The platoon system in baseball is a method of designating two players to a single defensive position—usually one right-handed and one left-handed. Typically the right-handed half of the platoon is played on days when the opposing pitcher is left-handed and the left-handed player is played otherwise. The theory behind this is that generally players hit better against their opposite-handed counterparts, and that in some cases the difference is extreme enough to warrant complementing the player with one of opposite-handedness.
Platoons can also be organized along other axis, for example, splitting games between home run hitters and speedy contact hitters as the park dictates. In a sense, late-inning defensive replacements are a form of complex platooning.
Managers well known for platooning include Earl Weaver, Tris Speaker, and Casey Stengel. The players involved in platoons are typically journeymen -- players not considered so valuable in any sense that they must be played every day, though if well complemented, they can be very effective.
Famous quotes containing the word system:
“To care for the quarrels of the past, to identify oneself passionately with a cause that became, politically speaking, a losing cause with the birth of the modern world, is to experience a kind of straining against reality, a rebellious nonconformity that, again, is rare in America, where children are instructed in the virtues of the system they live under, as though history had achieved a happy ending in American civics.”
—Mary McCarthy (1912–1989)