Let’s continue the unintentional Curtis Granderson theme on the day.

Prior to camp, Granderson had visited hitting instructor, Kevin Long, in Arizona in order to pick Long’s esteemed brain about hitting and, specifically, hitting left-handers. “I wanted to get a philosophy that he had going before I got down to spring training and all of a sudden he wanted to change a bunch of things,” Granderson said when asked about the visit. “I am not opposed to change, but once I get here I am ready to go. I wanted to make sure we were getting on the same page. He didn’t want me to change anything. He didn’t want me to bat right-handed all of a sudden.”

With that said, what, exactly, did Long think was the cause of Granderson’s southpaw struggles – he owns a career .210/.270/.344 line against them – and, more importantly, what did he suggest to correct or lessen the issue?

Here’s more on that via the NY Post’s George King:

“It was nothing major because his mechanics are good. It’s just that with his upper body against lefties, he tilts a bit,” Long said. “That coils him in on the front side and that doesn’t enable him to use his hands. You want him to stay on the ball more and hit it in the left-center field gap.”

“He told me that, mechanically, everything was great against right-handers, and against left-handers I broke down a little bit,” Granderson said. “I get over the plate a little bit and try to hit the ball the other way and break down. As you try to coil up a little bit, you are going to uncoil. If you start yourself open, you are going to close. [Long's philosophy] is, stay straight. That position puts you in a better situation to be successful.”

This is pretty interesting because, based on Granderson’s poor numbers against lefties, especially those from last season, it seemed that he was attempting to pull everything, which resulted in an alarming number of innocuous fly balls (infield pop-ups, in particular). However, if he was aware of his own dramatic split against lefties, perhaps he was trying too hard to cover the outer portion of the plate when facing them. This then can explain his woes (in part).

Long believes Granderson can “fix” the problem, though, and is not worried about him in 2010:

“I’m not too concerned about it,” Long said. “I really feel like he’s going to have a good year and that is not even going to be an issue. And you know what? We’re not going to make it an issue.

“We’re going to be positive about it, work on it. Half of it might be the battle of, ‘People don’t think I can do it.’ If we get him over that obstacle, we can go from there.”

I agree with Long. Not only is Granderson too good of a hitter to not bounce back against left-handed pitching this season, but his numbers versus lefties were so poor in 2009 that they would be hard for him to duplicate again.

Photo by the AP

With the announcement coming down just last night that Fangraphs has added splits to their stat pages, I thought it would be fun to look at interesting 2009 splits for each likely member of the 2010 Yankees. I looked at hitters this morning, and will now address starting pitchers, with relievers to follow at some point tomorrow. I will likely expand on some of these over the next few weeks. Remember, when you do splits, you are essentially splitting the sample, such that small sample size caveats apply.

CC Sabathia

FIP v. L: 2.43

FIP v. R: 3.69

CC against righties is a very good pitcher, but likely not a Cy Young candidate. His dominance against lefties is what makes him such a dangerous weapon. Much of the difference in performance comes from his significantly better K-rate against left handed batters (9.94 v. 7.02). I think it is interesting to note that CC would be a well above average pitcher even if he only faced righties.

AJ Burnett

Bases Empty:  WHIP 1.63, BABIP .348, FIP 4.62

Men On Base: WHIP 1.16, BABIP .250, FIP 4.03

AJ was significantly better once runners were on than he was with the bases empty, apparently buckling down once he got into trouble. However, as the BABIP suggests, he was quite unlucky with the bases empty and was very lucky once men reached. If both issues correct themselves, he should be slightly worse with runners on but will face fewer such situations due to an improvement with the bases empty.

Andy Pettitte

Home FIP: 4.67

Road FIP: 3.59

Pettitte had some major problems pitching in the new stadium, a fact that is reflected in his results. This is despite the fact that as a left-hander, he should have the tools to partially neutralize the effects of the ballpark. He gave up more line drives and more flyballs on the road, but significantly more of the fly balls allowed at home left the park (13.2% v. 5.1%).

