Thursday, October 15, 2009
2009 ALCS Preview: Angels vs. Yankees
Angels in Four.
OK, even though we already know what's going to happen, I'll run through the numbers for the hell of it.Angels
After constantly having to hear and read about how they couldn't beat Boston, the Angels showed that they could in fact do so, sweeping the Red Sox out of the ALDS. John Lackey and Jered Weaver both pitched gems against Boston, which helped make up for the team hitting .228/.318/.351. Then again, when facing not one, not two, not three, not four, not five, not six, not seven, not eight, not nine, not ten, not eleven, BUT TWELVE aces, .228/.318/.351 is actually pretty respectable.
So here are the Angels' position player projections for offense and defense.
| Lineup | Pos | PA | AVG | OBP | SLG | pwOBA | 09wOBA | Diff | BR | Outs | dRS |
| chone figgins | 3b | 30 | .288 | .371 | .381 | .340 | .354 | .015 | 4 | 19 | 9 |
| bobby abreu | rf | 30 | .284 | .379 | .440 | .362 | .366 | .004 | 4 | 19 | -11 |
| torii hunter | cf | 30 | .285 | .349 | .492 | .362 | .375 | .013 | 5 | 20 | -2 |
| vladimir guerrero | dh | 29 | .304 | .365 | .511 | .376 | .344 | -.033 | 5 | 18 | 0 |
| juan rivera | lf | 29 | .275 | .320 | .462 | .336 | .348 | .012 | 4 | 20 | 8 |
| kendry morales | 1b | 28 | .290 | .335 | .495 | .354 | .388 | .034 | 4 | 19 | 6 |
| maicer izturis | 2b | 27 | .281 | .343 | .401 | .329 | .346 | .017 | 3 | 18 | 4 |
| mike napoli | c | 25 | .259 | .355 | .499 | .367 | .362 | -.005 | 4 | 16 | -5 |
| erick aybar | ss | 24 | .281 | .317 | .388 | .308 | .334 | .025 | 3 | 16 | 6 |
| howie kendrick | 2b | 7 | .297 | .332 | .446 | .337 | .337 | .000 | 1 | 5 | 6 |
| gary matthews jr. | lf | 2 | .257 | .330 | .401 | .323 | .315 | -.008 | 0 | 1 | -1 |
| reggie willits | lf | 1 | .261 | .351 | .322 | .310 | .213 | -.097 | 0 | 1 | 5 |
| jeff mathis | c | 5 | .213 | .276 | .334 | .270 | .264 | -.006 | 0 | 4 | -4 |
| robb quinlan | lf | 1 | .263 | .310 | .374 | .303 | .271 | -.031 | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| total | 268 | .283 | .348 | .452 | .347 | .354 | .008 | 37 | 175 | 1 |
PA: Estimated plate appearances for the series, assuming it goes the distance.
pwOBA: projected weighted on-base average, a rate version of linear weights
09wOBA: 2009 actual wOBA
Diff: 09wOBA minus pwOBA. As a rough rule of thumb, a difference of .010 in wOBA is worth about five runs over 600 PAs.
BR: Estimated batting runs for the series using linear weights for estimated PA
Outs: Estimated outs for the series based on revised projection and estimated PA
dRS: Defensive projection over 150 games using an average of zone rating and UZR for non-catchers, and for 120 games using a system similar to the one described here for catchers.
Although the MSM is going to beat us to death about the fact that the Angels have owned the Yankees in the postseason, let's look at some facts.
Here are the batters from the Angels who played against the Yankees in the 2002 postseason.
Troy Glaus
Brad Fullmer
Darin Erstad
David Eckstein
Garret Anderson
Scott Spiezio
Tim Salmon
Bengie Molina
Adam Kennedy
Shawn Wooten
Benji Gil
Here are the pitchers from the Angels who played against the Yankees in the 2002 postseason.
Brendan Donnelly
Scott Schoeneweis
Jarrod Washburn
Ben Weber
Kevin Appier
Troy Percival
Francisco Rodriguez
John Lackey
Ramon Ortiz
Here are the batters from the Angels who played against the Yankees in the 2005 postseason.
Bengie Molina
Casey Kotchman
Adam Kennedy
Vladimir Guerrero
Steve Finley
Chone Figgins
Darin Erstad
Orlando Cabrera
Garret Anderson
Juan Rivera
Robb Quinlan
Jose Molina
Here are the pitchers from the Angels who played the Yankees in the 2002 postseason.
Bartolo Colon
Scot Shields
John Lackey
Francisco Rodriguez
Kelvim Escobar
Paul Byrd
Brendan Donnelly
Ervin Santana
Players in bold are members of the 2009 Angels that will be facing the Yankees.
Wow. So we have one player who was on the 2002 Angels on the 2009 Angels (John Lackey). And we have four players who were on the the 2005 Angels that are on the 2009 Angels (Figgins, Lackey, Vlad Guerrero, and Juan Rivera).
More facts.
Here are the batters from the Yankees who played against the Angels in the 2002 postseason.
Bernie Williams
Rondell White
Robin Ventura
John Vander Wal
Alfonso Soriano
Juan Rivera
Jorge Posada
Raul Mondesi
Derek Jeter
Jason Giambi
Nick Johnson
Ron Coomer
Here are the pitchers from the Yankees who played against the Angels in the 2002 postseason.
Roger Clemens
Steve Karsay
Ramiro Mendoza
Mariano Rivera
Andy Pettitte
Mike Stanton
Jeff Weaver
Orlando Hernandez
Mike Mussina
David Wells
Here are the batters from the Yankees who played against the Angels in the 2005 postseason.
Bernie Williams
Gary Sheffield
Alex Rodriguez
Jorge Posada
Hideki Matsui
Derek Jeter
Jason Giambi
Bubba Crosby
Robinson Cano
Tino Martinez
John Flaherty
Ruben Sierra
Here are the pitchers from the Yankees who played against the Angels in the 2005 postseason.
Tom Gordon
Al Leiter
Mike Mussina
Mariano Rivera
Tanyon Sturtze
Scott Proctor
Chien-Ming Wang
Randy Johnson
Aaron Small
Shawn Chacon
So we have two hitters (Jeter and Posada) and two pitchers (Mo and Pettitte) who played for the Yanks against the Angels in 2002 who will be playing in this series. We have five hitters (Alex Rodriguez, Posada, Matsui, Jeter and Cano) and ONE pitcher from the 2005 Yankees (Mo) who will be playing in this series.
In what freaking way is what happened in 2002 and 2005 relevant to what will happen in 2009?
Anyway, looking at 2009, we'll keep reading about how the Yankees have to keep Chone Figgins off the bases if they want to win, and that's probably at least partially true.
Even though Bobby Abreu's power is below average for a corner OF, he still does a great job at getting on base and works long counts. Abreu loses about .040 points of OBP and .050 points of SLG versus lefties, so between Sabathia, Pettitte, Coke and Marte (maybe?) they have some potential to match up with him in an important situation
Torii Hunter had a great year in exceeding his projections, but it's an uncertain proposition that he's quite as good as he was in 2009. Hunter is about .050 points of OBP and .040 points of SLG better against lefties, which will be an issue if the Yankees go with Coke or Marte against Abreu in a situation that doesn't end an inning.
In terms of exceeing projections, Vlad Guerrero was the polar opposite of Hunter. He had a down year although it looks like it may have been at least partially health-related. If he's healthy he should probably be better than he was in 2009. Guerrero has a history of underachieving in the postseason but he got the biggest hit of the Angels/Red Sox ALDS.
Former Yankee and glove thief Juan Rivera (yeah, I know it was actually Ruben) will be an important factor in the Angels lineup. With the likelihood of the Yankees starting Sabathia and Pettitte in five of the seven games, Rivera's ability to hit lefties better than righties (career .293/.334/.516 vs. LHP, .281/.330/.448 vs. RHP) will undoubtably come into play at some point.
Kendry Morales had a very good year after what had been a disappointing start to his career. However, until we have more evidence that he's as good as he was in 2009 we have to assume he may have been a little bit over his head. Mike Napoli's a very good hitting catcher, but like the Yankees with Jose Molina and A.J. Burnett, the Angels may use Jeff Mathis as John Lackey's personal catcher, which is a downgrade of almost .100 pts of wOBA. The middle infield will generally consist of some combination of Maicer Izturis, Erick Aybar and Howie Kendrick.
Defensively, the Angels were about a win better than average as a team according to Fangraphs' UZR(+11.6). Standard zone rating thinks they were even better than that (+26). Aside from Abreu and Napoli, most of their defense projects as at least average, with Figgins and Rivera standing out as their best defenders.
On the pitching side, here's how they look.
| Pitcher | Role | IP | H | HR | BB | K | pRA | pERA | pFIP | 09ERA | 09FIP | sIP | sR |
| john lackey | SP1 | 192 | 191 | 20 | 55 | 153 | 4.23 | 3.82 | 3.78 | 3.83 | 3.68 | 12 | 5.6 |
| joe saunders | SP2 | 192 | 211 | 25 | 62 | 105 | 4.94 | 4.61 | 4.76 | 4.60 | 5.17 | 12 | 6.6 |
| jered weaver | SP3 | 185 | 180 | 23 | 57 | 149 | 4.13 | 3.94 | 4.10 | 3.75 | 4.09 | 12 | 5.5 |
| scott kazmir | SP4 | 128 | 115 | 15 | 50 | 128 | 3.94 | 3.57 | 3.87 | 1.74 | 2.95 | 6 | 2.6 |
| brian fuentes | CL | 62 | 53 | 5 | 22 | 58 | 3.94 | 3.66 | 3.52 | 3.93 | 4.25 | 5 | 2.2 |
| ervin santana | SU | 72 | 65 | 7 | 24 | 68 | 3.51 | 3.30 | 3.17 | 5.03 | 4.91 | 5 | 2.0 |
| darren oliver | SU | 70 | 66 | 7 | 20 | 53 | 3.74 | 3.54 | 3.77 | 2.71 | 3.21 | 4 | 1.7 |
| jason bulger | MR | 59 | 48 | 4 | 24 | 66 | 3.18 | 3.10 | 2.97 | 3.56 | 3.88 | 4 | 1.4 |
| kevin jepsen | MR | 54 | 55 | 3 | 20 | 44 | 4.40 | 4.08 | 3.26 | 4.94 | 2.96 | 2 | 1.0 |
| matt palmer | MR | 134 | 136 | 10 | 40 | 84 | 4.49 | 4.26 | 3.85 | 3.93 | 4.71 | 1 | 0.5 |
| jose arredondo | MR | 68 | 74 | 9 | 26 | 52 | 5.44 | 5.15 | 4.47 | 6.00 | 4.38 | 0 | 0.0 |
| sean o'sullivan | LR | 119 | 154 | 16 | 21 | 54 | 6.84 | 6.45 | 4.51 | 5.92 | 6.02 | 0 | 0.0 |
| Total | 63 | 61 | 7 | 21 | 51 | 4.15 | 3.87 | 3.93 | 29.1 |
pRA: Projected runs allowed per nine innings
pERA: Projected earned runs allowed per nine innings
pFIP: Projected Fielding independent pitching
sIP: Estimated innings in the series
sR: Estimated runs allowed in the series based on revised projection and sIP
Based on what I've read, it looks like they're slotting their rotation as Lackey -> Saunders -> Weaver -> Kazmir, which sets up the first three to pitch twice in this series. In terms of projected ERA, Lackey is the third best starting pitcher in this series behind his Game 1 mound opponent, CC Sabathia and Angels Game 4 starter Scott Kazmir. Lackey's a good pitcher who pitched very well against Boston in the ALDS, and with free agency looming he's got a shot at making himself even wealthier with more shutdown pitching in the ALCS. Lackey pitched once against the Yankees, allowing two runs over seven innings. Of course that doesn't mean much when trying to predict how he'll do in this series.
Although he's scheduled to start Game 2, Joe Saunders doesn't have a great projection. In fact, he projects worse than any other starter in this series. He's a lefty, which may be beneficial in Yankee Stadium since it will force Teixeira, Posada, Swisher and Cabrera to bat righty. He's a low strikeout pitcher (4.89 K per 9 in 2009, 4.94 projected) with decent control. He gave up 29 HRs in 2009, let's hope he gives up a few more before the year is out. Saunders faced the Yankees twice in 2009 and allowed three HRs in 13.1 IP, with a 4.72 ERA.
Jered Weaver is probably neck and neck with A.J. Burnett as far as being the third best starter in this series if we don't trust Scott Kazmir's projection. The Yankees saw him three times this year and hit him pretty well (5.59 ERA against them) but againt that is not necessarily predictive.
Scott Kazmir pitched very well once acquired by Los Angeles, but blew up against Boston in the ALDS. His projection is based on a long history of being really good, but I think it's probably a little too rosy given where he is right now.
It's a good rotation, even if they don't have someone like Roy Halladay at the top.
The bullpen is where things get interesting. Brian Fuentes has been the nominal closer, but he didn't pitch as well Darren Oliver or Jason Bulger. I'd guess Fuentes will still get the opportunity to close based on platoon matchups, but I wouldn't be surprised to see Scioscia use anyone of his top relievers in the closer role if needed.
Oliver is a lefty who can give the Angels full innings, and he has actually had a reverse platoon split over the last three years (.259/.301/.415 vs. LHB compared to .233/.299/.317 vs. RHB).
Bulger had a very good season and gets into the mid-90s with his fastball which he throws about 55% of the time. He's also got a curve that he throws about 40% of the time and a changeup that he doesn't throw a lot.
Ervin Santana didn't pitch against Boston, but like I said in the ALDS preview, he's got a 97mph fastball and could be the Angels' equivalent of Phil Hughes. The projection above is the relief equivalent of his starter projection, he'd project about .75 runs of ERA worse as a starter. Jepsen throws even harder (average fastball velocity in 2009 was 96.2). His peripherals were very good this year (2.96 FIP) even if his ERA doesn't really impress.
This is a NOT an 85-87 win adjusted standings team. This is a very good team. How good? I'll tell ya.
| #games | 7 |
| home games | 3 |
| #outs | 175 |
| offense | 36.6 |
| pitching | 29.1 |
| defense | 0.7 |
| wpct | .615 |
| 162 gm equiv | 100-62 |
#outs: 27 outs times # of games if the series goes the distance.
offense: Total BR for the series using # of outs
pitching: Total runs allowed by the pitching for the series
defense: Estimated impact of defense over series
wpct: Estimated winning percentage for the team based on these playing time estimates and adjusted for home field advantage using the offense, pitching and defense plugged into Pythagenpat
162 gm equiv: wpct translated to a 162 game season
Will that be good enough? I'll let you know in a bit.
Update: It's been a bit.
Yankees
I'm still saying Angels in four, but consider this me playing devil's advocate.
Even though the Yankees have an unfair advantage due to market size and basically bought the World Series this year, rumor has it they are actually going to play the games. If they really are, here's what we have to look forward to.
| Lineup | Pos | PA | AVG | OBP | SLG | pwOBA | 09wOBA | Diff | BR | Outs | dRS |
| derek jeter | ss | 33 | .314 | .382 | .440 | .364 | .384 | .020 | 5 | 20 | -3 |
| johnny damon | lf | 32 | .282 | .357 | .453 | .354 | .369 | .015 | 5 | 21 | 0 |
| mark teixeira | 1b | 31 | .292 | .386 | .542 | .397 | .402 | .005 | 5 | 19 | 4 |
| alex rodriguez | 3b | 30 | .293 | .399 | .546 | .405 | .402 | -.003 | 5 | 18 | -4 |
| hideki matsui | dh | 28 | .279 | .363 | .474 | .363 | .375 | .012 | 4 | 18 | 0 |
| jorge posada | c | 27 | .288 | .378 | .485 | .376 | .377 | .002 | 4 | 17 | -6 |
| robinson cano | 2b | 27 | .305 | .339 | .485 | .354 | .372 | .018 | 4 | 18 | -1 |
| nick swisher | rf | 24 | .243 | .359 | .461 | .357 | .373 | .016 | 3 | 15 | 2 |
| melky cabrera | cf | 20 | .270 | .328 | .394 | .318 | .328 | .010 | 2 | 13 | 0 |
| brett gardner | cf | 7 | .257 | .338 | .342 | .310 | .318 | .008 | 1 | 5 | 13 |
| freddy guzman | cf | 5 | .239 | .308 | .320 | .286 | .129 | -.157 | 0 | 3 | 0 |
| jose molina | c | 8 | .226 | .270 | .319 | .261 | .259 | -.001 | 1 | 6 | 1 |
| jerry hairston | ss | 3 | .266 | .317 | .404 | .314 | .302 | -.012 | 0 | 2 | -3 |
| ramiro pena | ss | 0 | .240 | .287 | .304 | .267 | .306 | .039 | 0 | 0 | 5 |
| total | 275 | .285 | .366 | .476 | .361 | .368 | .007 | 40 | 175 | 0 |
You probably don't need a narrative from me on the Yankees, so I'm just presenting the projections. I will add this though.
| Players | AB | R | H | 2B | 3B | HR | RBI | BB | K | SB | AVG | OBP | SLG | BR |
| Rodriguez,. Jeter, Posada, Matsui | 41 | 10 | 15 | 2 | 0 | 5 | 12 | 7 | 7 | 0 | .366 | .458 | .780 | 15 |
| Everyone Else | 61 | 5 | 8 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 3 | 2 | 15 | 1 | .131 | .159 | .197 | 6 |
| Total | 102 | 15 | 23 | 3 | 0 | 6 | 15 | 9 | 22 | 1 | .225 | .288 | .431 | 21 |
BR are batting runs as calculated using linear weights. Those are the Yankees' stats from the ALDS. Against the Angels, that won't cut it.
As far as the pitching, here are the projections.
| Pitcher | Role | IP | H | HR | BB | K | pRA | pERA | pFIP | 09ERA | 09FIP | sIP | sR |
| cc sabathia | SP1 | 229 | 213 | 20 | 63 | 198 | 3.84 | 3.44 | 3.42 | 3.37 | 3.38 | 17 | 7.2 |
| a.j. burnett | SP2 | 197 | 186 | 22 | 71 | 185 | 4.42 | 4.06 | 3.84 | 4.04 | 4.29 | 12 | 5.9 |
| andy pettitte | SP3 | 205 | 219 | 21 | 68 | 149 | 4.82 | 4.35 | 4.05 | 4.16 | 4.19 | 12 | 6.4 |
| mariano rivera | CL | 71 | 55 | 5 | 12 | 69 | 2.32 | 2.18 | 2.72 | 1.76 | 2.94 | 4 | 1.0 |
| phil hughes | SU | 79 | 66 | 5 | 27 | 81 | 3.45 | 3.25 | 3.02 | 3.03 | 3.15 | 4 | 1.5 |
| david robertson | SU | 68 | 60 | 5 | 22 | 69 | 3.70 | 3.43 | 3.05 | 3.30 | 3.09 | 3 | 1.2 |
| alfredo aceves | MR | 84 | 72 | 8 | 13 | 59 | 3.91 | 3.63 | 3.46 | 3.54 | 3.68 | 3 | 1.3 |
| joba chamberlain | MR | 131 | 114 | 10 | 54 | 146 | 3.52 | 3.18 | 3.16 | 4.75 | 4.69 | 3 | 1.2 |
| damaso marte | MR | 43 | 39 | 4 | 19 | 41 | 5.02 | 4.68 | 3.97 | 9.47 | 5.53 | 2 | 1.1 |
| phil coke | MR | 61 | 63 | 6 | 15 | 46 | 4.73 | 4.41 | 3.62 | 4.50 | 4.73 | 2 | 1.1 |
| chad gaudin | MR | 102 | 104 | 13 | 42 | 79 | 4.82 | 4.45 | 4.54 | 3.43 | 5.18 | 1 | 0.5 |
| mark melancon | LR | 62 | 62 | 8 | 8 | 37 | 5.11 | 4.70 | 3.95 | 3.87 | 3.81 | 0 | 0.0 |
| Total | 63 | 59 | 6 | 20 | 55 | 4.08 | 3.72 | 3.56 | 28.5 |
I'm assuming the Yankees will throw CC Sabathia on short rest in Game 4. I'm also assuming that Sabathia will not lose effectiveness on a rate basis, but will likely need to have his innings in Games 1 and 4 managed judiciously, so I gave him six innings in Games 1 and 7 and five innings in Game 4. I'll account for the fact that a rain out may require Chad Gaudin to get a start at the end.
