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Nick's new approach

Posted by Chris H. at 6:43 pm 1 Response »
Jun 012010

The graph provided above outlines Nick Swisher’s plate discipline and contact rates on the season. As you can clearly see, in each respective category – from O-Swing percentage (percentage of pitches a better swings at outside of the strike zone) to O-Contact percentage (percentage of times a batter makes contact when swinging at pitches outside of the zone) – Swisher is performing “above” his career averages, an issue I have pointed to earlier in the year. He is swinging a lot more this season, and at everything, whether it is in the zone or not. Subsequently, he is making contact a lot more, as he has sacrificed some patience for a few hits.

The reasoning for this abrupt shift in hitting could be attributed to – and is more than likely related to – Swisher’s new batting stance. Over the winter, Swisher revamped his stance with the help of Kevin Long, and, ever since, he has been a different player. It is as if his new stance has provided him with an entirely different offensive approach. For instance, consider that, a season ago, Swisher’s walk rate was 16% and his career average was over 13%. Conversely, this season, with his new stance at work, Swisher has walked just 9.5% of the time—which will be his lowest mark to date if maintained. In the same vein, he is also seeing fewer pitches per plate appearance, as he normally sees around 4.25 P/PA, on average – he saw 4.27 P/PA in 2009 – but has seen only 4.09 P/PA in 2010. The explanation, it seems, is that he has taken to his new stance pretty well, and, therefore, is swinging more rather than walking, because he is having an easier time reacting to breaking pitches than he has in the past (slider, in particular). Pitch type value data suggests this, as well.

Though Swisher’s new stance is aiding him and his .317/.397/.563 line, luck has also lent him its hand. Swisher’s BABIP is currently .376, which is much higher than his .281 career average. Though we can assume that his BABIP might closer to .300 this year due to his altered batting stance, a .376 mark is just too high for a player like Swisher (it is largely the result of an other worldly .443 BABIP in May). Eventually, some of the hits will stop falling for him and his numbers will flatten out a bit (ZiPS projects him to bat .258/.364/.467 going forward, leaving him with a .277/.374/.498 line at the end of the year). Once that occurs, it will be interesting to see whether or not his plate patience picks up again or if it remains at its current levels.

Table/Screenshot via FanGraphs

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Matt's State of the Yankees

Posted by Matt Imbrogno at 3:00 pm 1 Response »
Jun 012010

Fans and readers, we’ve reached a milepost in the 2010 baseball season. The first two months have come and gone, and the season is beginning to take shape. Where do the Yankees stand? To put it quite bluntly, they stand in a pretty damn good spot. They’re 31-20, good for second place in the American League East and also good for the second best record in the Majors (damn you, Tampa Bay!). This record comes after a tough middle of May and what seemed like mostly road games for the first 51 games of the year. Generally, we’ve got to be feeling good about the team. They’ve survived a fair amount of injuries–mainly Nick Johnson and Curtis Granderson–and have battled bullpen inconsistency to get where they are. Obviously, there have been ups and downs for this season. Let’s begin by addressing them.

Pleasantly surprising, Robinson Cano and Nick Swisher have definitely been big “ups”. Phil Hughes has been phenomenal and Andy Pettitte is pitching out of his mind. Among the downs, there’s been Chan Ho Park and the now “departed” Randy Winn. Mark Teixeira has been cold, but has recently shown signs of life, while Javier Vazquez is struggling to find a groove.

Since we all love awards, let’s hand out the Yankee awards so far. I’m going to do this two ways. The first will be my “eye test” winner and the second will be the very technical (that is, leading in WAR version) of the MVP and CY for the first two months.

MVP

Eye Test Winner: Robinson Cano. He’s been, seemingly, the most consistent player on the team–despite a cold mid-May–and has frankly hit the cover off of the ball. He’s really taken another step forward this season, and I think we’re all incredibly impressed. He is now fully realizing his incredible talent and potential and this could be his best season to date.

WAR Winner: Also Robbie Cano at 2.6 WAR (FanGraphs, not incl. Monday’s games). Cano is followed in the “voting” by Nick Swisher (1.9), Derek Jeter, and Alex Rodriguez (both 1.4).

