Lefty Righty Considerations In National Pastime Outs
An interesting pattern
Lefty Righty Considerations In National Pastime Outs
As you can tell from the title, we’re getting into the nitty gritties now. Let me explain.
We revised the National Pastime model cards in our last two posts. There’s a pretty interesting pattern that emerges when you look at how out numbers were dispersed:
Now, these numbers do not necessarily always hold true. For example, while 90.4% of all right handed batters have play result number 28 on dice roll 32, only 58.76% of right handed batters have play result number 28 on dice roll 16.
These number patterns are common enough, however, to indicate that they might mean something.
So do they?
Unlike APBA, National Pastime out results don’t necessarily follow a set pattern. Here is a chart showing which fielder fields each of the ground ball play result numbers (24 to 29) in National Pastime:
Play result numbers 27, 28, and 29 all follow a specific pattern. 27 always involves the third baseman, 28 the shortstop, and 29 always involves the pitcher (the pitcher covers first when the grounder is hit to first with a runner on second).
24, 25, and 26, however, do not follow a discernible pattern.
We could argue that Van Beek created a hidden lefty/righty split by giving most right handed batters an extra 27 and an extra 28. However, because the fielder alternates between the second baseman and the shortstop, we really can’t say the same thing about the extra PRN 26 that left handed hitters receive.
Fly balls, on the other hand, seem to follow a more definite pattern:
With the exception of runners on first and second, all fly balls follow the same pattern. My guess is that Van Beek wanted to shake things up for fun with runners on first and second.
Left handed hitters have an extra 32, which is (almost) always a fly ball to right field. Meanwhile, right handed hitters have an extra 30, which is (almost) always a fly ball to left field. This indicates that Van Beek may have intended to show that those hitters were more likely to pull the ball.
I thought we might se a similar pattern with base hit locations, but it doesn’t look like it:
Note that “IF” in this chart indicates an infield hit.
However, the place where we do see a clear pattern is in the error play result numbers, which are 15 through 22. In particular, play result numbers 15 through 20 almost always follow the same pattern:
It would be interesting if we could see a similar righty/lefty pattern with how these error numbers were allocated. Unfortunately, we don’t.
Here’s the frequency of play result 15:
16:
17:
And so on. 18 is the most common of the error numbers, and also does not follow any discernable righty/lefty pattern.
The last thing for us to consider is play result numbers 33 and 34 — the two pop up numbers. Here are the fielding patterns:
Note that a 33 with a runner on second is actually a ground ball, not a pop up.
There’s no real discernable patterns among these infield pop ups. 33s have an extra pop up to the second baseman, and 34s have an extra pop up to the first baseman. Since left handed batters tend to have 2 34s and right handed batters tend to have two 33s, we could technically say that the lefties get an extra pop up to the far right side of the infield — but I’m not really convinced by that logic.
What do you think?