Crawford was awful vs. lefties last year. If Crawford doesn’t improve at all, he could be put in a platoon with the Riot.

vs. RH: Crawford 2011: .217/.301/.307, which is horrible, but add that to his 8.2 UZR/150 of last year, and you get roughly 1.5 wins across 440 PA.

vs. LH: The Riot Career: .301/.373/.401, which looks good. But Bill James has him losing 6 points of OBP and 9 points of SLG from his career. Let’s dock him 15 points each:
Conservative vs. LH: The Riot @ .390/.358/.386 ~ 27.6 wRC, which when paired with -15 UZR/150 and -1.5 BsR/150 comes out to around 1 win across 220 PA. He’ll look awful on defense, but he’ll hit enough to make up for it.

For those keeping count, that comes out to 2.5 wins from the SS position, assuming conservative projections from Theriot and absolutely no improvement for Crawford if the two are platooned. If Crawford can improve even a little bit, and he can be subbed in during the late innings vs. LHP, then the SS position could break 3 wins.

Wow. What a difference.

Crawford’s 2011 projected out to almost 1.5 wins fulltime. All of that value came from his AB’s vs. RHP. So essentially, if platooned, the Giants are paying Theriot $1.25M-$2M for approx. 1 WAR of production against LHP.

the way he’s been used in the past, Theriot could end up backing up 2B and SS.