Yeah Thomson said as much, he knew he wanted Pache in for defense anyway, though of course in that ideal scenario it would have been with a lead.
It's a mistake to isolate one or two or 10 or 20 pinch-hits as evidence that the pursuit of the platoon advantage isn't the correct strategy. Thomson may seem a little overly committed to it but it's not just him making that decision.
If anything it's a manager-proof philosophy. Odds are if you just do that 100 times by rote it is probably going to work a higher percentage of the time than if you let the manager or even more advanced/situational stats inform 100 different decisions (though even 100 is still a small sample).
He also seems less inclined (though not un-inclined) to use individual head-to-head history, another suspect data set. And you've now got a whole team of pretty smart people - which we're not used to, under the previous two GMs! - factoring in stuff/tunnels and exit velocity and barrels and pitch selection, not just head-to-head or L/R.
