This shouldn’t come as a huge surprise because Jim Leyland was leading off with Ivan Rodriguez pretty regularly.  Regardless, it was made official and Ivan Rodriguez will bat lead off against left handed pitchers.

This isn’t a bad move because while Ivan Rodriguez doesn’t have a huge platoon split, Curtis Granderson does.  Granderson is a career .231/.293/.434 hitter against lefties while he’s .270/.341/.451 against righties.  In Ivan Rodriguez’s career, he’s hit .314/.366/.495 against lefties and he’s .301/.334/.479 against right handed pitching.  More recently, Pudge’s platoon split is a little more prounounced.  He hit .340/.385/.506 against lefties and .284/.310/.409 against righties.  He also had three games where he started in the leadoff spot in 2006 in which he was 5 for 12.  That doesn’t mean anything because of the sample size but I thought it’s worth noting.

My opinion is that Gary Sheffield should be leading off.  I know he’s a power hitter but with his career on base percentage of .398 (.413 against lefties), he’d be pretty much ideal.  Ain’t going to happen though as it’s a little too radical. 

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