CY YOUNG

Eye Test: Phil Hughes. Young Phil has been absolutely great this season. Like Cano, he is realizing incredible talent that we all knew was present, it just needed an extended shot. We’ve been looking forward to seeing this out of Phil since his first cup of coffee in 2007. Hopefully, he keeps up his strong season.

WAR: Hughes again, with 1.6 WAR, followed by Burnett (1.4) and Pettitte (1.1). This isn’t surprising at all.

Going forward, it’s hard to not feel confident about the Yankees. For the next few weeks, they’ve got a relatively light schedule and they’ve already finished what will likely be the toughest part of their season. They should soon be getting back to full strength as well. When that happens, this team will be very dangerous. In fact, it could reach 2009 levels of dangerousness, and we all know how that ended up.

Profiling Great Yankees: Bill Dickey

Posted by Moshe Mandel at 1:00 pm 4 Responses »
Jun 012010


This is one of what will be an extended series of posts that will run over the summer. I will do one post covering the top 5 Yankees by WAR (Wins Above Replacement) at each position, plus a second profile piece on one player at each position. At the end of the summer, I’ll put together a post ranking the top 60 Yankees of all time. I will be using the career WAR found at baseballprojection.com, with only WAR garnered as a Yankee being included in the calculations.

Bill Dickey is a bit of a forgotten man in Yankee lore, as he was followed behind the plate by the great Yogi Berra and was therefore overshadowed by the sheer force of Yogi’s fame and skill. Even Dickey’s number was usurped by Berra, leading the team to retire the number #8 twice. Dickey is the only Yankee with a retired number to not be featured by YES Network’s Yankeeography, which is illustrative of his status of something of a forgotten man in Yankee lore. Dickey was a fantastic player even by Yankee standards, and he deserves greater recognition.

Dickey had a cup of coffee with the Yankees at in 1928 at 21, but first became an everyday player in 1929. Bill hit .324 in his rookie season, putting up an OPS of .832 and emerged as a strong defensive presence behind the plate. Dickey had his best stretch of seasons from , as he was worth at least 5.3 wins in each year and helped the Yankees win the title in every year during that span. 1937 was likely his best year, as he hit 29 homers and notched 133 RBI while putting up an amazing .332/.417/.570. He had a fantastic .313/.386/.484 line for his career, and garnered MVP votes in 9 different seasons. He made 11 All-Star teams, was among the top 10 among position players in WAR 6 times, and never struck out more than 37 times in a season. In all, he played in 8 World Series, and the Yankees won 7 of them, and he later coached on 6 additional champions. Dickey never played any position at catcher, which likely contributed to his decline at age 33. His 1943 season seemed to represent a recovery for him, but he got called to military service and only played 54 games after the war.

Dickey was known for having an intense on-field persona, and was suspended in 1932 after breaking the jaw of Carl Reynolds after a collision at home plate. He was also a close personal friend of Lou Gehrig, and took Yogi Berra under his wing as a coach for the Yankees in 1949. He is often credited with turning a raw defensive product in Berra into one of the top defensive catchers in the game. He also managed the club for a brief time in 1946 while wrapping up his playing career, but retired from both roles after the season, and coached for the club under Casey Stengel from .

Although Dickey was a great offensive player, his most highly regarded skill during his playing days was his game-calling ability, as the following anecdote illustrates:

Once, after the 1943 World Series, he found himself in an elevator with a soldier. The serviceman said to Dickey that he’d bet Bill didn’t remember him. Bill Dickey looked at the man and said, “Sure I do. We used to pitch you high and inside. If we pitched you outside-WHAM! – it was the ballgame”. Indeed, the fellow was an infielder who had played years before for the Athletics.

Dickey was a great Yankee, and is likely one of the top 10 catchers of all time. As his plaque in Monument Park reads, he was the first in the line of great Yankee catchers, and he should be recognized as such by the fanbase and the organization.

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Cleveland Series Wrap Up

Posted by Matt Imbrogno at 11:00 am No Responses »
Jun 012010

The Yankees took three of four (should’ve been four out of four) from the lowly Cleveland Indians this weekend, so let’s wrap this baby up quickly.

