Just how valuable is MLB matchup data?

As a Marlin in 2009, Chris Coghlan batted .321 and was named National League Rookie of the Year.

In the six ensuing seasons, however, he's batted .251 with the Marlins and Cubs while shuttling back and forth to the minor leagues a few times — fine but unremarkable production, except when he faces Reds pitcher Mike Leake. During those at bats, Coghlan morphs Ty Cobb's swing with Babe Ruth's power.

Coghlan started off 8-for-8 with four extra-base hits against Leake. When they met again on April 24 this season, Leake actually retired him on a line out and flyball . . . before allowing a home run in the seventh inning, at which point Coghlan was 9-for-11 with a staggering 2.455 OPS.

"It's probably a combination of multiple things, but he probably sees my pitches pretty well with a combination of I don't pitch him too well," Leake said. "Maybe I leave too many balls over the middle, or I just don't go to the right pitches in certain counts. I don't know, but he does hit me well, that's for sure."

Paradoxically, there are All-Star players such as Jhonny Peralta and Paul Goldschmidt who collectively are a meager 4-for-33 against Leake.

For Coghlan, meanwhile, a few pitchers are his Kryptonite: he is 0-for-8 against Brewers reliever Jonathan Broxton and 0-for-9 against Padres starter Tyson Ross.

"You just don't see the ball off some guys," Coghlan said. "Broxton hides the ball — he has a long arm. Tyson Ross is a short strider — a tall guy with a short stride and a good slider.

Coghlan then added, quite obviously, "Leake is a guy that I see well."

Investigate further and nearly every hitter and every pitcher will have extreme results against certain opponents. Over time, many of those results stabilize. To wit, Mets third baseman David Wright started off 0-for-7 against Nationals closer Drew Storen but has gone 4-for-6 since — a pair of exceptional streaks that combine for an unexceptional 4-for-13 (.308).

"It's amazing how quick that can turn," Storen said. "Small sample sizes can turn."

In fact, when Coghlan faced Leake again last Saturday, he grounded out twice and only reached base when a 1-and-2 fastball went too far inside and hit him. Though Coghlan began 8-for-8 against Leake, he's gone 1-for-5 since.

Then again, some dominant match ups persist: the Diamondbacks' Paul Goldschmidt is 15-for-28 (.536) with seven homers spanning four years against the Giants' Tim Lincecum.

A basic tenet of statistical analysis is to discount outliers, but perhaps in this one area, maybe they are more significant and indicative of whether a hitter sees the ball especially well or especially poorly against a certain pitcher. While the vast majority of matchup results will regress to the mean, perhaps some extreme cases will persist, if only because they are self-fulfilling as players overthink bad stretches.

Matchup data has long been a staple of media game notes and regularly is cited by television analysts — interesting to note as curiosity or a historical footnote but not something to which much predictive value should be ascribed.

They are now, however, gaining increased spotlight with the proliferation of daily fantasy leagues, with players' success and failures almost entirely based on gleaning insights.

The use of this information within the game varies widely.

Royals manager Ned Yost said his lineup is generally the same each day, but he will look at matchup data when deciding between bench options.

"If I look to give a guy a day off, I'll go over the numbers," he said. "If he's 1-for-12 off a guy compared to 4-for-12 off a guy, that might be the day I give him off."

New Marlins manager Dan Jennings said he relies on a variety of sources: "We have an advance report. We subscribe to a certain service we get, so I utilize all of that. We have some guys in our office that do some metrics work for us. It's kind of a group of those particular things."

Mets manager Terry Collins has cited matchup numbers to explain certain lineup decisions but acknowledged that too small a sample should be dismissed. Asked about where his line of demarcation stands for having confidence in the numbers, he replied, "I think if you get to a dozen, you have a better idea."

Collins added that he doesn't take the numbers at face value, at least when they show particularly poor results, in case there's another explanation.

"When I see their matchups against a certain pitcher are not very good, I go to them and ask them why," Collins said. "One of things you'll find out is, 'Gee, I see the ball good, I've hit the ball good, they just keep catching them.' Sometimes those numbers can be skewed a little bit. I think you have to use some of that because there are certain pitchers that you feel comfortable when you're against them."

Some managers prefer using proprietary metrics and never use analog matchup data.

"Not at all," Cubs manager Joe Maddon said. "Zero. We have our own cocktail brewing, so I look at that. I won't deny that I'll look at it after I've done my lineup, just curiously to see how our work compares to real life." (Answer: pretty well.)

After Yankees closer Andrew Miller allowed a walk-off home run to Nationals first baseman Ryan Zimmerman on May 19, the pitcher reviewed the video and saw that the TV broadcast noted that Zimmerman was 4-for-11 off Miller in his career.

