It has long been known that baseball players who bat with their left hand are over-represented in their sport. The Oldenburg sports scientist Florian Loffing has now discovered this together with international colleagues: Baseball players who bat left-handed but throw right-handed are more successful than players who both throw and bat left-handed.
The researchers have published their findings in the renowned New England Journal of Medicine. In their study, they re-evaluated data from a study published in 1982. Back then, researchers found that baseball players who bat and throw left-handed had an advantage when batting. The authors hypothesised that this was due to the fact that the functions of the right and left hemispheres of the brain differ less in left-handers than in right-handers, which could be advantageous for baseball players.
In their new study, Loffing and his colleagues Dr David Mann, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (Netherlands), and Dr Peter Allen, Anglia Ruskin University (England), also used data from all US Major League Baseball players from 1871 to 2016. Based on this information, they now draw different conclusions from the authors of the 1982 study, according to which players who throw right-handed and bat left-handed have a particular advantage: while only two per cent of the population as a whole throw with their right hand and bat with the other, this figure is 12 per cent among Major League professionals. And as many as 32 per cent of the best hitters to date throw and hit this way.
As the dominant right hand of these players is further away from the end of the bat than that of players who throw and hit with their left hand, the lever for hitting the ball is longer and therefore the force is greater, the researchers assume. "Left-handed baseball players already have some advantages. But players who throw right-handed and bat left-handed could additionally benefit from such a biomechanical advantage," concludes Loffing.