Becoming Platoon Neutral
You Probably Have it in You already.
Becoming Platoon Neutral: You Probably Have it in You Already
Over the last couple years the league has implemented new rules that affect relievers more than anyone. The three batter minimum is one of those rules. Before, if you came in as a reliever you were able to face one or two hitters and could be pulled mid-inning. Now, you have to face at least three batters and opposing teams are taking advantage of it more than ever. In Major League baseball, you will rarely see a lineup with three hitters of the same handedness in a row. teams and managers love to split lineups to make it increasingly difficult for opposing teams to get in a rhythm or have a break where they will have a significant advantage in one direction or the other.
Because of this, pitchers are required to be better than they have ever been. Pitchers often need to have multiple options to throw different hitters of different handedness in order to be as effective as they possibly can. If you look deep enough into pitchers and their splits against certain platoons, you will often find issues with results against one side of hitter or the other. A few weeks ago, I wrote an article about Twins reliever Cole Sands. Sands had a great year in 2024, however he had much more success against right-handed hitters than he did against left-handed hitters (LHH). Sands faced nearly twice as many right-handed hitters (RHH) then he did LHH yet almost gave up as many hits to LHH and even walked more LHH than he did RHH.
There are many solutions to solving this problem, oftentimes it involves throwing a different breaking ball to LHH than you would to RHH. However, learning a new pitch all together can be super challenging, even during the off season. Fortunately for many, you might already have two variations of breaking ball within your own pitch repertoire. In Sands' case, his curveball has a significant amount of variation in movement. Sands has thrown curveballs that should be tagged as a sweeper variant, Plotting at -19 in of horizontal movement and 0 in of induced vertical movement. However, within the same exact pitch type he has thrown a pitch with negative 10 horizontal movement and negative 11 vertical movement.
These two pitches will project completely different outcomes between two hitters of different handedness. The curveball with significant amounts of horizontal break will be devastating towards right-handed hitters, but will struggle against left-handed hitters. However, the pitch with equal amounts of horizontal and vertical movement (traditional slurve shape), will project significantly better against left-handed hitters than the one with just horizontal movement. Overall, the slurve shape will be pretty platoon resistant and can be used against both handedness of hitter. However, the sweeper profile against right handed headers will be significantly stronger.
Sands Has already shown the capacity to throw platoon neutral breaking balls on command. He also has shown the ability to throw two completely different shapes within the same pitch. At the major league level and across professional baseball as a whole teaching players something completely new is incredibly difficult and can oftentimes lead to dips in performance. However, if Sands has already shown the capability to dominate major league pitching and has a naturally varying breaking ball shape, getting him to manually shift between the two shapes on command is likely something he has a very high chance to accomplish consistently.
Leaning into a pitcher's natural capabilities and biases is a much better way to improve a pitcher's performance than to try and teach him something totally foreign. Mixing platoon specific breaking balls into someone's Arsenal can be a massive advantage. you see it all across the league and specifically in a reliever like Tim Herrin. Herrin specifically changed his pitch usage based on handedness and went from a struggling 2023 campaign to being absolutely dominant in 2024.
Sands was already a weapon for the twins in 2024 and could be even more so in 2025 if he adapts a new strategy against hitters of different handedness.
John