Jays v. Phillies: The All Lefty Weekend

It’ll be a surplus of 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 anymore?

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:

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.