Ramon Laureano Suddenly Can’t Turn Left

[N.B. Lindberg]

Very few players excel at everything. Sure, there are the Shohei Ohtanis and Bobby Witt Jr.s of the world who seemingly do it all, but the key to success for most players is that they do one thing extremely well and tread water everywhere else. Ramon Laureano was one of those players, and he still kind of is, except he is doing it in the complete opposite way as before. 

After parts of nine seasons in the bigs and at 31 years old, there isn’t a ton of mystery as to what makes Laureano tick. He plays solid outfield defense, holds his own against right-handed pitching, and crushes lefties. Just about every team would sign up for his career wRC+ of 108 against right-handed pitching and 123 wRC+ against lefties from a guy who can fake it in center for a game or two. It’s why the San Diego Padres traded for him last year, and he more than lived up to the billing in 2025, posting a wRC+ of 139 against left-handed pitching and a career-best 137 against right-handers. 

Heading into 2026, the expectation was that Laureano would cool off a tad against right-handers but would continue to mash lefties. And while he has cooled off a tad against same-handed pitching, he has cratered when he has the platoon advantage, just like no one expected. 

It’s still early, but heading into a mid-May clash with the Milwaukee Brewers, Laureano has a wRC+ of 113 against right-handed pitching and a wRC+ of 45 against lefties. While Laureano has had extended stretches where he has hit right-handed pitching well, the last time he finished a season with a wRC+ below 100 against left-handed pitching was the truncated 2020 season. If you exclude 2020 for the obvious reason that it was 60 games long, the lowest full-season mark of his career against left-handers is 108. Simply put, a wRC+ of 45 is beyond uncharted territory. 

Ramon Laureano Career Platoon Splits

*Stats as of May 12, 2026

Early in his career, Laureano did hit right-handed pitching better than left-handed pitching, but he was still wildly productive against lefties. However, starting in 2021, he began showing more conventional platoon splits, but the degree to which it has flipped this season is jarring. 

The easy answer to his struggles is that he is running a BABIP of .250 against lefties, against a career figure of .338, but there’s far more to it than just bad luck. Laureano is struggling against left-handed pitching because he hasn’t been able to turn on it. 

Stop me if you’ve heard this before, but Laureano’s offensive profile is driven by power. He doesn’t possess monster bat speed or exit velocities, but when he does make contact, it’s usually hard, in the air, and to the pull side. For his career, he has a pulled air rate of 19.4%, against the league average of 16.7%, and it was 21.8% in 2025. Unfortunately, in 2026, his pull air rate is down to a near career-low of 15.9%, and it has come largely against left-handed pitching. 

For his career, Laureano owns a fly ball rate of 37.1% and a pull rate of 43.6%. Against right-handed pitching, his career fly ball rate is 38.5% with a pull rate of 43.3%, and when facing left-handed pitching, his fly ball rate clocks in at 33.9% with a pull rate of 44.3%. In 2026, his fly-ball rate against left-handed pitching is up to 45%, but his pull rate is down to 30%. 

That's a lot of numbers to throw at you, but the point of the data is thus: Throughout his career, the more he has lifted the ball against left-handed pitching, the worse the results have been (-0.83 linear correlation to wRC+), but the more he has pulled the ball, the better they have been (0.836 linear correlation to wRC+). With that in mind, his 2026 spray map shows exactly why he has cratered. 

 

Most of his elevated contact has been to right field, while the vast majority of his pulled contact has been on the ground. This isn’t an unusual split, but the trade-off for pulled grounders needs to be elevated-and-celebrated pulled contact. To be a successful hitter with Laureano’s raw thump, you need to lift and pull, not lift or pull. 

It’s difficult to parse exactly why Laureano has struggled to turn on left-handed pitching, but I doubt that he has suddenly become Derek Zoolander. It’s very likely that this is a small sample quirk, which has been exacerbated by him facing better-than-average left-handed pitching. He has already faced Tarik Skubal, Framber Valdez, Ranger Suarez, Aroldis Chapman, and Gregory Soto, among others. Upon pulling the data, the average left-hander he had faced up to that point had a 3.17 ERA and 3.44 FIP, against league averages of 3.82 and 3.97.

At the end of the day, Laureano’s struggles against left-handers have only come in 32 plate appearances. I trust his track record of pulling the ball with authority when he has the platoon advantage more than what he has done in the early going. Now, if this continues, it’ll be worth examining, but we’ll also have more information to really figure things out. And considering how well he has hit right-handers, there’s a good chance he goes from being a league-average bat (99 wRC+) to the middle of the order thumper he was last season (138 wRC+), which the Padres could desperately use.

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