What?!? Ugh. This is going to be a long season.
*Yawn.* Hi there. I'm still around, in case you were wondering. Not much has been happening with the Phils, and I've been lazy, so it's been awhile. There is some news today, however, as the Phils re-signed Jimmy Rollins and Placido Polanco to one-year deals of $3.85 million and $4.6 million, respectively. Unlike some other recent acquisitions, these two signings actually make some degree of financial sense.
If you're a Baseball Prospectus subscriber, you might have read Joe Sheehan's praise of Rollins just this morning, calling him "someone who could be among the game's most interesting players in '05." Nice.
Polanco's no slouch either, although with Chase Utley already crowned the team's second baseman of the future, he's probably just a one-year rental (or trade bait). Personally, I think having Polanco on hand will do a lot of good in case one of the following happens:
- Utley falters in his first full year in the bigs. Keep in mind, the guy's only got 401 ABs under his belt. He showed signs of power last year, but his career line (.257/.313/.436) isn't much to write home about.
- David Bell gets injured again or recedes to his 2003 level of performance (.195/.296/.283 in 297 ABs), or both.
- Jim Thome gets injured (this post over at A Citizen's Blog covered this pretty well, so I'll refer you there).
Even if the team gets lucky and none of the above happen, an Utley/Polanco platoon at 2B might work out pretty well (again , I point you to a BP article, although this one's free) -- "if Polanco can maintain his pace against southpaws in 2004 (.327/.354/.503) and Utley hits well against righties again (.279/.322/.505), the two-headed monster may combine for one of the league’s most impressive positional lines in 2005."
Let's look at their 2004 VORP numbers -- Utley had a 12.9 in 287 PAs and Polanco 31.5 in 555 PAs. Here's a rough estimate of their VORP numbers against righties and lefties:
r-PA r-VORP l-PA l-VORP Polanco 387 21.0 155 10.5 Utley 237 11.5 47 1.3
(I calculated the splits by dividing up their VORP according to total bases vs RHP and LHP, since I couldn't find split VORP. I figure this is a tad easier than calculating my own VORP numbers, not to mention less rpne to error...)
Now, take these VORP numbers and extrapolate them to 400 PAs vs RHP and 200 PAs vs LHP (the actual number of PAs for the average batter probably skews closer to right-handed pitching, but whatever, 2/3 is a nice round number):
r-VORP l-VORP
per400 per200 total
Polanco 21.7 13.5 35.3
Utley 19.5 5.7 25.2
Platoon ------------ 33.1
Assuming I haven't messed up my calculations, it looks like starting Polanco against lefties and righties would actually be better than a straight-up platoon. That's using last year's numbers, though. If Utley improves, as many are predicting him to do, his VORP against righties will probably leapfrog Polanco's, making this platoon a true "two-headed monster".