Javier Vazquez

Bases Empty:  1.61 K/BB, .67 HR/9, 1.06 WHIP, 2.40 FIP

Men on Base: 2.12 K/BB, 1.06 HR/9, .98 WHIP, 3.34 FIP

As we have discussed at numerous points this offseason, Vazquez has, for much of his career, had difficulty pitching from the stretch. It is fascinating to note that his 2009 WHIP was lower with men on. However, is control seemed to get worse in those situations, and he gives up a lot more homers in those spots. Basically, Vazquez gives up his biggest blows with runners on base, which is why his ERA is usually worse than his FIP.

Joba Chamberlain

BABIP by Month (LD% in parenthesis)

Apr. .295 (23.9)

May .371 (25.5)

June .290 (15.5)

July .269 (23.6)

Aug. .374 (23.1)

Sep. .348 (19.3)

Rob at BBD did a study on Chamberlain’s velocity today, and found that his terrible August and September numbers could not be attributed to a loss in velocity. One possible explanation is what you see above. Joba’s BABIP in those two months was sky high, and could not be entirely explained by his LD%. It is possible that Joba was simply unlucky down the stretch.

With the announcement coming down just last night that Fangraphs has added splits to their stat pages, I thought it would be fun to look at interesting 2009 splits for each likely member of the 2010 Yankees. I will look at hitters now, and address pitchers later today. I will likely expand on some of these over the next few weeks. Remember, when you do splits, you are essentially splitting the sample, such that small sample size caveats apply.

Jorge Posada

Home: wRC+ : 167

Away: wRC+: 101

For those that are not aware, wRC+ is the Fangraphs version of OPS+, and is likely a better measure because it corrects the OBP/SLG weighting problem inherent to OPS. Regarding Posada, I was surprised to see how stark his home-road splits were, considering that he is a switch hitter and is not a dead pull hitter. He certainly made use of the short porch, notching a 271 wRC+ when batting as a lefty and hitting the ball to right field.

Mark Teixeira

Grounders: .187/.187/.214

Fly Balls: .327/.320/.991

Liners: .747/.747/.939

According to Fangraphs, league average in these categories:

Grounders: .231/.231/.253
Flies: .217/.212/.602
Liners: .727/.723/.974

Teixeira did significantly better than average on flies and worse than average on grounders. The ground ball data suggests he needs to keep the ball in the air, but I wonder about the flyball data. It may be possible that shots that would qualify as liners in other parks are being ruled flies when they clear the wall in Yankee Stadium, such that much of his power is being shifted from the liner category to the fly ball category.

Robinson Cano

Low Lvg. FB% 30.2

Med Lvg. FB% 34.1

High Lvg. FB% 48.1

The more important the situation, the more likely Robbie was to hit a fly ball. This strengthens my belief that he is trying to do too much in those spots. It is important to note that players only have 60-80 high leverage at bats a year, such that the sample is small. As such, take this more of an observation of what happened last year than something that necessarily represents a trend.

Derek Jeter

ISO to Left: .105

ISO to Center: .082

ISO to Right: .278

Almost all of Jeter’s power was to the opposite field. That is a startlingly large split in power, and was a greater dichotomy than that in Jeter’s career ISO.

Alex Rodriguez

Low Lvg. HR/FB: 20.3

Med Lvg. HR/FB: 21.1

High Lvg. HR/FB: 45.5

A-Rod hit flyballs with about the same frequency in all situations. However, when the game was on the line, he took the ball out of the ballpark with much greater frequency. Unclutch, indeed.

Nick Johnson

Low Lvg. BB/K 1.02

Med Lvg. BB/K 1.29

High Lvg. BB/K 1.42

Johnson did will in high leverage spots overall, but I found his increased patience in those spots fascinating. When the situation was important, Johnson became more likely to strike out, but also more likely to take a walk.

