Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Albino Warlord Wields Awful Axe of Doom

Lots of Lyle Overbay love going around the blogosphere these days. Your boy Eyebeleaf crunches a few numbers in showing Lyle the Love for his excellent (yet unfortunately platooned) season thus far. The Ack came with more respect for Overbay's ability to get on base and remain under-appreciated.

Lyle's getting love for good reason. Overbay's .395 wOBA is among the best for first basemen, just below that of Justin Morneau and Miguel Cabrera. Most encouraging is the return of Lyle's powerstroke. His 16% Home Run/Fly Ball rate is a return to the Overbay Salad Days of 2005/06. Sure, he's patient and that's a good thing. But let's have a little fun here.
THE MAN HITS BOMBS!
Lyle Overbay seems to hit nothing but no doubt bombs to right center field. Hit Tracker Online currently ranks Overbay 13th in average standard distance for his prodigious tater tots. Lyle's been dropping bombs like war monger with oil interests. Check out his Hit Tracker profile, there are links to video of each of his homers this year. I think this is my favorite. The atmosphere inside the Library on Bremner (aka the Rogers Crematorium) allows for the true, sickening crack of the bat to reverberate inside you skull, like Lyle's Viking ancestors laying waste to Newfoundland. Now that is something I can get behind.
Posted by Drew
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9 comments:

  1. According to Wilner call ins last year, the Jays should've traded Rolen and Overbay for a bag of balls.
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  3. Based on his .194/.286/.387 slash line against lefties, I'm not sure "unfortunately" is the word I'd use to describe his being platooned.
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  5. That's my favorite Overbay home run so far this year, too, and not just because the replay so beautifully illustrates the complete ineptitude of the idiots in the production truck for Sportnet - they credit Millar with the solo shot.
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  6. Hope Lyle has some fun with the right porch at the new Yankee Stadium next week - three or four HRs in the series would be nice
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  7. More Albino Warlord, less Cowboy, please.
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  8. @Torgen:

    You make a good point, but based on his production this year, I'd still like to see Overbay get the start against lefties, for two reasons:

    1. His career line against lefties: .260/.314/.413 is a fair bit better than he's fared this year, is probably close to what Millar will give us going forward, and we all know he plays much, much better defense.

    and more importantly,

    2. Cito's shown that he's extremely reluctant to take out a veteran that he's started in a game for a PH. When Overbay doesn't start against a lefty, he doesn't come in for Millar in later innings against RHP relievers, so by not getting the start against lefties he's missing a decent amount of potential ABs against righties too.
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  9. I've never pictured Overbay as the Norse God of Thunder, but from now on ... I will.
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