Now that I’m sitting here digesting this morning’s moves (Chris Snyder and a minor league SS to the Pirates for DJ Carrasco, Bobby Crosby, and Ryan Church with Jeff Clement and Argenis Diaz coming up to fill out the roster and probably one more move calling Dan McCutchen up and sending Jason Jaramillo down before tonight’s game so that McCutchen can start), I’m wondering what this means for playing time distribution down the stretch.
Calling Clement up is an interesting move; if the Pirates wanted someone to come up and fill Ryan Church’s role of not playing regularly I would’ve though that Brandon Moss was the obvious choice now that he’s heating up in Indianapolis. Clement’s numbers weren’t great in Indy (.305/.335/.555 with eight homers in 40 games), but he was down there to work on a specific part of his swing (getting his hands loaded faster to shorten and quicken the swing) and if he was focused on that the club might not be terribly worried about results. Which is to say that I have to think that Clement didn’t come up just to sit and he’ll presumably get some regular ABs against righties down the stretch.
Meanwhile, according to Dejan Kovacevic, Doumit will split time with Snyder behind the plate and also see some time at first base and right field. Presumably that will also come against righties because the Pirates will be showcasing Doumit for an off-season trade and his flailing from the right side against left-handed pitching won’t help his trade value much. And the Pirates aren’t going to sit Garrett Jones that often against right-handed pitching, so whenever Clement or Doumit are at first, he’ll likely be in right field.
So where, exactly, does Lastings Milledge fit into this? He’s cooled off considerably since getting moved into an every-day role after the break, so perhaps the Pirates do see some value in sitting him regularly against particularly types of righties. Obviously it’s a very small sample size since the break, but Milledge had a pretty big platoon split back when the JR was alternating him with Church. As that post indicates, I kind of thought that Russell wasn’t wrong to try and keep Milledge away from bad matchups, but he was wrong to do it with Church. So is it better if he uses Clement and Doumit for the same purpose? Because I wouldn’t be surprised at all if that’s what happens.
