The Cubs signed Xavier Nady to platoon with Kosuke Fukudome in right field.  Fukudome only had 67 PA last year against lefties and that included a long stint on the DL for Reed Johnson as well as missed time throughout the season by Milton Bradley.  It's safe to say had either of them been able to take the field more often that Fukudome would have had even fewer PA vs lefties.  Lou hasn't specifically said that Nady and Fukudome will platoon, but I think it's fairly obvious.  We already took a look at the 2010 projections for Kosuke Fukudome and Xavier Nady, but knowing the two will platoon will have a big impact just as the platoon at 2nd base.

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Once again using the split projection tool that SG from RLYW sent me, we're going to take a look at each player's splits.  We'll be using the CAIRO projections that SG created.

We first need to estimate playing time.  We projected 553 PA for Fukudome.  Nady wasn't on the survey, but I'm going to go with 300 and I'm reducing Fukudome's down to 500 PA.  Some of Nady's PA will be at other positions.  I'm giving him 260 in RF and Fukudome gets 435 in RF.  Fukudome will be playing CF on occasion and Nady will play some LF and possibly 1st base too.

Below are the split projections for each player.

Fukudome's splits look huge, but thanks to ZambranoAbs for posting Fukudome's splits data from Japan.  Or at least some of it.  We have the data for 2002-2004 and 2007.  Fukudome's wOBA vs lefties in those 4 seasons was a combined .388 and his wOBA vs righties was .428.  He was ridiculously bad against lefties in 2009, but I think we should be careful in expecting him to be that bad or even post a .272 wOBA against them in 2010.  That being said, that's the number I'm using for Fukudome vs lefties, but there's good reason to believe he's better than that.

As you can see, this is quite a platoon.  The Cubs could get an average wOBA out of that position (those 2 players) of about .383.  That's impressive.

Below is the value for each vs lefties and righties for their playing time in RF.

The two combined for 2.5 WAR before we put them in a platoon, but now they're at 3.9 WAR.

Berselius mentioned something about tempering expectations for the playing time and it's a fair point.  Instead of using my estimates, I'm going to set up a survey for just the 4 players involved in a split and ask you to fill out how many PA's you think each player will get at each position they will play.  I will want number of PA's vs lefties and righties.  Should be pretty simple to fill out, but it will help me out in the future.  I'll post that survey sometime tonight or tomorrow morning.