What often happens when a team has relatively few holes to address during an offseason is a lot of attention gets placed on minor needs. One of these needs in Detroit, has been a right handed hitting outfielder to match with Andy Dirks in a platoon situation.

The feeling among many is that this is one way the Tigers could improve their club heading into 2013, and it is also a way to improve the club that most perceive as possible. Finding a right handed hitter to man the weak side of a platoon is easier, for example, than finding a shortstop that is both available and an upgrade over Peralta.

So we’ve spent a good bit of the winter wondering who the Tigers could target to compliment Dirks. Scott Hairston was a logical fit, but he ended up signing with the Cubs for two years because they could offer him more in terms of playing time than the Tigers could.

But I think we’ve gotten a little too caught up in finding a dance partner for Dirks that we’ve overlooked the fact that he probably doesn’t need one. We’ve been looking for a match for him because there’s nothing else we even remotely need on offense, but we actually probably don’t need this either. The only place the Tigers really have room to upgrade is the bullpen and that only relates to Dirks in that he will be standing in front of it when he man’s left field.

Why is it that I say we don’t need a platoon partner for Dirks? Well, it’s because he can hit lefties just fine. Let’s explore the numbers.

Dirks has played 166 games in his career spawning 579 plate appearances. We’re working with about a full season of information that has covered parts of three seasons. Unfortunately, I can’t get splits data from his minor league career, just total numbers, so that can’t be included right now.

But let’s look at his big league breakdown:

So if we look at that, Dirks is pretty much just as good against righties and lefties. He gets on base a little more versus lefties and hits with a little more extra base power against righties. But he hits more homeruns on average against lefties, walks more against lefties, and strikes out less against lefties.

According to Baseball-Reference’s tOPS which weighs each side, he scores 100 against righties and 99 against lefties, meaning that he is a one percent better hitter against righties. That doesn’t sound like a big platoon split to me. In fact, one would hardly consider that a platoon split at all. What are the odds both sides are perfectly identical.

From both sides, Dirks appears to be a capable major leaguer. But even if you don’t buy into Dirks yet and worry about the sample size, that should affect your opinion of him against all pitchers, not just one side of them. Dirks shows no discernible platoon split during his big league career.

So while we’re dying to find Dirks a buddy to play with out in left field, he doesn’t need one. Dirks can handle that position all on his own.

I generally think we overvalue platoon advantages. Don’t get me wrong, a lot of hitters weight to one side or the other, but I don’t think we should accept it as a given that hitters hit worse against their same side pitcher. I think that hitters who aren’t top flight prospects are often pigeonholed into a role that assumes they can’t hit one side before they actually display evidence of this shortcoming, and that pigeonholing puts them in a position in which they get fewer at bats against their “weaker” side, which means they actually develop a weakness because of a belief that may have not been true.

I’m not sure how to demonstrate evidence of this, but I think it’s happening. At any rate, I can and did show evidence that Dirks does not appear to be weaker against lefties. So in this case, at least, Dirks doesn’t need a dance partner and the Tigers can stop looking.