Left Handed Players Dominate in Baseball

According to Korea Gallup`s research, the number of left handers in Korea is up to two million people, about one-fourth of the population. Also, on the question of the survey referring to whether lefties have more advantage over right handers in terms of daily life convenience, 48 percent of the respondents answered that lefties were unfavorable whereas only eight percent ended said lefties have an advantage.

In this way, much of the present thoughts represent that daily life is against the left handers, but in the baseball world, it`s a whole different story. Left handed pitchers and batters are at the primetime of their careers.

Out of a total of 480 players in the league, 95 players, 19.8 percent, are left handers and as of May 20, with the exception of the pitchers, 32 players are left handers within the 113 starting players in Triple A, comprising 28.3 percent.

The numbers look relatively small, but first of all, seven of the the top 10 batters in the league are left handers. SK`s Lee Jin-young leads the group with a batting average of 0.384 and Lee Young-woo(Han-Hwa, BA of 0.372) and Martin(LG,BA of 0.370) both are on the pursuit. Also, fifth ranked Kim Ki-tae(SK), seventh ranked Davis(Han-Hwa), ninth ranked Park Yong-taek, and tenth ranked Jung Soo-keun(Lotte) are also left handed.

Lee Jin-Young, who increased his strength through an intensive winter training program, leads the league in the most hits this season with 61 singles in 40 games. If he keeps up this pace, it would be possible for him to get 202 hits, which would surpasses the current record of 196 singles set by Kia`s Lee Jong-Bum in 1996. Lee Young-woo tops in runs scored and walk percentage with 0.478. Stolen base leader Jun Joon-ho is also a left hander with 18 stolen bases. The general analysis explains that due to the scarcity of left handed batters, pressure falls on the shoulders of the pitchers and also since the left handed batters are two to three steps closer to first base from the plate compared to the right handed batters, lefties are much more favorable.

The mighty strength of the southpaws not only bulge out at the plate, but also on the mound. Doo-San`s left hand pitcher Les earned his seventh victory (with two losses) against SK on May 20 to advance to the lead for most wins. LG`s Lee Seung-ho also leads in ERA (1.82) and is second in strikeouts with 55. Lotte`s lefty Joo Hyung-kwang overcame the aftermath of a ligament surgery he underwent in 2001 and faced his second peak of his career as he has four wins (fifth place for most wins) and an ERA of 2.96 (fourth place).

Jong-Seok Kim kjs0123@donga.com