The value of a good platoon

Back in March, Dusty Baker put on the anti-rational hat he wears whenever he has eaten breakfast within the past decade and declared that he wasn’t going to platoon Jacque Jones.  I can’t find his exact words, but it boiled down to the fact that he wanted to give Jones an opportunity to show what he could do against LHP in a new league with a new team, that Dusty himself would be working with Jacque to make adjustments, blah, blah, blah. 

In response, even the littlest lass playing rounders in Oxfordshire winced at these vocalizations from our manager.  Jones’s struggles against LHP were about as secret as a CIA agent’s cover in Dick Cheney’s office.  From 2003-2005 Jones hit .238/.295/.363 against lefties - and that was in close to 500 plate appearances.  The evidence of his incompence against southpaws couldn’t be clearer.  However, Dusty obviously pays little attention to such facts and chose to believe the impossible dream.  How have things turned out?  Even worse than could have been expected.  In 100 at bats, Jones has hit .190/.214/.330 against LHP.  He has drawn a grand total of two walks while fanning 24 times. 

What impact has this Mendoza-lite performance had the offense?  I mean, even though the numbers are awful, it’s only 100 ABs, right?  To look at this in more detail, I decided to do some guesswork using Baseball Prospectus’s MLVr, or marginal lineup value rate statistic.  Basically, MLVr estimates the number of runs per game a player is worth offensively to his team if the rest of the lineup is made up of average hitters.  For example, a MLVr of 0.150 would mean that the player adds ~0.150 runs per game.  If he played every game, he’d be worth 24.3 runs above an average hitter (162*0.150) over the entire season.

Calculating MLVr is complex, but some basic comparisons should do a reasonable job.  Jones is batting .314.351/.551 against RHP.  Aramis Ramirez’s overall line is .276/.341/.542 - slightly worse, but pretty similar to Jones’s line against righies.  Ramirez’s MLVr is .174.  So, with Jones’s slightly better numbers, let’s give him a .180 MLVr against right-handed pitching. Using 4 plate appearances per game as an average, and the fact that Jones has ~300 PAs against RHP, we can calculate the following:

300 PA/4=75 games*0.180=13.5 runs

So, Jones’s bat against RHP has been worth ~13.5 runs over an average bat this off-season.  Now, this doesn’t take in to account positional effects (if it did that 13.5 would be lower due to the typical average offense from RF), but since we are comparing apples and apples it doesn’t matter.  What about his value against lefties?  Well, BPro has Jones’ total MLV at 6.9.  6.9 minus 13.5 = -6.6.  So, Jones has been worth ~6.6 runs below average offensively against LHP.  With the season almost three quarters over, if we extrapolate to 162 games, Jones would be worth ~ 9 runs below average against southpaws, or about 1 win.  However, it isn’t hard to imagine that the Cubs could find a right-handed bat to platoon with Jones who could put up above average numbers in RF playing only against lefties.  If he just matched Jones’s output against righties, he’d be worth ~5 runs above average over the course of a full season. 

In conclusion, a rough estimation indicates that Baker’s refusal to platoon Jones will cost the Cubs ~1.5 wins this year.  Of course, with the Cubs at 48-67, I agree that 1.5 wins is meaningless except in terms of draft order next summer.  In addition, it is difficult to know whether Jones would have agreed to a contract with the Cubs (no sarcastic comments from the peanut gallery) if he knew he’d be platooned regularly , so this is conjecture.  Regardless, in a truly weak NL Central Division, 1.5 wins could easily mean the difference between a playoff spot and time at the beach in early October.  If the Cubs look to compete next year, one of the easiest and most cost-effective ways to improve the club will be to platoon Jacque Jones religiously.