Not so Special(-ist)

Tim's boy, Mike Gallo, is a great illustration of a guy who is likely only in baseball because he throws with his left hand. He has extremely mediocre "stuff" and sub-par stats. But apparently the Astros' brass, between time well spent polishing Biggio's statue and searching for overweight, no-hit Hispanic catchers, has not had time to take a peek on Mike's split stats.

Gallo has predominantly been brought into ballgames over the past 3 years to face left-handed hitters late in games, following the traditional notion that lefty hitters are at a disadvantage against lefty pitchers. Scrap Iron followed this same train of thought last night, bringing Gallo in to face Ryan Klesko and Brian Giles.

For Gallo's career, righties have an OPS of .888 and lefties have an OPS of .797. He has struck out lefties at a slightly higher clip (33K in 41 innings v. lefties, 20K in 39 innings v. righties). Essentially, however, Gallo seems to have no advantage when facing LH batters over RH batters. His career numbers in sum are equally unimpressive: ERA 4.13, WHIP 1.43, 1 HR allowed every 5+ innings, 85 hits allowed in 80 innings, 53 K and 30 BB, OPS against of .840 and OBP against of .349.

So the question is, which front office member of the Astros organization does Gallo hold compromising pictures of? Or maybe in a less conspiratorial theme, if you're going to keep throwing this no-talent clown out onto the hill in a relief role, Phil, could you please quit with the L/R manuevering? Ray King he's not.

Mike Gallo has pitched in 103 games in his Astros career and never lost a decision (he's 3-0). In his career, batters facing Gallo with the bases loaded are hitting .105, batters with RISP and 2 outs are hitting .178, batters w/ RISP generally are hitting .200, whereas batters with no one on base are hitting .341. Gallo certainly seems intensely focused on the mound, at least for the first batter or two, and these numbers seem to corraborate that he's at his best during his first 30-60 seconds out of the pen. So let's experiment with MG as a "bases loaded" specialist or RISP specialist - 1 batter only. The numbers suggest that would be the best way to utilize his "skeelz".

As a team, by the way, the Astros' LHP have fared quite miserably against LHP:

Andy Petttitte's been solid with a .664 OPS against LH batters.
Ex-"specialist" John Franco had a solid OPS against LH batters (.689) but that was short-circuited by the fact that lefties were reaching base at a .356 clip against him.
Wandy Rodriguez: lefties are OPS'ing 1.374 against him, reaching base 52% of the time.
Mike Gallo: (albeit in 2 games) 2 hits in 3 at-bats, 2.000 OPS.