Joseph Pawlikowski writes an interesting piece at River Ave. Blues suggesting the Yankees switch hitters should not turn around against pitchers with great changeups:

Earlier in the season Joe Maddon got some people thinking when he started running same-handed batters out against changeup-heavy pitchers. Mike wrote about it in the context of Mark Teixeira, who had been swinging over nearly every changeup thrown to him at that point. Yet the idea stretches across the entire lineup. A good changeup, the devastating kind that Shields and Romero feature, not only travels slower than a fastball despite using the same arm action, but it also tails. For the most part, a changeup will tail to the pitcher’s throw side. That means that Romero’s changeup would tail away from righties. Since it’s easier to hit a pitch breaking towards you than a pitch breaking away from you, doesn’t that change the platoon situation?

For Maddon it did. When the Rays faced Marcum earlier in the year he stacked his lineup with righties, and even had his switch-hitters bat right-handed. There’s plenty of randomness in baseball, so it’s tough to attribute the Rays’ success that game solely to Maddon’s lineup decision. Still, it’s tough to ignore the 10 hits and seven runs the Rays scored in four innings against Marcum. They had also scored five runs in 8.1 innings against him the time before. His ERA went from 2.59 heading into those two games with the Rays to 3.38 afterward.

Early in my tenure at ESPN, I noticed that Tom Glavine was noticeably better against RHB than LHB, despite having the platoon advantage against lefties. I asked Ray Knight about this, and he told me that Glavine threw a “dead-fish” pitch, one changeup that moved away from righties but right into the wheelhouse of a lefty batter. I asked him why managers didn’t start more lefties against Glavine, and Ray’s answer was that the media would vilify the manager if the team lost with a left-handed lineup. A couple of years later, Greg Olson, who caught Glavine, auditioned for Baseball Tonight. I asked him the same question, and got the same answer, even down to why managers won’t start lefties against Tom. I’m glad to see that Joe Maddon understands this, and that he actually modified his lineup accordingly.