So adding that up, here's how the Yankees look.
| #games | 7 |
| home games | 4 |
| #outs | 175 |
| offense | 40.2 |
| pitching | 28.5 |
| defense | -0.2 |
| wpct | .658 |
| 162 gm equiv | 107-55 |
If we replace five innings of Sabathia with five innings of Gaudin, they look like this.
| #games | 7 |
| home games | 4 |
| #outs | 175 |
| offense | 40.2 |
| pitching | 29.1 |
| defense | -0.2 |
| wpct | .650 |
| 162 gm equiv | 105-57 |
So, if we run the ALCS with three Sabathia starts 10,000 times, here's what the Monte Carlo Simulator sees.
Yankees 60.6%
Angels 39.4%
Red Sox 0.0%
I think that's probably a little high on the Yankees and low on the Angels, although I guess HFA is a big part of it.
And if we instead run it with two Sabathia starts and one Gaudin start 10,000 times, here's what the Monte Carlo Simulator sees.
Yankees 58.7%
Angels 41.4%
Red Sox 0.0%
Go Yankees.
Thursday, October 8, 2009
2009 ALDS Preview: Satan’s East Coast Team vs. Satan’s West Coast Team
Here’s a quick look at the Twins’ possible opponents for the next round…
Red SoxThe plucky underdogs from New England finished with the third-best record in the American League and took the wild card by eight games. Let's see how they look as presently constituted.
Although the Yankees ended up finishing eight games ahead of Boston, the actual difference between the two teams is more than likely smaller than that. Here's how their position players project for the ALDS, using my guess at the postseason roster (which isn't finalized yet).
| Lineup | Pos | PA | AVG | OBP | SLG | pwOBA | 09wOBA | Diff | BR | Outs | dRS |
| jacoby ellsbury | cf | 23 | .300 | .353 | .420 | .341 | .336 | -.005 | 3 | 15 | -10 |
| dustin pedroia | 2b | 22 | .305 | .370 | .459 | .362 | .358 | -.004 | 3 | 14 | 8 |
| victor martinez | c | 22 | .301 | .376 | .458 | .366 | .398 | .032 | 3 | 14 | 1 |
| kevin youkilis | 1b | 21 | .294 | .394 | .510 | .392 | .414 | .021 | 3 | 13 | 4 |
| david ortiz | dh | 21 | .270 | .378 | .539 | .391 | .342 | -.049 | 4 | 13 | 0 |
| jason bay | lf | 20 | .274 | .377 | .517 | .384 | .394 | .009 | 3 | 12 | -14 |
| j.d. drew | rf | 19 | .276 | .389 | .493 | .383 | .394 | .011 | 3 | 12 | 4 |
| mike lowell | 3b | 19 | .281 | .336 | .465 | .345 | .348 | .003 | 3 | 13 | -1 |
| alex gonzalez | ss | 10 | .270 | .317 | .417 | .319 | .324 | .005 | 1 | 7 | 5 |
| casey kotchman | 1b | 10 | .279 | .350 | .427 | .342 | .339 | -.003 | 1 | 7 | 7 |
| rocco baldelli | rf | 4 | .269 | .327 | .475 | .344 | .322 | -.022 | 1 | 3 | -1 |
| jason varitek | c | 2 | .230 | .331 | .396 | .324 | .311 | -.013 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| jed lowrie | ss | 2 | .253 | .329 | .407 | .324 | .211 | -.112 | 0 | 1 | 14 |
| nick green | ss | 1 | .253 | .312 | .409 | .314 | .295 | -.019 | 0 | 1 | 2 |
| total | 196 | .286 | .366 | .475 | 29 | 124 | 0 |
PA: Estimated plate appearances for the series, assuming it goes the distance.
pwOBA: projected weighted on-base average, a rate version of linear weights
09wOBA: 2009 actual wOBA
Diff: 09wOBA minus pwOBA. As a rough rule of thumb, a difference of .010 in wOBA is worth about five runs over 600 PAs.
BR: Estimated batting runs for the series using linear weights for estimated PA
Outs: Estimated outs for the series based on revised projection and estimated PA
dRS: Defensive projection over 150 games using an average of zone rating and UZR for non-catchers, and for 120 games using a system similar to the one described here for catchers.
Keep in mind that these projections are for Fenway, which boosts run-scoring even more than DNYS. So even though the raw numbers look better than any other team's, once you adjust for park they go down a little. Still, this is a good offensive team, especially if they are starting Victor Martinez at catcher. In a neutral environment they're probably a little worse than the Yankees, but better than any other team in the postseason.
I know we like to mock the media's fascination with the Red Sox, but they deserve credit for how they've put their team together. In Dustin Pedroia and Kevin Youkilis they have two players among the best at their positions in baseball that they've drafted and developed themselves, and while additional farm product Jacoby Ellsbury is overrated because of his speed, he's a pretty valuable player on offense. The only player on offense that is below average is probably Alex Gonzalez, although we can probably add Jason "C" Varitek if he gets any starts.
So yeah, they can hit. What about the defense? Funny you should ask. The Red Sox weren't a very good defensive team this year if you go by the numbers (-17 UZR, -36 ZR). The ZR number is "not" adjusted for Fenway's disgraceful LF wall, the normal effect of that is around 15 runs, so they're probably closer to that -17 UZR number.
Jason Bay is pretty bad in LF, and it's not just a Fenway thing. His numbers in Pittsburgh since a knee injury a few years ago were also not that good. Jacoby Ellsbury "looks" good, and he had decent numbers before this year, but for whatever reason his numbers aren't so good this year. I'd probably split the difference with him. He's probably not as good as Red Sox fans think, but he's also probably not as bad as this year's numbers indicate. Pedroia, Youkilis, Alex Gonzalez and J.D. Drew all probably classify as good to great defensively. Mike Lowell used to be a good defender, but his mobility has been hampered by his hip injury. Overall, they were a below average defense in 2009 but they project around average now.
The pitching staff of the Red Sox gets a lot of attention, as well they should with somewhere in the order of 12 different aces. Here's how they look.
| Pitcher | Role | IP | H | HR | BB | K | pRA | pERA | pFIP | 09ERA | 09FIP | sIP | sR |
| jon lester | SP1 | 182 | 184 | 18 | 66 | 154 | 4.22 | 4.06 | 3.88 | 3.41 | 3.21 | 12 | 5.6 |
| josh beckett | SP2 | 198 | 190 | 23 | 52 | 178 | 4.35 | 4.08 | 3.70 | 3.86 | 3.63 | 6 | 2.9 |
| clay buchholz | SP3 | 115 | 124 | 14 | 39 | 87 | 5.08 | 4.77 | 4.31 | 4.21 | 4.73 | 6 | 3.4 |
| daisuke matsuzaka | SP4 | 143 | 134 | 16 | 70 | 128 | 4.48 | 4.33 | 4.28 | 5.77 | 5.09 | 5 | 2.5 |
| jonathan papelbon | CL | 65 | 50 | 5 | 18 | 73 | 2.58 | 2.26 | 2.72 | 1.85 | 2.98 | 3 | 0.9 |
| billy wagner | SU | 46 | 34 | 4 | 14 | 54 | 3.37 | 2.71 | 2.94 | 1.97 | 2.47 | 3 | 1.1 |
| daniel bard | SU | 77 | 69 | 6 | 32 | 70 | 4.55 | 4.19 | 3.60 | 3.65 | 3.30 | 3 | 1.5 |
| hideki okajima | MR | 65 | 55 | 7 | 22 | 56 | 3.30 | 3.25 | 3.89 | 3.39 | 4.20 | 3 | 1.1 |
| takashi saito | MR | 60 | 50 | 4 | 23 | 62 | 2.79 | 2.63 | 3.18 | 2.42 | 4.08 | 2 | 0.6 |
| ramon ramirez | MR | 83 | 94 | 15 | 31 | 61 | 6.10 | 5.69 | 5.25 | 2.84 | 4.39 | 1 | 0.7 |
| paul byrd | MR | 134 | 159 | 20 | 31 | 64 | 5.41 | 4.93 | 4.87 | 5.82 | 5.05 | 1 | 0.6 |
| manny delcarmen | LR | 68 | 67 | 5 | 31 | 55 | 4.50 | 4.16 | 3.93 | 4.52 | 4.52 | 0 | 0.0 |
| Total | 45 | 43 | 5 | 16 | 40 | 4.18 | 3.92 | 3.82 | 20.9 |
pRA: Projected runs allowed per nine innings
pERA: Projected earned runs allowed per nine innings
pFIP: Projected Fielding independent pitching
sIP: Estimated innings in the series
sR: Estimated runs allowed in the series based on revised projection and sIP
The Red Sox haven't officially announced a game 4 starter so I put Matsuzaka in there. If they are down 2-1 I could see them going back to Lester.
Although Josh Beckett projects slightly better, Lester is probably the best Red Sox starter. His projection underrates him because it still includes data from when he was recovering from cancer. If I were to go with my gut, I'd knock about 0.50 off his ERA and FIP, but I am not going to start making manual adjustments to my projections because I want to be as objective as possible. But yeah, figure Lester is better than his projection, and probably one of the top five starters in the postseason.
Beckett has a good postseason resume and generally has pretty good peripherals, but he's struggled some with the long ball this year. Whether it was a HR/FB fluke (12.8% in 2009, compared to 10.6% career) or a symptom of some back problems he's supposedly been having is probably the key question. Still, you'd be hard pressed to find a #2 starter who is as likely to dominate as Beckett.
Clay Buchholz has been hyped for a few years now and had shown both promise and awfulness, but he pitched pretty well this year for both Pawtucket and eventually Boston. He's already exceed his previous high for innings pitched in a season this year by about 40 innings so he may be starting to hit the wall as evidenced by his last two starts (8 IP, 13 H, 13 R, 6 HR, 3 BB and 10 K). It could also just be a blip.
Matsuzaka had a rough year after a very good (if somewhat lucky) 2008. He pitched well upon his return from the DL over his last four starts, with a 2.22 ERA and 4.23 FIP, but it's pretty tough to know what the Sox will get from him.
The Sox bullpen is probably the best one in the postseason. Their top five relievers have a collective projected ERA of 3.46 and the highest projected K rate of any of the teams at 8.77.
Overall, this roster and distribution of playing time has the best strikeout rate of all the postseason teams at 8.01 per 9. Their projected walk rate is 3.15 per nine, which is worse than all other teams but the Rockies and Dodgers. HR rate of 0.93 per nine is essentially middle of the pack.
In summary, here's what all that means.
| #games | 5 |
| home games | 2 |
| #outs | 125 |
| offense | 29.2 |
| pitching | 20.8 |
| defense | 0.0 |
| wpct | .656 |
| 162 gm equiv | 106-56 |
#outs: 27 outs times # of games if the series goes the distance.
offense: Total BR for the series using # of outs
pitching: Total runs allowed by the pitching and defense for the series
defense: Estimated impact of defense over series
wpct: Estimated winning percentage for the team based on these playing time estimates and adjusted for home field advantage using the offense, pitching and defense plugged into Pythagenpat
162 gm equiv: wpct translated to a 162 game season
As much as it pains me to say it, the Red Sox are at the very least the second best team in the postseason if you penalize the Cardinals for playing in a weaker league. The difference in winning percentage between them and the Yankees is essentially due to home field advantage.
So how about their opposition?
Angels
A lot of analysts are fond of saying the Angels are an 86-90 win team who got lucky and exceeded their Pythagorean record this year. Maybe that's at least somewhat true, but it is irrelevant in the context of this series. Let's see what the team that's going to be playing Boston actually looks like.
| Lineup | Pos | PA | AVG | OBP | SLG | pwOBA | 09wOBA | Diff | BR | Outs | dRS |
| chone figgins | 3b | 23 | .288 | .371 | .381 | .340 | .354 | .015 | 3 | 14 | 9 |
| bobby abreu | rf | 22 | .284 | .379 | .440 | .362 | .366 | .004 | 3 | 14 | -12 |
| torii hunter | cf | 22 | .285 | .349 | .492 | .362 | .375 | .013 | 3 | 14 | -3 |
| vladimir guerrero | dh | 21 | .304 | .365 | .511 | .376 | .344 | -.033 | 3 | 13 | 0 |
| juan rivera | lf | 21 | .275 | .320 | .462 | .336 | .348 | .012 | 3 | 14 | 8 |
| kendry morales | 1b | 20 | .296 | .341 | .505 | .369 | .388 | .019 | 3 | 13 | 5 |
| maicer izturis | 2b | 19 | .281 | .343 | .401 | .329 | .346 | .017 | 2 | 12 | 4 |
| mike napoli | c | 19 | .259 | .355 | .499 | .367 | .362 | -.005 | 3 | 12 | -6 |
| erick aybar | ss | 10 | .281 | .317 | .388 | .308 | .334 | .025 | 1 | 7 | 5 |
| howie kendrick | 2b | 10 | .297 | .332 | .446 | .337 | .337 | .000 | 1 | 7 | 5 |
| gary matthews jr. | lf | 4 | .257 | .330 | .401 | .323 | .315 | -.008 | 0 | 3 | -2 |
| reggie willits | lf | 2 | .261 | .351 | .322 | .310 | .213 | -.097 | 0 | 1 | 5 |
| jeff mathis | c | 2 | .213 | .276 | .334 | .270 | .264 | -.006 | 0 | 1 | -4 |
| robb quinlan | lf | 1 | .263 | .310 | .374 | .303 | .271 | -.031 | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| total | 196 | .284 | .349 | .453 | 27 | 128 | 0 |
The Angels were third in baseball in team wOBA at .352 (behind the Yankees at .366 and the Red Sox at .352). They were second in runs scored at 883 (behind the Yankees at 915) although that's partially due to a better performance with runners on base. Their context-neutral runs scored would have been around 50 runs less.
It starts at the top with Chone Figgins, who's a very good overall player. In fact, if you factor in defense and baserunning, he was probably the Angels' most valuable player at around 5.7 WAR despite not having much power. Although noted for his defensive versatility, he's essentially settled in at third base and has shown a very good glove, projected around +9 over a full season.
Our old friend Bobby Abreu had a good year offensively as well, slightly better than he'd be expected to do going forward. He gives the Angels a good OBP at the top of the lineup and has been credited with helping the Angels be a little more patient overall as a team. The Angels saw 3.88 pitches per PA in 2009 compared to 3.65 per PA in 2008, which translates to about 9 extra pitches per game. Defensively, Abreu was better than 2008 with the Yanks, but still bad, and he projects pretty bad going forward.
Torii Hunter had a decent year as well on both sides of the ball, although his projection would be for him to do a little worse in both areas.
Let's consider a player who's probably heading to the Hall of Fame. This player bats cleanup for a very good team and has been an MVP. In the postseason, this player has hit .240/.337/.293 in the postseason in his career. Yet, Chip Caray doesn't seem to feel the need to continually recite those stats. That's what Vlad Guerrero has done in the postseason in his career. It doesn't mean he's a bad postseason player or is unclutch, it just means that he's had 86 bad PAs. Just like it means for another former MVP who's probably heading to the Hall of Fame as well. Guerrero's projection may look a little generous given his 2009 performance, but he did hit .300/.347/.498 after returning from the DL on August 4th.
Juan Rivera and Kendry Morales both had solid years as well. Maicer Izturis is really more of a glove man, although he does project to get on base at a better than league average clip. Mike Napoli's low batting average is probably the reason he doesn't get a lot of credit for being one of the better hitting catchers in baseball, but he is. Erick Aybar's another mostly glove guy, and Howie Kendrick should also get some of the playing time at 2B.
Defensively, you have Figgins, Rivera, Morales, Izturis, Aybar and Kendrick as projected plusses, Hunter a little below average, and then Abreu and Napoli as less than great defenders.
And for the pitching...
| Pitcher | Role | IP | H | HR | BB | K | pRA | pERA | pFIP | 09ERA | 09FIP | sIP | sR |
| john lackey | SP1 | 192 | 191 | 20 | 55 | 153 | 4.23 | 3.82 | 3.78 | 3.83 | 3.68 | 12 | 5.6 |
| jered weaver | SP2 | 185 | 180 | 23 | 57 | 149 | 4.13 | 3.94 | 4.10 | 3.75 | 4.09 | 6 | 2.8 |
| scott kazmir | SP3 | 128 | 115 | 15 | 50 | 128 | 3.94 | 3.57 | 3.87 | 1.74 | 2.95 | 6 | 2.6 |
| joe saunders | SP4 | 192 | 211 | 25 | 62 | 105 | 4.94 | 4.61 | 4.76 | 4.60 | 5.17 | 5 | 2.7 |
| brian fuentes | CL | 62 | 53 | 5 | 22 | 58 | 3.94 | 3.66 | 3.52 | 3.93 | 4.25 | 3 | 1.3 |
| ervin santana | SU | 72 | 65 | 7 | 24 | 68 | 3.91 | 3.66 | 3.52 | 5.03 | 4.91 | 3 | 1.3 |
| darren oliver | SU | 70 | 66 | 7 | 20 | 53 | 3.74 | 3.54 | 3.77 | 2.71 | 3.21 | 3 | 1.2 |
| jason bulger | MR | 59 | 48 | 4 | 24 | 66 | 3.18 | 3.10 | 2.97 | 3.56 | 3.88 | 3 | 1.1 |
| kevin jepsen | MR | 54 | 55 | 3 | 20 | 44 | 4.40 | 4.08 | 3.26 | 4.94 | 2.96 | 2 | 1.0 |
| matt palmer | MR | 134 | 156 | 16 | 39 | 72 | 5.65 | 5.35 | 4.51 | 3.93 | 4.71 | 1 | 0.6 |
| jose arredondo | MR | 68 | 74 | 9 | 26 | 52 | 5.44 | 5.15 | 4.47 | 6.00 | 4.38 | 1 | 0.6 |
| sean o'sullivan | LR | 119 | 154 | 16 | 21 | 54 | 6.84 | 6.45 | 4.51 | 5.92 | 6.02 | 0 | 0.0 |
| Total | 45 | 43 | 5 | 15 | 37 | 4.18 | 3.88 | 3.86 | 20.9 |
Lackey gets the nod in Game 1, with Weaver in Game 2 and Kazmir in Game 3. It looks like Ervin Santana will be in the bullpen, so I gave the Game 4 start to Joe Saunders.
Lackey's one of the better pitchers in the league, I had him at 19th in the league in runs saved above replacement level, despite missing 5-6 starts. It could be his last hurrah as an Angel, as he's likely to be the best free agent starting pitcher available in 2010.
Jered Weaver backs up Lackey and he's also a good starter, probably on par with A.J. Burnett as a #2. Although Kazmir's overall 2009 looks ugly, he pitched very well for the Angels after being acquired from Tampa Bay. Looking at all the third starters in the postseason, Kazmir projects better than any of them.
Joe Saunders kind of reminds me of Andy Pettitte. He's going to give up hits and runs, but he'll pitch well enough to keep the Angels in the game most of the time.
The bullpen is going to be interesting to watch. The Angels have almost always had one of the better bullpens in baseball since Mike Scioscia took over, but that's probably not true this year. Brian Fuentes isn't awful, but he's a little shaky and probably not someone you want to see pitching when trying to save a one run lead in Fenway.
The wild card is Ervin Santana. The projection above has been converted to a relief equivalent, but he's got great stuff and could be the Angels' equivalent of Phil Hughes the reliever in the postseason.
The rest of the bullpen isn't too bad, with Darren Oliver, Jason Bulger and Kevin Jepsen around.
So how good are the Angels?
| #games | 5 |
| home games | 3 |
| #outs | 125 |
| offense | 27.0 |
| pitching | 20.9 |
| defense | 0.3 |
| wpct | .631 |
| 162 gm equiv | 102-60 |
They're maybe a hair worse than the Yankees and Boston. So if someone tells you they're an 86 win team that got lucky, tell that person they are wrong.
So you have the equivalent of a 102 win team hosting the equivalent of a 106 win team. What happens if they play each other 10,000 times?
Angels 40.8%
Red Sox: 53.1%
Angels: 46.9%
I don't really care who wins, because I think the Yankees can beat either team and lose to either team, so I'm just going to root for a five game series where each game goes 20 innings.
Friday, September 4, 2009
This Is the Best Yankee Lineup Since…
There's a question that's been popping up a lot recently here, so let's see if we can figure it out. The question, or statement, is usually 'This is the best Yankee team since...', usually ending in 1999 or 1998. While I'd rather wait until the end of the season to try and answer this question correctly, here's a quick and dirty look at what the answer may be. I'm only looking at the lineup right now, and only looking at offense.Full-season pythag or run differential may tell us who the best Yankee lineup was over a full season considering all the contributions of everyone who played, but the more interesting question to me is what's the best concentrated set of talent the Yankees have ever run out on the field. To look at this question, I used my Lahman database to identify the primary position at each position on the field plus DH. Since the OF positions are not always split in the Lahman database prior to 1980, I'm only looking at the period between 1980-2009 for now.
