The Carlos Santana trade meant plenty for this Pirates team. It means they lost a clubhouse leader. They lost their cleanup hitter. And they lost something they don't have a lot of: A quality right-handed bat.
Ok, Santana is a switch-hitter, but when Derek Shelton played the platoon game, it was a definite plus for the lineup. While the Pirates are not as overly left-handed as they have been in years past, they still don't have too many right-handed options. Those righty bench options aren't exactly great at the moment, either. Connor Joe has a pretty pedestrian .719 OPS against left-handers since the start of May. Alika Williams did quite well offensively for Class AAA Indianapolis, but he's a glove-first middle infielder. Jared Triolo could move into a utility role once Ke'Bryan Hayes returns, but given how cranky the latter's back has been the past month or so, it may be wise to still view Triolo as a starter until proven otherwise.
That means for at least the short-term, the Pirates are going to have to schedule in some left-on-left matchups offensively. That could mean Jack Suwinski gets more of those opportunities.
Suwinski has taken a step forward this season, boosting his OPS to .849 with 21 home runs. He still has some feast or famine tendencies, but a .345 on-base percentage makes him a more consistent contributor. If expected stats are your thing, his .371 xWOBA puts him in the top 10% of hitters this year. He's a plus for this lineup.
He's also been steered away from at-bats against left-handers.
Suwinski had a poor minor-league track record against southpaws, and that carried through as a rookie. While he walked in about 10% of his plate appearances against them in 2022 and hit five home runs, he struck out 32.4% of the time and hit just .122. All told, it resulted in a 47 wrC+, which means he created less than half the offense a league average hitter would.
This year, he has slashed .224/.312/.343 in 77 plate appearances against lefties. That's still only an 81 wRC+, but the final results are much better. It's come with an increase in strikeouts (44.2%), but the walk rate has held steady.
"Hitting left-on-left in the big-leagues is really hard," Shelton said. "The comfortable-ness of it, or just the continuing to see it, is something that will make you better. The challenging thing is it's one of the most volatile things. There's very few guys that are [good] left-on-left every year. Over the course of time, if you look back, it's just not. And if they are, they are elite. I think it's just a matter of picking the right matchups for him."
So is it better to lean into the platoon split with Suwinski or make a push to make him an everyday starter? Well, it seems he'll get the chance to face lefties a little more during these final months of the season.
“We expect at some point there will be opportunities for him to start against lefties and keep working on that part of his game," Ben Cherington said on his weekly 93.7 The Fan radio show Sunday. "Right now, we want to put the best possible lineup out there that we can. We want to keep everyone on the team as sharp as we can.”
But is it the right thing to do? Well, there is a case for and against it.
The pro case is pretty straight forward: An everyday player is almost always worth more than a platoon. The OPS will take a hit, but there will be added player value through more consistent playing time. It's also reasonable to assume that he'll get better as he gets more reps.
He is whiffing more against breaking balls this year, but those are in-zone whiffs. He's chased fewer pitches against lefties last year, especially against breaking balls:
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In two-thirds of the season, Suwinski has been worth 2.3 WAR, according to Baseball Reference. That puts him on pace for an about three-and-a-half win pace, which is an impact player. Why do you want to take the bat out of the hands of an impact player for something you can't control, like who the other team is pitching?
That is assuming Suwinski does eventually learn to hit southpaws.
One of the things Suwinski does best as a hitter is he knows what his damage zones are and he's good at identifying pitches that cross in those zones. Take a look at the pitch location of his 21 home runs. Most are middle-middle or middle-in:
Facing right-handers, that makes sense. A good chunk of those are mistake pitches, either because they hung or they cut in to the inner-third of the plate. Left-handers, though, have a different approach. The breaking ball is going to run away from him rather than towards him. Fastballs that cut are going to go to the outer-third of the plate, where his slugging percentage significantly drops:
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What it all means is that if Suwinski is going to hit lefties even semi-effectively, he's going to need to grow more as a hitter. Perhaps that means a more aggressive approach, moving away from those damage zones. Perhaps it's really focusing in on where potential damage spots are against left-handed pitching. Either are theoretically viable.
The Pirates don't have much to lose these next two months by giving Suwinski these at-bats. (After all, this lineup has been half rookies the past few weeks and likely will stay that way down the stretch.) If the results are bad and Suwinski proves to just be a really effective platoon, then they still have an answer. And if he can learn to hit lefties and take away this last major hurdle as a hitter, this lineup will become deeper every day, not just depending on who the opposing pitcher is.
