left ahead

i'm all in favor of the cards acquiring another right-handed bat, but so far this season they have been hitting left-handers much harder than you've been reading. yesterday's post spoke of a "lefty complex" and ran down the litany of lhps who have stymied the cards lately. i checked the splits on espn.com and found that stl hits lhp slightly better this season:

the cards' top hitters vs left-handers this season, ranked by ops:

off the bench, abe nunez is 8 for 23 (.348) with a homer and a .945 ops; scott seabol is 7/28 (.250) with a .701 ops.

two guys jump out at me from this table: 1) go yadi, and 2) taguchi. i stumbled across taguchi's splits a couple days ago while on some other errand and posted them here, but they bear repeating: for his career, gooch hits right-handers much better than lefties. the diff'nce is mainly due to greater power: he hits at about the same rate (.290 v right, .280 v left) gets on base at about the same rate (.332 v right, .327 v left), but he slugs .461 vs right-handers, .398 v left. so taguchi's ops splits are 793 v right, 725 v left.

the gap is smaller so far this year --.743 ops v righthanders, .713 ops v left -- but still holding. in the next coupla days i'll post a catalog of the right-handed bats available on the trade market . . . . we need one.

for whatever it's worth: in 2004, the cards had an ops of .810 v lhp, .802 v rhp.