The Pastime

The only kind of splits I can “do” are those that involve numbers, bananas or bowling pins. Just to clear up any confusion about that title.

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And then there were none. Bobby Kielty signed a one year, $2.1 million contract to avoid arbitration, just below the $2.2 I’d estimated. He’s the last of the A’s MLB-high nine players that filed for arbitration this off-season. Oakland, as is their wont, avoided having to go in front of an arbiter once again.

Bobby Kielty has been an interesting player in his career thus far with the A’s. Exhibiting a huge platoon split isn’t that odd for a 4th-5th outfielder type, but when the player in question is supposedly a switch hitter… that’s odd.

In 2006, Bobby Kielty put up an AVG/OBP/SLG/OPS line of .325/.358/.607/.965, which is very good.

But that is only against lefties.

Against right-handers… .229/.308/.314/.622 is horrid.

Let’s put that into perspective, as I so enjoy doing. Here’s a series of four charts, pastel-colored for your reading ease.

The players I selected these top 10 lists from are all those that are switch-hitters and accumulated at least 100 at-bats during 2006.

The first chart is the top 10 largest differences between OPS against lefties and OPS against righties. The second is AVG, third OBP, fourth SLG.

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As you can tell (I hope), Bobby Kielty should absolutely give up trying to be a switch hitter. I doubt that he could put up worse numbers against right-handers if he hit from the other side.

While he owns the eighth largest OPS split gap in the majors, his OBP is nearly the same from either side. Clearly, he has good plate judgment. That means, though, that the meat of the OPS difference is coming from average and slugging. In the left batter’s box, he can tell where the ball is going to be, he just can’t hit the damn thing.

He probably could put up a similar slugging percentage against righties even if he held the bat by the fat end. .314 slugging? Neifi Perez slugged .316 last year. Cesar Izturis slugged .318 in 2006. It’s probably a bad idea to keep turning yourself into those players against righties, isn’t it Bobby?

It’s not like I’m stumbling into some new realm of knowledge here. This idea that Kielty should only hit from the right side is nothing new.

All is not doom and gloom on the horizon for Bobby Kielty, though. Unlike our recent gum-chewing leader, Bob Geren just… might… get it.

After talking with Geren, Kielty had this to say:

“I think I should be hitting against left-handed pitching most of the time and probably against righties who I have good matchups with.”

What he didn’t tell you, though, Bobby, is that those “righties who I have good matchups with” don’t exist.

Other than Paul Byrd. Kielty is 10/30 wth 4 HR lifetime against him… but then again, it’s Paul Byrd we’re talking about.

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Completely off the topic, but there’s something really peculiar about Chipper Jones showing up in the OBP gap chart there. Against lefties, he hit .293/.309/.576, and against righties it was .332/.434/.602. Apparently he can still for average and power from both sides, but just plain wouldn’t take walks in the right-handed batter’s box in 2006. His career numbers don’t reflect that, as they are very even, though. Odd.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 26th, 2007 at 2:47 am and is filed under Oakland A's, News, Players, Stats. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.