Switch Hitters: Chipper’s Place and The Issue of Speed

In early 2007 at my personal blog, Philosopher Stone , I blogged on the topic of all-time switch-hitters. Specifically, the blog posting’s focus was on Switch Hitters and Speed .

Given the continued hitting excellence of Chipper Jones, I thought I’d update this posting and give my question about the connection between switch hitting and speed a broader audience here at Seamheads.

When I think of the all-time best switch hitters, I immediately think of who I consider to be the “Big 3”: Mickey Mantle, Pete Rose, and Eddie Murray. But after that I usually draw a bit of a blank.

I now think Chipper Jones might deserve to be immediately thought of as an all-time great switch-hitter too. Afterall, at age 36 last year he hit .364 with a .470 OBP and 22 HR in 439 at-bats.

In fact, I’m open to arguments as to who the fourth best switch-hitting player is: Frankie Frisch, Tim Raines, Chipper Jones, or Robert Alomar. If it is purely a matter of switch- hitting , then I’d give Chipper the nod. If we are talking about the best all-around player who happened to be a switch-hitter , then I think you have to look more closely at Alomar — given that he won ten gold gloves, stole 474 bases, and was an All-Star 12 times compared with only six times for Jones.

Going beyond these top seven, some other all-time great switch-hitters include (in no particular order): Max Carey, Ted Simmons, Bernie Williams, Chili Davis, Ken Singleton, Maury Wills, and the two defensive wizards at shortstop, Ozzie Smith and Omar Vizquel. Who am I missing here?

When looking into all-time great switch hitters, I noticed an interesting fact. Only 1 of the top 100 players in all-time batting average was a switch-hitter: Frankie Frisch who ranks 68th. For Home-runs, only 4 of the top 100 were switch hitters: Mickey Mantle ranks 15th, Eddie Murray ranks 24th, Chipper Jones ranks 42nd, and Chili Davis ranks 78th.

But 18 of the top 100 all-time base-stealers were switch-hitters. Indeed, 8 of the top 21 were switch hitters. There is Tim Raines who ranks 5th, Vince Coleman 6th, Max Carey 9th, Willie Wilson 12th, Otis Nixon 16th, George Davis 17th, Maury Wills 19th, Ozzie Smith 21st, and so on. Plus another five of the next ten all-time base-thieves too.

So that made me wonder: why would that be? Why would switch-hitting correlate much more with base-stealing than with hitting for power or hitting for batting average? Likely someone has already written about this — perhaps many SABR members have! But without looking into others’ research on this question, I can think of a three possibilities:

1. If they started off as right-handed batters, but knew they were fast, so became switch hitters in order to sometimes bat lefty and get the added step or two towards first to beat out bunts and infield hits (or so they might have thought as youngsters). I checked those 18 switch hitters in the top 100 SB, and 15 throw right-handed, with only 3 throwing left-handed. So I’d be inclined to say that many of these folks were natural right-handed hitters.

2. As young players, if speed is your major (perhaps only) real strength, then learning to switch-hit can make you more valuable to the team. Or so the thinking of fathers and coaches might be.

3. Another possibility is a bit more complicated. Say kids determine (through observation or advice from parents or coaches) that becoming a switch hitter is a good idea during little-league and high-school baseball years. Say it is seen to raise your value to the team, because you can hit well against both righties and lefties, and so on. But then as you rise up the competitive ladder, it becomes more and more difficult to compete as a switch-hitter. Most hitters are perfecting their swing from just one side of the plate, and a SH has to work on both. If you lack speed (or other tools of the game, like defense), then you might be more likely to abandon switch-hitting in order to focus on just high-average hitting or power-hitting, and to do this best, you might think you should focus on just hitting RH or LH. But if you have a lot of speed, if that is your prime asset, then you might not be as driven to improve your BA or your power numbers, and so stick with switch hitting. Once you have reached the ultimate level, the MLB level, it is quite difficult for you as a switch-hitter to excel in BA or HR, relative to your peers, because they for years have been perfecting their swing from just one side of the plate or the other. So you don’t rate amongst the best in those categories, but your great speed still allows you to swipe all those bases.

What do you think? And have others written on this question before?