From there, I calculated the wOBA
If we want to look at the real question about most talented Yankee team ever, we shouldn't use a single season's stats, we should probably use some of the prior season data for everyone on the team and do a retro-projection on them to smooth out any fluke seasons, but like I said, this is quick and dirty.
Update: Revised chart with correct park factors now posted.
| Year | wOBA | lgWOBA | r600aa |
| 2009 | .374 | .332 | 228.2 |
| 2005 | .369 | .330 | 212.5 |
| 2007 | .369 | .334 | 189.8 |
| 2003 | .368 | .333 | 189.8 |
| 2002 | .363 | .330 | 176.4 |
| 1986 | .354 | .325 | 160.6 |
| 2004 | .366 | .337 | 157.1 |
| 1998 | .365 | .337 | 154.5 |
| 2006 | .367 | .339 | 151.8 |
| 1983 | .349 | .321 | 150.9 |
| 1999 | .366 | .343 | 122.9 |
| 1985 | .345 | .323 | 121.5 |
| 1988 | .337 | .316 | 116.1 |
| 1994 | .362 | .341 | 110.4 |
| 1980 | .342 | .323 | 101.7 |
| 1984 | .338 | .320 | 99.2 |
| 1997 | .353 | .336 | 87.2 |
| 2001 | .347 | .333 | 74.2 |
| 1989 | .328 | .315 | 73.1 |
| 1993 | .340 | .328 | 63.1 |
| 1981 | .320 | .309 | 62.2 |
| 1982 | .332 | .322 | 50.5 |
| 1996 | .354 | .347 | 35.8 |
| 1987 | .339 | .332 | 34.4 |
| 2008 | .336 | .332 | 25.7 |
| 1991 | .324 | .320 | 22.2 |
| 2000 | .349 | .346 | 16.8 |
| 1995 | .341 | .338 | 12.3 |
| 1992 | .317 | .317 | 2.2 |
| 1990 | .293 | .317 | -132.1 |
wOBA: Yankee wOBA
lgwOBA League average wOBA in this season.
r600aa: Runs above average over 600 PAs (totaled for the starting nine).
Well, that surprised the hell out of me. While the season isn't over yet, the starting nine for the 2009 Yankees rate as the best offensive Yankee lineup relative to their league since 1980. How is that possible? According to wOBA they've gotten an above average performance relative to league from every single player listed as their primary starter. It looks like not even the 1998 Yankees can make that claim thanks to Chad Curtis's below average performance in LF.
The team-by-team breakdown is too big of a table to post, but anyone who wants to look at it can download it in CSV format.
Sunday, August 23, 2009
2008 vs. 2009 Yankees by Position
I'm pretending yesterday's game didn't happen, and I advise everyone else to do the same. I've been thinking about exactly how much better the 2009 Yankees are compared to the 2008 version, so I thought it'd be instructive to look at the contributions they got out of each position last year and what they've gotten this year as a quick point of comparison.To do this, I just pulled the positional splits from Baseball Reference.com, so this is not done on a player by player basis, rather it's the combined stats of everyone from when they played a specific position.
I'm going to show the PAs, AVG, OBP, SLG and batting runs by linear weights for each position. I'm using a park factor divider of 1.015 for 2008 and a park factor divider of 1.03 for 2009. So batting runs are calculated then divided by the park factor divider (half of the estimated park factor) to park-adjust them. There is no position-adjustment here since we're comparing apples to apples.
I'm also adding in defense at each position. For non-catchers, RS are runs saved compared to average using an average of standard zone rating and UZR from Fangraphs. For catchers I am using a system that looks at SB, CS, WP and PB, similar to Sean Smith's system detailed here.
In order to compare the numbers directly, I've pro-rated the 2009 data to 162 games. To really do this right, I should probably add revised projection data to the YTD totals instead of pro-rating, but this is just a snapshot comparison so it should be close enough for now.
| 2008 | 2009* | |||||||||||
| Split | PA | AVG/OBP/SLG | BR | RS | PA | AVG/OBP/SLG | BR | RS | dBR | dRS | WAR +/- | |
| as C | 608 | .230/.290/.335 | 51 | 0 | 504 | .273/.331/.443 | 80 | -8 | 30 | -8 | 2.2 | |
| as 1B | 674 | .246/.349/.460 | 91 | -9 | 569 | .287/.388/.567 | 130 | 3 | 39 | 12 | 5.1 | |
| as 2B | 661 | .265/.299/.404 | 67 | -6 | 529 | .313/.344/.500 | 98 | -2 | 31 | 3 | 3.4 | |
| as 3B | 696 | .283/.364/.511 | 109 | -6 | 517 | .249/.358/.427 | 88 | -9 | -20 | -3 | -2.3 | |
| as SS | 731 | .295/.359/.402 | 86 | 1 | 581 | .324/.384/.463 | 112 | 4 | 26 | 3 | 2.9 | |
| as LF | 714 | .284/.349/.427 | 91 | -2 | 567 | .282/.355/.511 | 114 | -5 | 23 | -3 | 2.0 | |
| as CF | 676 | .261/.320/.391 | 75 | 5 | 506 | .270/.337/.413 | 78 | 6 | 3 | 1 | 0.4 | |
| as RF | 724 | .290/.362/.451 | 100 | -23 | 534 | .259/.369/.482 | 101 | -4 | 1 | 19 | 2.1 | |
| as DH | 662 | .282/.378/.461 | 97 | 0 | 496 | .263/.355/.507 | 98 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0.1 | |
| Total | 767 | -41 | 900 | -15 | 133 | 26 | 15.9 |
*Pro-rated to 162 games
dBR: Difference in batting runs (2009 BR - 2008 BR)
dRS: Difference in runs saved (2009 RS - 2008 RS)
WAR +/-: Difference in wins above replacement, calculated as dBR + dRS divided by 10, since 10 runs is generally equivalent to one win.
Sorting this by just WAR +/- looks like this:
| Split | WAR +/- |
| as 1B | 5.1 |
| as 2B | 3.4 |
| as SS | 2.9 |
| as C | 2.2 |
| as RF | 2.1 |
| as LF | 2.0 |
| as CF | 0.4 |
| as DH | 0.1 |
| as 3B | -2.3 |
| Total | 15.9 |
Mark Teixeira at first base has been the biggest upgrade, offensively and defensively. Robinson Cano's return from the dead has been the second biggest factor in the 2009 Yankees' improvement on the position player side. Cano has been better on both sides of the ball, and is on pace to be 3.4 wins better than he was last year. Derek Jeter's resurgence is another key factor, as he's also been more valuable both offensively and defensively. Jorge Posada's bat makes up for the defensive downgrade from Jose Molina to the tune of around two wins, and Nick Swisher's offense has been right around where Bobby Abreu was last year, while his defense is an upgrade (although it's worth noting Abreu is playing much better defense this season, at least according to the metrics). Johnny Damon's hitting better and fielding worse this year, but is still a net gain. CF and DH aren't really much improved over last year at this point, and I probably don't have to go through the backstory behind the 3B decline.
Overall, what this is telling us is that the Yankee position players would collectively be 16 wins better than last year if they were to play to the same level going forward. 13.3 of those wins are on the offensive side, as they've gotten better performance from every single position except 3B, even when adjusted for park. Defensively, they've primarily benefitted from swapping out Jason Giambi with Teixeira and Abreu with Swisher, leading to a 2.6 win defensive upgrade.
I'll look at the pitchers in the next day or two.
Friday, June 26, 2009
AL wOBA For Hitters and Pitchers Through Games of June 25, 2009
I was thinking of ways to compare pitcher and hitter value more directly and thought that it might be interesting to put them on the same scale. We often hear from people spouting conventional wisdom that a starting pitcher isn't worth as much as a position player because "they only pitch once every five days." However, if you look at their impact on a batter by batter basis, a top starting pitcher may impact 1000 plate appearances in any single season, compared to 700 at most by a hitter.So what I did was take the batting stats against every pitcher in the AL, and calculate the wOBA against them. Then I subtracted that wOBA from the league average wOBA and got a difference. That then gets added to the league average wOBA to get basically an inverse wOBA against, which should scale to what a hitter's wOBA is. From there, you can calculate runs above average using (wOBA - lgwOBA) divided by 1.15 times either PA or BF, or runs above replacement using the same formulat but substituting something like n times lgwOBA to adjust for replacement level.
Here's how the AL looks for hitters and pitchers doing this for players with at least 100 PAs or batters faced. I'm using 'n' = 0.92 to convert lgwOBA to replacement level (.8 times 1.15). Bear in mind there are no position-adjustments here.
| Player | Tm | Lg | Pos | PA | wOBA | RAA | RAR |
| Greinke, Zack Z | KC | AL | SP | 429 | .399 | 26 | 36 |
| Mauer, Joe | MIN | AL | C | 217 | .485 | 29 | 34 |
| Jackson, Edwin | DET | AL | SP | 401 | .390 | 21 | 31 |
| Halladay, Roy | TOR | AL | SP | 404 | .389 | 21 | 30 |
| Martinez, Victor | CLE | AL | 1B | 323 | .409 | 21 | 28 |
| Youkilis, Kevin E | BOS | AL | 1B | 250 | .437 | 22 | 28 |
| Bay, Jason | BOS | AL | LF | 311 | .411 | 21 | 28 |
| Teixeira, Mark | NYA | AL | 1B | 312 | .409 | 20 | 28 |
| Morneau, Justin | MIN | AL | 1B | 323 | .405 | 20 | 28 |
| Weaver, Jered D | LAA | AL | SP | 386 | .384 | 19 | 27 |
| Longoria, Evan | TB | AL | 3B | 295 | .414 | 20 | 27 |
| Zobrist, Ben T | TB | AL | RF | 238 | .437 | 21 | 27 |
| Branyan, Russell | SEA | AL | 1B | 268 | .422 | 20 | 27 |
| Hernandez, Felix A | SEA | AL | SP | 425 | .375 | 17 | 27 |
| Sabathia, CC | NYA | AL | SP | 417 | .376 | 17 | 27 |
| Cabrera, Miguel | DET | AL | 1B | 288 | .413 | 20 | 27 |
| Lind, Adam A | TOR | AL | DH | 316 | .402 | 19 | 26 |
| Hunter, Torii | LAA | AL | CF | 274 | .411 | 18 | 25 |
| Verlander, Justin B | DET | AL | SP | 400 | .372 | 15 | 24 |
| Pena, Carlos | TB | AL | 1B | 315 | .393 | 16 | 24 |
| Garza, Matt | TB | AL | SP | 399 | .367 | 13 | 22 |
| Suzuki, Ichiro | SEA | AL | RF | 298 | .393 | 15 | 22 |
| Lee, Cliff | CLE | AL | SP | 469 | .356 | 11 | 22 |
| Beckett, Josh | BOS | AL | SP | 385 | .366 | 12 | 21 |
| Washburn, Jarrod | SEA | AL | SP | 370 | .368 | 13 | 21 |
| Choo, Shin-Soo | CLE | AL | RF | 319 | .382 | 13 | 21 |
| Bartlett, Jason A | TB | AL | SS | 216 | .418 | 16 | 21 |
| Damon, Johnny | NYA | AL | LF | 301 | .386 | 14 | 21 |
| Kubel, Jason J | MIN | AL | DH | 252 | .394 | 13 | 19 |
| Bailey, Andrew S | OAK | AL | RP | 180 | .421 | 14 | 18 |
| Blackburn, Nick N | MIN | AL | SP | 422 | .353 | 9 | 18 |
| Millwood, Kevin | TEX | AL | SP | 441 | .350 | 8 | 18 |
| Braden, Dallas L | OAK | AL | SP | 396 | .356 | 9 | 18 |
| Buehrle, Mark | CHA | AL | SP | 377 | .358 | 10 | 18 |
| Kinsler, Ian M | TEX | AL | 2B | 328 | .371 | 11 | 18 |
| Inge, Brandon | DET | AL | 3B | 287 | .379 | 11 | 18 |
| Overbay, Lyle | TOR | AL | 1B | 225 | .398 | 12 | 18 |
| Tallet, Brian | TOR | AL | SP | 377 | .356 | 9 | 18 |
| Floyd, Gavin C | CHA | AL | SP | 409 | .351 | 8 | 17 |
| Scutaro, Marco | TOR | AL | SS | 353 | .364 | 9 | 17 |
| Rolen, Scott | TOR | AL | 3B | 264 | .383 | 11 | 17 |
| Outman, Josh | OAK | AL | SP | 276 | .374 | 11 | 17 |
| Young, Michael | TEX | AL | 3B | 305 | .371 | 10 | 17 |
| Bedard, Erik | SEA | AL | SP | 271 | .375 | 11 | 17 |
| Cuddyer, Michael | MIN | AL | RF | 279 | .376 | 10 | 17 |
| Hill, Aaron W | TOR | AL | 2B | 344 | .362 | 8 | 16 |
| Drew, J.D. | BOS | AL | RF | 254 | .382 | 11 | 16 |
| Dye, Jermaine | CHA | AL | RF | 259 | .379 | 10 | 16 |
| Scott, Luke B | BAL | AL | DH | 207 | .397 | 11 | 16 |
| Jeter, Derek | NYA | AL | SS | 319 | .365 | 9 | 16 |
| Jones, Adam L | BAL | AL | CF | 287 | .371 | 9 | 16 |
| Figgins, Chone | LAA | AL | 3B | 314 | .365 | 8 | 16 |
| Saunders, Joe | LAA | AL | SP | 412 | .346 | 6 | 16 |
| Swisher, Nick T | NYA | AL | RF | 281 | .370 | 9 | 15 |
| Crawford, Carl | TB | AL | LF | 324 | .362 | 8 | 15 |
| Markakis, Nick | BAL | AL | RF | 319 | .360 | 7 | 14 |
| Abreu, Bobby | LAA | AL | RF | 276 | .367 | 8 | 14 |
| Richmond, Scott | TOR | AL | SP | 320 | .354 | 7 | 14 |
| Cormier, Lance R | TB | AL | RP | 179 | .395 | 10 | 14 |
| Thome, Jim | CHA | AL | DH | 219 | .382 | 9 | 14 |
| Bannister, Brian P | KC | AL | SP | 334 | .352 | 7 | 14 |
| Feldman, Scott | TEX | AL | SP | 315 | .354 | 7 | 14 |
| Roberts, Brian | BAL | AL | 2B | 328 | .355 | 6 | 14 |
| Cruz, Nelson R | TEX | AL | RF | 284 | .363 | 7 | 14 |
| Shields, James A | TB | AL | SP | 420 | .339 | 4 | 13 |
| Meche, Gil | KC | AL | SP | 380 | .342 | 4 | 13 |
| Aardsma, David | SEA | AL | RP | 140 | .410 | 10 | 13 |
| Rivera, Juan | LAA | AL | LF | 251 | .367 | 7 | 13 |
| Nathan, Joe | MIN | AL | RP | 107 | .442 | 11 | 13 |
| Konerko, Paul | CHA | AL | 1B | 283 | .360 | 6 | 13 |
| Granderson, Curtis | DET | AL | CF | 322 | .353 | 5 | 13 |
| Howell, J.P. | TB | AL | RP | 143 | .403 | 9 | 12 |
| Downs, Scott | TOR | AL | RP | 108 | .435 | 10 | 12 |
| Cano, Robinson | NYA | AL | 2B | 307 | .354 | 5 | 12 |
| Wuertz, Mike | OAK | AL | RP | 129 | .411 | 9 | 12 |
| Baker, Scott S | MIN | AL | SP | 353 | .342 | 4 | 12 |
| Mazzaro, Vince M | OAK | AL | SP | 126 | .412 | 9 | 12 |
| Danks, John W | CHA | AL | SP | 346 | .342 | 4 | 12 |
| Holliday, Matt T | OAK | AL | LF | 300 | .353 | 5 | 12 |
| Ramirez, Ramon | BOS | AL | RP | 128 | .409 | 9 | 12 |
| White, Sean A | SEA | AL | RP | 149 | .393 | 8 | 12 |
| Bergesen, Bradley S | BAL | AL | SP | 322 | .345 | 4 | 12 |
| Guerrier, Matt O | MIN | AL | RP | 129 | .400 | 8 | 11 |
| Carrasco, D.J. | CHA | AL | RP | 201 | .364 | 6 | 11 |
| Hafner, Travis | CLE | AL | DH | 111 | .419 | 8 | 11 |
| DeRosa, Mark | CLE | AL | 3B | 310 | .347 | 3 | 11 |
| Napoli, Mike A | LAA | AL | C | 195 | .370 | 6 | 11 |
| Rodriguez, Alex | NYA | AL | 3B | 185 | .373 | 6 | 11 |
| Wakefield, Tim | BOS | AL | SP | 390 | .333 | 1 | 10 |
| Okajima, Hideki | BOS | AL | RP | 129 | .392 | 7 | 10 |
| Posada, Jorge | NYA | AL | C | 176 | .373 | 6 | 10 |
| Lester, Jon T | BOS | AL | SP | 392 | .332 | 1 | 10 |
| Morales, Kendry | LAA | AL | 1B | 268 | .350 | 4 | 10 |
| Matsui, Hideki | NYA | AL | DH | 232 | .356 | 4 | 10 |
| Baez, Danys | BAL | AL | RP | 154 | .376 | 6 | 10 |
| Padilla, Vicente | TEX | AL | SP | 344 | .335 | 2 | 10 |
| Callaspo, Alberto | KC | AL | 2B | 262 | .350 | 4 | 10 |
| Aybar, Willy | TB | AL | 2B | 160 | .376 | 6 | 10 |
| Kennedy, Adam | OAK | AL | 2B | 193 | .363 | 5 | 9 |
| Uehara, Koji | BAL | AL | SP | 279 | .341 | 3 | 9 |
| Span, Denard D | MIN | AL | LF | 269 | .347 | 3 | 9 |
| Pedroia, Dustin L | BOS | AL | 2B | 321 | .340 | 2 | 9 |
| Aceves, Alfredo | NYA | AL | RP | 132 | .382 | 6 | 9 |
| Teahen, Mark T | KC | AL | 3B | 276 | .345 | 3 | 9 |
| Palmer, Matt | LAA | AL | SP | 264 | .342 | 3 | 9 |
| Coke, Phil | NYA | AL | RP | 126 | .381 | 6 | 9 |
| Jones, Andruw | TEX | AL | DH | 151 | .373 | 5 | 9 |
| Cabrera, Asdrubal J | CLE | AL | 2B | 231 | .350 | 3 | 8 |
| Johnson, Jim | BAL | AL | RP | 147 | .368 | 5 | 8 |
| Porcello, Rick A | DET | AL | SP | 330 | .331 | 1 | 8 |
| Thornton, Matt J | CHA | AL | RP | 114 | .384 | 6 | 8 |
| Lowell, Mike | BOS | AL | 3B | 281 | .340 | 2 | 8 |
| Masterson, Justin | BOS | AL | RP | 253 | .339 | 2 | 8 |
| Butler, Billy R | KC | AL | 1B | 277 | .340 | 1 | 8 |
| Gross, Gabe J | TB | AL | RF | 152 | .366 | 4 | 8 |
| Vargas, Jason M | SEA | AL | SP | 207 | .346 | 3 | 8 |
| Rivera, Mariano | NYA | AL | RP | 118 | .377 | 5 | 8 |
| Cahill, Trevor | OAK | AL | SP | 364 | .327 | -1 | 8 |
| Huff, Aubrey | BAL | AL | 1B | 294 | .337 | 1 | 8 |
| Dickey, R.A. | MIN | AL | RP | 177 | .352 | 4 | 8 |
| Reimold, Nolan | BAL | AL | LF | 130 | .374 | 5 | 8 |
| Sherrill, George F | BAL | AL | RP | 116 | .377 | 5 | 8 |
| Varitek, Jason | BOS | AL | C | 221 | .346 | 2 | 7 |
| Papelbon, Jonathan R | BOS | AL | RP | 137 | .364 | 4 | 7 |
| Jakubauskas, Chris | SEA | AL | RP | 249 | .335 | 1 | 7 |
