Furthering Raburn's Cause

The idea of using Raburn as the everyday left-fielder is certainly not a new one. Even Lynn Henning joined the bandwagon today:

But for now, the Tigers are going with Guillen. I have my thoughts on that matter (it has to do with seniority and paying an esteemed Tigers player proper respect), but if performance means anything, Guillen will DH in 2010 and Raburn will be playing left field.

To realize the need for better defense in left field, I wanted to explore the fly-ball tendencies of our presumed starting four pitchers: Verlander, Porcello, Scherzer, and Bonderman.

The outfield sections are broken down according to the Project Scoresheet diagram used at baseball-reference.com. The larger black number indicates the amount of in-play balls hit in each outfield section. The smaller gray number is the number of those fly balls caught by the left or right fielder (some are caught by the center fielder, but that number is not added to the total). Home and away data is combined. On to the numbers:

A few notes:

• At-bats against (LHAB-RHAB): Verlander (505-397), Porcello (381-278), Scherzer (351-306), Bonderman (405-422)
  
• Bonderman's data, unlike the others, is from 2006 - his last full, healthy season
• Scherzer had the smallest majority of fly balls to LF: 92-89
  
• The LF/RF fly-ball ratios remain about the same for Verlander and Bonderman in their careers

This was simply meant to show a trend. The majority, 54% (437/786) in this case, of fly balls going to a corner outfielder will be to left or left-center field (for these starting four pitchers, of course). I wish I could delve further into the numbers. Knowing how many of them were sharp line drives or weak foul balls would provide a better picture. But for now, the conclusion that I'll reach is that Raburn should be our left-fielder, not rotating between the corner spots.