FanPost

Hank Conger: Switch Hitter?

Many of us were frustrated by Mike Scioscia's handling of Hank Conger this season.

After the pleasant surprise of Conger making the opening day roster, Scioscia used him sporadically the first three months of the season, demoted him to Triple-A, then all but forgot about him after his return in late August.

There's no doubt that Scioscia's never-ending love affair with Jeff Mathis got in the way of giving Conger consistent playing time. Hank only played three straight games twice the entire season.

However, Hank's lack of playing time was also severely compounded by Scioscia's apparent refusal to let Hank hit from the right side.

Of the 49 switch-hitters to accumulate 200 plate appearances this season (Conger was at 197, I rounded up), Hank received the fewest right-handed at-bats in baseball, and it wasn't even close.

23.7% of all MLB pitchers this season were left-handed. The average switch-hitter (with over 200 PA) faced left-handed pitching in 27.4% of their at-bats and started 27.6% of games in which a lefty was on the mound.

Of Conger's 197 PA, only 7.1% of them came from the right side of the plate and not one of his starts came against a left-handed pitcher.

Hank is not just an outlier, he's on another planet.

Conger's 7.1% is more than three standard deviations away from the mean. No one else is more than two away. Hank is the 1%. (Occupy Hank)

How far is he from the next switch-hitter on the list? Double Conger's rate, and you will almost get there.

Screenshot2011-11-26at122105am_medium

Since the original sample set includes guys like Jose Reyes and Mark Teixeira who take the field every day, perhaps the results are skewed a bit. If we reduce the sample noise by including just part-time players (200-400 PA), maybe Conger won't be as large an outlier.

And.....nope. Still way the hell out there.

The averages drop just slightly to 25.8% of at-bats and 25.2% of starts vs lefties. Of the 18 switch-hitting bench players left in the sample not named Conger, only four faced left-handed pitching in less than 20% of their plate appearances: Ramon Santiago, Dioner Navarro, Jorge Posada and Andres Torres.

2011 stats:

Last First POS PA LHB% RHB% AVG LH AVG RH GS v LHP LH Start%
Conger Hank C 197 92.9% 7.1% .211 .182 48 0 0.0%
Santiago Ramon 2B 294 80.6% 19.4% .245 .320 62 8 12.9%
Navarro Dioner C 202 83.2% 16.8% .196 .179 46 5 10.9%
Posada Jorge DH 387 81.7% 18.3% .269 .092 93 13 14.0%
Andres Torres CF 398 85.2% 14.8% .229 .170 78 8 10.3%

As I see it, there are two arguments for heavily platooning a switch-hitter:

  1. There's another player on the team who's (allegedly) better from that side of the plate.
  2. The switch-hitter shouldn't really be switch-hitting.

Santiago, Posada and Torres fit squarely into argument one. Each split his time with players who put up comparable to better numbers from the right side this season.

As far as argument two, while their splits vary slightly season to season each has put up about the same numbers from both sides of the plate in his career. None of the three have a platoon difference in career OPS greater than 20 points. They are "true" switch-hitters.

Navarro fits both arguments in a roundabout way. He has actually been a significantly better hitter from the right side in his career, OPS-ing over 100 points higher as a righty. With a .238/.299/.333 slash line as a lefty, I'd argue Navarro should only bat right-handed.

In spite of this easily accessible bit of information the Dodgers platooned Navarro with Rod Barajas, he of the career .238/.284/.414 slash line, forcing Navarro to take 83.2% of his plate appearances from the left side. Further evidence in my developing theory that the Dodgers have no clue what the hell they're doing.

So we have three understandable platoons and one stupid front office.

What, then, is going on with Conger? Why has Scioscia treated him strictly as a left-handed platoon player when he is a switch hitter?

In Conger's situation, the two arguments listed above seem to be one in the same. There's no way Scioscia views Mathis and Wilson as better offensive options from the right side unless Conger has no business switch-hitting.

Are Conger's numbers from the right side really that bad? Let's find out.

***

Jeff Sackmann used to run a pretty sweet site calculating splits for all minor leaguers called, logically, MinorLeagueSplits.com. Unfortunately the site is no longer up and running, but Jeff has graciously made the catalog of stats available in CSV format.

However, MinorLeagueSplits.com and its recent spin-off created by Kyle Boddy only includes data up to 2010. I searched far and wide for Conger's splits for his stint at Salt Lake this year, but they were nowhere to be found. MiLB.com's splits include his "current team only", which is the Scottsdale Scorpions of the AFL. No help there.

So, using MiLB GameDay I was able to rummage through each boxscore and compile his 2011 Triple-A splits myself. I may have made a few errors here and there but they should be pretty accurate.

Somewhere along the way 12 or 13 (depending on the source) of Conger's at-bats in 2007-2009 evaporated into the depths of the internet, never to be found again. They will be missed. However, since they make up 1% of total ABs, they don't mean much in the big scheme.

NB: I have no idea how to calculate Minor League Equivalencies so this is all taken at face value.

Overall:

as LHB as RHB
PA 1220 PA 498
AVG .316 AVG .262
OBP .370 OBP .363
SLG .505 SLG .377
OPS .875 OPS .741
BABIP .332 BABIP .311

EDIT: My original BABIP numbers were way too low, I subtracted the wrong number. They are now accurate.

Batted Ball Profile:

as LHB as RHB
GB% 42.4% GB% 47.2%
LD% 18.1% LD% 16.2%
FB% 33.1% FB% 29.8%
IFF& 6.9% IFF& 6.8%
BH% 0.9% BH% 0.9%
BB% 8.4% BB% 13.9%
K% 13.8% K% 21.3%

While Hank has a rather significant loss of power when hitting from the right side of the plate, he's not a bad hitter. His batted ball profile seems to indicate he's essentially the same hitter from the right side, just without power.

Every possible bane in the splits seems to have an antidote. For instance, a concerning 7% hike in strikeout rate it coincides with a nice 6% boost in walk rate. His .267 batting average seems low but if you bump his BABIP up into average range he's hovering at .300.

His power split is big but it's not the end of the world (see: Kendrys Morales). Even if we end up signing Ryan Hanigan (.275/.371/.368) or Ramon Hernandez (.267/.336/.403), their career power numbers from the right side aren't much better.

Overall, I really see nothing in the stats to indicate what made Scioscia so strict in his usage of Conger this season. His numbers aren't great but they're also not dismal.

I am excited at the prospect of acquiring a catcher not named Mathis to share duty with Conger behind the dish, but I see no reason to platoon Hank as dramatically has been done no matter who is signed.

***

Random things I learned while writing this FanPost:

  • The Reds and the Blue Jays were the only two teams without a single switch hitter on their roster in 2011.
  • The Angels had the most switch hitters with six, not including Kendrys Morales.
  • Lance Berkman's B-Ref page is sponsored by the guy from Desperate Housewives.
  • Excel 2011 has nothing on SPSS and Stata, which I sadly don't own. Excel no longer does histograms and shifting the numbers on the axis is apparently an impossibility.

Stats culled for this post are to be credited to Minor League Splits(Jeff Sackmann) / CC BY-SA 3.0, Baseball-Reference and myself. My full spreadsheets can be viewed here and here.

This FanPost is authored by an independent fan. Tell us what you think and how you feel.

In This FanPost

Teams

Trending Discussions