| Lyon, Brandon | DET | AL | RP | 152 | .356 | 4 | 7 |
| Ellsbury, Jacoby | BOS | AL | CF | 303 | .334 | 0 | 7 |
| Perkins, Glen W | MIN | AL | SP | 255 | .333 | 1 | 7 |
| Cabrera, Melky | NYA | AL | CF | 223 | .341 | 1 | 7 |
| Contreras, Jose | CHA | AL | SP | 228 | .335 | 1 | 6 |
| Iwamura, Akinori | TB | AL | 2B | 176 | .348 | 2 | 6 |
| Rios, Alex I | TOR | AL | RF | 332 | .328 | -2 | 6 |
| Chamberlain, Joba L | NYA | AL | SP | 330 | .324 | -1 | 6 |
| Rodney, Fernando | DET | AL | RP | 130 | .356 | 3 | 6 |
| Jenks, Bobby | CHA | AL | RP | 112 | .364 | 3 | 6 |
| Lowe, Mark | SEA | AL | RP | 153 | .346 | 2 | 6 |
| Balfour, Grant | TB | AL | RP | 148 | .347 | 2 | 6 |
| Pierzynski, A.J. | CHA | AL | C | 230 | .335 | 0 | 6 |
| Speier, Justin | LAA | AL | RP | 117 | .356 | 3 | 5 |
| Blalock, Hank | TEX | AL | DH | 220 | .335 | 0 | 5 |
| Burnett, A.J. | NYA | AL | SP | 378 | .319 | -3 | 5 |
| Guillen, Jose | KC | AL | RF | 232 | .333 | 0 | 5 |
| Batista, Miguel | SEA | AL | RP | 165 | .339 | 1 | 5 |
| Delcarmen, Manny | BOS | AL | RP | 128 | .349 | 2 | 5 |
| Green, Nick | BOS | AL | SS | 184 | .339 | 1 | 5 |
| Podsednik, Scott | CHA | AL | LF | 216 | .334 | 0 | 5 |
| Kapler, Gabe | TB | AL | RF | 113 | .356 | 2 | 5 |
| Gonzalez, Edgar | OAK | AL | RP | 105 | .355 | 2 | 5 |
| Crede, Joe | MIN | AL | 3B | 225 | .332 | 0 | 5 |
| Swarzak, Anthony | MIN | AL | SP | 119 | .349 | 2 | 5 |
| Giambi, Jason | OAK | AL | 1B | 273 | .327 | -2 | 5 |
| Hochevar, Luke | KC | AL | SP | 164 | .335 | 1 | 5 |
| Griffey Jr., Ken | SEA | AL | DH | 221 | .331 | -1 | 5 |
| Niemann, Jeff | TB | AL | SP | 315 | .319 | -3 | 5 |
| Carlson, Jesse C | TOR | AL | RP | 155 | .336 | 1 | 4 |
| Laffey, Aaron S | CLE | AL | RP | 145 | .338 | 1 | 4 |
| Wilson, C.J. | TEX | AL | RP | 131 | .341 | 1 | 4 |
| Quentin, Carlos J | CHA | AL | LF | 151 | .340 | 1 | 4 |
| Saito, Takashi | BOS | AL | RP | 115 | .345 | 2 | 4 |
| Byrd, Marlon | TEX | AL | CF | 244 | .327 | -1 | 4 |
| Dotel, Octavio | CHA | AL | RP | 132 | .339 | 1 | 4 |
| Garko, Ryan F | CLE | AL | 1B | 184 | .333 | 0 | 4 |
| Harris, Brendan | MIN | AL | SS | 232 | .328 | -1 | 4 |
| Bautista, Jose A | TOR | AL | LF | 141 | .340 | 1 | 4 |
| Slowey, Kevin | MIN | AL | SP | 362 | .315 | -5 | 4 |
| Jennings, Jason | TEX | AL | RP | 172 | .328 | 0 | 4 |
| Bulger, Jason P | LAA | AL | RP | 128 | .336 | 1 | 4 |
| Lugo, Julio | BOS | AL | SS | 104 | .348 | 1 | 4 |
| Olson, Garrett | SEA | AL | RP | 183 | .325 | -1 | 4 |
| Fuentes, Brian | LAA | AL | RP | 106 | .342 | 1 | 4 |
| Betancourt, Rafael | CLE | AL | RP | 114 | .339 | 1 | 4 |
| Oliver, Darren | LAA | AL | RP | 131 | .334 | 1 | 4 |
| Carroll, Jamey | CLE | AL | 2B | 130 | .338 | 0 | 3 |
| McCarthy, Brandon P | TEX | AL | SP | 281 | .316 | -3 | 3 |
| Cust, Jack | OAK | AL | DH | 281 | .321 | -3 | 3 |
| Hughes, Phil | NYA | AL | RP | 197 | .321 | -1 | 3 |
| Pettitte, Andy | NYA | AL | SP | 403 | .311 | -6 | 3 |
| Arredondo, Jose J | LAA | AL | RP | 110 | .335 | 1 | 3 |
| Murphy, David M | TEX | AL | LF | 182 | .326 | -1 | 3 |
| Olivo, Miguel | KC | AL | C | 178 | .326 | -1 | 3 |
| League, Brandon P | TOR | AL | RP | 140 | .326 | 0 | 3 |
| Camp, Shawn A | TOR | AL | RP | 139 | .326 | 0 | 3 |
| Sizemore, Grady | CLE | AL | CF | 245 | .320 | -3 | 3 |
| Ray, Robert A | TOR | AL | SP | 101 | .333 | 0 | 3 |
| Gardner, Brett | NYA | AL | CF | 170 | .325 | -1 | 3 |
| Jacobs, Mike | KC | AL | DH | 246 | .320 | -3 | 3 |
| Santiago, Ramon | DET | AL | SS | 127 | .331 | 0 | 3 |
| Ordonez, Magglio | DET | AL | RF | 253 | .319 | -3 | 3 |
| Albers, Matt J | BAL | AL | RP | 127 | .326 | 0 | 3 |
| Suzuki, Kurt K | OAK | AL | C | 266 | .318 | -4 | 2 |
| Cruz, Juan | KC | AL | RP | 122 | .326 | 0 | 2 |
| Perry, Ryan | DET | AL | RP | 124 | .325 | 0 | 2 |
| Romero, Ricky | TOR | AL | SP | 243 | .313 | -3 | 2 |
| Ziegler, Brad G | OAK | AL | RP | 140 | .321 | -1 | 2 |
| Zumaya, Joel M | DET | AL | RP | 110 | .325 | 0 | 2 |
| Miner, Zach C | DET | AL | RP | 198 | .314 | -3 | 2 |
| Peralta, Jhonny | CLE | AL | SS | 277 | .315 | -5 | 2 |
| Sweeney, Mike | SEA | AL | DH | 118 | .325 | -1 | 2 |
| Linebrink, Scott | CHA | AL | RP | 122 | .318 | -1 | 2 |
| Casilla, Santiago | OAK | AL | RP | 111 | .318 | -1 | 1 |
| Nelson, Joe | TB | AL | RP | 139 | .314 | -2 | 1 |
| Crisp, Coco | KC | AL | CF | 215 | .315 | -4 | 1 |
| Thomas, Clete | DET | AL | RF | 127 | .319 | -2 | 1 |
| Wells, Vernon | TOR | AL | CF | 332 | .312 | -6 | 1 |
| Hill, Rich | BAL | AL | SP | 168 | .311 | -3 | 1 |
| Burrell, Pat | TB | AL | DH | 161 | .316 | -3 | 1 |
| Shoppach, Kelly B | CLE | AL | C | 170 | .315 | -3 | 1 |
| Berken, Jason T | BAL | AL | SP | 144 | .311 | -2 | 1 |
| Hamilton, Josh H | TEX | AL | CF | 138 | .316 | -2 | 1 |
| Gutierrez, Franklin R | SEA | AL | CF | 250 | .312 | -5 | 1 |
| Zaun, Gregg | BAL | AL | C | 156 | .314 | -3 | 1 |
| Bass, Brian M | BAL | AL | RP | 198 | .307 | -4 | 1 |
| Millar, Kevin | TOR | AL | 1B | 148 | .313 | -3 | 1 |
| Guthrie, Jeremy | BAL | AL | SP | 379 | .305 | -8 | 1 |
| Veras, Jose | NYA | AL | RP | 118 | .307 | -2 | 0 |
| Davies, Kyle K | KC | AL | SP | 348 | .304 | -8 | 0 |
| Price, David T | TB | AL | SP | 142 | .305 | -3 | 0 |
| Richard, Clayton C | CHA | AL | RP | 278 | .304 | -6 | 0 |
| Barajas, Rod | TOR | AL | C | 232 | .308 | -5 | 0 |
| Ramirez, Alexei | CHA | AL | SS | 284 | .308 | -6 | 0 |
| Robertson, Nate | DET | AL | RP | 102 | .302 | -2 | 0 |
| Huff, David G | CLE | AL | SP | 181 | .302 | -4 | 0 |
| Morrow, Brandon J | SEA | AL | RP | 143 | .302 | -3 | 0 |
| Izturis, Maicer E | LAA | AL | 2B | 166 | .306 | -4 | 0 |
| Sowers, Jeremy B | CLE | AL | SP | 179 | .301 | -4 | 0 |
| Upton, B.J. | TB | AL | CF | 311 | .306 | -8 | 0 |
| Maier, Mitch W | KC | AL | CF | 114 | .304 | -3 | 0 |
| Wigginton, Ty | BAL | AL | 3B | 191 | .305 | -5 | 0 |
| Pavano, Carl | CLE | AL | SP | 372 | .301 | -9 | 0 |
| Polanco, Placido | DET | AL | 2B | 285 | .305 | -7 | 0 |
| Reyes, Anthony L | CLE | AL | SP | 176 | .299 | -5 | 0 |
| Ortiz, David | BOS | AL | DH | 275 | .305 | -7 | -1 |
| Bloomquist, Willie | KC | AL | SS | 182 | .304 | -5 | -1 |
| Buscher, Brian | MIN | AL | 3B | 106 | .301 | -3 | -1 |
| Wright, Jamey | KC | AL | RP | 145 | .297 | -4 | -1 |
| Ayala, Luis | MIN | AL | RP | 138 | .297 | -4 | -1 |
| Penny, Brad | BOS | AL | SP | 346 | .300 | -9 | -1 |
| DeJesus, David | KC | AL | LF | 283 | .303 | -8 | -1 |
| Valbuena, Luis A | CLE | AL | 2B | 130 | .298 | -4 | -1 |
| Mora, Melvin | BAL | AL | 3B | 214 | .301 | -6 | -1 |
| Snider, Travis J | TOR | AL | LF | 108 | .295 | -4 | -1 |
| Colon, Bartolo | CHA | AL | SP | 249 | .297 | -7 | -1 |
| Andrus, Elvis | TEX | AL | SS | 214 | .300 | -6 | -1 |
| Wood, Kerry | CLE | AL | RP | 113 | .289 | -4 | -1 |
| Guerrero, Vladimir | LAA | AL | DH | 143 | .296 | -5 | -1 |
| Lewis, Jensen D | CLE | AL | RP | 164 | .292 | -5 | -2 |
| Ramirez, Horacio | KC | AL | RP | 104 | .285 | -4 | -2 |
| Holland, Derek | TEX | AL | RP | 191 | .293 | -6 | -2 |
| Anderson, Brian N | CHA | AL | CF | 175 | .297 | -6 | -2 |
| Davis, Chris | TEX | AL | 1B | 248 | .300 | -7 | -2 |
| Ponson, Sidney | KC | AL | RP | 202 | .292 | -6 | -2 |
| Saltalamacchia, Jarrod S | TEX | AL | C | 209 | .297 | -7 | -2 |
| Davis, Rajai | OAK | AL | CF | 110 | .287 | -4 | -2 |
| Balentien, Wladimir R | SEA | AL | LF | 143 | .291 | -5 | -2 |
| Loux, Shane | LAA | AL | SP | 174 | .289 | -6 | -2 |
| Chavez, Endy | SEA | AL | LF | 182 | .294 | -6 | -2 |
| Liriano, Francisco | MIN | AL | SP | 371 | .296 | -11 | -2 |
| Aybar, Erick J | LAA | AL | SS | 211 | .295 | -7 | -2 |
| Fields, Josh | CHA | AL | 3B | 227 | .296 | -8 | -2 |
| Lackey, John | LAA | AL | SP | 211 | .290 | -7 | -2 |
| Beltre, Adrian | SEA | AL | 3B | 300 | .298 | -9 | -2 |
| Pie, Felix | BAL | AL | LF | 110 | .280 | -5 | -3 |
| Laird, Gerald | DET | AL | C | 218 | .293 | -8 | -3 |
| Everett, Adam | DET | AL | SS | 185 | .290 | -7 | -3 |
| Anderson, Brett F | OAK | AL | SP | 307 | .292 | -10 | -3 |
| Francisco, Ben B | CLE | AL | LF | 260 | .294 | -9 | -3 |
| Purcey, David K | TOR | AL | SP | 120 | .273 | -6 | -3 |
| Springer, Russ | OAK | AL | RP | 124 | .274 | -6 | -3 |
| Willis, Dontrelle | DET | AL | SP | 160 | .280 | -7 | -3 |
| Sweeney, Ryan J | OAK | AL | CF | 233 | .289 | -9 | -4 |
| Anderson, Josh | DET | AL | LF | 141 | .275 | -7 | -4 |
| Mahay, Ron | KC | AL | RP | 116 | .262 | -7 | -4 |
| Lopez, Jose C | SEA | AL | 2B | 267 | .289 | -10 | -4 |
| Hendrickson, Mark | BAL | AL | RP | 215 | .278 | -9 | -4 |
| Izturis, Cesar | BAL | AL | SS | 159 | .274 | -8 | -5 |
| Getz, Chris | CHA | AL | 2B | 216 | .283 | -10 | -5 |
| Andino, Robert L | BAL | AL | SS | 110 | .259 | -7 | -5 |
| Carmona, Fausto C | CLE | AL | SP | 291 | .284 | -11 | -5 |
| Kendrick, Howie | LAA | AL | 2B | 201 | .279 | -10 | -5 |
| Matthews Jr., Gary | LAA | AL | RF | 151 | .269 | -9 | -5 |
| Gomez, Carlos A | MIN | AL | CF | 177 | .274 | -9 | -5 |
| Mathis, Jeff | LAA | AL | C | 122 | .258 | -8 | -5 |
| Hannahan, Jack | OAK | AL | 3B | 129 | .260 | -8 | -5 |
| Sonnanstine, Andy | TB | AL | SP | 362 | .286 | -14 | -5 |
| Crosby, Bobby | OAK | AL | 1B | 173 | .271 | -9 | -5 |
| Harrison, Matt | TEX | AL | SP | 283 | .279 | -12 | -6 |
| Silva, Carlos | SEA | AL | SP | 132 | .251 | -9 | -6 |
| Eveland, Dana J | OAK | AL | SP | 127 | .249 | -9 | -6 |
| Guillen, Carlos | DET | AL | LF | 101 | .238 | -8 | -6 |
| Young, Delmon D | MIN | AL | LF | 180 | .264 | -11 | -7 |
| Cecil, Brett | TOR | AL | SP | 151 | .251 | -10 | -7 |
| Santana, Ervin R | LAA | AL | SP | 150 | .251 | -10 | -7 |
| Perez, Rafael E | CLE | AL | RP | 109 | .230 | -9 | -7 |
| Janssen, Casey C | TOR | AL | SP | 123 | .236 | -10 | -7 |
| Punto, Nick | MIN | AL | SS | 180 | .261 | -11 | -7 |
| Kazmir, Scott E | TB | AL | SP | 224 | .264 | -13 | -7 |
| Johnson, Rob | SEA | AL | C | 128 | .240 | -10 | -8 |
| Benson, Kris | TEX | AL | RP | 114 | .225 | -10 | -8 |
| Tolbert, Matt | MIN | AL | 2B | 129 | .232 | -11 | -8 |
| Galarraga, Armando | DET | AL | SP | 355 | .274 | -17 | -9 |
| Eaton, Adam | BAL | AL | SP | 194 | .247 | -14 | -9 |
| Casilla, Alexi | MIN | AL | 2B | 121 | .216 | -12 | -10 |
| Cedeno, Ronny | SEA | AL | 2B | 101 | .193 | -12 | -10 |
| Betancourt, Yuniesky | SEA | AL | SS | 245 | .260 | -16 | -10 |
| Cabrera, Orlando | OAK | AL | SS | 312 | .267 | -18 | -11 |
| Aviles, Mike A | KC | AL | SS | 127 | .200 | -15 | -12 |
| Navarro, Dioner F | TB | AL | C | 228 | .236 | -19 | -14 |
| Wang, Chien-Ming | NYA | AL | SP | 162 | .201 | -18 | -14 |
| Matsuzaka, Daisuke | BOS | AL | SP | 177 | .198 | -20 | -16 |
Congratulations are in order to Chien-Ming Wang, as I've finally found a metric that doesn't have him as the least valuable player in the AL.
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Projecting the 2009 Yankee Defense Using Fangraph’s UZR
The more statistically-inclined of our blog readers are probably aware of this, but Fangraphs has added Ultimate Zone Rating, b/k/a UZR to their statistical reports. What’s UZR? Here’s an article describing it, by its creator, Mitchel Lichtman, b/k/a as MGL in the online baseball statdork world.
Although the engine behind UZR is the same, Fangraphs uses different input data than MGL, which causes some variance in the numbers in their database compared to numbers you may have seen posted elsewhere. This could be as simple as a difference in how scorers judge balls in play, which points to one of the limitations of our current defensive metrics. This has been discussed on this thread on The Book blog so I won’t get into that here.
Still, I feel that UZR is a sound system, and while I will still use standard zone rating as at least part of any defensive analysis I do, I would like to incorporate UZR as well, as long as it passes the sniff test.
So what better way to run a sniff test than look at the last few years of data for the 2009 Yankees and see what it says?
UZR doesn’t include catchers, so I’ll skip them for now. I’m going to use a weighted average of last four years of data, with some regression towards the mean included.
First, here’s the list of all the Yankees 2005-2008 UZRs and their 2009 projections(using a 4/3/2/1 weight and adding in 150 league average games) to regress towards the mean. Obviously, sample size is a concern for some players, like Brett Gardner, so take that into account.
DG: Defensive games.
exO: Expected outs. The number of outs plus reached base errors that would be made by an average fielder given the distribution of balls in play while that fielder was on the field.
RngR: Range runs. The number of runs above or below average a fielder is, determined by how the fielder is able to get to balls hit in his vicinity.
ErrR: Error runs. The number of runs above or below average a fielder is, determined by the number of errors he makes as compared to an average fielder at that position given the same distribution of balls in play.
UZR: Ultimate zone rating. The number of runs above or below average a fielder is in both range runs and error runs combined.
UZR/150: UZR pro-rated to 150 games.
And here’s a rough stab at how the starters project over a full season.
The outfield looks like it’ll be mix and match, so I tried to account for that somewhat, but obviously, there will be bench time in here that I haven’t accounted for, both in the infield and the outfield. If the Yankees go for an offensive middle infielder, they’ll probably be a few runs worse than this. If they go for a glove guy, they shouldn’t change much.
Still, -14 isn’t bad. Last year’s team was -39 according to these same statistics, although more than half of that was Bobby Abreu’s -25.
And there’s a pretty major math issue with the numbers above. Anyone with fewer than four seasons at a position is wrong. Update after the jump.
So yeah, like I said, I messed up the numbers for players with fewer than four seasons at a position. Let this be a warning, stay away from spreadsheets after midnight. Here’s what the numbers should look like.
And what that means…
Infield doesn’t really change, but the OF gets much better. Still, we have sample size issues with just about everyone out there, so take that into account. But it is entirely possible the Yankee defense will be average or (gasp) above average this year.
Monday, December 1, 2008
DAILY NEWS: Yankees’ decision time on Andy Pettitte and Bobby Abreu
The Yankee offseason - and the future of the club’s player development - could be affected by Monday’s arbitration deadline, a little bit of baseball bookkeeping that could influence Bobby Abreu and Andy Pettitte.
Pettitte likely would earn around the $16 million he’s pocketed the last two seasons if he accepts arbitration, but it seems unlikely the Yanks will offer it - if they wanted to pay Pettitte that much money, he’d likely already have been re-signed. Instead, the team wants him to take a pay cut after a 14-14 season. There’s additional intrigue with Pettitte - Joe Torre’s Dodgers have emerged as potential suitors.
Abreu is seeking a three-year deal, something the Yankees apparently have no interest in, because they have not engaged his agent since the end of the season.
We needed a new thread.
And:
Yanks Unlikely To Offer Pettitte Arbitration
Update: Yankees offer arbitration to none
No draft picks for you.
