With the back-to-back losses to Cleveland's CC Sabathia and Aaron Laffey, the Angels are now 16-18 (.471) in games started against left handed pitchers. They're 68-41 (624) against right handed starters. Could this be trouble in October?
The Angels hitting numbers are basically the same vs lefties as righties. Their team average against righties is .286, vs lefties it's .283. Not much different. Their OPS is equally similar, against righties it's .763 and against lefties, it's .769.
With the hitting numbers so close, the win-loss record might be a statistical aberration. In any case, I took a look to see who the Angels might face in the playoffs and how many left-handed starters were in each rotation.
Cleveland could be a playoff opponent for the Angels, but I doubt they would start Laffey despite his success today. Besides Sabathia, their 4-man playoff rotation would probably include three righties - Paul Byrd, Jake Westbrook and Fausto Carmona.
The Yankees, who as of today, would be the Angels opening round opponent have only one lefty- Andy Pettitte. Chien-Ming Wang, Roger Clemens, Mike Mussina, Phil Hughes and Ian Kennedy are all right handed.
Boston also only has one southpaw, Jon Lester. Their right handed starters include Curt Schilling, Daisuke Matsuzaka, Tim Wakefield and Josh Beckett.
It appears that the Angels won't face more than one lefty each series.
Here's a look at the Angels player's stats.
VS RHP VS LHP DIFFERENCE
AVG OPS AVG OPS AVG OPS
Quinlan .207 .574 .267 .679 +60 +105
Willits .273 .714 .333 .783 +60 +69
Mathis .234 .690 .280 .837 +46 +147
Maicer .274 .723 .300 .817 +26 +94
GA .290 .819 .314 .891 +24 +72
Cabrera .302 .723 .325 .884 +23 +161
Napoli .248 .805 .265 .805 +17 0
Kendrick .321 .789 .333 .875 +12 +86
Figgins .338 .829 .346 .894 +8 +65
Kotchman .290 .835 .279 .708 -11 -127
Vlad .330 .946 .306 .956 -24 +10
Matthews .282 .808 .179 .565 -103 -243
Morales .333 .904 .227 .545 -106 -359
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