The Pecan Park Eagle

Darrell Pittman
Our Pecan Park Eagle Baseball Researcher
“Nobody Does it Better or with More Passion for Accuracy!”

He’s done it again. Big time, this time.

The indefatigable baseball researcher we all know as Darrell Pittman has come up with just about all the nuts and bolts that have gone into Houston MLB batting history against right and left handed pitchers, separately and collectively, since the franchise began in 1962, and running through the completion of last season’s 2014 data.

If you bear in mind that “RH” signifies right-handed batter, “RP” symbolizes right-handed pitcher, and that “LH/LP” bear the same values for players performing on the southpaw side, the following table will read easily on just a few of the data items that Darrell has captured.

There is much more to the data base. I simply could not come up with a readable format for displaying it here on short notice, forcing me to fall back on my personal rule about data charts and tables: “If you can’t make it neat – relax and delete.”

If anything, the data stands as confirmation that opposite hand hitter-pitcher match-ups do result in an overall advantage to the batter.

Through 2014, the Houston MLB team batting average was .254. For me, that information simply confirmed why I still harbor affection for .300 as the “Mantle Crying Line” for greatness with the stick. Mantle forever lamented  that his performance fell hard off the hitting cliff after 1964 and carried him through his final four seasons to a .298 finish in 1968, his last call, for hitting, at least.

When he has time, I will ask Darrell for his sources on the compilation of this data – and the much more me he sent me that is not shown here. When that narrative is available, we will add it to this column as an addendum to this post.

Meanwhile, enjoy what you may derive from this limited display and please do not be shy about posting your comments and questions below.

Thanks, The Pecan Park Eagle.

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Addendum source Information from Darrell Pittman, 9/15/15 (same date as column):

The data source is Retrosheet. More specifically, the season batting splits pages that start at:

http://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1962/WHOU01962.htm

and go up through:

http://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/2014/WHOU02014.htm

I used the first section of each page, labeled “Batting Splits”. (The lower section, labeled “Pitching Splits” appears to be opponents’ batting against our pitchers.) The software just downloaded and added up the “Batting Splits” figures from the season pages.

~ Darrell Pittman

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Tags: 1962-2014, All Time Astros Club Batting

This entry was posted on September 15, 2015 at 2:22 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.