The All Lefty Weekend

It’ll be a surplus but southpaws this weekend at the Rogers Centre; three games and all the starting pitchers will be lefties. Left hands haven’t seen this much work since the inception of porn on the internet.

The Blue Jays will send Romero, Mills and Tallest to the hill, while the Phillies will counter with Hamels, Happ and Moyer.

Since there will be all left-handed starting pitchers this weekend, that means Kevin Millar will likely start most if not all three games at first base. Cito has maintained his strategy to play Millar against lefties, but is that really the best option any more? This season Millar’s splits are better than Overlay’s, but if you look at Millar’s numbers in the month of June they are atrocious:


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Millar .205 AVG, 5 RBI, 1 HR, .618 OPS

Compare those with Lyle Overlay’s stats this month, and it should be a no-brainer for Cito to play Overbuy at first base:

Overbay .288 AVG, 18 RBI, 4 HR, 1.008 OPS

Cito prefers to think with his heart instead of his brain sometimes and this is a perfect example. For some reason he has it ingrained in his managerial mind that Millar hits left-handed pitching better than Overbuy. It’s time for Cito Gaston to throw those preconceived notions out the window.

Now while that may statistically be true this season, shouldn’t you continue to ride a player who’s on a hot streak? Lyle’s numbers in June are far too impressive to warrant him being benched in this series.

I’ll be liveblogging Sunday’s finale over at The Score which features Brian Tallet against Jamie Moyer, so stop by on Sunday afternoon for what looks to be a great game.

Ian Hunter

Ian has been writing about the Toronto Blue Jays since 2007. He enjoyed the tail-end of the Roy Halladay era and vividly remembers the Alex Rodriguez "mine" incident. He'll also retell the story of Game 5 of the 2015 ALDS to his kids for the next 20 years.

4 thoughts on “The All Lefty Weekend

  • June 27, 2009 at 2:39 am
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    I agree that Cito should not treat these decisions as no-brainers — though I don't think the decision is a no-brainer the other way either. Personally, I would try to use Overbay as much as possible.
    What is crazy is that Millar has seen about double the at bats against righties this year that Overbay has against lefties — that is simply beyond silly.

  • June 27, 2009 at 3:07 pm
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    It kinda reminds me of the Simpsons softball episode and Mr. Burns explaining playing the percentages to Darryl Strawberry before pinch-hitting for him with Homer.

    Cito just puts too much faith in that kind of match up.

  • June 27, 2009 at 8:35 pm
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    QJays, what's the worst that could happen if Cito plays Overbay vs. lefties? I would favour Overbay over Millar personally, otherwise how is he supposed to get better numbers against left handed pitchers?

    Woodpeck, I'm sorry that today was your first game of the season 🙁

    Matty, I love that Simpsons episode – probably my favourite of all time. Can you believe that Millar was hitting cleanup today? That's just a recipe for disaster right there.

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