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Hit Parade: Breaking down platoon situations

By Brendan Roberts
ESPN.com

Thursday, April 16, 2009

Man, what's with all the platoons? Used to be, maybe no more than 10 years ago, managers had nine regulars in the AL, and eight regulars in the NL. The bench players were pinch hitters, pinch runners, utility players or merely backups. With the advancement and wide availability of baseball statistics (splits, batter-versus-pitcher matchups), and the acceptance (or dependence) of the managers who use them, some of today's managers play the matchups more than a Gold member on Date.com. It does c ...

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