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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:

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.