Ensberg Platoon with Kouzmanoff?

It's no secret that the Padres front office has become more and more comfortable with the use of statistics to impact their moves. This begs the question of how their new additions will alter Bud Black's daily line up card. Let's dig a little deeper and see if we can find out, starting with third base.

The big dig against Kevin Kouzmanoff is that he has struggled against right handed pitching. This is certainly true - but's lets take a gander at his stats in comparison to newly acquired Morgan Ensberg. Against right handed pitching, Kouz scores just below Ensberg in terms of OPS, .610 to .653. While facing left handed pitching, Kouz enjoys a .942 to .789 advantage. Perhaps this will be enough to get Ensberg occasional starts against righties, but it doesn't seem to support a full fledged platoon. The more likely scenario is that Towers, Black and company keep Kouz in there as an everyday player and hope he breaks through against right handed pitching as he had in the minor leagues in prior seasons (.952 and .923 OPS in 2006 and 2005, respectively).

That said, Morgan Ensberg is a very accomplished player. If he gets hot and returns to his 2005 form, Bud Black will find a regular spot for him. Today was certainly an example of what he can do. Perhaps more encouraging is that Ensberg has noted that he feels that he needs to regain the aggressiveness that he has had in prior seasons. A quick pass through his numbers shows that in the last two years, Ensberg has been seeing nearly 4.25 pitches per plate appearance. In his massive 2005 campaign as well as prior years, that number hovered in the mid to high 3s.

We'll look at some of the other newcomers and how they might fit in to the Padre hitting machine over the next few days.