Lawrence Butler's One Odd Split

The Athletics signed Lawrence Butler to a seven-year, $65.5 million extension over the offseason after he was one of the best hitters in baseball in the second half of the 2024 campaign. This year he hasn't quite matched that same production, but he's still been an effective player, batting .250 with a .307 OBP and a 107 wRC+ (100 is league average) while racking up 1.6 fWAR.

This season, however, manager Mark Kotsay has been having Butler sit against left-handers on occasion. It's not every time the A's face a lefty, but his days off do seem to come with a southpaw starting on the mound. On Tuesday night, Kotsay removed Butler from the game in the top of the tenth with a lefty reliever on the mound, sending backup catcher Austin Wynns to the plate in his place.

Wynns produced an eventful sac-fly that gave the A's the lead, and ultimately was enough to get his team the win.

This trend had us look into Butler's splits to see how he's fared against lefties, and while he hasn't been great against them, there is one odd split that stood out. Overall, he's batting .194 when facing a left-hander, while batting .266 against right-handers. That's fairly common for left-handed bats. Nothing to really see there.

But when you scroll down just a touch, you see that his home/road splits against lefties are fairly large. Of course, the sample sizes we're talking about are pretty small, but it's definitely something to keep an eye on--perhaps more so with how Kotsay uses that information in home and away games than the stats themselves.

On the road against a lefty, Butler is 5-for-32 (.156) with a solo home run, two walks, and 12 strikeouts. His on-base percentage also sits at just .206, while his wRC+ is just 37 (100 is league average). That means that he's 63% below league average when facing a left-hander on the road.

But at Sutter Health Park it's a slightly different story. He's 9-for-40 (.225) at home which isn't a huge difference given the limited sample size, but he's also put up two home runs and a triple in those nine hits, and his OBP is 71 points higher at .279. What stands out the most however, is that he has a 103 wRC+, three percent above league average against southpaws at home. That's quite a turnaround from his road numbers.

Part of this is a bit of a quirk of the amount of data we have from this season, but it's certainly a quirk to keep an eye on. If Tuesday's situation, a tie game with a lefty on the mound in extra innings, came up in West Sacramento, would Kotsay have made the same move he did in Tampa? That's the interesting part that we should keep an eye on.