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:
| split | avg / obp / slg / ops | hr / ab | rc / 27 |
|---|---|---|---|
| overall | .274 / .345 / .435 / .780 | 1/ 29 | 5.50 |
| vs right | .273 / .347 / .431 / .778 | 1/ 31 | 5.46 |
| vs left | .276 / .341 / .444 / .785 | 1/ 27 | 5.57 |
the cards' top hitters vs left-handers this season, ranked by ops:
| ab | r | h | hr | avg | obp | slg | ops | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| pujols | 85 | 18 | 26 | 6 | .306 | .404 | .576 | .981 |
| walker | 36 | 9 | 8 | 3 | .222 | .378 | .556 | .933 |
| sanders | 81 | 12 | 23 | 7 | .284 | .348 | .568 | .916 |
| yadi | 69 | 8 | 26 | 2 | .377 | .397 | .507 | .905 |
| rolen | 47 | 8 | 13 | 2 | .277 | .370 | .468 | .838 |
| edmonds | 60 | 8 | 15 | 3 | .250 | .308 | .500 | .808 |
| grud'k | 90 | 9 | 28 | 0 | .311 | .347 | .411 | .758 |
| taguchi | 79 | 7 | 22 | 2 | .278 | .321 | .392 | .714 |
| eck'n | 85 | 14 | 18 | 2 | .212 | .306 | .329 | .606 |
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.