Crimsonblue, I decided to try out your ideas here on platooning in an OL league. I couldn't quite keep it to the parameters (LH batters high avg./RH batters HRs, with a 3-1 ratio in PAs) that you suggested in every case, but I think mine is a decent approximation.
Here is the team stats link:
http://www.whatifsports.com/mlb-l/playerstats.asp?teamid=1126828 (I don't know if it can be seen from here, hope so).
After 28 games the team is 15-13. No guarantee of course that even that modest success will last (though luckily enough it is good enough to be in 1st place as I write). Nearly everyone is at 100% among position players (2-3 exceptions) on a team where till now I have not used AAA players except for one OF because the AAA player was better than the one I had drafted, and at Catcher (where I have two switch-hitters) because the AAA guy is a .300 hitter.
Strangely, only the bullpen, where I have three high IP/G pitchers, seems overworked. I may have erred on the side of resting my 3-man rotation too much thinking I had enough backup innings plus AAA pitchers, so I have reset pitch counts to get a few more IP from starters. But I have 10 pitchers plus the two AAA so I have been able to keep a critical mass of 100% pitchers with a revolving door to AAA when needed.
That problem aside, I see this team as an experiment, built partly on the experience of reasonably successful drafting for the Wider Rotation and Platoon League I mentioned above (we are discussing where to make modest adjustments in the league restriction for a second season now) - I have so far not had significant fatigue issues with that team either (my problem there is that the team's LH batters aren't hitting, while the RH hitters are killing the ball).
So we will see if you can keep the use of AAA to a minimum, maximizing production and quality of ABs with a platoon team in an OL league. I think the main weakness here, and contrarian23 among others might be quick to see it, is that I am paying for more ABs than needed and with more micro-management of the AAA players could reduce PAs even more and pay for even higher avgs. and HR/100AB.
At some point I will work through the math on how to best incorporate AAA players into a platoon team. Would it be a revolving door system - LH/RH/ off to AAA with you, back again... etc. or simply using AAA players as some do to tank games and rest regulars? Don't know yet. But since the regulars so far haven't needed resting, it may be a moot issue, though I have been very lucky with a couple of AAA ers that, as noted above, I have incorporated into the platoons.
The other issue is switch-hitters, as I have at least two positions, Catcher and Second Base, where I found that the two best available players that I wanted (here it may be my limits as a drafter) were switch-hitters. It is not a guarantee that LH hitters always hit RH pitchers better than they do LH ers, nor that they hit better than a comparable RH hitter would. But it is harder to know with switch-hitters as though they have some advantage, they probably usually hit one better than the other.
One thing I find strange is that we don't seem to be able to search for stats v.LH and RH pitchers, nor does baseball-reference.com give these stats. Now, it may be I guess that the SIM does not use the batter's individual v. RH/LH stats, but just some cumulative collective average for RH-LH confrontations, nor those for pitchers v. LH/RH batters, but it would be good to know if it does and for some future update to include these.
It is a little odd that this aspect of the game gets little mention, except when we see the defaults for pinch-hitting, where it is hard to tell if some of the seemingly less than ideal hierarchies in the default settings may be because the SIM knows something we don't. Does anyone know anything about the LH-RH aspect and the SIM?
Anyway, my guess is that it would be better to have natural RH/LH batters in a platoon, so I have made some compromises. But it is an attempt to see what happens with a platoon team. The team name, by the way, comes from the two best bars in the 1950s-1970s Greenwich Village, NYC where two late friends of mine bar-tended and waitressed, including feeding a young, often malnourished Bob Dylan between his sets, and keeping Richie Havens out of jail. Another story for another time.