Monday, October 27, 2008
Fifty Ways To Upgrade the Yankee offense
There’s been a few questions in some of the last few posts about different combinations the Yankees could pursue to improve their offense, so I’m going to run through a few of them.
There’s a crapload of stuff that the Yankees can try, but I’m just going to run through a few of them. For now I’m giving all the starters 600 plate appearances and the bench 1004 replacement level PAs. In actuality we should expect the bench to get more playing time, but for the purposes of comparison this is more straightforward. The projections I’m using are the current version of my 2009 CAIRO projections, which may change slightly.
First, let’s look at a control group. Here, the Yankees return all their projected starters from last year with a healthy Posada and Xavier Nady on the bench.
Combination 1
BR: Batting runs using linear weights (not position-adjusted or compared to average)
BRAR: Batting runs above replacement level player at same position
RS: Runs saved above average on defense
WAR: Wins above replacement (BRAR + RS divided by 10)
Returning a healthy Posada makes a pretty big difference. This version of the Yankees would score 849 runs if they could stay relatively healthy, which is not very likely. It’s also not very likely that the Yankees are going to bring back both Jason Giambi and Bobby Abreu. As you can see, this group gives back a non-trivial amount of their value on defense, but collectively they would be worth around 16 wins above replacement level team.
Combination 2
For this combination, I’m punting defense to get the best bats in the lineup. That means Melky on the bench, Nady in LF and Damon in CF. Nady’s LF numbers are not very good which is why he shows as a -9 but it’s a very small sample size, and he’s been close to average in RF so there’s a chance he’d be a little better than -9 if he was a full-time LF. Still, this group would score 19 more runs but allow 19 more runs on defense, which is basically a wash.
Combination 3
Now we start getting into slightly more realistic scenarios. Here, Abreu walks but the Yankees keep Giambi. Melky gets back in the lineup with Nady in RF. This group is a little less than a win better than combinations 1 and 2, thanks to the defensive upgrade of Damon in LF and Melky in CF.
Combination 4
Same lineup as above, but swapping Brett Gardner for Melky. Gardner’s defensive projection is probably a little generous, but this combination makes the Yankees a better defensive team than any of the other previous combinations. The projected offensive difference between Gardner and Melky is only 4 runs thanks to Gardner’s expected stolen bases. If he’s really 6 runs better defensively then he’s the better player than Melky.
Combination 5
Keeping Giambi is probably not going to happen, so here’s what happens if we stick Juan Miranda in there as the full-time 1B. He projects as right around replacement level, although if he’s platooned with someone like Nady he could be better than that. I went with Gardner in CF again, but if you want to figure Melky instead add 4 offensive runs and subtract 6 defensive runs.
Combination 6
Now we’re cooking. Adding Mark Teixeira at first boosts the offense to 860 runs and improves the defense to just about average. All other combinations hovered in the 15-16 win above replacement range, Teixeira makes them 19 wins above replacement.
Combination 7
There’s a very good chance the Yankees won’t be able to get Teixeira, so what about someone like Pat Burrell? Burrell in LF, Damon in CF, and Nady in RF leads to a pretty good offense, almost as good as the Teixeira offense, but 20 runs worse defensively.
Combination 8
Adding Adam Dunn instead of Burrell doesn’t really change anything from combination 7.
Combination 9
Even though it makes my stomach churn, here’s what it would look like if the Yankees added Manny Ramirez. I adjusted Ramirez’s defense for the Green Monster penalty from -21 to -11, but that may be overly generous. Manny’s Dodger tenure makes his 2009 projection really good, but I still don’t want him.
I still think combination 6 (Teixeira at first, Damon in LF, Gardner/Melky in CF) is the best one for the 2009 Yankees, because it balances offense and defense.
There are a lot more combinations that I’m probably missing, so if you want to see some other ones ask in the comments.
Monday, October 20, 2008
2009 Defensive Projections for Current and Former Yankees
GP: Games
Inn: Defensive Innings at Position
PO: Putouts
A: Assists
E: Errors
DP: Double Plays
PM: Plays Made
CH: Playable Chances
ZR: Zone Rating (PM/Ch)
Avg ZR: ZR by average defender at the same position
Diff: Difference between PM and AvgPM
RS: Runs Saved
RS/162: Runs Saved pro-rated to 162 games
Inn : Defensive innings at position
PO : Putouts
A : Assists
TE : Throwing errors
FE : Fielding errors
WP+PB: Wild pitches plus passed balls
SBA: Stolen base attempts
SB: Stolen bases
CS: Caught stealings
CS%: Caught stealing percentage (CS / SBA)
RS: Runs saved compared to average
RS/130: Runs saved pro-rated to 130 games
Projections are based on zone rating over the last four seasons for non-catchers, weighted, regressed and aged. For catchers, projections are based on the stats listed for the last five seasons, again weighted, regressed and aged. Don’t read too much into the numbers for players with small sample sizes at their listed positions.
In other Hot Stove stuff:
Agent: Peavy won’t be pitching for Mets, Yankees.
I like Peavy, but I think his numbers get a fair boost from Petco and the NL. Put him in the AL and with the Yankee defense behind him and he’s probably a non-zero amount worse, although still pretty good.
NY Post: YANKS WANT TO OFFER BOWA SECOND THIRD CHANCE.
I can’t see the Dodgers letting him go, but it’d be nice…
Thursday, October 16, 2008
Bobby Abreu: Should He Stay or Should He Go?
A couple of weeks ago I looked at whether or not the Yankees should keep Jason Giambi in 2009. Today, it’s Bobby Abreu’s turn.
Abreu had a strong offensive season in 2008, around three offensive wins above replacement using context-neutral linear weights. He also hit well in higher leverage situations giving him another few runs of value above and beyond that.
Unfortunately, Abreu gave back a large part of value with his defense. Abreu didn’t make a lot of misplays or errors, but according to zone rating he just didn’t get to balls that other RF get to. Abreu rated as the single worst defender in the American League in terms of runs saved compared to average with his -22.
First, let’s look at how Abreu projects offensive in 2009 using CAIRO.
*2008 line is translated to a neutral park and league which is why it doesn’t match the actual 2008 stat line.
BRAR: Position-adjusted batting runs above replacement level using linear weights.
CAIRO is not sanguine about Abreu repeating his 2008. CAIRO expects Abreu to lose around 20-30 pts of batting average and 40-50 pts of slugging. In order to match last year Abreu would have to hit near his 65% projection, which is certainly possible but not the most likely scenario. So Abreu projects to be about average for a RF offensively next year, or two wins above replacement.
Now, the defense.
GP: Games played
GS: Games started
Innings: Defensive innings at position
PO: Putouts
A: Assists
E: Errors
DP: Double plays
PM: Plays made
CH: Fieldable chances (plays in zone converted to outs at least 50% of the time by all defenders)
ZR: Zone rating (PM / CH)
Diff: Difference between PM by an average defender and this specific defender (at the same position)
RS: Runs saved compared to average (Run value of play not made at position times Diff)
Abreu is almost definitely a below average defender, but last year was out of line with his last few seasons. He may have fallen off the cliff, but more likely he faced a higher percentage of more difficult chances or didn’t position himself well. We should project Abreu to rebound somewhat, but at a projected -13 for 2009 he’s still giving back a very significant part of his value.
Abreu is a potential Type A free agent, and the Yankees have the option of offering him arbitration. By way of Peter Abraham directly from Brian Cashman, if he accepts, he would receive a non-guaranteed contract, which means the Yankees can either keep him for another year at whatever price an arbitrator deems to be fair, or they would receive a first round pick and a supplemental pick in the 2009 MLB entry draft (unless he signs with one of the top 15 picking teams, in which case they’d get a second round pick plus a supplemental).
The non-guaranteed part of the arbitration contract is key, and something that people don’t think about. If Abreu accepts, the Yankees are not on the hook for a whole year, they can release him in spring training and only have to pay a portion of the contract (30 or 45 days termination pay).
This makes offering arbitration to all the free agents a no-brainer IMO.
Abreu is probably a good bet to decline arbitration anyway, since he is looking for a three year deal and will probably get it from someone. As long as that’s not the Yankees, that’s the best case scenario if you look at his 3 year CAIRO forecast.
Abreu projects to only be worth about 2.5 WAR (wins above replacement) over the next three seasons if zone rating is accurate about his defense. That’s only worth around $12 million, but odds are someone’s going to offer him that PER SEASON.
So I’m going to go ahead and answer no to Abreu staying. I like him, but his days of being above average are likely over.
Friday, October 3, 2008
Yankees.com: Yankees have tough decisions to make
With their home for the 2009 season approximately 75 percent complete and on track for Opening Day, the Yankees soon will get to work planning the blueprint for the players who will comprise that initial lineup, as the club attempts to move its memories across 161st Street in the Bronx.
I’ll help out.
1) Let Giambi walk
2) Let Abreu walk
3) Let Pavano walk
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Why Did the 2008 Yankees Disappoint?(Defense Edition)
Before getting to the pitching, here’s a quick look at how the 2008 Yankees performed defensively compared to their projections. For my defensive statistics, I use zone rating. If you want to read more about how these numbers are calculated you can read this post or this post. If you want a good general overview of zone rating, read this article by Chris Dial.
First up, here’s how I had the Yankees projected on a team level at each position compared to how they actually ended up doing.
Anyone that wants to look at the details behind the defensive projections can check out this entry so I won’t rehash all that here.
Here’s a rundown by position.
Catcher
rvTE +/-: Run value of throwing errors
rvFE +/-: Run value of fielding errors
rvWP+PB+/-: Run value of wild pitches and passed balls
rvSBA+/-: Run value of stolen base attempts
rvSB+/-: Run value of stolen bases
rvCS+/-: Run value of caught stealings
RSAA: Runs saved above average
Jorge Posada’s a very valuable player at catcher, but that’s because of his bat. His defense is usually average or slightly below average. Posada’s injury led to Jose Molina playing a lot more than expected. As we know, he hit like 1991 Bob Geren, but his glove was outstanding. Using my catcher defense system, he was the best defensive catcher in the AL, and second in MLB behind Jason Kendall.
Posada’s shoulder problems led him to be awful, 5 runs below average in just 234 innings. It’s going to be tough to project the 2009 Yankees without knowing if Posada can handle catching the majority of the time. If he can’t throw better than he did in 2008, he probably gives back the majority of his offensive value on defense.
First Base
G: Games
GS: Games started
INN: Defensive innings at position
Ch: Fieldable chances
PO: Putouts
A: Assists
E: Errors
DP: Double plays
ZR: Zone rating (PM/Ch)
PM: Plays made
AvgPM: Plays made by an average defender over the same # of chances
Diff: PM - AvgPM
RS: Runs saved above average (Diff times run value of play not made)
This projected to be a sore spot defensively because Jason Giambi is just not a good defender. Giambi had a ZR of .801 compared to his projected .796, which is basically the same thing. The Richie Sexson pickup cost the Yankees another four runs at 1B in just 19 games. Nice.
Replacing Giambi with an average defender is probably a ten run upgrade. If they replace him with Teixeira it’s probably close to a 15 run defensive upgrade.
Second Base
Robinson Cano had a very strange season on both sides of the ball. We know he hit like garbage for most of the year. What’s interesting about his defense is he was actually playing very well through July 9, as detailed here. Cano went from a zone rating of .865 and a runs saved above average of +8 to a zone rating of .799 and a runs saved above average of -8 in a span of 49 games. From September 5 on he seemed to recover, putting up a zone rating of .884 and saving 4 runs above average over the rest of the season.
Cano will probably project as an average defender next year instead of a plus defender because of this year, but that’d be a 5 run upgrade.
Third Base
If you just look at the runs saved total for Rodriguez it may seem like he was disappointing, but it’s interesting to note that his zone rating of .786 is actually the highest of his career at 3B. So what happened? The average AL 3B zone rating shot way up to .791 this year, after being about .767 from 2004 - 2007. In a league where .767 is average, Rodriguez would have been a +6 defender.
Morgan Ensberg and Wilson Betemit were both craptacular in limited action, and that’s the main reason 3B was so negative overall. As someone who thought an Ensberg/Betemit platoon could approach league average when Rodriguez opted out, let’s just say it’s a good thing I’m not running the Yankees…
Rodriguez probably won’t be any better defensively next year. At his age we should expect him to lose a run or two of value defensively, so I’d say we should expect 3B to be 2 runs worse next year.
Shortstop
He’s the poster boy for defensive ineptitude, and many of the people who use defensive metrics can barely contain their glee when using them to tear apart his game, but Derek Jeter had a good defensive season this year if you believe zone rating. Whether it was an offseason training regimen that improved his agility, better positioning, or a more favorable distibution of balls in play, the difference between last year was stark, both statistically and visually. Realistically we shouldn’t expect it to happen again in 2009, but he was projected around a -10 coming into 2008, and probably will project to be a -6 or -7 in 2009. 2008 Jeter was more valuable than 2007 Jeter because of the glove.
With the AG gone, backup SS is looking like a problem next year. Cody Ransom did not impress in Fenway defensively.
Left Field
I thought Johnny Damon would end up better in LF and for a while he was above average before falling off, but if he’s the LF next year he should be average or slightly below. Xavier Nady didn’t really impress in LF, but for his career he’s been an average RF (-2 LF in a very small sample size). Hideki Matsui has to be a full-time DH at this point. He was awful this year in LF, and his knees won’t help that.
Center Field
We all know Melky couldn’t hit this year, but he did play solid defense. Damon wasn’t awful in CF, although I doubt he could hold up full-time. Brett Gardner only got 22 games in CF, but his ZR was ridiculously good and he saved 3 runs in very limited time. While I still am not sold on him being able to hit enough to be a starting CF, if his glove and baserunning are as good as they appear to be, it’s very possible he can start in CF with a slightly below average bat. It depends on how below average he is of course.
Right Field
Coming into 2008, Bobby Abreu projected to be about average in RF. Instead he was the absolute worst defensive player in the AL according to zone rating. Abreu’s not obviously bad as far as making errors, but he’s extremely tentative and just doesn’t seem to get to balls that most other players get to. Still, he’s probably not as bad of a defender as his 2008 stats make him look. If I had to project him next year I’d probably project him around a -10 or so. If I were the Yankees I’d still offer him arbitration and hope he declines, because he probably will still be a pretty good player next year if you get stuck with him. I wouldn’t entertain the thought of signing him to a multi-year extension though. Xavier Nady should be able to fill RF next year and play average or slightly below average defense, although he’s not going to hit like Abreu has.
So going into 2008, the Yankees looked to be about two wins worse than an average defense. They actually wound up four wins worse, and that’s almost entirely on Abreu. They should be able to upgrade 1B fairly easily (let’s say +10), Cano should be better at 2B(+5), Jeter will likely be a fair bit worse(-10), Rodriguez and Damon will probably be a little worse(-4 combined). CF depends on if they go with Melky/Gardner or bring someone in(??), and Nady should be better than 2008 Abreu(+15). If Posada is the catcher, that’s a defensive hit(-15).
So minus CF, adding all that up we get +1 compared to 2008. So yeah, don’t expect a much better defense next year.
Monday, September 29, 2008
Why Did the 2008 Yankees Disappoint?(Offense Edition)
Coming into this season, the Yankees looked to be a contender for best team in baseball. Although they were taking a calculated risk in relying on some very young pitchers, they were returning the bulk of a team that has scored 968 runs last year. Even with expected declines in their older players, they still projected to have the best offense in baseball.
When I ran the Diamond Mind Projection Blowout, they were the best team in the AL in most of the projection systems I used. When I looked at the position players and the pitching staff I arrived at the same basic conclusion, the the Yankees should have won somewhere between 93-97 games.
As we all know, things didn’t work out that way. The question I want to look at is why? Were the projections wrong? Was it injuries? Was it a lack of testicular fortitude? Let’s see if we can figure it out.
The projections I’ll be referencing here are the composite projections of several different systems, as detailed in this February blog entry. I’m going to go through position by position looking at the projected starters compared to what the actual primary starters ended up doing, then looking at the bench as a unit.
One other thing, while offense in the AL was down for most of this year compared to last year, the difference has narrowed signficantly of late to the point that it’s probably no longer statistically significant. The league average line of .268/.336/.420 equates to a BR/650 of 80 this season compared last year’s line of .271/.338/.423 which equates to a BR/650 of 81. The BR(batting runs) I’ll be using here are context-neutral raw batting runs using linear weights, not position-adjusted or adjusted for base-out states.
Catcher
Coming off his career year in 2007, Jorge Posada was projected to give back a fair amount of value in 2008. Posada was projected to hit .286/.380/.469, a performance that would have been worth 76 batting runs according to linear weights using my assumed 500 plate appearances.
Posada went down to a shoulder injury after just 195 PA, which made Jose Molina (Molino for the regulars) the primary starter. While Molino had a strong defensive season, he hit like crap. Molina hit .216/.263/.313 over 297 PA, which was worth 21 batting runs. The difference between Posada’s projection and Molina’s actual performance as the primary starter was 55 runs, which was a 5.5 win underperformance. BTW, disparities in playing time at all the positions will be accounted for when we get to the bench.
First Base
Another risk the Yankees took entering 2008 was that Jason Giambi would be able to
-Out-produce a disastrous 2007
-Play passable defense at first base
-Stay healthy all season
If you had asked me the likelihood of all three of those things happening, I’d have put it around the same likelihood as Mike Mussina winning 20 games.
Giambi managed to achieve all three things for the most part. His glove was bad, but not horrifically bad, and he was productive and healthy for most of the year, although 45% of his production came in the 45 games from April 22 - Jun 17 where he hit .319/.441/.694 (40 BR). Over the other 100 games he played, he hit .213/.342/.414 (48 BR). I don’t know if this type of split is particularly meaningful, so consider it just a random factoid.
The 2008 projections for Giambi weren’t bad on a rate basis (.245/.387/.474) but his playing time projections were pretty pessimistic (300 PA). He projected to be worth about 46 batting runs because of that. Instead, Giambi hit for a little more power but a little less OBP (.247/.373/.502), but thanks to exceeding his playing time projections he was far more valuable than he projected to be, exceeding his projected batting runs by 42 runs, a 4.2 win offensive upgrade. The 2008 Yankees’ underperformance from their pre-season projections can’t be laid at Giambi’s feet.
Second Base
Pass.
Well, I wish I could pass anyway. Robinson Cano seemed to be on the cusp of becoming the best 2B in the AL. Cano projected to hit .308/.348/.482 and play plus defense and was at an age where he could still realistically be expected to improve. Cano’s projected offense over 585 plate appearances would have made him worth 84 batting runs. Instead, Cano digressed in just about every facet of his game, hitting .271/.305/.410 over 634 PA, which was only worth 68 BR. This was a downgrade of 1.6 wins.
Third Base
Boo.
Alex Rodriguez was justifiably the AL’s MVP in 2007. He was rightfully expected to regress somewhat in 2008, projected to hit .300/.406/.574 over 650 PA, which would have been worth 123 batting runs. On a rate basis, he basically hit his projection, but thanks to a leg injury that cost him 56 PA compared to his projection, he was 14 runs less valuable than projected, a downgrade of 1.4 wins. It’s also a fact that Rodriguez’s performance in more crucial plate appearances were less productive than his context-neutral numbers show. This was not a problem exclusive to Rodriguez, so I’ll devote a section to that as well.
Shortstop
Derek Jeter came into 2008 projected to hit .307/.379/.438 over 600 PA, which would have been worth 86 BR. A late hot streak pushed him closer to his projections as he ended the season at .300/.363/.408 over 668 PA, a total of 82 BR. He was less valuable than projected on a rate basis, but by exceeding his projected playing time his overall value was only about four runs less than projected.
Left Field
Johnny Damon was shifted to LF due to his defensive decline, the seeming emergence of Melky Cabrera and Hideki Matsui’s bad knees. This looked like a disaster in the making coming off a poor offensive 2007, although it did also seem like a defensive upgrade. Damon projected to hit .280/.353/.423 over 585 PA, a line that would have been worth 78 batting runs. He blew that away by hitting .303/.375/.461 over 623 PA. So like first base, left field ended up as a net gain on the pre-season projections, to the tune of 15 runs, or 1.5 wins.
Center Field
After a promising rookie season, Melky Cabrera declined in 2007. The projections expected him to bounce back, thanks in part to his youth. Melky was projected to hit .282/.344/.406 over 550 PA for a total of 68 BR. Instead, he got even worse, hitting .249/.301/.341 over 453 PA before mercifully being demoted to Scranton. Cabrera’s line was a downgrade of 27 BR, or 2.7 wins. And that’s all I have to say about that.
