As we enter the 2009 season with the signing of Damaso Marte and the emergence of Phil Coke, the Yanks enjoy surplus of left handed relief pitchers for the first time in a very, very long time.
How long? Check out this list, the last lefty we had coming out of the bullpen who actually got lefty hitters out on a regular basis was Mike Stanton in 2002.
Mike Stanton, Randy Choate, Sterling Hitchcock, Chris Hammond, Felix Heredia,
Gabe White, Jesse Orosco, Alex Graman, CJ Nitkowski, Donovan Osborne,
Al Leiter, Buddy Groom, Alan Embree, Mike Stanton-part deux, Wayne Franklin,
Sean Henn, Ron Villone, Mike Myers, Matt Smith, Kei Igawa, Billy Traber
Amazing. Felix Horrendous was my favorite. When it was late in a game and you needed two walks and a hit batsman, he was your go-to guy.
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Heredia combined with Contreras to blow Game 6 of the 2003 ALCS so quickly. I was there, it was windy and cold in the left field bleachers, and I literally wanted to kill them. One second it was 6-4 Yankees, the next we were pouring soda on the Sox fans near us. It is quite unbelievable that the farm system could not stumble on one serviceable lefty. Villone was decent for a bit.
Hammond was pretty good, you must admit.
He was alright, a bit of a disappointment. Looking at the numbers, definitely better than I remember.
Not against lefties, his OPS+ almost doubled facing lefty batters that year.
http://www.baseball-reference.com/pi/psplit.cgi?n1=hammoch01&year=2003
But you are right that he was decent overall. I rewrote that sentence to clarify the role I intended.
Al Leiter as a reliever was decent, and Matt Smith had a 0.00 ERA pitching exclusively in blowouts. That has to count for something, right?
Yeah, and then he was the biggest part of the Abreu deal- pretty sad trade, huh?
Matt Smith was pitching with a bad elbow and the Yanks knew it. They used him a few times (12IP) to get his trade value up, and then threw him in the Abreu/Lidle deal.
http://www.baseball-reference.com/s/smithma04.shtml