Replacing Injured Stars: Look Left on the Platoon

Photo courtesy of Keith Allison.

I don’t know about you, but it seems to me like 2013 has been the year of the injury so far. Johnny Cueto, Jered Weaver, Zack Greinke, all out for a bit. On Monday, you’ll see the first 2013 installment of Dixon’s Picks, waiver wire pitchers who will help you in the short term, especially for that week. You’ll actually see that every Monday for the rest of the season.

But today, we’re going to try try to find out how to replace Yoenis Cespedes, Aramis Ramirez, Hanley Ramirez, and every other bat that seems to be on the shelf now.

Now, you can try for a young gun that your whole league has missed out on. But honestly, most young players worth having are probably on a roster already, or in the minor leagues. You can try to play guys on hot streaks but honestly, that’s going to have limited success. You don’t realize most hot streaks are even happening until the middle of them, and they may be just about wrapping up at that point. You can go for high steal guys, who are a threat to maybe score a lot of runs or hit .300 (Denard Span, Juan Pierre), but that’s probably only a good idea if you see your team needing steals. At this point, the season is too young to make that call.

Right now, we’re trying to fill the stat sheet as much as possible. You can do that with platoon guys, specifically the left-handed hitters in the platoon. To start, let’s take a look at some numbers of different left-handed hitters with different skills.

We’ll start with Barry Bonds, who one way or another, has more home runs than anyone in the history of the game.

Obviously Bonds was never a platoon player, nor was he ever available on any fantasy baseball waiver wires. But we’ll use him as a bit of a control, if you will. The slash stats are pretty close, while just over 70 percent of his career home runs came against right-handed pitching.

Now, let’s look at Josh Hamilton. Obviously, Hamilton isn’t going to be available in any fantasy leagues, either. He’s not the kind of player Bonds was, but we’ll just consider this level two of our tier, and I promise, this is going somewhere.

The slash stats are a bit more lopsided than Bonds. But those 120 homers make up 74 percent of his career total.

Two more guys to show. The first will be Raul Ibanez, who’s pretty much a platoon guy now and was never at Hamilton’s level as an overall hitter. But in his best days, he was an everyday guy.

That is just under 80 percent of Ibanez’s career home runs against right-handed pitchers. A higher percentage than Bonds and Hamilton, for sure. Those two are everyday players and the discrepancy there can be chalked up to there being more right-handed pitchers than left-handed. With Ibanez, it’s not so simple.

With Seth Smith of the A’s, who Nash recently talked about as a potential Yoenis Cespedes replacement, it’s a little more difficult.

That’s 89 percent of his career total. That’s 19 percent more than Bonds, about 15 more than Hamilton, and 9 more than Ibanez.

Here’s the thing about those guys, though. If you’re looking to replace a player who’s hit the DL, you don’t need a star like Bonds or Hamilton in his prime, nor do you even Ibanez in his best years. All of those guys would probably not be available. Seth Smith, is available in nearly every league, and will absolutely do if you’ve had an outfielder go down.

Yes, I know, those AVG/OBP/SLG splits are just not close, but they don’t need to be. Yes, Smith can’t left-handed pitching, but he doesn’t face lefties that often. There are a few reasons for that.

1. Again, there are more right-handed pitchers than left-handed counterparts. If you were to average .284 and .205, you’d get a sub-.250 hitter. But Smith is a .270 hitter. Because again, there are more right-handed pitchers than left-handed and…
2. Smith rarely faces left-handed pitching.

The left-sided side of a platoon works so well because platoon left-handed bats generally don’t bat against lefties, so you don’t need to worry about the slash splits as much. Since they do get more at-bats, their slash stats will impact your team more than a lefty. While a 30-for-100 and 3-for-10 hitter both bat .300, the guy with more at-bats helps your team’s average much more. Simple, I know, but worth repeating.

Smith is a pretty drastic case, but certainly not the only platoon guy who can help you out short term. Todd Helton is no longer the player he once way, but can still do damage against right-handed arms, especially in Coors Field. Carlos Pena (who Will recently talked at length on) can hit lefties is another guy who can still do damage.

Something else simple but worth saying: Hitters who get more at-bats will have better counted stats. So again, you don’t want the right-handed side of the platoon, but the lefties will do well as a short-term fix.

Now, if a star guy is down for the year, a platoon guy probably won’t work too well. In that case, your best chance at remaining competitive is a trade. But in a normal 2-4 week DL stint, go with the lefties. They’re more than likely your best chance at success.