Right Field
Bobby Abreu came into 2008 projected to hit .277/.383/.439 over 600 PA, which would have been worth 89 BR. He exceeded that by hitting .296/.371/.471 over 684 PA, worth a total of 101 BR. Luckily for Abreu, we’re ignoring defense for now, and this was an offensive upgrade of 12 runs or 1.2 wins.
Designated Hitter
Hideki Matsui was penciled in as the primary DH coming into 2008 and his projection was pretty good, .287/.367/.477 over 500 PA, equivalent to around 74 BR. Unfortunately, after a hot start to the season, Matsui’s knees gave out on him and he missed a significant part of the season and when he managed to come back was very unproductive, ending 2008 with a line of .294/.370/.424 over 378 PA for a total of 50 BR. That’s a 24 run/2.4 win falloff.
So just looking at the starting nine, we see that the Yankees projected to hit .289/.372/.465 over 4870 PA, which would have been worth 724 BR. Instead, the starting nine hit .280/.352/.443 over 4896 PA, for a total of 653 BR. That’s a 71 run drop off or 7.1 win drop off.
The Bench
Projecting the bench is usually tricky, but at least on paper the Yankee bench looked to be serviceable this year, with Wilson Betemit, Morgan Ensberg, Jose Molina, Shelley Duncan, Brett Gardner, Alberto Gonzalez, Nick Green, Jason Lane and Chris Woodward the likely candidates to see playing time. I had the bench projected to hit .247/.319/.404 over 1811 PA, which would have been worth 209 BR. Instead, the collection of Betemit, Ensberg, Posada, Duncan, Gardner, Gonzalez, Justin Christian, Francisco Cervelli, Juan Miranda, Chad Moeller, Xavier Nady, Ivan Rodriguez, Richie Sexson, Chris Stewart and Cody Ransom hit over .244/.306/.380 over 1339 PA for a total of 140 BR. That’s a 69 run underperformance.
Clutchness
Regular watchers of the 2008 Yankees as well as regular readers of this blog also know from a variety of different methods that the Yankees underperformed with runners on base. Using the method I like best (Fangraph’s batting runs above average based on run expectancy), here’s a look at how the Yankees’ players context neutral batting runs compared to their contextualized batting runs in 2008.
Overall, the difference was small, but I think we can all pick out several games where the Yankees failure to come up with hits in big spots cost them wins.
cnBRAA: context-neutral batting runs above average.
cxtBRAA: contextualized batting runs above average.
Diff: cxtBRAA - cnBRAA.
I don’t know how good or bad the team baserunning has been aside from stolen bases, which are already included in the batting runs above, so we’ll assume they were average.
Let’s roll all that up.
So we had a team that was supposed to score 933 runs or so. Their starting nine created 71 fewer runs than expected, and their bench created 69 fewer than expected, for a total shortfall of around 141 runs. Subract another three runs for unclutchness.
933 run projection - 141 actual underperformance - 3 clutchness = 789.
How many runs did the 2008 Yankees score? 789. That’s creepy, huh?
If you were to rate the biggest reasons for the Yankees’ offensive underperformance, it’d be:
1) Losing Jorge Posada (55 runs)
2) Melky Cabrera sucking ass (27 runs)
3) Hideki Matsui’s knee causing him to both miss time and to underperform when he returned (24 runs)
4) Robinson Cano becoming Wayne Tolleson (16 runs)
Friday, September 19, 2008
Yankees.com: Abreu powers Yanks to finale victory
NEW YORK—When Yankees starter Mike Mussina recorded a strikeout to end the sixth inning, it could have been the end of his night.
After he was worked for 28 pitches and one run in the first inning, the right-hander shut down the White Sox offense, retiring 10 straight batters spanning the second and fifth innings. And in the meantime, the Yankees lineup unloaded for seven runs to put Mussina in line for the victory.
But instead of pulling him after the sixth inning, manager Joe Girardi made a move based on the suggestion of pitching coach Dave Eiland and sent Mussina back to the mound.
He faced one batter before Girardi took his starter out. Mussina left to a chorus of “Moose” calls and tipped his cap to the crowd as he walked off the field at Yankee Stadium for the final time.
“Moose is a historian, and he loves this game, and I think for him to have an opportunity to do that was really special,” Girardi said.
Moose keeps his shot at 20 wins alive with a solid out. Bobby Abreu’s been hitting well of late (.339/.413/ .540 since the All Star Break), although zone rating says his defense has given it all back (-23 runs saved compared to average over the full season so far). His good hitting does help make him more attractive to teams as a free agent, so that’s good too.
So, last night I had this nutty dream. In my dream, the Yankees swept Baltimore over the weekend, while Toronto took 2 out of 3 at home against Boston behind Burnett and Halladay. So on Monday morning, the Yankees were 85-71, trailing 90-65 Boston by 5.5 games. Then the Yankees swept Toronto on the road while Boston lost 3 of 4 to Cleveland at home. So heading into the final series of the season, the Yankees were 88-71 and Boston was 91-68. So the Yankees could tie for the wild card if they swept.
Then I woke up screaming, because Sidney Ponson was scheduled to pitch the series opener.
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Batting Runs Above Average Using Run Expectancy
My post about contextualizing linear weights got linked over at The Book Blog, which led to a new discovery for me. Fangraphs, which is really a wonderful site for stat dorks, tracks a version of batting runs above average that is not context-neutral. Instead, they use the difference in run expectancy before and after every plate appearance or batters faced. The full glossary definition is here, but here’s the heart of it.
BRAA (batting runs above average): BRAA is the difference in run expectancy (RE) between the start of the play and the end of the play. That difference is then credited/debited to the batter and the pitcher.
What I like about this is it adds the out state to the base states I was using, and it includes pitchers, and it doesn’t give different weights based on innings or scores. Basically, you look at what an average player adds to his team on each specific play for each of the 24 base/out states, then you compare that to what each player actually does.
Since it includes pitchers we can do direct comparisons of everyone on the team and see how they’ve stacked up this year as well.
Here’s the offense.
Here are the starting pitchers.
Here are the relievers.
And here’s everyone.
These numbers are not position-adjusted, so you may want to account for that. Here are my 2008 AL position adjustments based on 650 PAs.
C 10
1B -5
2B 0
3B 0
SS 12
LF -4
CF -3
RF -6
DH -6
So you’d subtract around 5 runs from Giambi’s value, you’d add around 12 to Jeter’s (pro-rated). Here’s how the overall chart looks if we position-adjust for the offensive players.
These numbers are against average, not replacement level. Also as a reminder, a measure like this is not necessarily supposed to be predictive, it’s retroactive.
This says that in total, the Yankees have been about four wins better than average including everything except baserunning and defense, although I think the bulk of defense is included in the pitchers’ BRAA. An average team over 151 games would be 76-75 or so, and the Yankees are 80-71, or four games better than average.
Update(s):
As requested by DaPuj, I’ve added the context neutral batting runs above average for the position players to the overall Yankee chart.
And here’s the top 25 in the AL for contextualized, position adjusted BRAA for position players.
And the bottom 25.
Lastly, adding in pitchers here’s the top 50.
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
AL Zone Rating Rankings through Sept 8, 2008
Minimum of 500 innings.
*adjusted for Green Monster
G: Games.
INN: Defensive innings at position.
Ch: Fieldable chances (chances converted into an out at least 50% of the time by all fielders)
ZR: Zone rating (plays made divided by fieldable chances)
PM: Plays made
Avg ZR: Average zone rating for all players at position
Avg PM: Average plays made (Avg ZR times Ch)
Diff: Difference between PM and Avg PM (PM - Avg PM)
RS: Runs saved (Diff times run value for each play not made at position)
Someone had requested these a while back and I said I’d get them up that day or the next. Here we are weeks later…
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Situational wOBA Splits
I've been thinking more about the whole concept of clutch and after a little more thought I've realized that the clutch stat that I referenced in this post is somewhat limited, given sample size and other issues. That hasn't stopped people from linking to that post to 'prove' their point that A-Rod is unclutch, but whatever.Anyway, since that statistic focuses on just batting average with RISP and HRs with runners on base, it's missing important information, like walks and non HR XBH. So I've calculated wOBA (weighted on Base Average) in six areas. wOBA is the rate version of linear weights and is far more reflective of a player's offensive contribution than batting average or OPS.
The six areas I'm looking at are:
Total (all situations)
Men On
Runners in scoring position
Trailing
Tied
Leading
I realize this doesn't encompass everything that we'd consider under the umbrella of clutch, but it's got at least some key areas. I'll also reiterate that this is not meant to be any assessment of a player's skill or talent in these particular areas, the sample size is too small. It's merely a look at what has happened to this point in 2008. I've restricted the lists to players who have had at least 200 total PAs this season.
| Rank | Total | Men On | RISP | Trailing | Tied | Leading | ||||||
| Player | TwOBA | Player | MOwOBA | Player | wOBA | Player | wOBA | Player | wOBA | Player | wOBA | |
| 1 | Albert Pujols | .466 | Albert Pujols | .477 | Ian Stewart | .490 | Ryan J Braun | .475 | Lance Berkman | .517 | Albert Pujols | .508 |
| 2 | Chipper Jones | .444 | Alex Rodriguez | .465 | David Ortiz | .480 | Ty Wigginton | .451 | Milton Bradley | .501 | Chipper Jones | .503 |
| 3 | Milton Bradley | .444 | Matt Holliday | .464 | Lance Berkman | .478 | Matt Holliday | .450 | Mike Aviles | .479 | Ryan Ludwick | .467 |
| 4 | Lance Berkman | .438 | Ty Wigginton | .429 | Albert Pujols | .469 | Jermaine Dye | .445 | Adam Lind | .478 | Brad Hawpe | .460 |
| 5 | Matt Holliday | .433 | Ryan Ludwick | .428 | Justin Morneau | .466 | Ryan Spilborghs | .442 | J.D. Drew | .474 | Kevin Youkilis | .457 |
| 6 | Ian Stewart | .422 | J.D. Drew | .427 | Grady Sizemore | .462 | Prince Fielder | .441 | Carlos Lee | .463 | Lance Berkman | .456 |
| 7 | Carlos Quentin | .417 | Jermaine Dye | .425 | Fernando Tatis | .461 | Troy Glaus | .439 | Aramis Ramirez | .458 | Alex Rodriguez | .454 |
| 8 | Alex Rodriguez | .417 | Ryan J Braun | .422 | Manny Ramirez | .459 | Ian Stewart | .438 | Albert Pujols | .455 | Justin Morneau | .450 |
| 9 | Manny Ramirez | .414 | Milton Bradley | .421 | David DeJesus | .456 | Alfonso Soriano | .438 | Gabe Kapler | .454 | Aubrey Huff | .448 |
| 10 | Ryan Ludwick | .411 | Pat Burrell | .415 | Denard Span | .452 | Milton Bradley | .435 | Chipper Jones | .450 | Chase Utley | .440 |
| 11 | Mark Teixeira | .410 | Mike Fontenot | .415 | Alexei Ramirez | .449 | Mark Teixeira | .433 | Hanley Ramirez | .450 | Ryan Doumit | .439 |
| 12 | Kevin Youkilis | .409 | Chipper Jones | .414 | Alfonso Soriano | .445 | Brian Giles | .429 | Bill Hall | .449 | Jerry Hairston Jr. | .437 |
| 13 | J.D. Drew | .402 | Geovany Soto | .408 | Jim Thome | .445 | Albert Pujols | .422 | Ian Stewart | .442 | Joey Votto | .437 |
| 14 | Ryan Spilborghs | .401 | David Wright | .408 | Jesus Flores | .442 | Manny Ramirez | .421 | Mike Fontenot | .437 | Aramis Ramirez | .425 |
| 15 | Carlos Lee | .400 | Lance Berkman | .407 | Ian Kinsler | .441 | Shin-soo Choo | .420 | Chris Iannetta | .433 | Placido Polanco | .425 |
| 16 | Hanley Ramirez | .399 | Xavier Nady | .405 | Nicholas Markakis | .440 | Jhonny Peralta | .420 | Miguel Olivo | .428 | Matt Holliday | .422 |
| 17 | Chase Utley | .394 | Carlos Lee | .404 | Milton Bradley | .437 | Vladimir Guerrero | .418 | Manny Ramirez | .428 | Mark Teixeira | .421 |
| 18 | Ryan J Braun | .394 | Ian Stewart | .403 | Carlos Quentin | .435 | Matthew Joyce | .418 | Brad Hawpe | .427 | Omar Infante | .421 |
| 19 | Xavier Nady | .394 | Manny Ramirez | .403 | Kevin Youkilis | .435 | Carlos Quentin | .413 | Ronnie Belliard | .426 | Jayson Werth | .419 |
| 20 | Pat Burrell | .394 | Rick Ankiel | .402 | Mark Teixeira | .432 | Ian Kinsler | .405 | Jim Thome | .425 | Grady Sizemore | .418 |
| 21 | Brad Hawpe | .393 | Emmanuel Burriss | .402 | J.D. Drew | .430 | Josh Hamilton | .405 | Matt Holliday | .425 | Carlos Quentin | .417 |
| 22 | Nicholas Markakis | .393 | Hanley Ramirez | .400 | Chris Iannetta | .429 | Nicholas Markakis | .403 | Xavier Nady | .424 | Adam Dunn | .416 |
| 23 | Adam Dunn | .392 | Evan Longoria | .396 | Casey Blake | .429 | Alex Rodriguez | .403 | Fernando Tatis | .423 | Milton Bradley | .415 |
| 24 | Aubrey Huff | .391 | Mark Teixeira | .395 | Aramis Ramirez | .427 | Jason Bay | .403 | Aaron Miles | .421 | Brian McCann | .413 |
| 25 | Aramis Ramirez | .391 | Mark DeRosa | .394 | Adam Dunn | .426 | Joe Mauer | .401 | Carlos Quentin | .419 | Jimmy Rollins | .413 |
| 26 | Grady Sizemore | .390 | Miguel Cabrera | .390 | Jody Gerut | .425 | Brian Roberts | .401 | Pat Burrell | .417 | James Hardy | .413 |
| 27 | Justin Morneau | .389 | Carlos Pena | .387 | Carlos Lee | .421 | Chone Figgins | .398 | Rick Ankiel | .416 | Hanley Ramirez | .412 |
| 28 | Mike Fontenot | .389 | Grady Sizemore | .386 | Jeffery Mathis | .420 | Melvin Mora | .398 | Marcus Thames | .415 | Evan Longoria | .411 |
| 29 | David Wright | .389 | Adam Dunn | .384 | Josh Hamilton | .420 | Curtis Granderson | .397 | Carlos Beltran | .414 | Geovany Soto | .411 |
| 30 | Jason Bay | .389 | Jason Giambi | .384 | Adrian Gonzalez | .420 | Vernon Wells | .397 | Miguel Cabrera | .412 | Matthew Joyce | .409 |
| 31 | Chris Iannetta | .388 | Dustin Pedroia | .384 | Chipper Jones | .419 | Carlos Pena | .397 | Hideki Matsui | .411 | Mike Cameron | .409 |
| 32 | Ty Wigginton | .386 | Joe Mauer | .383 | Mike Cuddyer | .418 | Ryan Ludwick | .395 | Josh Hamilton | .410 | Ian Kinsler | .406 |
| 33 | Ian Kinsler | .385 | Jason Bay | .382 | Doug Mientkiewicz | .417 | Xavier Nady | .395 | Brian Schneider | .410 | Ray Durham | .403 |
| 34 | Brian McCann | .385 | Chase Utley | .382 | Orlando Hudson | .415 | Pat Burrell | .394 | Cody Ross | .405 | Marlon Byrd | .402 |
| 35 | Jim Thome | .383 | Elijah Dukes | .380 | Reed Johnson | .413 | Carlos Lee | .393 | Adrian Beltre | .403 | Shannon Stewart | .402 |
| 36 | Josh Hamilton | .383 | Jayson Werth | .379 | Melvin Mora | .412 | Jim Edmonds | .393 | David Wright | .402 | Manny Ramirez | .401 |
| 37 | Alfonso Soriano | .382 | Derrek Lee | .379 | Ryan Howard | .410 | Bobby Abreu | .391 | Gabe Gross | .400 | Mike Jacobs | .400 |
| 38 | Joe Mauer | .382 | Carlos Quentin | .378 | Omar Infante | .410 | J.D. Drew | .389 | Jason Giambi | .400 | Johnny Damon | .400 |
| 39 | Ryan Doumit | .382 | Nicholas Markakis | .377 | Hideki Matsui | .409 | Hideki Matsui | .389 | Jason Bay | .396 | David Wright | .400 |
| 40 | Jermaine Dye | .382 | Randy Winn | .376 | Juan Uribe | .408 | Orlando Hudson | .389 | Adam Dunn | .395 | Fred Lewis | .400 |
| 41 | Jason Giambi | .379 | Omar Infante | .376 | Nick Swisher | .407 | Jason Giambi | .389 | Stephen Drew | .393 | Russell Martin | .399 |
| 42 | Mark DeRosa | .379 | Edwin Encarnacion | .376 | Johnny Damon | .407 | Carlos Guillen | .388 | Alex Rodriguez | .393 | Ryan Spilborghs | .399 |
