southpaw

It seems fair to say that the southpaw advantage has shaped the game we know in fundamental ways.

You would be able to count all the lefty pitchers in the Hall of Fame on your fingers, and every few years we might debate whether a southpaw will ever win the Cy Young Award again.

Therefore, if southpaws are achieving superior movement, that should show up in the rate of spin on their pitches.

We turn now to estimating the size of the “southpaw advantage,” which we define as the overall advantage a pitcher gains solely from being left-handed, as compared to a right-handed pitcher with equal pitch quality.

As we stated earlier, southpaws have pitched 28 percent of major league innings in recent years, despite representing just 10 percent of the male population.

The four-part story of Henry Wiggen begins with The Southpaw, which was published a year after The Natural.

He was one of the pitchers who when he was good was very good indeed, and on that day his southpaw slants were simply unhittable.

Then a veritable torrent of hits broke from the Bostons bats and drove the southpaw from the mound.

At the age when its purity was whitest, a great moon hung midway between Southpaw peak and Moon mountain.

The enemy over in Southpaw had already advanced the prophecy that they would take the meeting-house.

Over in Southpaw the enemy gazed down from the heights upon this spectacle in amazement.