June 1st this season was a milestone date for the New York Mets. The Mets hosted the Cardinals that day and achieved something never previously accomplished in the team’s first 50 seasons of play. That was the day, of course, of Johan Santana‘s no-hitter, the first ever by a Met.

After the break, I’ll take a look at this and other similar games.

Surprise! This post is not about Johan Santana or no-hitters, though they will long be associated with that Mets/Cardinals game on June 1st. No, what ALSO happened that day for the first time in Mets history actually occurred just prior to the game, when the Mets’ manager Terry Collins filled out a lineup card with the names of eight left-hand hitting starters. He enjoyed it so much, he did it again a couple of weeks later, again with Johan on the mound.

Here’s the list of games since 1918 where a team fielded a starting lineup with 8 left-handed batters.

That’s eleven different teams represented in those 22 games. While the number of games is small, it is interesting that 4 of the the 7 teams with more than one game like this (’37 and ’39 Senators, ’79 Yankees, ’88 White Sox) fielded such a lineup twice against the same opponent, and within the same week.

How about if we expand the search to also include switch-hitters? Now we have these games from 1918 to 1968 with every starting batter a lefty or switch-hitter.

So, there were 3 such games in 50 years (1918-67) and 3 more in 1968. Then 6 more (by 5 teams) in 1969. That “explosion” has continued. Since 1969, there has been a total of 109 games with 9 starters batting left or switch, including 19 so far this season, 16 of those by Cleveland. There were also 19 such games in 1986 and 18 in 1985, with St. Louis logging 35 of those 37 lineups.

Looking at team rosters, here are the teams with most left-hand hitters to appear in 100 or more games.

Interesting that there are no Yankee teams here, despite the obvious advantage for most left-hand hitters in Yankee Stadium. The Yankees, though, did have 8 teams with 5 left-hand batters, but only one (in 2005) since 1951.

And, expanding to include switch-hitters, we have these teams.

At the top of the list, the 2009 Yankees, with no fewer than four regular switch-hitters. Also, of these 6 teams, 2 (New York, St. Louis) were world champions, another (Minnesota) was a division winner and LCS finalist, and a fourth (Los Angeles) finished just one game back of a division title. Not a bad showing for a group of 6 teams. One other note: in addition to these teams, of the 38 teams with 7 left 0r switch batters, ALL but the 1921 Tigers (who had no switch hitters) have come since 1965.

So, why is it that earlier teams are not showing up on these lists? Here’s a graph showing number of regular players (100+ games) per team who batted left, right or both.

Well, there’s the answer. This is interesting. Lineups have become progressively more varied with platooning and other tactics for sharing playing time. There are more regular batters per team, though left-hand batters have stayed fairly steady throughout the live-ball era. The increases have been for right-hand and, especially, for switch batters.

Switch-hitting started coming into vogue in the sixties. My guess is Mickey Mantle‘s success may be responsible for popularizing switch-hitting. The other related effect may be that having more switch hitters has allowed managers to employ larger pitching staffs, though that tactic seems to this writer to have gone too far, with benches now too short for much game situation tactics.