If you follow me on Twitter, you know that I’ve long been upset with the amount of playing time Ryan Church has been getting. (If you don’t follow me on Twitter, you should. I can be found @stealing1stbase) Not only is Church 30 years old, not only is he hitting badly, not only are his career stats not at all impressive even if he does regress to his mean, but he’s also been blocking Lastings Milledge.
While Milledge has mostly been a disappointment in terms of him being the player scouts thought he would be when he was a top prospect, he’s also 25 years old and had been hitting better than Church.
To boot: Milledge’s line on the season has been .276/.347/.392. While the slugging is underwhelming, he’s finally been hitting for power in limited duty, hitting three homers, seven doubles and a triple over his last 100 plate appearances. His slugging percentage in those plate appearances has been a respectable .470. Combine this with a decreased strikeout rate and an increased walk rate, and two of the biggest knocks on Milledge in his career thus far seem to have righted themselves: he’s hitting for power and showing a disciplined approach at the plate.
Church, meanwhile, has a .186/.240/.321 line on the season and unlike Milledge has yet to put up a solid month, much less a solid month and a half.
It’s quite possible that Milledge could regress when given the starting role and be the same disappointing player he’s been since coming to the Majors. He was only facing left-handed pitchers while Church was stealing his playing time, and while he’s never mashed left handed pitchers like he has since the end of May, he’s always hit better against them.
However, a team in the Pirates’ position owes it to themselves to find out if Milledge is just a platoon player or not. And, if it turns out Milledge is a platoon player after all, the Pirates need to find a better hitter against righties to take over the majority of the platoon than Ryan Church.
Now, if I could just get one more wish regarding Milledge, I’d want him to hit at the top of the order so the team can move Jose Tabata to the bottom of the order and take some pressure of the 21 year old.
I don’t think that there was any Pirates fan remaining even trying to defend Russell and the Ryan Church playing time decision/head scratcher. Now there’s some people that seem to think that the platoon worked magic for whatever reason. I don’t know, personally, just like most of the players on this team, there’s hot and cold streaks. I don’t think Ryan Church and his sub .200 batting average had anything to do with Lastings Milledge hitting a little bit over his head recently. Just a nice streak.
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Kipper