Mickey Mantle: father knew best but for the wrong reason.

If he somehow knew that his son Mickey Mantle would have 4,848 plate appearances (PA) in Yankee Stadium, which was very difficult for right handed sluggers, then, yes, Mutt Mantle was correct when he started teaching his son to switch hit in 1936, Joe DiMaggio's rookie season.

Jimmie Foxx, Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, and Mickey Cochrane
[CC-BY-1.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/1.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962): "When the legend becomes fact, print the legend."

Yankee manager Casey Stengel won the World Series in his first five Yankee seasons (1949-1953) and was known for platooning players like Hank Bauer/Gene Woodling.  I'm guessing that sports writers in the early 1950s retrofitted that into the Mantle legend and credited Mutt with seeing the future of platoon baseball (righty batters against lefty pitchers, lefty batters against righty pitchers).  That could have been reinforced by:

Father Knows Best (radio 1949-1954, television 1954–1960): TV actor Robert Young often, but not always, knew best.  In real life "he suffered from depression and alcoholism, culminating in a suicide attempt in January 1991".

Maybe it's documented somewhere but I cannot imagine what drove Mutt Mantle to force young Mickey to learn to switch hit.  Even now we do not have good lefty/righty splits for seasons before 1950.  Probably it was just Mutt's experience trying to hit curve balls and side arm pitchers.

We know that Mutt named his son after a player later elected to the as yet to be created Hall of Fame: Gordon Stanley Cochrane, better known as Mickey, also Black Mike.  In later life this became one of Mickey Mantle's standard laugh lines, that he was glad that his father didn't know Cochrane's real first name was Gordon.

Cochrane was a catcher who batted lefty and, of course, threw righty.  So he may have been a lefty batter of opportunity as most are.  Fewer than half of all lefty batters throw lefty.

By October 20, 1931 when Mickey Mantle was born Cochrane was 28 and had just completed his seventh full season, all with the Philadelphia As.  Philadelphia won the American League pennants in 1929, 1930, 1931, also winning the World Series in 1929 and 1930.  In 1928 Cochrane won the old MVP award.  The fact that Cochrane won the modern MVP award in 1934 as player/manager of the pennant winning Detroit Tigers is usually cited as influencing Mutt but obviously Mickey Mantle was already three years old by then.

Didn't Mutt realize the difficulty the great DiMaggio was having hitting home runs (HR) in Yankee Stadium?  Here are DiMaggio's splits for his career, rookie season, two seasons leading AL in HR and WS (lower is better):

           AB HR AB/HR
Home 2,758 126 21.89
Road 2,851 177 16.11

1936 home 288 8 36.00
1936 road 349 21 16.62

1937 home 306 19 16.11
1937 road 315 27 11.67

1948 home 294 15 19.60
1948 road 300 24 12.50

WS home  90 0
WS road       109 8 13.63

Not that Mutt knew that Mickey would one day play for the Yankees but that ball parks influence hitting too.

Friday, February 10, 2012
New way to switch hit.

While playing for the Angels 1964-1970 hot shot bonus baby righty slugger Rick Reichardt made his manager Bill Rigney who managed the Angels from their inception in 1961 into 1969 a little nuts by suggesting that he learn to bat lefty in order to take advantage of certain ball parks.  You know, bat righty in Fenway Park, lefty in Yankee Stadium regardless of which arm the pitcher used.  Most people thought Reichardt was nuts.  However, Reichardt may have been ahead of his time.  Reichardt wanted to take advantage of another stupid baseball rule that allows for non-uniform playing areas.
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Here's the thing that Mutt Mantle did not and could not know: his son Mickey was one of the greatest right handed hitters of all time.  Except for the Yankee Stadium factor, which was an accident, Mickey did not need to switch hit.

Friday, April 19, 2013
Mickey Mantle was a great right handed hitter.

Mickey Mantle is really the only great switch hitter and that seems to be because he was a really great righty batter.  Here is a list of 21 righty batters, both switch hitters and righty only, against lefty pitchers since 1950 sorted by OPS...

Despite the disadvantage of playing his home games in the original Yankee Stadium, which was very tough on righty batters, Mantle is in a virtual tie at the top with Aaron and Mays
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In recent posts I used the metaphor of the Twilight Zone TV program from the 1950s to describe Mickey Mantle batting right handed exclusively: TZ Mickey.  Here are the basic averages:

BA OBP  SLG OPS
.298 .421 .557 .977 Real
.323 .413 .558 .971 TZ

I left Mickey's numbers against lefty pitchers alone and used Mickey's averages as a base and for each of his 18 seasons and applied the average MLB percent difference between righty batters against lefty pitchers v. righty batters against righty pitchers.  For all four averages for all 18 seasons righty v. righty performed worse.

I'll review the numbers in detail in future posts but overall it appears that Mickey Mantle would have performed comparably well batting only right handed, especially if he had played his home games in a ball park more neutral to righty/lefty batting.