Projecting Platoon Splits for Pitchers

When a team is looking for pitchers, especially starting pitchers, they are looking for the ability to get both left and right handed hitters out.  There have been plenty of LOOGY/ROOGY’s who have had long careers, but their value to the team is not impactful, due to lack of innings.  There are two major factors which usually show the divide in results against lefties and righties: repertoire and ballpark factors.

PITCHf/x Primer

In 2006, Sportvision implemented their first camera system for baseball analysis, PITCHf/x.  Two cameras are set up in every stadium to record speed, movement, and location of every pitch.  While there are occasional flaws, it has become an extremely reliable source of evaluating a pitcher’s “stuff.”  The common values listed under PITCHf/x pages are pitch type percentage, average velocity, horizontal movement, and vertical movement.  The first two are self-explanatory for the most part, so I’ll explain how the movement works.