Archive for platoons

Remember back in the 2009-2010 off-season, when some people weren’t sure who was better between big-time free agent outfielders Jason Bay and Matt Holliday? That was awesome. The Bay contract may not have been the nail in the coffin of Omar Minaya’s tenure as general manager of the Mets, but it was pretty close.

It is unlikely that even the biggest critics of the Bay contract at the time (and I was not a fan) thought things would get this bad this quickly. Bay was paid to be a star, but he has not even been an average player in either of his seasons so far with the Mets. Perhaps he was about average overall when he played in 2010, but he missed more than a third of the 2010 season. In 2011 he played more, but went from overpaid average player to just a bad player. He has looked so poor in spring training that there is talk (understandably dismissed by the Mets) that Bay could be platooned if he starts slow this year. The talk may be baseless, but that it is even out there is a bad sign for the Mets given that Bay still has two years and $35 million guaranteed (including the $3 million buyout on the 2014 club option) on his contract, which also includes a full no-trade clause.

But for the sake of speculation, if the Mets did decide to platoon Bay, would it really accomplish anything?

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The Washington Nationals have been making headlines lately with big such as trading for Gio Gonzalez and getting a one-year deal with Edwin Jackson. They were even rumored to be in on the Prince Fielder sweepstakes. Some of the Nationals’ other moves understandably have garnered less attention, such as minor-league deals for veteran outfielders Mike Cameron and (more recently) Rick Ankiel. While these are low-risk deals that may turn out to be bench insurance, given some ambiguities about the Nationals’ outfield situation, Cameron and Ankiel could form a nice stopgap platoon in center field that would allow Washington to protect other, more significant investments.

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[NB: Working team names into titles is an oh-so-subtle way of showing readers how clever you are. Also: food metaphors~!]

I guess it is Brewers’ week here at FanGraphs, and why not? Surely I’m only one among many non-Milwaukee fans who is enjoying their all-in season. It’s been a hoot watching as they attempt to make the playoffs with a Stars and Scrubs approach. And, as we know, anything can happen in the playoffs (Roy Halladay versus Zack Greinke in the NLCS, anyone?). The Scrubs are as fascinating as the Stars… can a team really make it to the playoffs with Yuniesky Betancourt (anagram: “Batter Nine You Sucky,” thanks Graham) at shortstop? Shortstop has been a mess for a while now in Milwaukee, and there isn’t an immanent solution in sight. However, another position that was thought to be on the Brewers’ “scrub side” prior the season, center field, has turned into a real plus. It’s the too-rarely-used (and rarely-properly-implemented) Magic of Platooning, starring Carlos Gomez and Nyjer Morgan!

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As the “real” trade deadline approached last night, the New York Mets finally got rid of their 2010 team mascot, Jeff Francoeur, trading him to the Texas Rangers in exchange for Joaquin Arias. Dan Szymborski has already issued a brilliant analysis of the trade, but I want to focus on what Francoeur might bring to the Rangers over the last month of the season.

It depends on his role. Obviously, Josh Hamilton and Nelson Cruz are far superior to Francoeur, but as Rob Neyer notes, they’ve each struggled with injury issues this season, so Francoeur provides a bit of depth in case those come into play again. Still, Francoeur has been close to worthless for two seasons, so it’s not clear why the Rangers would need to trade for a replacement-level bench player at this point, especially one who can’t play center field (assuming the Rangers don’t want to play Julio Borbon and don’t want Hamilton in center). In any case, the Rangers already have David Murphy, who does play center occasionally, although he isn’t very good there.

Assuming Murphy and Francoeur are roughly equivalent in the field (and some quick number crunching has them in the same general area), the main skill Francoeur supposedly brings to the Rangers is as a platoon partner for Murphy. When Francoeur’s abilities have been (rightly) criticized this season, his alleged usefulness as a right-handed platoon bat is usually brought up as a way he might be made useful. Francoeur does have a fairly big observed split: .302 wOBA versus RHP and a .344 versus lefties. However, as most readers of FanGraphs know by now, there’s a difference between observed performance and true talent. We have to properly regress Francoeur’s split against league average to get an idea of what his real platoon skill, i.e., what it will likely be going forward.

