The More Things Change... (aka That Guy Redux)

Remember one of my very first posts entitled "That Guy?" Well, it's very short az I'll just paste it here for your reading pleasure:

Tuesday, August 22, 2006

That Guy
So, you know how sometimes people say things like, "Don't be that guy!" Well, I was just "that guy." I was paying to go over the George Washington Bridge, and I gave the nice lady $6. I then sat there for about 30 seconds waiting for change. "Schmutter, don't be that guy." I've spent a good portion of my life trying to NOT be that guy, but I was tonight. I feel like I've failed some of you out there. Next time you see me, flick my ear.
end

Anyway, I was That Guy again last night. Let's start at the beginning. I went to a book signing at the Barnes & Noble on 18th Street and 5th Avenue last night. Four of the Baseball Prospectus guys came to sign and speak about their new annual Baseball Prospectus 2008. I especially excited to meet Joe Sheehan because I like his work on baseballanalysts.com in addition to his regular work on Baseball Prospectus. Anyway, they were pretty much just normal guys. Joe was the balding funny guy; Jay Jaffe and Steven Goldman reminded me of the Jeff Goldblum and Wayne Knight characters from Jurassic Park; and Derek Jacques was like a slightly flamboyant, Indian college professor. They were terrific. Az the 40 or 50 of us are hanging out, talking baseball for almost two hours, and then we went up to get our books signed. So while Joe is signing my book I tell him that I like his work on baseballanalysts.com a lot. So he says "that's a different Joe Sheehan. I've read some of his stuff and he's way smarter than I am." Now I feel like an idiot, so I try to salvage my dignity by trying to be funny. "Oh man! I can't believe I was just That Guy! I guess it's alright; you probably get it all the time," I said. His reply: "nope, this was the first time." Now I'm horrified: "I'm the ORIGINAL That Guy?! Ohmygod!" It wasn't very pretty. As I said in my old post, I've spent most of my life trying to avoid being that guy. The tolls on the bridge might have changed, but clearly I haven't very much. Anyway, there's still some small part of me that's hoping that Joe really is the same guy and he just has an alter-ego. Aside from that it was a very pleasant experience.

I started reading Baseball Prospectus 2008, and this morning on the subway I had a bit of a brainstorm. In the book, they make a big deal out of platoon splits, the disparity in how players perform against lefties and righties. For those who don't know, right handed hitters generally do better against left handed pitchers and vice versa. The disparity is very pronounced for left-handed batters. It's for this reason that switch-hitters are highly valuable in baseball today. Now, there have been only a handful of pitchers who pitched with both hands; baseball-reference.com lists only six, and only one in the last 99 years. But what if aspiring hurlers trained themselves to be able to pitch from both sides? That would potentially eliminate the hitters' platoon advantage. Then I started thinking what would happen if a switch-pitcher faced a switch-hitter? Would they both keep switching their positions in the batter's box/pitching rubber until the umpire forced the pitcher to throw? Can you imagine how comical it would be to watch the pitcher and the hitter dance around trying to get the advantage? I envision a lot of balks (illegal activity by the pitcher. See the Wikipedia entry for all examples). Anyway, it probably won't happen, but I thought it was a fun brainstorm.