Teixeira can breathe easier with April over

Mark Teixeira homered from both sides of the plate in last night's loss to the Red Sox, signaling that he may be back on track following yet another underwhelming April.

For whatever reason Teixeira has made a habit of getting off to slow starts throughout his seven-year career, hitting .249/.349/.433 for a .781 OPS in April compared to .287/.377/.538 for a .915 OPS overall.

Take a look at his year-by-year OPS splits:

YEAR     APRIL    OTHER      DIFF
2003      .631     .836     -.205
2004      .984     .926     +.058
2005      .807     .982     -.175
2006      .886     .886      .000
2007      .686    1.025     -.339
2008      .797    1.000     -.203

Teixeira's production in April was at least 175 points of OPS worse than his production for the rest of the year in four of his first six seasons and the only time that his April production bested his post-April production was 2004 ... when he played just eight April games because of an injury.

All of which is a long way of saying that Teixeira hitting just .200/.367/.371 for a .738 OPS this April is par for the course, even if Yankees fans may not see it that way. Fortunately for them, homering from both sides of the plate three games into May is also part of the usual Teixeira script, and if the past is any indication his overall numbers will be looking just fine come September.

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