"He probably has at bats off me when I was a starting pitcher with the Marlins," Miller said. "I don't know that he could look back at our video from 2008 and be like, 'This is what I'll do.' Both of us have evolved as ballplayers, and I think I have even more drastically than him. I'm a different pitcher."

Indeed, all but one of Zimmerman's at bats had occurred between 2008 and '10, when Miller was a starter for the Florida Marlins and Zimmerman was a Gold Glove third baseman in D.C. In the interceding seasons, both changed positions, Miller changed teams three times and the Marlins moved to a new ballpark and revised their geographic affiliation.

Miller noted that there are too many variables to value such statistics, considerations ranging from throwing a bad pitch to having an injury to not sleeping well the night before a game.

"Honestly, I use my eyes more than I would use numbers," Miller added, before attending a pre-series pitchers' meeting at which the opponents' last two weeks would be discussed.

Context matters, as pitchers in certain bases-and-outs situations will approach a hitter differently — or if he's Albert Pujols. Phillies veteran Aaron Harang said he wasn't concerned that Pujols was batting over .300 against him (27-for-82, .329) as he was with Pujols' slugging (five home runs).

"I'll go out and take giving up base hits and not care about the average as much because I'm trying to limit his run production," Harang said.

Hitters like Mets right fielder Curtis Granderson similarly downplayed such numbers, calling matchups "more of a feel thing."

"It could be a while since I've faced a guy and, if it has, I just throw it out the window because obviously he's probably a different pitcher and I'm a different hitter now," Granderson said.

Added Mets second baseman Daniel Murphy, "Even a guy that you've faced a month or six weeks ago doesn't look the same now, so I'll check out their last start — what they did against left-handed hitters their last start and maybe the start before that."

That importance of recency is why a club's advance scout typically tries to see an opponent one or two series before a head-to-head meeting, largely to see the starting pitchers his club will face.

The unofficial sabermetric bible — The Book: Playing the Percentages in Baseball, written by statisticians Andrew Dolphin, Mitchell Lichtman and Tom Tango — cast aspersions on whether there was any use to matchup hitter data.

If comparing a player's 1,500 plate appearances over three seasons against the rest of the league with 25 plate appearances against a particular pitcher, The Book says the league-wide 1,500 PAs are more predictive, writing, "When a particular batter has faced a particular pitcher 200 or 300 times, come back and we'll talk. Maybe." Even targeted history of hitters against similar-style pitchers and found no discernible pattern. "There is simply too much noise masking the truth under those numbers," The Book concludes.

That strong stance could soften, at least somewhat, with new information. A batted ball's exit velocity, which is already being used to determine whether hitters are streaking or just getting lucky, may be applicable here, too.

"We also can look at batter versus pitcher matchups, which historically need a huge sample for it to really mean anything," Baseball Info Solutions president Ben Jedlovec said. "Well, maybe if we're looking with something that's more predictive in small samples, maybe we don't need a huge sample anymore to learn something."

Mets third-base coach Tim Teufel said he used all available statistics to make out lineups when he was a Class AAA manager, though he cautioned against relying on small sample sizes. Now, while planning New York's defensive positioning, he reviews a variety of data and niche splits.

"We do lifetime (spray charts), we do a short-term like this year to see if there are any changes," Teufel said. "We use a two-year-out and then break it down from there— how he's hitting against 95-plus (mph), 92-94, 88-91, slider, change up. We're trying to figure it out, too. We're trying to use any edge we can possibly find."

One can imagine how similar breakdowns can be applied to pitching game plans, too.

Of course, players evolve, of course. Mets left-handed slugger Lucas Duda, for instance, batted .212 with nine homers and a .610 OPS in 470 plate appearances against lefty pitchers in his first five seasons but has mashed same-sided pitchers to the tune of .360, four homers and 1.079 OPS in 57 PAs against lefties this season.

"I can only speak for our club, but we take very little stock in past performance," Cardinals manager Mike Matheny said. "I'm talking about (looking only at) the last 10, 15 games so we know where they are right now. That's the video that we get, and most of our data. We have all-season data, but we like to get the most recent stock to see where they are and maybe what kind of approach they have right now and if there are any strengths and weaknesses they're displaying."

Coghlan said he rarely reviews his success but, while mired in a slump one time, he watched his at bats against a particular pitcher against whom he had success — only to realize most of his hits were of the broken-bat or bloop variety. He went hitless that evening.

"That's stupid," Coghlan said of that exercise. "I already know I have good numbers against him, I'm not going to look and see how hard I hit the ball because there are a lot of guys where I have hit the ball hard and they've just been outs."

Some players are superstitious about not knowing. Years ago, since-retired outfielder Randy Winn covered his ears when a reporter was about to recite his past performance against closer Trevor Hoffman.

After all, whether a player knows what has happened may not have any bearing on what will happen.

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