Tuesday, May 27, 2008
Cy Olson
After beating up on the Mariners and getting a five game winning streak going, the WOE showed up again yesterday in an 8-1 loss to Baltimore. Garrett Olson stifled the offense over seven scoreless inning.
Olson is a lefty, and this year the Yankees have hit .242/.317/.347 vs lefties. It seems like the Yankees are facing an inordinate amount of lefties this season so I looked at the splits. Last year, 27% of the Yankees PAs came against lefties. This year, 35% of them have. Whether this is by design by opponents or an early season fluctuation is an open question, but it does explain some of their offensive struggles this season.
Joe Girardi has tried to mitigate this some by playing people like Morgan Ensberg and Shelley Duncan, but it hasn’t worked so far. With Ensberg seemingly on his way out there’s talk of Jason Lane being brought up as another RHB off the bench. Lane’s not exactly a lefty masher (career .231/.310/.469) so I don’t see how that helps.
Here are the individual splits:
Jason Giambi (.220/.429/.439) in 50 PA
Hideki Matsui (.323/.364/.387) in 66 PA
Derek Jeter (.274/.328/.419) in 66 PA
Bobby Abreu (.286/.318/.429) in 66 PA
Johnny Damon (.274/.357/.387) in 70 PA
Robinson Cano (.250/.333/.375) in 61 PA
A. Rodriguez (.233/.361/.333) in 35 PA
Chad Moeller (.278/.381/.278) in 20 PA
S. Duncan (.211/.279/.342) in 42 PA
Jorge Posada (.308/.308/.308) in 13 PA
Melky Cabrera (.177/.246/.306) in 67 PA
W. Betemit (.250/.250/.250) in 8 PA
M. Ensberg (.167/.265/.167) in 34 PA
Jose Molina (.152/.176/.212) in 34 PA
A. Gonzalez (.133/.188/.133) in 16 PA
Chris Stewart (.000/.000/.000) in 3 PA
Ensberg was brough in at least partially because of a career OPS over .900 vs lefties. While 34 PA is too small to write him off, the Yankees may not have the luxury of the time needed to see if he can improve there. Melky is killing them vs. lefties. He has shown a slight platoon split over his career but it’s really bad this year. You’d expect Alex Rodriguez to start hitting them better, which I guess is probably going to be the key.
Anyway, we know the Yankees aren’t going to win every game this year, but with the hole they’re digging themselves every loss is painful. On the plus side, Darrell Rasner again pitched well and this time it was against a team that had recently seen him, which is an encouraging sign going forward. I still don’t think he’s sub 2 ERA good, but if you look at his projections and factor in his YTD performance (MLEs + MLB), there’s a decent chance he’s 4.50 ERA good.
Ian Kennedy goes to the post tonight, trying to build off a decent outing last time. The Orioles will throw another lefty at the Yanks so he’ll need to be good.
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