Assuming that Juan Gonzalez doesn’t make an implausibly amazing return and that none of the odds-on outfield candidates injures himself or has a run-in with the law, the Cardinals will begin the season with five roughly interchangeable outfielders — two righthanded-hitting and three lefty. The situation begs for a platoon, inasmuch as it would be a simple way to optimize these outfielders’ performance. As most people now know, the platoon differential — that righties hit lefties better and vice versa — is real and it’s spectacular virtually universal.

Only one problem: With the exception of Chris Duncan and Skip Schumaker, the outfielders pretty much defy the platoon differential — that is, Brian Barton, Ryan Ludwick and Rick Ankiel all seem to hit better against pitchers of their own handedness (right, right and left, respectively). The samples are admittedly small, and yet they are enough to at least consider the possibility that they do indicate a bucking of the sabermetric axiom.

First, Duncan and Schumaker, who are more predictable:

And now, the players exhibiting backward platoon splits:

Again, sample-size alert applies — only Duncan has as much as a season’s worth of ABs in a single split (which is why we’re most confident in his .311 GPA vs. righties). And since we’re comparing apples to oranges — and in Barton’s Double-A line, perhaps even clementines — it’s hard to put these guys up against each other. Still, here’s our gut feel of rank, in descending order, of the team’s best options vs. each handedness of pitcher:

Assuming Barton (currently second on the team in RC27 this spring) could play centerfield — a big assumption, admittedly — that would put Ankiel and Ludwick in a rightfield platoon. Only Ankiel would play against southpaw starters (opening day?) and Ludwick against righties.

The lesson here? Sabermetric tenets often have exceptions. Even those of us who hew to the sabermetric line (as well as those who subscribe to simple old "conventional wisdom") need to be vigilant enough to recognize those exceptions. In this case, Tony La Russa might even play it to his advantage. For example, he could slot a couple or three consecutive lefties in a batting order — say Ankiel and Schumaker — hoping to lure a LOOGy in the later innings. In that case, with Ankiel being perhaps the best outfield option, the opposing manager would be playing right into TLR’s hands. We can hear Mike Shannon now, describing the irony of that iconoclastic manager Tony La Russa "going with his gut" and leaving the lefty in to face the lefty pitcher — "Ol’ Abner’s done it again, folks!"

This entry was posted by Pip on Friday, March 21st, 2008 at 8:29 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.