I love platoons and I don’t care who knows it.
For some reason, with the Toronto Blue Jays running several platoons over the course of this season, there has been some disdain for the practice among some fans and observers, and referring to someone as a “platoon player” has become a pejorative description.
Now, of course, every team would love to have nine players who hit right-handers and left-handers equally well and who could be run out there every day, but there really aren’t a lot of those guys (at least, not a lot of really good hitters who hit both sides equally well), which is why platooning tends to give a team an offensive advantage.
Blue Jays fans were introduced to the idea by Hall of Fame skipper Bobby Cox in the early 1980s and Jimy Williams kept things going when he took over in 1986. We remember well the successful platoons of Buck Martinez and Ernie Whitt behind the plate, Garth Iorg and Rance Mulliniks at third, Cecil Fielder and Fred McGriff at first, and even Wayne Nordhagen and Dave Revering at DH (which would beget Cliff Johnson and Al Oliver on the Jays’ first playoff squad).
Granted, it was a lot easier to run platoons 30 years ago, because even a six-man bullpen was seen as an unnecessary luxury, so there was a lot more room on the bench for extra position players, but teams can certainly still afford to have a platoon or two to help make their offence as efficient as possible.
The danger arises when platoon players hit so well in their designated spots, as one could expect, that teams begin to think that maybe they might be miscast and could overcome their history and be an effective everyday player. After all, they’re doing so well facing only one side and a hitter is a hitter, right?
Not really.
Adam Lind springs to mind as a glaring example. Lind has been one of baseball’s best hitters against right-handed pitching this season, batting an astounding .357/.415/.548 – an OPS of nearly 1.000 despite hitting only six home runs in 265 plate appearances. But he’s been one of baseball’s worst against lefties, batting just .061/.162/.061 against portsiders. That’s two singles in 33 at-bats, with four walks.
But he’s a different hitter now, many suggest, and his success against right-handers (as though that’s something new) this season proves it, so he should get another shot against lefties. After all, the argument goes, how can we know whether he can hit them or not if he never gets the chance to prove it?
Here’s the thing, though. Lind has had plenty of chances to try to hit southpaws, almost 900 career plate appearances worth. And he’s hit .212/.257/.331 against them. As for the argument that he’s a different hitter now, well, his recent record shows nine hits in his last 103 at-bats against left-handers.
But the fact that Lind should never face a left-handed pitcher, let alone in a big spot late in the game, doesn’t mean that he’s not still a very valuable bat.
The same thing applies, just the other way around, to Danny Valencia.
When the Blue Jays traded for Valencia in late July, they did it because they needed someone (anyone) who could hit left-handed pitching, and that was something Valencia had been very good at in his career. Offensively, though, that was all he had been good at.
But circumstances forced him into the lineup a few times against right-handers and Valencia came up with a few big hits, which led the Blue Jays to think that there might be a lot more in his bat. Valencia told hitting coach Kevin Seitzer that his previous teams had encouraged him to be more of a pull hitter in order to try to hit more home runs, and so maybe a gap-to-gap approach could erase the previous years of futility against right-handed pitching.
With Brett Lawrie hurt again and Juan Francisco giving new meaning to the word “slump,” Valencia became the Blue Jays’ everyday third baseman on Aug. 29. A lot of that had to do with the lack of options, but a lot of it also had to do with those few big hits leading to some interest in “getting a look at him” to see if he had truly been miscast as a platoon guy.
He hadn’t.
Since taking over on a regular basis, Valencia has hit .200/.206/.300 against right-handed pitchers in 63 plate appearances. Not a great sample size, but not horribly out of line with his career .227/.264/.352 mark, amassed in almost 1,000 career trips to the dish.
But he kills lefties, hitting .328/.366/.499 against them in his career, which makes him a very valuable guy to have, so long as he’s used in the right manner.
If one could somehow transmogrify Valencia and Lind into one guy, say Dadam Valindcia, we’d be looking at a Hall of Famer. That can’t happen, but both of them (along with John Mayberry, Jr. and his .860 career OPS vs. LHP) are very valuable weapons to have, so long as they’re not relied upon to do more than they can and get big hits against their weak side.