rasmus on lefties

[Kincaid]

What do you mean by "die on a battlefield"? A 1.5 WAR projection for the most conservative projection on the player (and about 1.8 WAR average projection), against a platoon disadvantage, is very useful. Also, Rasmus would project to a positive WAR even if you don't give him any defensive credit at all and just call him average on defense.

I used 600 PAs because, even though a full season is generally around 700 PA, and that is 650 PA prorated to 150 (same scale as the defensive projections) that's dependent on lineup position. You can leverage his platoon disadvantage by dropping him to 7th or 8th in the order, and you turn him into a 600 PA/150 game player. You can make his defense more valuable relative to the cost in offensive production as long as you have hitters to put in front of him in the lineup because you are getting the same defensive contributions with fewer PA per game. If you want to go with 650 PA, I won't quibble with that, although if you give him +2 runs for baserunning instead of +1, it would erase that difference.

For ZiPS, that would be -15 per 650 PA, +8 defense, +1 baserunning, for a total of -6 runs per 150 games. To improve on that, let's say you can go out and find someone who projects to league average against lefties. Roughly 18% of a typical LH hitter's PAs are against LH pitchers, so that's 120 of Rasmus' 650 PA. If you give all of those PAs to a league average player, and don't let Rasmus hit at all against lefties, it saves you an expected 1 run. The cost of that 1 run is the cost of going out and finding and signing a league average CF (league average only against lefties, of course; he can project worse overall if he is RH) with little to offer in playing time, plus the development lost to Rasmus by not letting him hit lefties for a full year (or, if you let him face them, say, half the time, you gain even less by replacing him with a league average player), plus any future costs you have to continue to sink into paying for platoon players in the future since you never let Rasmus develop against lefties. Or, you could gain a bit more than a run if you can find, and are willing to pay, an above average player who is willing to come hit against lefties and sit on the bench. I'd hardly call passing on that expected gain "dying on a battlefield".

And that's if you only take the worst projection for Rasmus and ignore everything else. If you go by the average of the 5 projections, it's virtually a wash platooning Rasmus with an average CF against lefties, minus the costs of acquiring that player and the loss of Rasmus' development. If you choose CHONE as your one projection system instead of ZiPS, Rasmus projects well enough to be above average against lefties anyway.

[Jmodene]

Sometimes it's better to assume the worst and hope for the best.

[The Third Man]

Sometimes it's better to assume the worst and hope for the best.

This is my philosophy during finals week.

[st.lewis11]

Rasmus did get a couple of hits off lefty Kershaw in the NLDS, including that booming go-ahead double. (the one when he had a brain cramp, being thrown out trying to advance to 3rd on a cutoff).

[spiritofstlouis]

I fully expect him to improve in all aspects of his game.

Would also like to see him hitting in the 6 hole so perhaps his speed can be utilized.

I'd prefer him in the 5 hole to achieve a R-L-R split with Holliday and Ludwick.