As is covered in the linked post, there is less variance among right-handed hitters with regard to platoon skill, so while Francoeur’s observed split is bigger than average, his 961 career PA versus LHP is regressed against 2200 of league average RHH versus LHP. In other words, his estimated hitter platoon skill is still far closer to league average than to his past observed performance. ZiPS overall rest-of-season projection for Francoeur is a .311 wOBA, which is pretty useless for a corner outfielder who isn’t exceptional defensively. Applying the split estimate to that figure gives us an projected wOBA of .304 versus RHP, and .330 versus LHP — terrible versus RHP and a bit above average versus LHP. Murphy’s ZiPS RoS wOBA is .344, and his estimated splits are .319 wOBA vs. LHP, .353 vs. RHP. *

* I realize that the ZiPS RoS projections currently assume Francoeur playing in the Mets’ pitcher-friendly park and Murphy playing in the Rangers’ hitters’ paradise. There isn’t a simple way of working around that, so I’ll simply note a) the park differences aren’t as big as one might think, especially over the few games left in the season (in terms of run values), and b) they are somewhat offset by the AL’s superior pitching.

Over a full season of 700 PAs, the difference between Francoeur’s .330 vs. LHP and Murphy’s .319 is about six runs. Of course, there isn’t a full season left, but about a fifth of a season — so it’s one or two runs over 140-150 PA. But even that is too much, since Francoeur would be the lesser part of a platoon. Assuming one third of the PAs go to the right-handed batter, the expected offensive difference between Murphy alone and a Francoeur/Murphy platoon would be less than a run over the remainder of the season. Yes, they’ll have Francoeur in the playoffs, but that’s (at most) 19 games. The expected difference is miniscule.

From the standpoint of creating a productive platoon, Francoeur’s expected platoon skill isn’t enough to overcome his overall lousiness at the plate, and can’t reasonably be expected to make much of a difference over the remainder of the season over just playing Murphy. If an injury does occur to one of the starters, forcing a backup into a full-time role, then Francoeur will have to face right-handed pitching. In that case the Rangers would be better off playing Julio Borbon (superior defense) and keeping the recently-designated Brandon Boggs around as depth.

It might not be a total wash. Francoeur might get a big hit in the playoffs and that, combined with his apparent ability to charm the press corps, will lead to some indignant newpaper columns when he gets non-tendered in the off-season. Fun for everyone!

As you’ve probably heard by now, the Mariners waived Ryan Garko, having been thoroughly unimpressed with his glove and bat this spring, particularly his glove, which is so bad they don’t want to platoon him with Casey Kotchman at first base. Plenty of reaction and analysis is already out there in the blogosphere, here I offer a loose series of (dis)connected thoughts.

1. Given that Garko’s glove is apparently un-platoon-able, and assuming that the Mariners had been willing to use him as their full-time DH, how would that compare to the current plan? CHONE (less optimistic on Garko than ZiPS) projects Garko for a .336 wOBA. ZiPS is more optimistic for both Mike Sweeney and Ken Griffey Jr. If they platoon at DH (with a 70/30 RHP/LHP distribution), and adjusting for estimated platoon skill, a Griffey/Sweeney platoon projects for a .327 wOBA. Over 150 games (about 630 PA), that’s about a 5 run (about half a win) difference.

2. Using the same inputs as in #1, against RHP, right-handed hitting Garko projects to have a .329 wOBA; against RHP, left-handed hitting Griffey projects for .325.

3. A league-average hitter is a replacement level DH. For the past three seasons, the league-average wOBAs have been .331, .328, and .329, respectively.

4. Sweeney and Griffey are apparently important to the Mariners for their positive effect on chemistry. Last season, Tom Tango used the example of Cliff Floyd to show that the open market values the “intangibles” at $350,000 per season. What does this situation tell us about the 2010 market for intangibles?

According to Cot’s, Garko is guaranteed $550,000 this season, Sweeney $650,000 in the majors, and Griffey $2.35 million (we’ll leave out the various playing time and award incentives for the sake of simplicity). First, let’s eliminate the “replacement salary” of about $400,000 for each player, so we’re left with $150,000 for Garko, $250,000 for Sweeney, and $1.95 million for The Zombie Kid. From #1 and #3 we can infer (generously) that a Sweeney/Griffey DH platoon would be around replacement level. So their “surplus salary” would tell us how much the Mariners are willing to pay for chemistry — $2.2 million. But we need to take account of Garko. Let’s assume he adds nothing to chemistry (or is it alchemy?). Still, we’ve established him as (conservatively) half a win (runs) better than the Sweeney/Griffey DH platoon (and we should really be only eliminating one of Griffey/Sweeney’s replacement salaries, since Garko only takes one roster spot, but this was supposed to be a simple post…). A win on the open market this offseason was going for around $3.5 million, so half a win is $1.75 million. That means that the Mariners are valuing Griffey and Sweeney’s “clubhouse presence” at almost four million dollars this season. The Mariners thus must think that the chemical advantage added by Sweeney and Griffey will add at a bit more than a win for them this season.

