It's becoming clear because the Pirates still have some money to spend this offseason, but Dejan Kovacevic points out that the Pirates will most likely spend that on starting pitching (if they spend it at all). Sadly, I think it about time to start thinking about a Pittsburgh Pirates team with Jones and McGehee as their starting first base platoon.
Garrett Jones is a left-handed batter who, like most all left-handers, hits right-handed pitching much better than left-handed pitching. Casey McGehee is the opposite of all that. That said, let's assume that the Pirates will start Jones against right handers and McGehee against left handers. That may not be true, but for now we'll just assume it is.
| YR | G | AB | HR | AVG | OBP | SLG |
| 2007 | 29 | 64 | 2 | .234 | .296 | .375 |
| 2009 | 76 | 213 | 15 | .333 | .426 | .620 |
| 2010 | 137 | 378 | 15 | .262 | .330 | .444 |
| 2011 | 139 | 355 | 14 | .262 | .346 | .462 |
| career | 381 | 1010 | 46 | .275 | .354 | .483 |
| YR | G | AB | HR | AVG | OBP | SLG |
| 2008 | 5 | 8 | 0 | .125 | .125 | .250 |
| 2009 | 45 | 104 | 2 | .303 | .404 | .461 |
| 2010 | 77 | 158 | 8 | .316 | .358 | .589 |
| 2011 | 62 | 124 | 0 | .169 | .228 | .185 |
| career | 189 | 379 | 10 | .261 | .323 | .420 |
You can see from that McGehee isn't your prototypical major league hitter. He has actually hit better in his career against right-handed pitchers, which doesn't make much sense. That is because of his extremely peculiar 2011 season where he hit .169/.228/.185 against lefties and .239/.295/.393 against righties. It was really just a horrible season for McGehee, so you can't read into his career line and assume he's going to be better against righties again this year.
Playing in the National League Central, an everyday starter will face a right-handed pitcher in about 75% of his at-bats. That means that if the Pirates do such a platoon with Jones and McGehee, Jones will be starting around 75% of the time. Do some math, and with a full season of those too platooning at that rate, you would have a first baseman that will hit something like .268/.339/.452 over a 162-game season. Let's compare that first baseman (we'll call him McJonesee) to one of the three guys that are still on the market that the Pirates could sign. We'll use each of those players Bill James prediction for 2012 to compare with.
| McJonesee | .268/.339/.452 |
| Carlos Pena | .223/.356/.458 |
| Derrek Lee | .269/.349/.459 |
| Casey Kotchman | .268/.344/.402 |
Looking at that, you can see that a Jones-McGehee platoon sizes up pretty well do other first baseman they would give much more money to. So heck, maybe I have been wrong this whole time about the Pirates needing to sign a free agent first baseman, maybe Jones and McGehee will be alright.
For now, if the Pirates are going to sign another player this offseason, I think they are right in making starting pitching their first priority.