Full Platoon?

[MBrunet]

I have Kotchman and Durazo platooning at 1B. Durazo's crushing lefties (500/571/583) but he's facing as many righties as he is lefties so far. I have him checked for "avoid righties", but he's still facing them.. the same is true with Mauer/Olivo. Is there any way to prevent Durazo and Olivo from facing ANY righties?

[LMBombers]

No there isn't.

You can be stuck with your platoon if the opposing SP gets removed from the game early on. HAL won't PH for the platoon batter facing the wrong pitcher until late in the game.

[Jerlins]

Which is a reason why one should keep platooning to a minimum. I've limited platooning to players who are at least bearable vs their weak side. Guys like Piedra (who folks here swear by), Howard, etc., will never find a home on my team, though others who are generally perceived as needing a platoon mate, like Crisp or Kielty, are welcome on a platoon basis with me. At least they are not an automatic out.

[Mean Dean]

This is this poor guy's first post, so I don't mean to dump on him, but I have seen this "I want him NEVER to face a righty/lefty!" complaint before and I just don't think it makes any sense at all. Show me the real-life hitter with any decent number of PA who literally never faced a lefty or righty pitcher, or the real-life pitcher with any decent number of IP who literally never faced a lefty or righty batter. It's not the least bit practical.

HAL seems to me to take the "avoid L/R" switches as seriously as any real manager does. For instance, I recently had Branyan (a 9R lefty), and he had 45 of his 461 PA against lefties -- 9.8%. That's about as low as you'll ever actually see for a guy hitting that many times.

It's possible that HAL doesn't handle reversies as well; I'm not sure I've ever used a reversie platoon guy. However, if he's leaving Durazo in against the Kelvim Escobar/Brad Radke types, then quite possibly his decisions are making sense.

But yeah, even if HAL always made the right move, platooning is always going to create the issue that someone can go L-R-L or R-L-R on you, and when you face that same-side reliever in the 5th or 6th inning, there really [i:dc7f586edd]is[/i:dc7f586edd] no right move.

[LMBombers]

[quote:de654e6c45="DeanTSC"]I recently had Branyan (a 9R lefty), and he had 45 of his 461 PA against lefties -- 9.8%. That's about as low as you'll ever actually see for a guy hitting that many times.[/quote:de654e6c45]

Dean, I agree with what you are saying but I wanted to see if I could find an even more severe platoon in real life. Check out Greg Gross' stats from 1977-1989.

2348 plate appearances (PA) vs RHP (91.2%)
226 PA vs LHP (8.8%)

[rgimbel]

I think you can get away with a ryan howard type he wont see that many leftys there are just so many lefty relievers to go around. However I dont like to use more than a 3L type as my righty half because they will see a lot more righties.