Here’s a crazy idea: Heretofore-unknown second baseman Edgar Gonzalez makes the team out of Spring Training, and the Cardinals begin the season with a platoon at second base. Crazy or not, the fact of the matter is that it’s about as likely as Rick Ankiel opening the season as the team’s starting rightfielder.

Not that the idea of having Gonzalez — a player so obscure that he has to go by his middle initial — as the righthanded platoon partner of Adam Kennedy is without merit. The guy can get on base, and his minor-league BABIP numbers show why: He’s either amazingly "lucky" — as in, over his whole career — or a line-drive hitter (typical BABIP is .290-.300):

A platoon actually makes sense, for several reasons:

Kennedy doesn’t hit lefties well, and neither does Miles. The goal of any platoon is to optimize your output at a position. In his career, Kennedy has a .256 GPA vs. righties and a .225 GPA vs. lefties. And that gap doesn’t appear to be improving: in 2006, he was .260 and .184. By contrast, Gonzalez hit lefties in various minor-league stints last year at a clip of .331 GPA, which includes a .432 OBP. As most Cardinal fans know, the team struggled against southpaws last year, performing well below their opponents (.249 GPA to .275). Adding the lefthanded Kennedy doesn’t help in that regard. Although Miles did have some key at-bats in 2006 — his Rocky-like performance vs. Brad Lidge just before the All-Star break comes to mind — and that he’s as good from the right side (.238 GPA) as the left (.234), that’s not saying much. E-Gonz is an upgrade over both players.

The Cardinals don’t lose that much on defense. Though defense is apparently Gonzalez’s achilles heel, let’s first remember that Adam Kennedy is no, er, Fernando Vina. We haven’t seen Gonzalez afield, so perhaps the rap is justified, but as the big brother of smooth-fielding Adrian Gonzalez and the winner of the Mexican League Gold Glove, how bad can he really be? Plus, Aaron Miles can take over in late innings, which he might be doing anyway for Kennedy. And Gonzalez’s bat may be so good that it doesn’t matter how weak his glove is.

Kennedy’s relatively low salary makes a platoon tolerable. It’s not like Kennedy is making so much coin ($2.5 mil in 2007) that he needs to play everyday to earn his keep. Besides, if you’re paying a guy to perform badly, it’s silly. Even with Gonzalez making the major-league minimum, the team is looking at a second-base platoon for less than $3 mil, only slightly more than they paid for the underwhelming services of Hector Luna and Ronnie Belliard in 2006 (approximately $2 mil). With Kennedy starting very slowly this spring (.202 GPA), and Gonzalez raking — his .419 GPA and 15.13 RC27 are tops on the team so far — Gonzalez would be a useful insurance policy, especially early in the season.

When he’s not starting, Gonzalez would be the team’s top right-handed pinch-hitting option. Yes, probably even better than Scott Spiezio (.242 career GPA vs. lefties). Let’s face it, the Cardinals are fairly helpless against late-inning LOOGyings (no, that’s not a word), So Taguchi’s NLCS heroics vs. Billy Wagner excepted. The presence of Preston Wilson, Taguchi or Miles doesn’t exactly strike fear into the hearts of the opposition — or confidence in the hearts of the faithful.

In reality, of course, Gonzalez will more likely be brushing up on his fielding in Memphis most, if not all, of the season, unless Miles or Kennedy gets hurt. And that’s too bad, since it appears that Gonzalez could help the big club this year.

This entry was posted by Pip on Thursday, March 22nd, 2007 at 10:45 am and is filed under analysis. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.