There’s something going on within baseball right now for which I don’t have a good explanation. I’ve shared it with a few statistically-inclined friends of the company and I’m hoping they’ll be able to suss out the reasons for this.

For now, I’m just going to point out what’s going on because I don’t know if it’s just a small-sample anomaly or something bigger.

In a sentence: Right-handed batters are having a much rougher go of it against left-handed pitching than they typically do.

In a table:

Right-Handed Batters vs Left-Handed Pitchers – Last 5 Seasons

Note the extreme drop-off from 2023 to the first two months of 2025. That doesn’t exist if we flip things and look at left-handed batters versus right-handed pitching.

The gap between those hitter results in 2023 and the start of 2025 is 2 points of batting average (instead of 16), 2 points of on-base percentage (instead of 13) and 10 points of slugging percentage (instead of 49). Ten points is a deficit that could be made up as the weather gets warmer and offense increases. Forty-nine points of slugging percentage is a bigger crater.

Let’s look at this from a more micro perspective.

Yankees right-handed batters are hitting .304/.398/.535 against left-handed pitching for a league-leading .952 OPS and a large chunk of that is obviously Aaron Judge (.444/.565/1.111 in 46 plate appearances). But it’s also Paul Goldschmidt (24-for-45 with 10 walks) and Anthony Volpe (.328 BA, .929 OPS).

And Yankees left-handed pitchers are dominating right-handed hitters, holding them to a .191 opponents’ batting average (2nd-lowest) and .562 opponents’ OPS (lowest). Carlos Rodón (.153 BA allowed, .499 OPS) and Max Fried (.207 BA, .521 OPS) are dominating. Ryan Yarbrough (.177 BA, .604 OPS) has been pretty good too.

Meanwhile Orioles right-handed batters collectively have MLB worsts in batting average (.199) and OPS (.540). against southpaw pitching. There’s a six-player group with a smattering of 72 plate appearances headed by Tyler O’Neill and Gary Sánchez that is a combined 4-for-63.

And Orioles left-handed pitchers have allowed the 3rd-highest batting average (.283) and OPS (.821) to right-handed hitters (Cade Povich and Cionel Pérez have been especially ineffective).

I also want to give a shout-out to the left-handed relief pitchers who are thriving against right-handed hitters. We’re only a few years into the three-batter rule that all but eliminated the existence of the LOOGY. Lefty relievers wanting to stick around know they have to be really good against right-handed hitters.

You may not know their names, but you should know their stats. Brendon Little (Blue Jays), Mason Fluharty (Blue Jays), Steven Okert (Astros), Garrett Cleavinger (Rays), Danny Coulombe (Twins), Yuki Matsui (Padres), Bryan King (Astros) and Brennan Bernardino (Red Sox) have the eight lowest opponents’ batting averages against right-handed hitters.

Combined, right-handed batters are hitting .136 and slugging .211 against that group, with specialty pitches such as King’s sweeper and Matsui’s splitter repeatedly shutting hitters down. They are a small piece but nonetheless an interesting one to consider in trying to figure out what the heck is going on with this trend at the moment.

If you want to see stats for right-handed hitters versus left-handed pitchers, click the links to see them on Baseball-Reference and FanGraphs.