Feliciano, Mota and Platoon Splits

In the eighth inning of last night's game, after L'il Pedro walked Brian McCann to load the bases, Willie decided to take out Feliciano, who'd walked McCann on only five pitches, and go with the platoon righty-righty matchup of Mota vs. Francoeur. I actually said out loud "this is a bad idea," and sure enough, Frenchy got a base hit to tie up the game. Sweet.

Now Bill James said that "the platoon differential is real and virtually universal," but I wasn't sure about the wisdom of replacing a pitcher who's been lights out with a pitcher who's stunk up the joint all year, just because he's right-handed. So I decided to look into it and see who's been better against RHB this year, lefty Pedro or righty Mota. I seriously doubt the answer will surprise anyone.

Wow. One of these pitchers has been very effective against right-handed batters, and the other one is Guillermo Mota. Anyway, Willie has to know this, right? I mean, Pedro hadn’t pitched for a few days, so he wasn’t tired; and the Mets have a day off before taking on Philly, so you wouldn’t need to save his arm, either. I just don’t understand why Willie would let the worst pitcher in his bullpen come in to pitch in the most important situation in the game. Especially when he had a better reliever in there already.

Of course, the Mets score in the bottom half, so it all works out OK (unless you’re John Maine). Mota . . . not good. Congratulations on the W, though. But here’s something that actually was surprising.

In 2007, Mota has actually been pretty effective against left-handers. This year, anyway, Guillermo has a reverse-platoon split. There aren’t a lot of pitchers like this, but anecdotally, pitchers who are more effective against batters from the opposite side frequently have crappy fastballs but good fadeaway changeups/screwballs (Jamie Moyer, Jim Mecir, Fernando Valenzuela). That sounds like Guillermo Mota to me.*

Mota used to have a small but normal platoon differential (better against RH than LH), so maybe I shouldn’t get too excited about these 86 at bats (sample size alert!) But of course, for most of his career Guillermo used to be a good reliever, too.

As always, special thanks to David Pinto, whose Day by Day Database makes my dull and inaccurate analysis possible.

*I know he can throw it 96 mph, but Mota can’t locate his fastball for shit. Even at 96 mph, a fastball right over the heart of the plate sucks.