| 43 | Jerry Hairston Jr. | .378 | Hideki Matsui | .375 | Stephen Drew | .407 | Carlos Beltran | .387 | Conor Jackson | .393 | Josh Willingham | .399 |
| 44 | David Ortiz | .378 | Aubrey Huff | .375 | Shin-soo Choo | .406 | Darin Erstad | .386 | Doug Mientkiewicz | .392 | Ian Stewart | .399 |
| 45 | Raul Ibanez | .377 | Ian Kinsler | .375 | Jason Michaels | .405 | Frank Catalanotto | .386 | Joe Mauer | .392 | Ryan J Braun | .398 |
| 46 | Geovany Soto | .377 | Brian McCann | .375 | Chris Snyder | .405 | Ryan Church | .384 | Ben Francisco | .392 | Magglio Ordonez | .398 |
| 47 | Hideki Matsui | .377 | Curtis Granderson | .375 | Conor Jackson | .404 | Dustin Pedroia | .383 | Ramon Vazquez | .391 | Casey Blake | .396 |
| 48 | Curtis Granderson | .376 | Torii Hunter | .375 | Vladimir Guerrero | .404 | Lyle Overbay | .382 | Damion Easley | .387 | Matthew Kemp | .395 |
| 49 | Prince Fielder | .376 | Jack Cust | .373 | Aubrey Huff | .404 | Chase Headley | .382 | Adrian Gonzalez | .386 | Mark DeRosa | .395 |
| 50 | Daniel Uggla | .375 | Matthew Joyce | .373 | Howie Kendrick | .402 | Luke Scott | .381 | Daniel Uggla | .384 | Miguel Cabrera | .394 |
| 51 | Marlon Byrd | .375 | Matthew Kemp | .372 | Jarrod Saltalamacchia | .401 | Raul Ibanez | .381 | Derrek Lee | .383 | Luis Castillo | .394 |
| 52 | Ryan Church | .375 | Alexis Rios | .371 | Yadier Molina | .400 | Chipper Jones | .380 | Scott Rolen | .381 | Carlos Delgado | .393 |
| 53 | Evan Longoria | .375 | Ryan Spilborghs | .371 | Ronnie Belliard | .397 | Evan Longoria | .380 | Rich Aurilia | .381 | Ryan Church | .393 |
| 54 | Johnny Damon | .374 | Brad Hawpe | .370 | Matt Holliday | .397 | Mark DeRosa | .380 | Grady Sizemore | .381 | Mike Aviles | .393 |
| 55 | Troy Glaus | .373 | Marlon Byrd | .370 | Brad Hawpe | .394 | Chris Davis | .379 | Nicholas Markakis | .381 | Nicholas Markakis | .392 |
| 56 | Denard Span | .373 | Ray Durham | .370 | Ryan Doumit | .393 | Jim Thome | .379 | Denard Span | .381 | Nathan McLouth | .392 |
| 57 | Ronnie Belliard | .373 | Jerry Hairston Jr. | .369 | Mark DeRosa | .393 | Conor Jackson | .379 | David Ortiz | .380 | David Ortiz | .391 |
| 58 | Miguel Cabrera | .372 | Alfonso Soriano | .368 | Ramon Hernandez | .393 | Brian McCann | .379 | Josh Willingham | .380 | Curtis Granderson | .391 |
| 59 | Fernando Tatis | .372 | Johnny Damon | .368 | Skip Schumaker | .393 | Adam Lind | .378 | Ryan Howard | .380 | Jarrod Saltalamacchia | .391 |
| 60 | Luke Scott | .372 | Prince Fielder | .367 | Joe Mauer | .392 | Elijah Dukes | .377 | James Hardy | .379 | Brandon Phillips | .389 |
| 61 | Matthew Joyce | .372 | Aramis Ramirez | .367 | Ryan J Braun | .390 | Mark Reynolds | .377 | Dustin Pedroia | .378 | Reed Johnson | .389 |
| 62 | Brian Giles | .372 | Jose Reyes | .366 | Daniel Uggla | .389 | Lance Berkman | .377 | Adam Kennedy | .378 | Mike Cuddyer | .389 |
| 63 | Mike Cameron | .371 | Magglio Ordonez | .366 | Todd Helton | .388 | Aubrey Huff | .377 | Jack Cust | .376 | Brian Roberts | .388 |
| 64 | Conor Jackson | .370 | Carlos Guillen | .365 | Jimmy Rollins | .388 | Cody Ross | .377 | Ray Durham | .376 | Mike Fontenot | .387 |
| 65 | Jayson Werth | .369 | Todd Helton | .365 | Mark Reynolds | .388 | Jerry Hairston Jr. | .377 | Jeremy Reed | .376 | Mark Kotsay | .387 |
| 66 | Adrian Gonzalez | .368 | Lyle Overbay | .364 | Curtis Granderson | .388 | Edwin Encarnacion | .376 | Kosuke Fukudome | .375 | Andre Ethier | .387 |
| 67 | Brian Roberts | .368 | Josh Hamilton | .364 | Chris Coste | .388 | Denard Span | .376 | Mark Teixeira | .373 | Bobby Abreu | .386 |
| 68 | Vladimir Guerrero | .368 | Garrett Atkins | .364 | Jayson Werth | .387 | Fernando Tatis | .375 | Alex Gordon | .373 | Jermaine Dye | .386 |
| 69 | Carlos Pena | .368 | Luke Scott | .364 | Ryan Ludwick | .387 | A.J. Pierzynski | .374 | Aaron Rowand | .373 | Willie Harris | .385 |
| 70 | Jose Reyes | .368 | Brian Giles | .363 | Darin Erstad | .387 | Clint Barmes | .374 | Chase Utley | .373 | Alfonso Soriano | .385 |
| 71 | Bobby Abreu | .367 | Andre Ethier | .363 | Nathan McLouth | .386 | Geovany Soto | .374 | Raul Ibanez | .373 | Ryan Howard | .384 |
| 72 | Rick Ankiel | .366 | Troy Glaus | .362 | Ken Griffey Jr. | .386 | Adam Dunn | .373 | Johnny Damon | .372 | Cliff Floyd | .383 |
| 73 | Mike Aviles | .366 | Jim Edmonds | .362 | Ryan Spilborghs | .386 | BJ Upton | .372 | Joe Crede | .372 | Chris Iannetta | .382 |
| 74 | Magglio Ordonez | .365 | Jhonny Peralta | .362 | Mark Loretta | .386 | Kevin Youkilis | .372 | Cliff Floyd | .372 | Jose Guillen | .381 |
| 75 | Ramon Vazquez | .364 | Raul Ibanez | .362 | Carlos Pena | .385 | Kelly Shoppach | .372 | Ken Griffey Jr. | .371 | Jeff Keppinger | .381 |
| 76 | Derrek Lee | .364 | Placido Polanco | .361 | Xavier Nady | .383 | Jeremy Hermida | .372 | Chris Davis | .370 | Jose Reyes | .380 |
| 77 | Dustin Pedroia | .364 | Jeff Kent | .360 | Brian Giles | .383 | Jose Reyes | .371 | Ryan Doumit | .369 | Luke Scott | .380 |
| 78 | Josh Willingham | .363 | Josh Willingham | .360 | John Bowker | .383 | Adam LaRoche | .371 | Skip Schumaker | .367 | Daniel Uggla | .378 |
| 79 | Nathan McLouth | .363 | Jeff Baker | .360 | Cody Ross | .383 | Chase Utley | .371 | Kevin Youkilis | .367 | Ken Griffey Jr. | .378 |
| 80 | Jack Cust | .363 | Justin Upton | .360 | Ryan Garko | .383 | Todd Helton | .371 | Randy Winn | .367 | Raul Ibanez | .377 |
| 81 | Reed Johnson | .363 | Skip Schumaker | .359 | Mike Fontenot | .380 | Marlon Byrd | .370 | Matt Stairs | .366 | Luis Gonzalez | .377 |
| 82 | Orlando Hudson | .362 | Carlos Beltran | .359 | Andre Ethier | .380 | Mike Fontenot | .369 | Yuniesky Betancourt | .366 | Pat Burrell | .377 |
| 83 | Chris Davis | .361 | Ryan Doumit | .359 | Chase Utley | .380 | Nick Swisher | .369 | Russell Martin | .366 | Alexei Ramirez | .376 |
| 84 | James Hardy | .361 | Kazuo Matsui | .358 | Joey Votto | .379 | Omar Infante | .369 | Jason Kubel | .365 | Justin Upton | .375 |
| 85 | Carlos Beltran | .361 | Shane Victorino | .358 | Pat Burrell | .378 | Grady Sizemore | .369 | Hunter Pence | .365 | Kelly Johnson | .374 |
| 86 | Jody Gerut | .361 | Eric Hinske | .357 | Corey Hart | .377 | Chris Iannetta | .369 | Casey Kotchman | .364 | Mark Grudzielanek | .374 |
| 87 | Russell Martin | .360 | James Loney | .356 | Juan Pierre | .377 | Jody Gerut | .368 | Alfredo Amezaga | .364 | Carlos Pena | .374 |
| 88 | Carlos Delgado | .360 | Orlando Hudson | .355 | Kosuke Fukudome | .376 | Derrek Lee | .368 | Mike Cameron | .363 | Mike Lowell | .373 |
| 89 | Eric Hinske | .359 | Brian Roberts | .355 | Brian McCann | .375 | Reed Johnson | .368 | Ryan Theriot | .363 | Kurt Suzuki | .371 |
| 90 | Todd Helton | .358 | Chris Davis | .355 | Mike Lowell | .375 | Daniel Uggla | .367 | Ty Wigginton | .362 | Xavier Nady | .371 |
| 91 | Fred Lewis | .358 | Ryan Theriot | .355 | BJ Upton | .375 | Chris Snyder | .367 | Paul Konerko | .361 | Garrett Atkins | .369 |
| 92 | Kelly Shoppach | .358 | Cliff Floyd | .354 | Miguel Olivo | .372 | Jason Kubel | .366 | Troy Glaus | .360 | Aaron Hill | .368 |
| 93 | Shin-soo Choo | .358 | Kevin Youkilis | .354 | Matthew Joyce | .371 | Craig Counsell | .366 | Scott Hairston | .360 | Ryan Sweeney | .368 |
| 94 | Melvin Mora | .357 | Chris Iannetta | .353 | Joe Crede | .371 | Scott Hairston | .365 | Eric Hinske | .360 | Carlos Lee | .367 |
| 95 | Elijah Dukes | .356 | Frank Catalanotto | .353 | Kelly Johnson | .371 | David DeJesus | .364 | David Murphy | .360 | Jim Edmonds | .366 |
| 96 | Ray Durham | .356 | A.J. Pierzynski | .353 | James Loney | .370 | Justin Morneau | .364 | Kurt Suzuki | .359 | Shane Victorino | .366 |
| 97 | Chris Snyder | .356 | Ivan Rodriguez | .352 | Wes Helms | .370 | #N/A | #N/A | Gerald Laird | .359 | Jason Bay | .366 |
| 98 | Carlos Guillen | .355 | Joey Votto | .352 | Troy Glaus | .369 | Orlando Cabrera | .363 | Edgar V Gonzalez | .359 | Eric Hinske | .366 |
| 99 | Adam Lind | .355 | Mike Lowell | .352 | Carlos Delgado | .369 | Jack Cust | .362 | Rickie Weeks | .357 | Denard Span | .366 |
| 100 | Jim Edmonds | .355 | Dioner Navarro | .352 | Magglio Ordonez | .368 | James Loney | .359 | Jody Gerut | .357 | Brian Giles | .366 |
| Rank | Total | Men On | RISP | Trailing | Tied | Leading | ||||||
| Player | TwOBA | Player | MOwOBA | Player | wOBA | Player | wOBA | Player | wOBA | Player | wOBA | |
| 101 | Matthew Kemp | .355 | Ronnie Belliard | .352 | Raul Ibanez | .368 | Akinori Iwamura | .359 | Elijah Dukes | .356 | David Eckstein | .365 |
| 102 | Alexei Ramirez | .354 | Daniel Uggla | .351 | Alex Rodriguez | .367 | David Ortiz | .358 | Joe Inglett | .356 | Scott Rolen | .365 |
| 103 | Gabe Kapler | .354 | Mark Grudzielanek | .351 | Aaron Rowand | .367 | Howie Kendrick | .357 | Todd Helton | .356 | Gabe Kapler | .364 |
| 104 | Joey Votto | .354 | Rod Barajas | .351 | Ben Molina | .366 | Adrian Gonzalez | .357 | Michael Young | .356 | Randy Winn | .364 |
| 105 | Torii Hunter | .354 | Carlos Delgado | .351 | Ryan Sweeney | .366 | Fred Lewis | .356 | Matthew Kemp | .355 | Ramon Vazquez | .364 |
| 106 | Randy Winn | .354 | Jim Thome | .351 | Carlos Beltran | .365 | Nathan McLouth | .356 | James Loney | .354 | Adrian Gonzalez | .364 |
| 107 | Vernon Wells | .354 | Fred Lewis | .350 | Marlon Byrd | .365 | Ryan Doumit | .355 | Ichiro Suzuki | .353 | Torii Hunter | .363 |
| 108 | Ben Francisco | .354 | Conor Jackson | .350 | Brandon Boggs | .365 | David Wright | .354 | Brendan Harris | .353 | Garret Anderson | .363 |
| 109 | Skip Schumaker | .354 | Vernon Wells | .349 | Kurt Suzuki | .365 | Alexei Ramirez | .354 | Torii Hunter | .352 | Marcus Thames | .363 |
| 110 | Casey Blake | .353 | Scott Hairston | .348 | Kelly Shoppach | .365 | David Murphy | .353 | Gregor Blanco | .351 | J.D. Drew | .363 |
| 111 | Ryan Theriot | .353 | Adam LaRoche | .348 | Billy Butler | .364 | Magglio Ordonez | .353 | Jose Reyes | .351 | Cristian Guzman | .363 |
| 112 | Marcus Thames | .353 | Lastings Milledge | .348 | Augie Ojeda | .364 | Joey Votto | .353 | Nathan McLouth | .351 | Alexis Rios | .362 |
| 113 | Lyle Overbay | .353 | Mike Cameron | .347 | Elijah Dukes | .364 | Johnny Damon | .352 | Yunel Escobar | .351 | Jorge Cantu | .362 |
| 114 | Shane Victorino | .353 | Robinson Cano | .347 | Garret Anderson | .363 | Derek Jeter | .352 | Carlos Guillen | .350 | Nick Swisher | .362 |
| 115 | Omar Infante | .353 | Alexei Ramirez | .347 | Prince Fielder | .363 | Ronnie Belliard | .352 | Ramon Hernandez | .350 | Kevin Kouzmanoff | .361 |
| 116 | Adam LaRoche | .353 | Julio Lugo | .347 | Ramon Vazquez | .362 | Ryan Zimmerman | .352 | Andre Ethier | .350 | Kevin Millar | .361 |
| 117 | Cody Ross | .352 | James Hardy | .347 | Gregor Blanco | .362 | Augie Ojeda | .352 | Jose Guillen | .349 | Ronnie Belliard | .361 |
| 118 | Justin Upton | .351 | David Murphy | .347 | Lyle Overbay | .361 | Yunel Escobar | .351 | Emmanuel Burriss | .348 | Skip Schumaker | .361 |
| 119 | Placido Polanco | .349 | Marcus Thames | .346 | Ryan Church | .361 | Ramon Vazquez | .351 | Endy Chavez | .348 | Ryan Theriot | .361 |
| 120 | BJ Upton | .349 | Miguel Tejada | .346 | Geoff Blum | .360 | Eric Hinske | .350 | Shane Victorino | .348 | Willy Aybar | .360 |
| 121 | Andre Ethier | .349 | Mike Aviles | .345 | Gerald Laird | .360 | Ben Francisco | .349 | Kelly Shoppach | .348 | Jason Kendall | .359 |
| 122 | Jhonny Peralta | .348 | Stephen Drew | .345 | Daric Barton | .360 | Gregg Zaun | .348 | Kazuo Matsui | .348 | Frank Thomas | .359 |
| 123 | James Loney | .348 | Clint Barmes | .345 | Jose Reyes | .359 | Chris Coste | .348 | BJ Upton | .348 | Chris Snyder | .359 |
| 124 | Cliff Floyd | .347 | Vladimir Guerrero | .344 | Miguel Cabrera | .359 | Chris Duncan | .348 | Jeff Baker | .347 | Mark Loretta | .359 |
| 125 | Nick Swisher | .347 | Kevin Millar | .344 | Jim Edmonds | .358 | Ryan Garko | .347 | Brian McCann | .346 | Orlando Hudson | .358 |
| 126 | Edwin Encarnacion | .347 | Yunel Escobar | .343 | Torii Hunter | .358 | Hanley Ramirez | .346 | Justin Morneau | .346 | Jay Bruce | .358 |
| 127 | Chris Coste | .347 | Rickie Weeks | .343 | Jeff Keppinger | .358 | Adam Jones | .345 | Ryan Ludwick | .345 | Mark Reynolds | .358 |
| 128 | Willie Harris | .346 | Ben Francisco | .342 | Marco Scutaro | .358 | Emmanuel Burriss | .345 | Juan Rivera | .345 | Vernon Wells | .357 |
| 129 | Corey Hart | .346 | Shin-soo Choo | .341 | Willie Harris | .357 | Shane Victorino | .344 | Curtis Granderson | .344 | Rick Ankiel | .357 |
| 130 | Ken Griffey Jr. | .345 | Chase Headley | .340 | Brian Roberts | .357 | Jamey Carroll | .344 | Luke Scott | .343 | Ivan Rodriguez | .356 |
| 131 | David DeJesus | .345 | Paul Konerko | .340 | Hanley Ramirez | .357 | Torii Hunter | .343 | Maicer Izturis | .343 | Jason Varitek | .356 |
| 132 | Mark Reynolds | .345 | Nick Swisher | .340 | Geovany Soto | .356 | Delmon Young | .341 | Ian Kinsler | .342 | Joe Mauer | .356 |
| 133 | Stephen Drew | .345 | Nathan McLouth | .340 | Luis Castillo | .356 | Richie Sexson | .340 | Miguel Tejada | .341 | Rod Barajas | .355 |
| 134 | Garrett Atkins | .344 | Corey Hart | .339 | Russell Martin | .355 | Corey Hart | .340 | Dioner Navarro | .341 | Jim Thome | .355 |
| 135 | Doug Mientkiewicz | .343 | Derek Jeter | .338 | Brandon Inge | .354 | Kevin Kouzmanoff | .340 | Aubrey Huff | .340 | Jason Giambi | .355 |
| 136 | Aaron Rowand | .343 | Adam Lind | .338 | Yunel Escobar | .354 | Placido Polanco | .340 | Carlos Delgado | .340 | Corey Hart | .354 |
| 137 | Scott Hairston | .342 | Gary Sheffield | .337 | Mike Cameron | .353 | John Bowker | .340 | Garrett Atkins | .340 | Nick Punto | .354 |
| 138 | Alexis Rios | .342 | Adam Jones | .337 | Maicer Izturis | .353 | Yadier Molina | .338 | Lyle Overbay | .340 | Prince Fielder | .353 |
| 139 | Joe Inglett | .341 | Adrian Beltre | .335 | David Dellucci | .353 | Ichiro Suzuki | .337 | Vladimir Guerrero | .340 | Alexi Casilla | .353 |
| 140 | Jorge Cantu | .341 | Cody Ross | .334 | Jose Lopez | .352 | Mike Cameron | .336 | Magglio Ordonez | .340 | Lastings Milledge | .353 |
| 141 | Ryan Howard | .341 | Russell Martin | .334 | Vernon Wells | .352 | Jorge Cantu | .336 | Chris B Young | .340 | Jack Cust | .352 |
| 142 | Jason Kubel | .340 | Endy Chavez | .333 | Eric Hinske | .351 | Alexi Casilla | .336 | Mark DeRosa | .339 | Jody Gerut | .352 |
| 143 | Alex Gordon | .340 | Justin Morneau | .333 | Mike Jacobs | .351 | Justin Upton | .335 | Wes Helms | .339 | Jeff Baker | .351 |
| 144 | Mike Lowell | .338 | Bobby Abreu | .332 | Luke Scott | .351 | David Dellucci | .335 | Alexis Rios | .338 | Vladimir Guerrero | .350 |
| 145 | Ichiro Suzuki | .337 | Chris Snyder | .332 | Bobby Abreu | .350 | Gary Sheffield | .335 | David Dellucci | .337 | Chris Coste | .350 |
| 146 | Kazuo Matsui | .337 | Jason Kubel | .332 | Josh Willingham | .348 | Randy Winn | .334 | Ryan Church | .336 | Ben Molina | .350 |
| 147 | Howie Kendrick | .336 | Ryan Church | .332 | Victor Martinez | .348 | Gabe Gross | .334 | Orlando Hudson | .336 | Gregor Blanco | .350 |
| 148 | David Murphy | .336 | Willy Aybar | .332 | David Murphy | .348 | Julio Lugo | .334 | Blake Dewitt | .336 | Matt Stairs | .350 |
| 149 | Derek Jeter | .336 | Jeremy Reed | .331 | John Buck | .347 | Kazuo Matsui | .334 | Robinson Cano | .336 | Kelly Shoppach | .349 |
| 150 | Chase Headley | .335 | David Eckstein | .331 | Kevin Millar | .347 | Jose Bautista | .334 | Corey Hart | .336 | Shin-soo Choo | .349 |
| 151 | Clint Barmes | .335 | Brandon Boggs | .331 | Shane Victorino | .347 | Eric Bruntlett | .334 | Omar Quintanilla | .335 | John Bowker | .348 |
| 152 | Scott Rolen | .335 | Aaron Miles | .330 | Derrek Lee | .346 | Willie Harris | .333 | Chris Coste | .335 | Fernando Tatis | .347 |
| 153 | Joe Crede | .335 | Brandon Phillips | .330 | Nick Punto | .345 | David Eckstein | .333 | Prince Fielder | .335 | Billy Butler | .347 |
| 154 | Kosuke Fukudome | .334 | Denard Span | .329 | Matthew Kemp | .345 | Rick Ankiel | .332 | Lastings Milledge | .335 | Coco Crisp | .346 |
