If 2026 is “the year of the lefty batter,” given that lefties are taking a higher share of plate appearances and with more success doing so than at nearly any other time in recent Major League history, then the Red Sox may have a pretty effective countermeasure headed into the playoffs. It's a potentially crucial one, given that no offense has scored fewer runs in September than Boston has.
Boston, more than any team in decades, features a pitching staff loaded with left-handed pitchers. So, so many of them. More than any team has deployed in nearly 40 years, in fact. In a sport in which 30% of plate appearances see a lefty on the mound, the Red Sox are at nearly 60%. It is, by our math, twice as many as average. It’s the most since the 1988 Reds. It’s just outside the top dozen all time.
Ned Flanders, eat your heart out. (Stats below are as of Friday.)
Red Sox southpaws have thrown 832 1/3 innings this year, a whopping gap of 264 innings over second-place Philadelphia, and more than five times as many as the 30th-ranked Mariners. Boston has started a lefty 119 times, the third most of all time. It's the most since the 1983 Yankees of Ron Guidry and Dave Righetti, whom you remember, and also Shane Rawley and Ray Fontenot, whom you may not.
It could have even been more, too. Staff ace Garrett Crochet, a lefty, threw just 30 early-season innings, injuring his shoulder before April was even over. He hasn’t been seen since, though he’s still holding out hope he can be available in relief in October. Young lefty Connelly Early, 24, provided 91 2/3 first-half innings before he too was injured and then traded to Washington for infielder Curtis Mead.
In their stead are fellow lefties Ranger Suarez, Payton Tolle, Jake Bennett and Patrick Sandoval, as starters, and Aroldis Chapman, Jovani Morán, Alec Gamboa, Raymond Burgos and Trade Deadline acquisition Erik Miller out of the bullpen. They’re among the 14 different lefties who have thrown at least 10 innings, easily the most of any team in baseball.
Is that all a coincidence under president of baseball operations Craig Breslow, a known left-handed person who appeared in 576 regular-season games over a 12-year career?
It’s hard to say if it’s an intentional strategy -- good pitchers are good pitchers, after all -- but it’s worth noting that Breslow was hired following the 2023 season. Since then, Boston’s left-handed innings rank has immediately gone from a paltry 28th (2024) to seventh (2025) to, again, “the most in nearly 40 years.”
(On the other hand, Triple-A Worcester was merely 15th of 30 teams in lefty innings; Double-A Portland eighth of 30; Boston's Single-A teams in Greenville and Salem are just outside the top 10. Maybe it’s not that intentional, at least up and down the organization.)
Still, if we can borrow and update a table from Anthony Castrovince’s look at lefty hitters earlier this season, you can see why this might be a relatively appealing strategy. In a world where lefty batters are more prominent than ever, the best outcomes you can get among any of the platoon situations remain lefty-pitcher-vs-lefty-batter. That’s the story you get from wOBA, or weighted on-base average, which shows you why platoon matchups are still so valued.
MLB 2026 platoon situations
But, as the Red Sox barrel toward a Wild Card Series matchup with the Yankees, what does this mean for the playoffs? Can you win, in other words, with this extreme of a left-handed tilt? Is there such a thing as being too left-handed?
“I don’t think we’re going to be putting a ton of stock in the fact that potentially we could have four lefties,” said Boston’s pitching coach. “I think they’re four legitimate left-handed pitchers.”
That was actually former pitching coach Carl Willis, way back in 2017, one of approximately a million times this topic came up previously. Those Red Sox won 93 games. The 1965 Dodgers, essentially tied atop our list of most lefty teams ever, won 97 and the World Series -- though they were led by not just any lefty, but none other than Sandy Koufax. The 1980 Yankees, also on that list, won 103 games; the 2017 Dodgers, one of a very few teams in history who had four lefties making 20 starts apiece, won 104 games and lasted until the seventh game of the World Series.
It can be done, is the point, and it’s not like the Red Sox will roll out nothing but lefties. Righty starter Sonny Gray, in the midst of an excellent season, is all but certain to be one of the team’s top two starters, and Garrett Whitlock, Tyron Guerrero and Brayan Bello should feature prominently in various roles. It helps, obviously, that Boston’s lefties can handle right-handed hitters; they have had the seventh-best outcomes of any team when it’s a lefty batter against a righty hitter. (This is part of a larger trend since the implementation of the three-batter minimum; lefties, now, simply must be able to face righties effectively.)
It helps, also, that some of Boston’s potential opponents in the American League should they advance have something of a weakness against lefty pitching; Cleveland and Tampa Bay are two of baseball’s six weakest offenses against southpaws in terms of wRC+. That’s not entirely true for the Yankees, who have been better against lefties than righties, but there’s a hidden secondary effect here, too, which is this: Having this many lefties on the mound forces opponents to roll out different lineups, which is about to be a problem Yankees manager Aaron Boone is going to have to consider.
Consider this:
That’s not an accident. That’s opposing managers sitting their lefty hitters and putting in righty platoon bats, which is easily palatable when you’re looking to give a starter a mid-week July day off and somewhat more difficult to do in a short postseason series.
The Yankees, in the midst of uncertainty about whether Aaron Judge will be available, would then be forced to consider some uncomfortable choices. You don’t really want to let catcher Austin Wells face lefties, against whom he has a mere .441 OPS this year and .580 for his career, but it’s hard to see journeyman Ali Sánchez starting playoff games just because he hits righty.
Ryan McMahon’s complete inability to hit lefties (.509 OPS this year, .667 career) might lead to Anthony Volpe playing third base, a position he had never played in the Majors prior to Friday. It goes on and on. Jazz Chisholm Jr. is about 100 points of OPS worse against lefties, both this year and for his career. Luis García Jr.’s breakout year with Washington came in part because of how little they asked him to face lefties, a trend the Yankees have attempted to continue, and for good reason -- 27 of his 30 homers have come against righty pitchers.
While lefties Ben Rice and Cody Bellinger are going to start against all comers, and Spencer Jones has been successful in just a small sample, the mere presence of all of these lefties is going to force Boone into some difficult and potentially unpopular decisions.
It’s not that the Yankees can’t hit lefties. They can, and they do, better than most. It’s just going to force Boone to make some uncomfortable choices in all-or-nothing games to do it, potentially also sacrificing some defense along the way. It’s not the way you’d draw it up. On the other hand, you never really need to, either. It’s not often you run into a team with this much lefty pitching. It hasn’t been seen in decades.