Archive of SportingNews.com's old SOM Baseball forum

I've never given much thought to how SOM defines a players 'balance'.
Sure, I realise a '3L' hitter can be a pretty significant determinant for someone who faced lefties only 30% of the time (much more so than a 3L for a platoon player who saw them 90% of the time). Play the 'real-world everyday' 3L only against lefties and you should get better percentages than he actually posted, but how does that designation get made?

I've seen some pitchers get called 2R when they don't give up as many hits to righties but give up a ton of bombs to them and not so many to lefties. What makes him 2R?

Now I find Petralli's 1991 described as just '7R'. He gets absolutely nothing against lefties. Why isn't he '9R'?

It's a relative term . . . in my offline game, I have seen something similar, where a hitter rated 1R or 2R actually gets on base more against a Lefty, but power is against RHP. As for Petralli, I couldn't tell you . . . could be that he doesn't have enough hits on the card period to get a (L rating. Check out the card for Kal Daniels in 86 or 87 to see what a 9R looks like.