The offseason obviously isn’t over for the Pittsburgh Pirates, but pending a major trade or a big surprise signing, the offensive side of the 2016 Pirates appears to be set.
Whether you think that is a good thing or not is a matter of debate, but it would seem very likely that the current 25-man roster is the same 25 men that will enter Spring Training with jobs to lose.
There is no greater baseball tradition than getting worked up over the daily lineups and wishing your team’s manager would stop batting the wrong player in the clean-up spot. Every fan at one point or another thinks they can create a better lineup than the manager and it’s really fun to play around with the numbers and try to create the optimal lineup.
The Pittsburgh Pirates will enter the 2016 season with very few jobs up for grabs and even fewer starting positions, so it makes it pretty easy to guess who will be starting, but the one thing that still needs to be decided is how the team will approach platoon splits. It’s obvious they will have a straight platoon at first base with John Jaso and Mike Morse, but despite not being a platoon-heavy lineup outside of that, there are some decisions to be made about who will play vs. left and right-handed pitching and where they should be in the lineup.
So without further delay, here are my optimal lineups for the 2016 Pittsburgh Pirates and their platoon splits against right-handers.
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