Feel free to check my math.

5. If Griffey and Zombie Sweeney are platooning at “chemistry,” does this mean their lockers are on either side of Milton Bradley’s?

6. I wonder what Kenny thinks of all this?

7. Yes, it’s only one decision, so “small sample size” caveats apply, even to front offices. Still, how fitting is it that this decision is announced so close to the Mariners’ organizational ranking being posted?

In line with our Fabulous Split Week here at FanGraphs, this post will utilize the framework for estimating hitter platoon skill outlined on Monday. If you crave more details, read that post, or, even better, take a look at the sections from The Book on which it is based. Today, I’ll apply this analysis to four of the remaining DH-ish players left on the free agent market. This will allow us to set aside issues of defense and get a simple overview at how platoon skill effects the value of some hitters. Recalling Monday’s post, platoon skills are regressed to the mean (here based on league-wide splits 2007-2009), moreso for righties (regressed against 2200 PA) than for lefties (1000 PA).* For the projected overall wOBA, I use CHONE’s projections as listed on the FanGraphs player pages.

* David Appelman informs me that the “career splits” pages only include stats starting in 2002. That’s helpful in this case because we’re getting the more recent data for older players, although platoon skills usually don’t change much over most players’ careers. But keep in mind that the “career” numbers listed below are post-2002.

Let’s begin with some lefties:

Russell Branyan
Career Split: 15.2% (437 PA v LHP)
Regressed: 10.6%
CHONE projected wOBA: .359
Estimated wOBA vs. RHP: .367
Estimated wOBA vs. LHP: .329

Like most saber-nerds, I love talking about Russell Branyan. Although he has a platoon-guy rep, in 2009, when he got more PAs against LHP than ever before in his major-league career, he hit well against them (.345 wOBA). It’s still a small sample, but it does show that sometimes regression to the mean happens right before our eyes. Branyan actually projects as about league average vs. LHP. His back is problematic and he probably went into the off-season with unrealistic expectations about what he could get in free agency, but it’s hard to believe he won’t find a starting job before Opening Day.

Carlos Delgado
Career Split: 18.2% (1400 PA v LHP)
Regressed: 14.2%
CHONE projected wOBA: .337
Estimated wOBA vs. RHP: .352
Estimated wOBA vs. LHP: .304

In an earlier post on free agent 1B/DHes, I hinted that the once-great Delgado might want to consider hanging it up. But this is a case where a larger split makes a guy more valuable with a decent platoon partner.

Hank Blalock
Career Split: 21.8% (1060 PA v LHP)
Regressed: 15.4%
CHONE projected wOBA: .328
Estimated wOBA vs. RHP: .342
Estimated wOBA vs. LHP: .291

It may seem like Hank Blalock was good just a couple years ago, but it’s really been six. He has even a bigger splits than Delgado, but he’s also not as good of a hitter in general. A .342 wOBA part-time DH can be useful, but not often.

And now some righties…

Jermaine Dye
Career Split: 9.1% (1196 PA v LHP)
Regressed: 7.1%
CHONE projected wOBA: .345
Estimated wOBA vs. RHP: .338
Estimated wOBA vs. LHP: .363

Dye seems to have realized he can’t play the field anymore, which is good. Given how long he’s been in the league relative to Ryan Garko (discussed in Monday’s post), that their estimated split is almost exactly the same points to how much observed RHH platoon splits need to be taken with a grain of salt.

Johny Gomes
Career Split: 15.4% (600 PA v LHP)
Regressed: 8.1%
CHONE projected wOBA: .336
Estimated wOBA vs. RHP: .327
Estimated wOBA vs. LHP: .354

Now this is a righty with a big split, although not as big as people think. Despite Gomes’ reputation, his estimated platoon split isn’t any bigger than the average lefty split. Of course, he’s only about average against RHP.

This small selection reflects what we’d generally expect — lefties have larger splits that vary more widely. This implies that when setting up a platoon, given similar defensive skills (or lack thereof), the key is finding a lefty with a big split, and to find a RHH who is a decent overall hitter. And, of course, there’s the issue of whether bringing in a platoon partner is worth the roster spot. For example, given that the expected performance of Gomes and Dye (the lesser half of the platon) vs. LHP isn’t that much better than Branyan’s overall projection. On the other hand, on the right team, Gomes or Dye + Delgado might make sense.