Ted Williams: BA v. righty/lefty pitchers.

baseball-fever.com has Ted Williams stats against lefty pitchers at this link.

I used that data here at my own link to figure stats for Williams against righty pitchers and to further enhance the data, including the creation of graphs.  This post, about batting average (BA), is the first of a series.  Others will include on base percentage (OBP), slugging average (SLG), on base plus slugging (OPS) and home runs per at bat.

Williams batted a career high against lefties in 1941: .420.  baseball-reference.com generally has play-by-play data back to about 1950 on a league level but some individual player splits are available as evidenced by result of the ad hoc query below.

For single seasons, From 1916 to 2012, vs LHP as LHB (within Platoon Splits), (requiring AB≥85 and batting_avg≥0.4), sorted by greatest Batting Average for this split

Rk	I	Player	Split	Year	G	BA	BAtot	GS	PA	AB	R	H	2B	3B	HR	RBI	SB	CS	BB	SO	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS	TB	GDP	HBP	SH	SF	IBB	ROE	BAbip	tOPS+	sOPS+
1	I	Stan Musial	vs LHP as LHB	1948	35	.436	.376		109	94		41	13	2	9	24	2	0	14	6	.436	.514	.904	1.418	85	4	1	0	0	0	2	.405	142	313
2		Ichiro Suzuki	vs LHP as LHB	2004	85	.404	.372		226	208		84	9	1	5	21	5	7	15	19	.404	.444	.529	.973	110	1	1	1	1	3	5	.427	124	166

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Play Index Tool Used
Generated 4/2/2013.

I used 85 at bats (AB) because Williams had 88 AB in 1941.

The graph below shows Williams BA percent difference against lefty pitchers: difference divided by BA against righty pitchers.


Biggest negative percent differences, excluding 1952 with only 10 AB, all against righties:
1960 -35.3% .224; .346 against righties; .316 overall
1958 -34.7% .227; .348 against righties; .328 overall; led AL
1946 -32.6% .244; .362 against righties; .342 overall

Only positive percent differences:
1956 18.7% .387; .326 against righties; .345 overall
1941  4.3% .420; .402 against righties; .406 overall
1948  0.6% .371; .369 against righties; .369 overall

Year  L% of PA
1939 10.34%
1940 18.76%
1941 17.33%
1942 11.18%
1946 16.37%
1947 16.02%
1948 25.08%
1949 23.29%
1950 37.98%
1951 25.78%
1952 0.00%
1953 19.09%
1954 27.34%
1955 27.60%
1956 30.42%
1957 22.06%
1958 15.79%
1959 20.25%
1960 23.45%