Mike Napoli

Mike Napoli is a professional baseball player. He's a catcher for the Los Angeles Angels and wears number 44. He is managed by Mike Scioscia.

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What an idea — Napoli at DH

Written by zimbee on

From: anaheim.info

NEW YORK

Angels manager Mike Scioscia woke up and smelled the OPS today, starting Mike Napoli at DH against Yankees left-hander Andy Pettitte.

Rain stopped, tarp coming off

Napoli had already been getting most of the starts at catcher (13 to eight for Jeff Mathis through Thursday) with the Angels in need of any post-Vlad power threat they can find. And he has delivered — seven hits in his past 18 at-bats including two of his four home runs.

Between them, Napoli and Torii Hunter have accounted for 12 of the Angels’ 20 home runs. And last night’s home run gave Napoli a career ratio of one home run every 15.2 at-bats (50 home runs, 760 at-bats) — the all-time best ratio for any major-league catcher with at least 50 home runs (according to Stats LLC).

“There’s a chance right now in the short term to keep Mike’s bat in the lineup and keep Jeff behind the plate,” Scioscia said of the move. “If we were going to do this for an extended period of time, we’d have to make a move to add a third catcher. We can spot this in occasionally and see if it’s something we can use to keep moving forward.”

Scioscia said Napoli would be back behind the plate tomorrow against left-hander CC Sabathia.

“Right now, we’re not ready to go and commit in this direction because we have a lot of bats that are important to keep going and keep in the lineup,” Scioscia said. “It just fell into place with the day game tomorrow and another lefty.”

Juan Rivera, Maicer Izturis and Kendry Morales (in favor of Robb Quinlan) are the ones left out tonight.

Tonight’s lineups:

ANGELS

3B Chone Figgins

RF Gary Matthews Jr.

LF Bobby Abreu

CF Torii Hunter

DH Mike Napoli

2B Howie Kendrick

1B Robb Quinlan

C Jeff Mathis

SS Erick Aybar