These projections are going to be posted in a random order at this point.  So far we've covered all of the regular position players and 3 of the rookie bullpen arms.  You can always check out the projections for the players and the NL Central by clicking on the Projections link on the menu.

I decided to start with 2nd base because it's one of the two positions the Cubs will more than likely be employing a platoon.  I do think Jeff Baker will get a few weeks to win the everyday job, but in all likelihood the position becomes a platoon before the end of April.  I'm going to ignore that for a moment and pretend that Baker and Fontenot are platooned from the start and I'm also pretending it's a perfect world in which Baker never faces a right handed pitcher and Fontenot never faces a lefty.

Thanks to SG of Replacement Level Yankee Weblog, I'm able to calculate the split projection using the CAIRO system.  These can be considered the player's true talent level against righties and lefties.  I appreciate SG's help and I greatly appreciate all of his work in putting together the CAIRO projections and running a great Yankees blog.

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Each position will get roughly 695 plate appearances in the season.  This is obviously affected by which position in the lineup the batters hit and how good the offense is, 695 is a good estimate so we're using that.  We're assuming that 67% of the plate appearances will be against righties and 33% against lefties.  So we're actually going to use 693 PA.  Remember, this first projection is a perfect world projection.  It means that Fontenot gets 462 PA and Baker gets 231 PA.  All of them are coming at 2nd base of course.  We'll make some adjustments and make this more realistic later, but let's take a look at what the best case scenario is.

Below are the 2010 CAIRO split projections for each player

Here are the links the 2010 projections we already did for Mike Fontenot and Jeff Baker.  Baker's overall projection was a .334 wOBA while Fontenot's was a .322 wOBA.  Baker was worth 1.2 WAR using the playing time estimates we did and Fontenot was worth 0.7.  We had them combined for 677 PA at 2nd base and worth a combined 1.9 WAR.  Baker was slightly above average over 700 PA and Fontenot was slightly below average.

If we use the new split projections (and our perfect world playing time estimate), the new value for each player is below.

That's a rough average of a .370 wOBA, -1 run on the bases and +4 runs fielding.  It's a combined 4.5 WAR, which is 2.6 wins better than the combined projection we initially had.  This is why teams use the platoon.

However, we were pretending that neither player would face a pitcher they suck against.  That 4.5 WAR is unrealistic, but so is the 1.9 WAR.  Even if Lou doesn't go with a platoon, the reason would be because Baker has exceeded expectations and produced more than 2 WAR by himself.

It is likely the two platoon.  While Baker isn't nearly as bad against righties as Fontenot is against lefties, Fontenot's advantage vs righties is huge.  He's also a good fielder so you're not only gaining offense, but you're improving your defense too.  Assuming Baker doesn't exceed expectations by a great amount, these two will end up platooning.  What can we expect from this platoon?

Obviously we can't expect that neither would face the pitcher half of the platoon they aren't any good at.  That's unreasonable.  I don't care who your manager is, that's impossible.

So we first need to figure out what is the most reasonable plate appearance projections vs. righties and lefties for each player.  The best way to do this would be to look at all players who have been platooned and take the average, but I don't have that kind of time.

I decided to take a look at Dwight Smith and Lloyd McClendon in 1989.  The two of them made a very productive platoon that year.  Smith had only 35 PA against lefties, but McClendon did have about half of his PA against righties.  McClendon did appear in LF only 45 games so it's safe to say that almost all of PA in LF came against lefties since Smith had so few.

If we stick with the same 2 to 1 PA numbers that we already have and give each player 50 PA vs. the pitchers we don't want them to face, we'll get a more realistic number.  Jeff Baker is likely to get some playing time at 3rd base, but we'll factor that in when we get to the 3rd base part of these projections.

That's a .362 wOBA, about -1 run baserunning and about 4 runs fielding.  The total value is 3.9 WAR.  Fontenot vs. LHP is a really, really bad idea.  Without changing anything on the roster, we just added 2 wins the Cubs total.  The Cubs will have to search for these wins, becuase they're going to be very important if this team contends.