outweigh physical skill?

I’ve always assumed your strongest arm is in right for throws to 3rd base. Both fields are supposed to hit the cutoff man on throws to the plate, and don’t have to have the strongest arms for that. No data, just the reason I assumed for that.

Collins has his second best outfielder, Carlos Beltran, in RF. The reason for that is because he expected to have Jason Bay in LF, and Bay has played exactly 1 game in RF during his 8 year career.

This is Beltran’s first season playing a corner position. It wouldn’t make sense to shift him to LF for two weeks while Bay is out. He needs time to get acclimated to playing RF, which will be his role when Bay returns.

The logic is the same while Bay is out. His replacement, Willie Harris, is playing LF. It might be disruptive to move him from there on days when Beltran doesn’t play.

I suppose to a small extent, the stadium might have something to say about this.

my memory suggests that more balls are hit to left field than to right, for the simple reason that there are more right-handed batters than left-handed, and players pull the ball more often than go the other way.*

When you hit the top of a baseball with a bat angled downward toward the ground (which is the normal swing plane of a baseball hitter— I suppose some cricketers might have experience at swinging at things above shoulder height…), there is a strong tendency to hit it to the pull side on the ground.

When you hit the bottom of said baseball with a bat angled downward, there is a strong tendency to hit it to the

opposite field

in the air. Really. Visualize it, draw it, or go out in a park and try it. Pulling a ball in the air, without hitting it square-on, is actually quite difficult.

Most fly outs would be made to center or the opposite field for that reason alone. Add in the fact that pulled flies are often smashed and, thus, often home runs or (at low launch angles) extra-base hits, and the disparity gets even wider. There’s a reason teams tend to shade hitters “the opposite way” in the outfield. The majority of fieldable fly balls are hit in that direction.

I actually think there’s a good case to be made, in a situation where you have two good outfielders and one crappy one (think the current A’s outfield of Coco Crisp (very good), David DeJesus (pretty good), and Josh Willingham (really bad)), for actually switching the corner outfielders within an inning so the bad one is always to the pull side of the hitter.

However, if switching on a batter-to-batter basis is too crazy for you, I’d suggest that you generally stick the good one on the side of the field which is the pull side of fewer hitters in the opposing team’s lineup.

Example: the other team has four righties, three lefties, and two switch hitters. Put the bad fielder in left when a left-hander is starting (pull side of six hitters) and in right when you’ve got a right-hander starting (pull side of five hitters).

If it’s tied (I wouldn’t count the pitcher or extreme groundball hitters), put the better arm in right.

There are almost exactly the same number of air balls to the right side and left side of the OF (left side 50.5%), therefore you cannot leverage your corner outfielders much based on batted ball location. RHB actually hit more air balls to the right side than the left side (52%), and vice versa for LHB (54% to the left side), although more harder and deeper air balls (and HR and dbls/trpls) are hit to the pull side.

(And BTW, there is no evidence that for covering a large area, the better OF’er – more range – is preferred.) In any case, on the average, the CF’er tends to play straight away or slightly to the opp field, which favors the right side slightly since there are more RH batters of course.

So it probably makes almost no difference, range -wise, where you play your corner outfielders. You simply choose your two worst OF’ers, and put the one with the strongest arm in RF (to throw to third and decrease triples). There is some logic, I suppose, for putting the faster OF’er in RF, also to decrease triples.

Of course, if you are a manager, you want to put your corner guys at the position they are most comfortable and/or experienced with.

MGL

“There’s a reason teams tend to shade hitters "the opposite way" in the outfield. The majority of fieldable fly balls are hit in that direction.”

Right. My numbers did not exclude HR’s which they should have. For non-HR air balls (flies, pop flies and line drives according to retrosheet), in 2010, overall, 50.4% are hit to the RIGHT SIDE. For RHB, it is 57% to the right side. For LHB, it is 59% to the left side. Now, it is probably true that there are more easily catchable (no matter where you play), lazy fly balls hit to the opp side, which probably shifts the “effective” or relevant (to where you need to play) percentage back to the pull side. In essence, hard to catch air balls are probably 50/50, location-wise, no matter how you slice it.

If you are Ron Gardenhire, the correct answer apparently is 2nd base.