On Switch Hitters and Speed

I received an email recently from a fellow member of SABR (The Society for American Baseball Research), that was asking opinions on who the all-time best switch hitters were. I immediately thought of who I consider the "Big 3" to be: Mickey Mantle, Pete Rose, and Eddie Murray. But after that I wasn't as sure... a few other names came to mind, but I decided that before responding I should consult baseball-reference.com. After doing so, I responded as follows:

"I'd rank them as follows:
1. Mickey Mantle
2. Pete Rose
3. Eddie Murray
4. Frankie Frisch
5. Roberto Alomar

Close call between Alomar and Chipper Jones. I might switch Jones and Alomar by the time Jones retires. Also, if it is just hitting -- then I'd choose Jones for #5 here... but I think Alomar is the better all-around player (including defense and speed). So depending on what you are after, you might need to switch my fifth-place vote.

Honorable mention to: Max Carey, Tim Raines, Ted Simmons, Bernie Williams, Chili Davis, Ken Singleton, Ozzie Smith, Omar Vizquel."

But in doing this little bit of research, I noticed (or re-noticed) an interesting fact. Only 1 of the top 100 players in all-time batting average was a switch-hitter: Frankie Frisch who ranks 70th. For Home-runs, only 4 of the top 100 were switch hitters: Mickey Mantle ranks 13th, Eddie Murray ranks 20th, and two others.

But 20 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 15th, George Davis 16th, Maury Wills 19th, Ozzie Smith 21st, and so on.

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 20 switch hitters in the top 100 SB, and 17 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.

Just my speculations on this...