Bill Hall Has Less-Crazy Splits

I just wanted to revisit Bill Hall's lefty/righty splits to see if they had started to sort themselves out. I showed in a previous post that Hall's lefty/righty splits were so extreme at the time that an adjustment should have been expected. Let's compare his splits from then to now:

JUNE 27
            AB   AVG   OBP   SLG    OPS
vs. Left    54  .389  .469  .833  1.302
vs. Right  193  .238  .277  .492   .769
---------------------------------------
           247  .271  .322  .567   .889  


JULY 16
            AB    BA   OBP   SLG    OPS
vs. Left    61  .344  .423  .738  1.161 
vs. Right  243  .243  .279  .486   .765
--------------------------------------- 
           304  .263  .310  .536   .846

While his stats against righties have remained pretty constant, he went 0-6 against lefties. When you are sporting a 1.302 OPS against lefties, it doesn't take many ABs to lower it considerably. While there’s still a significant difference between his splits, the gap appears to be closing.

What's surprising is, after an insane start, Hall's 2006 numbers are now actually worse than his breakout 2005 stats:

        AB    BA   OBP   SLG   OPS
2005   501  .291  .342  .495  .837 
2006   304  .263  .310  .536  .846

While Hall has added some power in 2006, he hasn't learned to walk more yet. As a result, as his batting average goes, so goes his OBP. Unless he can get his BA over .280 this year, he's not going to be able to have even a mediocre OBP. As a SS you can live with a low OBP. As a 3B or CF a .310 OBP is a lot harder to ignore. Hall has plenty of time to rebound but if he doesn’t, Melvin is going to have some hard decisions to make in the off season.