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.

While most of that has to do with the fact that they’re not a very good team, I can’t help but thinking that some of it has to do with things like leaving Ryan Doumit – who is bad at everything except hitting – to play first base and using Ryan Church, owner of a .198/.243/.337 line as the designated hitter.

There were some other questionable moves in today’s lineup as well, such as benching Jose Tabata for just his third game in the Majors despite him having hit the ground running.

However, on the most fundamental level, I feel like you should definitely take a guy who can hit well and who is a liability everywhere he plays on the diamond and make sure that for the few games a year that this is a possibility for a National League club that the only thing he does is hit.

Just saying.