Nick Swisher

Home ISO: .168

Away ISO: .316

Most of Swisher’s power came on the road, despite the New Yankee Stadium being a homer haven. If he can maintain something close to his road performance while bumping his home power a bit, he could find himself at 35 or more home runs.

Curtis Granderson

Home HR/FB: 8.9%

Away HR/FB: 15.7%

Granderson simply did not get much bang for his buck on fly balls in Comerica. His road numbers were significantly better than his home numbers, particularly against lefties, giving hope that he might return to the superstar that he was in 2007 once he gets out of the large ballpark in Detroit.

Brett Gardner

wRC+ v. L 115

wRC+ v. R 93

Gardner actually played fairly well against lefties. If he continues that and Granderson is not able to turn it around against lefties, might Randy Winn become the platoon caddy for Granderson rather than Brett?

Randy Winn

wRC+ v. R 102

wRC+ v. L -9

Of course, if Winn cannot turn this around, he will not be caddying for anybody. He has pretty solid career numbers against lefties, so this seems to be an anomaly, but he did hit significantly fewer line drives and more fly balls against lefties, both bad signs.

I can’t believe this is even necessary for Teixeira’s slow start, but the rumblings about his slow start are starting to drive me crazy.  I’m a little surprised that not everyone knows this, but here’s a little tidbit:  pssst… HE DOES THIS EVERY YEAR!!!  I thought it was common knowledge, but as I was leaving my apartment this morning, I heard Brandon Tierny of ESPN radio beginning a segment on Tex’s slow start, so I guess not everyone knows this yet.  Maybe it’s because his name you can’t look him up in baseball reference is so darn hard to spell.   I’ll lay out the stats on Tex as well as for Mariano, if any of you forgot about his history of dead arms.  It’s important to know what you should be worried about and what you shouldn’t.

Tex is the easy one: every year it’s the same, #$R@ing thing.  Last year, he actually wasn’t quite as bad, with a .273 average and a .797 OPS in March/April (compared to .308, .962 overall), but look at some of these other years.:

2007:  .231, .686
2006: he steadily got worse and worse before finally picking it up in July! (June avg of .250, OPS of .728)
2005: .262, .807
2004 (May – he missed most of April/March): .212, .735
2003: .188, .631

This March/April, he went .200, .738 – right in line with his career averages in early months.  He just turned 29, he does this every year.  He’s a stud who will carry us in July-October: bank on it.

Historical fact #2: Mariano Rivera usually goes through a dead arm period either in the beginning of the season or in the middle of the season (usually in July).  The way he’s pitching so far this year are EXACTLY in keeping with his traditional numbers.  Here are the stats:

2008: no dead arm period
2007: April/March ERA: 10.57
2006: April/March ERA: 3.72
2005: No real Dead arm period
2004: July ERA: 3.52
2003: April/March ERA: 9.00; August ERA: 3.38 (with a 1.625 WHIP!)
2002: July ERA: 9.45

Hey, with all these injuries and A.J. Burnett acting like… well, A.J. Burnett, we certainly have lots of legitimate things to be concerned about.  Don’t worry about these two guys.  They’ve done it all before.

Every April, the Yankees seem to frustate us. They did themselves a hole, and work for the rest of the season to claw their way back to contention. By July, they have gained momentum, and by September they are competing for first place. The Yankees as a team seem to start the season sluggishly. Mark Teixeira, while an excellent player, has always stuck out in my mind as a slow starter. I was poking around at baseball reference today, and took a lot at his career splits:

• April: .256/.346/.442
• May: .288/.376/.507
• June: .279/.371/.555
• July: .282/.374/.531
• August: .314/.398/.584
• September: .309/.392/.605

Teixeira’s splits are pretty extreme. He’s most likely going to be fairly impotent in April, and then heat up as the season progresses. If the rest of the Yankees start slow, could Teixeira be the target of the boo-birds? He wouldn’t be the first high-priced acquisiton to meet that fate.