In baseball, what makes left-handed pitchers so successful?
There are three factors here. First, left-handed pitchers stand on the mound facing first base, making it much easier to spot base-stealing attempts, and to throw out the runner. Secondly, the throwing arm of a lefty pitcher is more hidden from view of a righty batter, making it difficult for the batter to gauge the pitch as it’s being thrown. Finally, lefties naturally tend to throw the ball towards the left side of the plate (from the batter’s perspective), placing the pitch inside for a righty batter (which is more difficult to hit). Ironically, the perceived success of LH pitchers is primarily due to their inherent advantages over the LH hitters that the other teams put in their lineups to hit off the RH pitchers! Often, managers will bring in a pitcher to face just one hitter (LH-on-LH or RH-on-RH matchup), because of which hitters are coming up soon, or even to try to force the opposing manager to pinch hit to get HIS favorable matchup (the hitting team gets to make the last chan
