The Buccos were above. While waiting to board the flight from Philadelphia to St. Louis, Distefano and pitching coach Ray Miller were having a cold one at the bar and watching a bit of a ballgame on TV. Only years later would Distefano realize that this was no spontaneous remark by Miller.
The coach was planting a seed, and it took root quickly. Leyland, already wise to this scheme, said he was open to it.
With roster sizes about to be reduced from 25 to 24 men in , versatility was vital. He stuck around all season and wound up making three brief appearances at catcher a total of six innings over the course of the year. So it was taken seriously. Now, more than 30 years later, he remains the most recent left-handed thrower to play backstop in the big leagues -- a status he does not expect to surrender anytime soon.
Attitudes are evolving on swinging at pitches with a lead, on bat-flipping, on using closers in tie games on the road. An upstart generation has brilliantly deduced that, were these rules rational and rigid, they would have been written down in the first place. But the Dale Long and Chris Short of it is that the live-ball era has basically operated sans southpaw catchers. Louis Browns. And the only left thrower in Major League history to have caught at least 1, games was Jack Clements, who played from and who also holds the distinction of being the first catcher to wear a chest protector.
Even in the Minor Leagues, over the last 15 years as far back as we were able to search , there has not been a lefty catcher who accrued so many as plate appearances in a single season.
So this rule, it would appear, is about as entrenched as they come. Left-handers, who are relegated to a life of awkward handshakes, frustrating scissor experiences and discriminatory field hockey arrangements, cannot and will not become catchers in the big leagues. Why, though? Why are righties the only ones who catch on?
Over the years, a handful of assumptions have been made as to why lefties should be left out of the catching ranks. Left-handed throws to second base are adversely affected by right-handed hitters. Controlling the running game is important, and the majority of plate appearances come with a right-hander at the plate. Throws for right-handers are far more open and natural. But the primary problem Distefano encountered was with plays at home.
Because his glove was on his right hand, every accurate throw to the runner's side of the plate would have to be reached for backhanded, impeding a quick tag. And on outfielder throws up the first-base line, reaching out with his right hand would leave his throwing shoulder wide open to the runner.
The most frequent throw a catcher makes besides throwing the ball back to the pitcher is to throw out a runner on first base trying to steal second base. Because it is the most frequent throw, and because it keeps the runner from advancing to a scoring position runner can score from 2nd base on a single , it is also the most consequential throw a catcher makes.
A large majority of baseball players are right handed and bat right handed. That means, the majority of time, there is a right handed batter in the batters box.
A right handed batter is in the way of the throw to second base from a left handed catcher. As second based is the farthest base to the catcher every split second counts. Any impedance to the throw and avoidance of the batter can make the difference between an out or a person in scoring position. The tag plays at the plate would become more difficult and the LH catchers can not put swipe tags down. They have to turn their body to tag instead of having the ball travel to the tag.
I think it can be argued for or against in any situation. It would probably stem from the lack of young left handers and their youth coaches trying to utilize them in pitching roles or 1st base. Sign up to join this community. The best answers are voted up and rise to the top.
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Asked 4 years, 5 months ago. There are a few reasons why I don't end the article right here with a resounding yes. First, the attempted steal is not a strategy that happens all that often.
Second, in the past few years we have been able to quantify the value of framing pitches, which in a single season has much more of an impact than erasing runners. If a framing wizard like Jose Molina happened to be left-handed, would it be wise to pass up 40 runs saved with a good target because of 10 runs lost as a result of throws tailing the wrong way?
Finally—and this is the big one—what if left-handed catchers actually have an advantage in framing pitches? The runs lost on the basepaths Since , the worst catchers in the controlling-the-running-game department have cost their teams roughly 10 runs per season because of their inadequate arms.
Here's a distribution of the catcher-seasons in the past quarter century only catchers with significant playing time are featured. Note: I prefer the convention of always looking at runs from an offensive point of view , so in the above charts and others in this article , negative values represent runs saved by the catcher.
