Is There Any Platoon Value Left Out There?

I was thinking about Rob Refsnyder recently for two reasons. First, I think about Rob Refsnyder a lot. I try to be professional in this forum, but everyone has their own sports fan nemeses, and Refsnyder is one of mine.

Back in 2012, Refsnyder — then a University of Arizona Wildcat — was the Most Outstanding Player of the College World Series, in part because he went berserk in the two-game final against South Carolina: 4-for-6 with two walks and a home run. He drove in the winning run in Game 1 and scored the winning run in Game 2. My beloved Gamecocks were denied a third straight national championship and haven’t been back to Omaha since. I’ll die mad about this series, and I’ll never forgive Refsnyder in particular.

I did not, however, expect to still be writing about Refsnyder — then a punchy, athletically unremarkable second baseman — in 2026. The previous year’s College World Series MOP, Scott Wingo, was an 11th-round pick; he never came close to making the majors and has spent the past decade as a college assistant coach. (He was most recently in the news in 2024 as the Home Run Derby pitcher for Alec Bohm.)

More relevant, in toodling around the internet I’ve encountered some discontentment among Mariners fans over the quiet offseason their front office is having. Yes, they kept Josh Naylor in the fold on a five-year, $92.5 million contract, which is good, but coming off a near-miss at the World Series, Jerry Dipoto’s men have done almost nothing to reinforce the roster — or even tread water, with the departures of Jorge Polanco and (presumably) Eugenio Suárez.

I know you’re all shocked that Mariners fans are cheesed off at Jerry for not striking while the iron is hot. It’s comforting to know that, in this age of upheaval and uncertainty, some things will never change.

This is relevant to Refsnyder because he, and his one-year, $6.25 million contract, is by far Seattle’s biggest external free agent signing this winter. Obviously, signing Refsnyder isn’t as exciting as signing Bo Bichette or Dylan Cease (or even, like, Harrison Bader). And I’m not suggesting that Mariners fans shouldn’t be tetchy about his being their team’s headline signing so far. It’s a bit of a drag, coming off an ALCS appearance like this.

But Refnsyder is, if not a good player, then at least a useful one. For the first decade of his professional career — really, until he finally bounced around to Boston in 2022 — Refsnyder was the player he projected as coming out of college. He’s now a slugging corner outfielder.

Over the past four seasons, Refsnyder is hitting .276/.364/.440, which comes to a wRC+ of 124. In 2025, he had a HardHit% of 52.3%, which was 21st out of the 348 batters who recorded 200 or more plate appearances. (A sampling of the players in the ensuing 10 positions: Kyle Stowers, Fernando Tatis Jr., Manny Machado, Junior Caminero, Nick Kurtz, and Vladimir Guerrero Jr.) The normal-human-sized Refsnyder hasn’t become any kind of exit velo monster; his EV90 last year was 105.7 mph, which was 125th among that same sample, and the second lowest of anyone in the top 50 in HardHit%.

Refsnyder just hits the ball hard, consistently, and especially against left-handed pitching.

A short-side platoon bat — even an incredible one, like Refsnyder — is a bit of a luxury player. That goes double when the player in question is stuck on the lower end of the defensive spectrum. It’s not always easy to carry a guy like that, let alone invest in a good player for that role.

And to be honest, that’s what really grinds my gears about the explosion in relief pitcher usage in the 21st Century. Yes, it can be a bit of a drag to watch all those pitching changes. Yes, it stinks that we’re seeing more of the game played by anonymous, interchangeable pitchers and less played by name-brand stars.

But when eight out of 26 roster spots are devoted to the bullpen — when GMs have to be limited to 13 pitchers by rule — you only get four position player bench spots in a league with a full-time DH. Some teams are going to have trouble fielding a credible emergency injury replacement for the defensive positions where you can’t fake it until you make it: center field, shortstop, catcher. A guy who is cleanup hitter-quality twice a week but replacement-level otherwise and can’t play any of those tough positions? That’s a hard sell.

My view is the game is worse off because of this style of roster construction, in which only pitching gets optimized and open to strategy, while the offense and defense are left to hang on by their fingernails. I wish teams were able to go with shorter bullpens so they could carry more platoon bats and pinch-runners, but I wish for a lot of things I know aren’t going to happen.

Nevertheless, the past couple weeks have seen most of the rest of the big free agent bats come off the board, so marginal upgrades are going to be key for teams that missed the boat on their big targets. Is there another Refsnyder out there, a player who kills pitchers with the platoon advantage but suffers so badly without that he looks anonymous overall?

RosterResource’s free agent tracker has 56 remaining unsigned position players who appeared in the majors in 2025. Of those, 42 recorded at least 30 plate appearances against left-handed pitchers and 60 against right-handed pitchers. (I’ll concede that we are cutting the pie extremely thin here. But it’s the last week of January, what do you want from me?)

So this is a list of guys who make Refsnyder look like Willie Mays. A couple of them had big platoon splits because they actually put up a negative wRC+ against lefties. But there are a couple promising options here. A Paul Goldschmidt-Nathaniel Lowe first base platoon looks like it’d be quite good if you had the roster room and could get both players to buy in.

But it’s probably a good idea to establish a standard of baseline competence. Alex Verdugo hit 66 points of wRC+ better against righties than lefties in 2025, for instance, but he still hit like a backup catcher on the whole. Who should teams actually be targeting for part-time roles?

Even this list could use some pruning. Suárez is coming off a 49-homer season; obviously whoever signs him will pay reasonably big money and ask him to play every day. Conforto and Hoskins both put up reverse splits during bad seasons overall, after having posted traditional platoon numbers throughout their careers. Smith, Ozuna, Lowe, and probably Arraez are first base-or-DH-only. Marte and Solano are old as hell. Goldschmidt and Turner are both first base-or-DH-only and old as hell.

Tauchman is 35, which for the purposes of this exercise is merely normal old, rather than old as hell, and I think he’d actually be a decent bargain signing as a fourth outfielder. Everyone remembers Tauchman going berserk for the Yankees for half a season in 2019. After that he was pretty bad in 2020 and 2021, before heading to Korea for a season in 2022.

However, since he’s been back, Tauchman has been quite good for the two Chicago teams: three straight seasons of at least a .356 on-base percentage and a 108 wRC+ in at least 350 plate appearances. He made $1.95 million in each of the past two seasons; if someone signed him for that and used him as an on-base guy in a corner outfield spot three times a week, that’d be a terrific use of a roster spot.

But from a platoon perspective, the big name left on the board here is Andujar, who was decent as a third baseman and corner outfield guy for the Pirates and A’s from 2023 to mid-2025, then went ballistic (.359/.440/.544) for the Reds down the stretch last year. But again, there’s reason to be skeptical. Earlier this week, I wrote about Bader showing up near the top of every leaderboard that measures overperformance of batted ball data; Andujar is at the top of those leaderboards.

So even if you’re only looking for a part-time bat, it does look like slim pickings at this point in the offseason. I guess that’s why you lock up Rob Refsnyder in December.