5 facts about southpaws in baseball for Lefthanders Day

Today is International Lefthanders Day, which, yes, is an actual thing. It's a strange thing, sure, but baseball is the one profession that craves left-handed humans more than perhaps any other, lusting over southpaws like football lusts for tall quarterbacks with big hands or hockey lusts over immeasurable grit and fist rigidity.

In honor of all our favorite lefties out there, here are five facts about left-handed players in baseball.

Baseball skews extremely left-handed, relative to the population

Estimates put the percentage of left-handed people in the population at anywhere from seven to 10 per cent, meaning that if baseball were sampling a random population, you'd expect two or three lefties per team. 

That's not the case. It's not even close, actually:

One in five batters throw left-handed (those numbers are by throwing hand in order to place switch-hitters in one bucket or the other), and more than a quarter of pitchers to toe the rubber this season have done so with the ball in their left hand. There's clearly a strong bias towards lefties relative to the population, and there's good reason for that.

Left-handed starters are dominant

Clayton Kershaw has won two of the last three National League Cy Young awards, which is a pretty good place to start. David Price won the American League award in 2012, too. Those are individual examples, but the pitching leaderboards skew even more heavily left-handed than the already-skewed baseball population:

So, 10 per cent of the population is left-handed, nearly 30 per cent of pitchers are left-handed, and left-handers account for more than a third of the top pitching seasons over the past five years. Pretty impressive, southpaws.

Left-handed hitters are great, just not against fellow lefties

Of course, left-handed pitchers are great, but what every manager really craves is a left-handed slugger in the middle of his order. There's evidence to suggest that, while not necessarily better overall, batters do more damage from the left side of the dish:

The overall impact may not appear that extreme, but the left-handed hitter against right-handed pitcher match-up is obviously a necessary tool in the manager's toolbox. What's more, like with pitchers, lefties tend to dominate the top of the power pool:

Left-handedness isn't for every position

There are advantages to being left-handed, sure. The platoon match-up is in your favor nearly 70 per cent of the time if you're a left-handed hitter, for example, and your natural positioning at first base allows you to face the entire infield when extending.

But there are drawbacks, too, and they've worked to limit left-handers to just a few positions on the diamond. Back-catching, and trying to throw around a right-handed batter more than two-thirds of the time? Forget about it. Throwing across your body from the left side of the infield? Rarely.

It's not an easy game for a lefty. You have to be able to hit well enough to play a non-premium defensive position in most cases, and even if you can carve that role out, there's nearly a 30 per cent chance you face a fellow lefty and, well, good luck.

But, as we've outlined, being a lefty in baseball, especially on the mound, ain't all struggles ...

Fifth left-handed "fact," presented without context

[Courtesy Fangraphs]