ARLINGTON, Texas — Have you ever watched switch hitter Ozzie Albies absolutely punish baseballs batting right-handed but struggle from the left side, and asked yourself (or the person at the next barstool) why the plucky Braves second baseman doesn’t just bat right-handed all the time?
Well, you’re not alone.
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“I think there’s been conversations ever since he’s been in the minor leagues,” Braves manager Brian Snitker said, regarding the notion of Albies’ abandoning switch hitting. “Because you saw (his disparity in righty-lefty stats) in the minor leagues, too.”
This subject has come up again now because Albies, who has a stunning .336 career average and .945 OPS batting right-handed against lefty pitchers before Monday, compared with a .245 average and .732 OPS batting left-handed against righties, has an even more pronounced disparity in his splits this season. A ginormous gap.
With just over one-fourth of the season completed, Albies leads all major-league qualifiers with his .439 average, his .842 slugging percentage and his 1.290 OPS in 57 at-bats while hitting right-handed, including two doubles off Rangers debuting lefty Cody Bradford in Monday’s series-opening 12-0 Braves rout at Globe Life Field.
However, batting left-handed, Albies has a .171 average and .571 OPS in 105 at-bats, third lowest among MLB qualifiers in each of those categories.
So, has there been serious discussion among Braves officials about Albies’ batting right-handed all the time?
“Not really,” said Snitker, whose Braves matched an MLB record with five two-run homers from Kevin Pillar, Ronald Acuña Jr., Orlando Arcia, Austin Riley and Marcell Ozuna and got 6 2/3 innings with 10 strikeouts from Charlie Morton in the win, snapping a four-game losing streak and remaining the only MLB team that’s not had as a much as a five-game skid since the beginning of the 2018 season.
“You look at a guy that has a 30 (homer season) and 100 (RBI season) under his belt, and All-Star appearances and things like that,” Snitker said of Albies, 26, a two-time All-Star and two-time Silver Slugger Award winner in his three full seasons before this, not counting injury-shortened 2020 and 2022 seasons or 2017 when he didn’t make his MLB debut until August.
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Snitker added, “You know what, if at some point in time he feels like he needs to do that, I’m sure he’ll come to us.”
Albies isn’t planning to do that.
“I love switch hitting,” he said after Monday’s game. “Some days it feels amazing on the left side, some days it feels not as good on the right side. Some days it’s opposite. I guess because I’m naturally righty it clicks better.”
He added that “it was a conversation in the past” he had with Braves coaches.
Hitting coach Kevin Seitzer said he discussed the possibility with Albies as recently as last year and followed up on it this spring.
.@ozzie getting in on the fun!#ForTheA pic.twitter.com/UYcOkoCCw5
— Atlanta Braves (@Braves) May 16, 2023
Though a general consensus around baseball is that going from many years of switch hitting to batting exclusively from one side is a switch that probably needs to be made during the offseason, to have an entire spring training to work through the transition, Seitzer believes Albies might just be talented enough to defy that school of thought.
That’s whether Albies wanted to, of course.
“I mean, if anybody could do it, he could do it during the season,” Seitzer said before Monday’s game. “I said something to him last year about it. He said if I did it, I’d want spring training to get used to it and all of that. So we came to spring training and I’m like, ‘What do you think?’ And he was like, ‘I just want to stay this way (switch hitting).’ And I was like, ‘I don’t blame you.’ I mean, the dude’s won two Silver Slugger awards.”
Also, despite all the hand-wringing that seems to ensue on social media every time Albies strikes out batting left-handed in a big situation, or goes through a particularly ugly slump from that side of the plate, ultimately he produces more offense than just about any current second baseman in baseball, as long as he’s healthy.
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When he hit his 10th homer Sunday at Toronto, he became the first middle infielder in the majors with double-digit homers this season. It was the second time he’s gotten his 10th homer within the team’s first 40 games, something no other MLB second baseman has done even once since 2017, and no other Braves middle infielder ever accomplished.
This season, Albies leads all MLB second basemen in homers (10), extra-base hits (20) and total bases (84), leads qualified second basemen in slugging percentage (.515), and is second among second basemen in RBIs (34).
Still, it’s understandable that some will keep wondering what Albies, who has the highest career batting average (.336) against left-handed pitchers among active players, might do if he hit from that same side against every pitcher.
But facing 93 mph sliders and 95 mph sinkers from a right-handed pitcher while batting right-handed is something Albies has never done, as he hit against an entirely different caliber of pitching when he was a switch-hitting teen in Curaçao. Making the switch, particularly during a season, would not be nearly as easy as some seem to think it would be.
Seeing nasty pitches come at him from angles he’s never seen them come from before — from right-handers — could be daunting, at least initially. But when asked about potentially hitting only from the right side, Albies laughed and said he would do what he’s done as a switch hitter: “Same thing,” he said. “Kill the ball.”
“Yeah, I’m kind of along the lines of agreeing with him, that he needs spring training in order to feel it out and get used to it,” Seitzer said. “But, I mean, we could do (pitching) machine work and things like that in the cage (during the season), but it’s not the same. He’s flipped around right-handed when we’ve faced certain types of (righty) pitchers — guys who have, like, the eephus slow curveballs, he’ll flip around. Or a cutter guy, like that (Ryne) Harper dude with the Nationals who had a kind of cutter and a big, really slow curve was his go-to. And Ozzie took him deep right-handed. Curveball.”
Albies hit a tie-breaking two-run homer batting right-handed against righty Harper in a September 2021 game. He’s made just 11 plate appearances batting right-handed against righty pitchers, including some position players throwing 50-60 mph in the late innings of blowouts. He’s 4-for-10 with three homers and an absurd 1.300 OPS in those PAs, for those curious. But again, those weren’t facing typical righties.
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And as long as he keeps putting up such overall robust offensive numbers switch hitting, the Braves aren’t going to request that he hit from the right side only. That’s up to Albies.
“Ozzie goes through some really rough stretches that are like, ‘Oh, my gosh,’” Seitzer said. “And the majority of the time they’re (batting) left-handed, and he makes up for it right-handed. And then he gets hot for a while left-handed. And then you get to the end of the year and you go, ‘Freakin’ Oz had a pretty good year.’ You know? Except for last year, and he was hurt; he had some serious issues last year physically for the first time.”
Albies missed nearly 100 games last season with a broken foot and a broken pinkie in the second game back from the injured list, then had postseason surgery for a sore shoulder that’s bothered him for a few years. Now, he’s healthy and raking. Even if far more consistently batting right-handed than left.
“Yeah, it doesn’t matter how we get there,” Albies said, agreeing with Seitzer about the final stats’ being more important than the splits. “If I can do anything to help the team win every night and do great, I’m happy with it.”
(Photo: Ron Jenkins / Getty Images)
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