Left at the Plate

Q: What makes a $130M team cringe?
A: The sight of a left-handed starting pitcher.

Remember that great feeling you had when the Sox jumped out 5-1 this season? Well, consider this. In the first week of the season the Sox faced only one left-handed starter. They barely escaped with a 2-1 victory on April 8 in Baltimore. Since that day the Sox have gone 9-10 to slip into a first place tie with the Yuckies powered in large part by a 3-6 showing in games started by an opposing lefty.

The Sox are being left at the plate by lefty hurlers. In the ten games that southpaws have started against the Sox their teams are 6-4. If that does not sound impressive, just extrapolate it to a full 162-game season: 97-65, good enough for a spot in the playoffs.

What may be more worrisome is that the numbers could easily be worse. Three of the Sox four victories were one-run affairs that occurred in the first ten days of the season: 2-1 over Bruce Chen and the O's, 2-1 over ageless Jamie Moyer and his Mariner teammates, and 3-2 over Jarrod Washburn and the M's. The Sox did not score more than two earned runs off the LHP starters in those games. In fact, the Sox have scored three earned runs off a lefty starter only once this year (3 from Gustavo Chacin on April 12).

With the dismal showing this weekend, opposing lefties now have an ERA against the Sox roughly half their season ERA (2.25 vs 4.34). Want a good comparison for opposing lefty starters? Check out the lifetime stats of Greg Maddux. When you start every game against a lefty as if you were facing vintage Maddux you're in trouble.

But the Sox have not yet faced a top LHP except perhaps emerging hurler Cliff Lee. Overall the lefties the Sox have faced were generally mid-to-late rotation guys who had an average ERA of 4.34. None sported an ERA under 3.00 (Lee was 2.97 after shutting down the Sox) . They've been shutdown twice each by D'Rays southpaws Kazmir (12.2 IP, 9H, 2ER) and former Sox Fossum (12.1IP, 9H, 2ER). Do you see a trend here? If the D'Rays can run out lefties that shut down the Sox then their season is doomed. Sure, they may make the playoffs by beating up on RHP but to what avail? If the Jays take a spot is there any chance that the Sox slip past them without facing Sox-killer Ted Lilly and Chacin? Or meeting RJ twice with the Yuckies? The Sox are not likely to emerge as the AL Champion, if they even make it past the first round, unless they address this difficulty.

Updated: Posted the table as an image rather than debug the HTML.