One could assume that a left-handed catcher would be the equivalent of the worst right-handed one, inflicting a roughly run penalty to his team. However, like their righty counterparts, southpaw catchers would likely have their own bell-shaped distribution. We can only speculate about whether the best lefty would hardly be superior to the worst righty as in the left-panel chart below or the two distributions would have some degree of overlap right panel.
Would he be Piazza-esque? Worse than that? Or maybe close to league average? The worst throwing season overall is an interesting example for our exercise. Hatteberg, then playing for the Red Sox, had a sore arm, and opposing teams noticed: he somehow gunned down only 12 runners while allowing steals. The rest of the story makes for some of the more enjoyable moments of Moneyball , as Billy Beane A's made a useful first baseman out of him.
Gains on borderline pitches Now let's look at the distribution of framing runs, again since using the Retrosheet-based method I introduced some time ago. Here we don't have any clue as to whether left-handed catchers would fare worse than right-handed ones if any comes to your mind, don't hesitate to share your thoughts in the comments below. My controversial hypothesis As I mentioned in the introductory section, I suspect that a left-handed catcher might even have an advantage in framing pitches.
And since the run-value distribution of framing is a lot wider than that of steal prevention, even a small edge could signify a net gain for the team on defense. Let's start with the catchers themselves. Since right-handed throwers wear their mitt on their left hand, they reach the inside corner against right-handed batters and the outside corner against left-handed batters easily.
When they have to catch a pitch on the other side of the strike zone—that is, to their own right—they need to stretch their arm a bit across their body. Now, on to the umpires. Umpires make a slightly higher proportion of incorrect calls on the outside corner than they do on the inside corner. I believe the reason for this is that they usually place themselves on the inside corner, which gives them a better view there. Take a look at this plot:. Above you see how the umpire correctness using the rulebook strike zone definition varies on the horizontal plane.
The chart is constructed using four-seam fastballs delivered at mid-height so that vertical location should not be a factor in judging that did not feature a swing by the batter. As one would expect, umpires are close to percent right on down-the-middle pitches, as well as on those far away from the plate. The highest rates of wrong calls occur closer to the edges the vertical lines in the plot.
And for both right-handed and left-handed batters, the outside corner features a greater proportion of miscues. I would also like to note the difference between the two curves. While the wrong calls when righties are at the plate peak precisely on the plate corners, the line for lefties is shifted slightly to the left. Also, the difference between the outside and inside corners, while barely noticeable for right-handed batters, is huge for southpaws.
I'm not sure I have a good explanation for this, although eye dominance might have something to do with the phenomenon.
Finally, a brief reminder about the batters: more of them swing from the right side than from the left. Catchers can exploit the umpires' fallibility, especially on the outside corner;.
It's easier to look steadier and get calls when the ball is delivered to the catcher's glove side;. More right-handed batters than left-handed ones come to the plate, offering more opportunities to left-handed catchers for the favorable combination of the previous two points outside corner pitch on the catcher's glove side. The fact that we have zero left-handed catchers in the big leagues and as far as I know, no trace of any further down the professional ladder means that this is nothing more concrete than conjecture.
When working on this article, my memory kept summoning sequences from Ben Lindbergh 's weekly articles on framing featuring left-handed batters being called out on strikes on pitches just outside the strike zone. However, being a statistician, the confirmation bias bell started ringing inside my head, so I decided to go a bit more by the numbers rather than relying on memories that were likely distorted by my underlying hypothesis. Catchers gain more extra strikes on their left side, where they don't have to stretch their glove-hand across their body.
The difference is big when left-handed batters are at the plate and the glove-side effect compounds the umps-are-more-fallible-on-the-outside-corner one. It is hardly detectable when right-handers are hitting and the two effects nearly cancel each other out.
However, there are ways to make it seem senseless. First, the plot displayed last, while showing many gained strikes on the outside corner to lefty batters, also shows a good chunk of strikes lost in the middle-to-inside part of the plate.
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