Archive of SportingNews.com's old SOM Baseball forum

When you set a relief pitcher to "Avoid LH (or RH) batters" what exactly does that mean? Does it mean the reliever won't be brought in when there's a LH (or RH) batter coming up next? Or does it mean he's going to pitch around LH (or RH) batters?

[quote:5843fb5bce="budcochrane"]Does it mean the reliever won't be brought in when there's a LH (or RH) batter coming up next?[/quote:5843fb5bce]

Generally speaking it is your first guess. There is no hard rule on this however. RP usage comes into play as well. If some of your RP have been in two or more straight games this guy might come in even though it is versus his bad side. Basically it is just guidance but not a rule.

A couple of years ago, when everyone was ragging HAL's situational relief use I analyzed my teams at the time to see what was actually happening. I checked 8-10 teams for the usage of situational LH & RH relief pitchers(all set to "avoid", "quick" & 1-2 IP. I found that the lefties were facing an average of just over 50% LH hitters, while the RH's percentage was about 57-58% RH batters faced. I had deep pens and used situational guys on almost evry team. I think one RH specialist was facing 67% RH batters, which was the highest. If you look at the real-life splits for LH specialists, you'll see that most don't face much more than 50% LH batters. So, even if your pen is structured perfectly and HAL uses everyone as you intend, it is doubtful that your LH specialist will even face 60% LH batters.