THE GOOD: THE OFFENSE

The best thing about this weekend’s series with the Yankees was clearly the offense. They put up 8, 11, 7, and 11 runs during the wrap-around series, which means they averaged 9.25 runs per game. Robinson Cano had ten hits, including two home runs, during the series. Nick Swisher also had a strong series, knocking nine hits as well as a home run. Surprisingly, his batting average is up to a totally un-Swisherian .317 (.397 OBP/.563 SLG/.960 OPS). Either way, the offense definitely led the way.

The starting pitching (non-CC Sabathia division) was also great this weekend. Between the three of them, Phil Hughes, A.J. Burnett, and Andy Pettitte gave up just six runs.

THE BAD: CC SABATHIA

CC was pretty dull on Saturday. The five strikeouts and two walks in six innings? Quite good. The five runs on seven hits? Not so good. That start was the third time in the last four starts that CC has given up at least five runs. CC’s last five starts have not been great. Over 28.2 innings, he’s given up seven HRs (2.34/9), 34 H (10.85/9), and opponents have hit a rather robust .291/.346/.538/.885). Hopefully, he rebounds back to his normal form in his next start.

THE UGLY: SATURDAY’S BULLPEN

Yeah, I don’t quite know what to say about this embarrassment. This is the second such time we’ve seen this kind of meltdown (vs. Boston) so hopefully that’s it because breakdowns like that are rare. If I was a betting man, I’d say we won’t see anther blow up like that soon.

Anyway, the Yankees welcome the Orioles to town for the next three games and will send Javier Vazquez, Phil Hughes, and CC Sabathia to the mound against Brian Matusz, Brad Bergesen, and the horribly unlucky Kevin Millwood.

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'Hughes Rules' come into focus

Posted by Steve S. at 6:10 am 3 Responses »
Jun 012010

Looks like the Hughes Rules are finally being unveiled, and it’s nothing as unusual as what happened last year with Joba Chamberlain. MLB.com has the story:

The Yankees have four scheduled days off in June and another five in July, including a four-day All-Star break and the Monday immediately following the break. That could enable them to give Hughes extra time off with perhaps only minor tinkering of the rotation. ESPNNewYork.com noted that because of the schedule, manager Joe Girardi and pitching coach Dave Eiland could go without adjusting their rotation at all and still get Hughes a fifth day off in five of his next eight starts, including Friday’s against the Indians in New York.

Then, they would likely start Hughes as many as four days prior to the All-Star break and schedule his first post-break start for July 20 or 21, giving him nearly two weeks off.

Basically, the Yanks are following the restrictions that worked so well with Rick Porcello of the Tigers last year. Extra day here and there, and two weeks off book ending the All Star break. No one (including Girardi himself) wanted to repeat the disjointed, failed experiment made with Joba Chamberlain in 2009. Girardi stated late last year that had no plans to use Joba that way, but the early season loss of Chien Ming Wang and ineffectiveness of Sergio Mitre forced Girardi to start someone, and with Hughes in the bullpen the best option available appeared at the time to be Joba in small doses, particularly after Joba’s hot stretch after the All Star break last year. The Yankee rotation didn’t really settle down last year until the Yanks picked up Chad Gaudin in mid-August and he emerged as a reliable starter the following month. Fans may recall that Gaudin’s effectiveness was the result of working with Dave Eiland on refining his slider, which took a few weeks of bullpen work. So at the time the decision to use Joba in abbreviated starts was made, it was the best of a group of poor choices from a series of unforeseen events.

Another note, there’s a chance Hughes gets selected to the All-Star Game this year. Joe Girardi is the AL manager and gets to fill out the Pitchers and reserves. Phil would certainly merit serious consideration, he is currently among the AL Leaders in Wins (3rd) WHIP (5th) and ERA (6th) among qualifiers. The Yanks may decide to reward Phil with an All-Star selection for a job well done this year, and may want to raise his profile as being an elite pitcher at a young age.  But even if chosen, I think there’s zero chance he’ll actually pitch in that game. The Yanks will want him to get his rest and won’t put an exhibition game ahead of his health.

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