| 155 | Mike Jacobs | .334 | Joe Inglett | .329 | Derek Jeter | .345 | Jay Bruce | .330 | Mike Lamb | .335 | Edgar Renteria | .346 |
| 156 | Gerald Laird | .334 | Chris Coste | .328 | Carlos Gomez | .344 | Ryan Theriot | .330 | Howie Kendrick | .335 | Gerald Laird | .346 |
| 157 | Yunel Escobar | .334 | Nick Punto | .328 | Luis Gonzalez | .344 | Ross Gload | .329 | Alfonso Soriano | .334 | Derrek Lee | .346 |
| 158 | Kevin Millar | .333 | Jorge Cantu | .328 | Jhonny Peralta | .343 | Skip Schumaker | .329 | Marlon Byrd | .334 | Dioner Navarro | .346 |
| 159 | Mark Kotsay | .332 | Gregg Zaun | .328 | Fred Lewis | .343 | Jimmy Rollins | .328 | Justin Upton | .333 | Yadier Molina | .345 |
| 160 | Jimmy Rollins | .332 | Aaron Rowand | .327 | Rick Ankiel | .342 | Jack Wilson | .327 | Emil Brown | .333 | Conor Jackson | .345 |
| 161 | Yadier Molina | .332 | Adrian Gonzalez | .327 | Casey Kotchman | .342 | Brad Hawpe | .326 | Frank Thomas | .332 | Joe Inglett | .345 |
| 162 | Aaron Miles | .331 | Rich Aurilia | .327 | Chone Figgins | .341 | Garrett Atkins | .326 | Matt Treanor | .332 | David DeJesus | .345 |
| 163 | Alexi Casilla | .331 | Willie Harris | .326 | Brad Ausmus | .341 | Rickie Weeks | .326 | Victor Martinez | .331 | Doug Mientkiewicz | .345 |
| 164 | Brandon Boggs | .331 | Cristian Guzman | .326 | Matt Stairs | .341 | Jeff Kent | .326 | Pedro Feliz | .331 | Yorvit Torrealba | .344 |
| 165 | Nick Punto | .330 | Brad Wilkerson | .326 | Chad Tracy | .340 | Brandon Phillips | .325 | Ryan Sweeney | .331 | Pedro Feliz | .344 |
| 166 | Jeremy Hermida | .330 | Kelly Shoppach | .326 | Delmon Young | .339 | Joe Inglett | .325 | Chris Snyder | .330 | Chris B Young | .344 |
| 167 | Michael Young | .330 | Jeremy Hermida | .325 | Eric Byrnes | .338 | Casey Blake | .325 | Jose Vidro | .330 | Brandon Boggs | .344 |
| 168 | Matt Stairs | .330 | Michael Young | .325 | Michael Young | .338 | Kevin Millar | .323 | Adam LaRoche | .330 | Mark Ellis | .343 |
| 169 | Miguel Olivo | .330 | Alex Gordon | .324 | David Eckstein | .338 | Alexis Rios | .323 | Jose Lopez | .329 | Alex Gordon | .342 |
| 170 | Paul Konerko | .329 | Omar Quintanilla | .324 | Mike Lamb | .338 | Melky Cabrera | .322 | Ryan Spilborghs | .329 | Adam LaRoche | .342 |
| 171 | Jeff Baker | .329 | Fernando Tatis | .324 | Jose Bautista | .338 | Jose Lopez | .322 | Jeff Francoeur | .329 | Aaron Rowand | .342 |
| 172 | Kevin Kouzmanoff | .329 | Casey Blake | .323 | Ty Wigginton | .337 | Miguel Cabrera | .321 | Jerry Hairston Jr. | .328 | Stephen Drew | .341 |
| 173 | Brandon Phillips | .328 | Alexi Casilla | .323 | Omar Vizquel | .337 | Carlos Delgado | .320 | Brandon Inge | .328 | Josh Hamilton | .341 |
| 174 | A.J. Pierzynski | .328 | BJ Upton | .323 | Randy Winn | .337 | Brandon Boggs | .320 | Jeremy Hermida | .327 | Melvin Mora | .341 |
| 175 | Gabe Gross | .328 | Akinori Iwamura | .322 | Cristian Guzman | .336 | Geoff Jenkins | .320 | Carlos Pena | .327 | Hideki Matsui | .341 |
| 176 | Dioner Navarro | .328 | Jason Varitek | .322 | Carlos E Gonzalez | .336 | Jeff Clement | .320 | Richie Sexson | .326 | Augie Ojeda | .340 |
| 177 | Kurt Suzuki | .327 | Craig Counsell | .321 | Scott Rolen | .336 | Marco Scutaro | .319 | Nick Punto | .326 | Kosuke Fukudome | .340 |
| 178 | Kelly Johnson | .327 | Chad Tracy | .321 | Frank Thomas | .336 | Aaron Rowand | .319 | A.J. Pierzynski | .325 | Todd Helton | .339 |
| 179 | Adrian Beltre | .326 | Troy Tulowitzki | .321 | Jason Kubel | .335 | Russell Martin | .319 | Juan Pierre | .325 | Troy Glaus | .338 |
| 180 | Garret Anderson | .326 | Kelly Johnson | .321 | Brandon Phillips | .335 | Aaron Miles | .319 | Chone Figgins | .324 | Omar Quintanilla | .338 |
| 181 | Luis Gonzalez | .326 | Chris Duncan | .321 | Alfredo Amezaga | .333 | Ivan Rodriguez | .319 | Ryan Garko | .324 | Darin Erstad | .338 |
| 182 | Chone Figgins | .325 | Mark Kotsay | .321 | Gary Sheffield | .333 | Josh Willingham | .318 | Chad Tracy | .323 | Chad Tracy | .338 |
| 183 | Akinori Iwamura | .325 | Kurt Suzuki | .321 | Jeff Clement | .333 | Doug Mientkiewicz | .317 | Fred Lewis | .323 | Lyle Overbay | .338 |
| 184 | Mark Grudzielanek | .325 | Gabe Kapler | .320 | Scott Hairston | .332 | Juan Rivera | .317 | Derek Jeter | .323 | Miguel Tejada | .338 |
| 185 | Jeff Kent | .324 | Ichiro Suzuki | .320 | Alexi Casilla | .331 | Mark Grudzielanek | .316 | Mark Ellis | .323 | Dustin Pedroia | .337 |
| 186 | Frank Catalanotto | .324 | Carl Crawford | .318 | Erick Aybar | .331 | Joe Crede | .316 | Marco Scutaro | .323 | Jacoby Ellsbury | .335 |
| 187 | Rich Aurilia | .324 | Jose Guillen | .318 | Jamey Carroll | .331 | Andre Ethier | .316 | Luis Castillo | .323 | Brandon Inge | .335 |
| 188 | David Eckstein | .324 | Jody Gerut | .318 | Mark Ellis | .331 | Matthew Kemp | .316 | Bobby Abreu | .323 | Chase Headley | .335 |
| 189 | Jose Lopez | .323 | Mark Reynolds | .318 | Blake Dewitt | .330 | Alex Gordon | .314 | Willie Harris | .322 | James Loney | .333 |
| 190 | David Dellucci | .323 | Kevin Kouzmanoff | .316 | Ray Durham | .330 | Garret Anderson | .314 | Mike Lowell | .322 | Derek Jeter | .332 |
| 191 | Chris Duncan | .323 | Jamey Carroll | .316 | Aaron Miles | .328 | Gary Matthews Jr. | .312 | Melvin Mora | .321 | Chris Davis | .331 |
| 192 | Ivan Rodriguez | .322 | David Ortiz | .315 | Kevin Kouzmanoff | .328 | Paul Konerko | .310 | Erick Aybar | .321 | Jhonny Peralta | .330 |
| 193 | Gregor Blanco | .322 | Andruw Jones | .312 | Ross Gload | .327 | Maicer Izturis | .310 | Jayson Werth | .321 | BJ Upton | .330 |
| 194 | Rickie Weeks | .322 | Chone Figgins | .312 | Bill Hall | .326 | Jay Payton | .310 | Evan Longoria | .321 | Jason Michaels | .330 |
| 195 | Jamey Carroll | .321 | Melvin Mora | .312 | Chris B Young | .326 | Bobby Crosby | .310 | Brandon Boggs | .321 | Kazuo Matsui | .330 |
| 196 | Darin Erstad | .321 | Casey Kotchman | .310 | Jason Bay | .325 | Michael Young | .309 | Jacoby Ellsbury | .320 | Jeffery Mathis | .329 |
| 197 | Lastings Milledge | .321 | Augie Ojeda | .310 | Evan Longoria | .325 | Mike Jacobs | .308 | Jorge Cantu | .320 | Orlando Cabrera | .328 |
| 198 | Ryan Sweeney | .321 | David DeJesus | .310 | Jeremy Hermida | .325 | Joey Gathright | .308 | David DeJesus | .320 | Chris Duncan | .328 |
| 199 | Mark Loretta | .320 | Ryan Zimmerman | .310 | Dioner Navarro | .325 | Gerald Laird | .308 | Carl Crawford | .319 | Carlos Guillen | .328 |
| 200 | Cristian Guzman | .320 | Reed Johnson | .310 | Jorge Cantu | .324 | Ben Molina | .308 | Edwin Encarnacion | .319 | Julio Lugo | .328 |
| 201 | Delmon Young | .320 | Yuniesky Betancourt | .309 | Gabe Gross | .324 | Nick Punto | .307 | Jeff Kent | .318 | Ben Francisco | .328 |
| 202 | Adam Jones | .320 | Matt Stairs | .309 | Hunter Pence | .323 | Jesus Flores | .307 | Mark Kotsay | .317 | Michael Young | .327 |
| 203 | Augie Ojeda | .320 | Joe Crede | .309 | Gary Matthews Jr. | .323 | Cristian Guzman | .307 | Brian Giles | .317 | Blake Dewitt | .327 |
| 204 | Pedro Feliz | .320 | Felipe Lopez | .309 | Ichiro Suzuki | .322 | Jose Castillo | .306 | Jamey Carroll | .317 | Joe Crede | .327 |
| 205 | Brian Schneider | .320 | Mark Ellis | .309 | Pedro Feliz | .322 | Stephen Drew | .306 | Casey Blake | .316 | Geoff Blum | .326 |
| 206 | Rod Barajas | .319 | Jose Lopez | .308 | Ryan Theriot | .322 | Juan Uribe | .306 | Clint Barmes | .316 | Jeff Kent | .326 |
| 207 | Frank Thomas | .319 | Ken Griffey Jr. | .308 | Dustin Pedroia | .321 | Wes Helms | .306 | Troy Tulowitzki | .315 | Carl Crawford | .326 |
| 208 | Miguel Tejada | .319 | Orlando Cabrera | .308 | Carlos Joaquin Ruiz | .321 | Geoff Blum | .306 | Delmon Young | .315 | Felipe Lopez | .325 |
| 209 | Hunter Pence | .319 | Richie Sexson | .308 | Rod Barajas | .321 | Mark Loretta | .305 | Gary Sheffield | .315 | Paul Konerko | .325 |
| 210 | Edgar V Gonzalez | .318 | Bill Hall | .307 | Alexis Rios | .321 | Rich Aurilia | .303 | Eric Byrnes | .314 | Edwin Encarnacion | .325 |
| 211 | Marco Scutaro | .318 | Geoff Jenkins | .307 | Placido Polanco | .319 | Carl Crawford | .302 | Reed Johnson | .314 | Willy Taveras | .324 |
| 212 | Chad Tracy | .318 | Luis Gonzalez | .307 | Chris Duncan | .318 | Carlos Joaquin Ruiz | .302 | Jason Varitek | .313 | Jack Wilson | .323 |
| 213 | Ben Molina | .318 | Jason Bartlett | .307 | Edgar Renteria | .318 | Jeff Baker | .302 | Jesus Flores | .310 | Akinori Iwamura | .323 |
| 214 | Jarrod Saltalamacchia | .318 | Jay Bruce | .306 | Carlos Guillen | .318 | Mike Lowell | .302 | Kevin Millar | .309 | Howie Kendrick | .323 |
| 215 | Ramon Hernandez | .317 | Aaron Hill | .305 | Edwin Encarnacion | .317 | Marcus Thames | .301 | Frank Catalanotto | .308 | Franklin Gutierrez | .323 |
| 216 | Luis Castillo | .317 | Frank Thomas | .305 | Jason Kendall | .317 | Rod Barajas | .300 | Alexei Ramirez | .308 | Mark Teahen | .322 |
| 217 | Ryan Zimmerman | .317 | Gabe Gross | .304 | Matt Treanor | .317 | Billy Butler | .300 | John Buck | .308 | Jose Bautista | .322 |
| 218 | Carl Crawford | .316 | Franklin Gutierrez | .304 | Damion Easley | .316 | Jason Michaels | .300 | Kelly Johnson | .307 | Elijah Dukes | .321 |
| 219 | Jose Bautista | .316 | Ramon Vazquez | .304 | Paul Konerko | .315 | Brian Schneider | .300 | Luis Gonzalez | .306 | Ramon Hernandez | .321 |
| 220 | Coco Crisp | .316 | Marco Scutaro | .304 | Gabe Kapler | .314 | Hunter Pence | .298 | Brian Roberts | .306 | Asdrubal Cabrera | .320 |
| 221 | Casey Kotchman | .315 | Jacoby Ellsbury | .303 | David Wright | .314 | Dioner Navarro | .298 | Vernon Wells | .306 | Jose Lopez | .320 |
| 222 | Chris B Young | .315 | Chris B Young | .303 | Jerry Hairston Jr. | .313 | Casey Kotchman | .297 | Jeff Clement | .306 | Miguel Olivo | .320 |
| 223 | Richie Sexson | .315 | Edgar V Gonzalez | .303 | Jack Cust | .313 | Ken Griffey Jr. | .297 | Geovany Soto | .305 | Adrian Beltre | .318 |
| 224 | Gary Sheffield | .315 | Jeff Francoeur | .303 | Jose Guillen | .312 | Ray Durham | .296 | Freddy Sanchez | .305 | Jay Payton | .318 |
| 225 | Mike Cuddyer | .314 | Erick Aybar | .302 | Clint Barmes | .312 | Kelly Johnson | .296 | Shannon Stewart | .305 | Erick Aybar | .318 |
| 226 | Willy Aybar | .314 | Ramon Hernandez | .302 | Jacoby Ellsbury | .312 | Chad Tracy | .295 | Daric Barton | .305 | Jason Bartlett | .317 |
| 227 | Brandon Inge | .314 | Kosuke Fukudome | .301 | Alex Gordon | .312 | Ramon Hernandez | .295 | Alexi Casilla | .304 | Robinson Cano | .316 |
| 228 | Jason Varitek | .313 | Ross Gload | .301 | Carl Crawford | .311 | Yorvit Torrealba | .295 | Brad Ausmus | .304 | Geoff Jenkins | .316 |
| 229 | Ryan Garko | .313 | Jose Bautista | .301 | Adam Jones | .310 | Kosuke Fukudome | .294 | Cristian Guzman | .304 | Edgar V Gonzalez | .316 |
| 230 | Maicer Izturis | .313 | Ryan Howard | .301 | Freddy Sanchez | .309 | Mark Kotsay | .293 | Ryan Zimmerman | .303 | Jesus Flores | .315 |
| 231 | Jay Bruce | .313 | Coco Crisp | .300 | Chris Davis | .309 | Edgar V Gonzalez | .292 | Mark Loretta | .302 | Hunter Pence | .314 |
| 232 | Robinson Cano | .312 | Jose Castillo | .300 | Adrian Beltre | .308 | Brad Wilkerson | .292 | Carlos E Gonzalez | .301 | Ichiro Suzuki | .314 |
| 233 | Julio Lugo | .312 | Doug Mientkiewicz | .300 | Mark Kotsay | .308 | Robinson Cano | .292 | Adam Jones | .301 | Corey Patterson | .314 |
| 234 | Orlando Cabrera | .310 | Pedro Feliz | .299 | Jay Payton | .307 | Luis Gonzalez | .291 | Jermaine Dye | .301 | Marco Scutaro | .313 |
| 235 | Mark Ellis | .310 | Damion Easley | .298 | Shannon Stewart | .307 | Lastings Milledge | .290 | Jeff Keppinger | .299 | Ty Wigginton | .313 |
| 236 | Jesus Flores | .310 | Jason Kendall | .298 | Eric Bruntlett | .306 | Miguel Tejada | .290 | Ben Molina | .298 | Troy Tulowitzki | .312 |
| 237 | Gregg Zaun | .310 | Yorvit Torrealba | .298 | Emil Brown | .306 | Emil Brown | .290 | Nick Swisher | .297 | Paul Bako | .312 |
| 238 | Jeremy Reed | .310 | Carlos Joaquin Ruiz | .298 | Tadahito Iguchi | .306 | Jarrod Saltalamacchia | .289 | Tadahito Iguchi | .296 | Carlos Beltran | .311 |
| 239 | Billy Butler | .309 | Willy Taveras | .298 | Brendan Harris | .306 | Miguel Olivo | .289 | Asdrubal Cabrera | .296 | Jack Hannahan | .311 |
| 240 | Jose Guillen | .309 | Bobby Crosby | .298 | Jason Giambi | .305 | Troy Tulowitzki | .288 | Ryan J Braun | .295 | David Murphy | .311 |
| 241 | Brendan Harris | .309 | Hunter Pence | .297 | Adam LaRoche | .305 | Mark Teahen | .288 | Yadier Molina | .295 | Jamey Carroll | .307 |
| 242 | Jacoby Ellsbury | .308 | Scott Rolen | .297 | Frank Catalanotto | .304 | Coco Crisp | .288 | Akinori Iwamura | .294 | Rich Aurilia | .306 |
| 243 | Aaron Hill | .308 | Jack Wilson | .296 | Bobby Crosby | .304 | Jeremy Reed | .287 | Willy Aybar | .293 | Jose Molina | .306 |
| 244 | Damion Easley | .308 | Adam Kennedy | .296 | Jay Bruce | .304 | Erick Aybar | .286 | Felipe Lopez | .292 | Brad Ausmus | .306 |
| 245 | Erick Aybar | .307 | Brendan Harris | .296 | Brian Schneider | .303 | Pedro Feliz | .285 | Bobby Crosby | .290 | Brendan Harris | .305 |
| 246 | Bill Hall | .307 | Emil Brown | .296 | Edgar V Gonzalez | .303 | Mike Cuddyer | .285 | Jose Castillo | .290 | Jeff Francoeur | .305 |
| 247 | Emmanuel Burriss | .307 | Ben Molina | .296 | Jermaine Dye | .302 | Willy Aybar | .285 | Cesar Izturis | .289 | Austin Kearns | .305 |
| 248 | Geoff Jenkins | .306 | Gerald Laird | .295 | Yorvit Torrealba | .302 | Brandon Inge | .284 | Placido Polanco | .289 | Adam Jones | .304 |
| 249 | Blake Dewitt | .305 | Luis Castillo | .295 | Akinori Iwamura | .301 | Brendan Harris | .284 | Coco Crisp | .288 | Mike Lamb | .304 |
| 250 | Edgar Renteria | .304 | Delmon Young | .295 | Rickie Weeks | .301 | John Buck | .283 | Mark Grudzielanek | .288 | Delmon Young | .304 |
| 251 | Troy Tulowitzki | .303 | Blake Dewitt | .295 | Mike Aviles | .300 | Adrian Beltre | .282 | Jhonny Peralta | .288 | Daric Barton | .303 |
| 252 | Jack Wilson | .303 | Edgar Renteria | .294 | Rich Aurilia | .299 | James Hardy | .280 | Jim Edmonds | .286 | Cesar Izturis | .302 |
| 253 | Geoff Blum | .303 | Gregor Blanco | .293 | Jose Castillo | .298 | Aaron Hill | .280 | Rod Barajas | .285 | Jason Kubel | .302 |
| 254 | John Bowker | .303 | Mark Teahen | .293 | Robinson Cano | .298 | Frank Thomas | .280 | Chris Duncan | .284 | Casey Kotchman | .302 |
| 255 | Ross Gload | .302 | Austin Kearns | .292 | Jeff Kent | .297 | Edgar Renteria | .280 | Garret Anderson | .284 | Ross Gload | .301 |
| 256 | Jeff Keppinger | .301 | Maicer Izturis | .291 | Jack Wilson | .296 | Felipe Lopez | .279 | Edgar Renteria | .281 | David Dellucci | .301 |
| 257 | Jason Kendall | .300 | Asdrubal Cabrera | .291 | Adam Kennedy | .296 | Freddy Sanchez | .279 | Mark Teahen | .281 | Clint Barmes | .301 |
| 258 | Jason Michaels | .300 | David Dellucci | .291 | James Hardy | .295 | Jack Hannahan | .279 | Kevin Kouzmanoff | .280 | Carlos Gomez | .299 |
| 259 | Yorvit Torrealba | .299 | Miguel Olivo | .289 | Justin Upton | .294 | Yuniesky Betancourt | .278 | Gary Matthews Jr. | .280 | Khalil Greene | .299 |
| 260 | Mark Teahen | .298 | Jimmy Rollins | .288 | Omar Quintanilla | .293 | Luis Rivas | .277 | Brandon Phillips | .278 | Juan Uribe | .298 |
| 261 | Emil Brown | .298 | Howie Kendrick | .288 | Troy Tulowitzki | .293 | Kenji Johjima | .277 | Austin Kearns | .277 | Yunel Escobar | .298 |
| 262 | Craig Counsell | .297 | Yadier Molina | .287 | Cliff Floyd | .293 | Juan Pierre | .276 | David Eckstein | .276 | Brad Wilkerson | .297 |
| 263 | Felipe Lopez | .297 | Mark Loretta | .286 | Austin Kearns | .292 | Paul Bako | .276 | Jack Hannahan | .275 | John Buck | .294 |
| 264 | Asdrubal Cabrera | .296 | Cesar Izturis | .286 | Chase Headley | .292 | Victor Martinez | .276 | Jason Kendall | .275 | Cody Ross | .294 |
| 265 | Victor Martinez | .296 | Juan Uribe | .286 | Mark Grudzielanek | .292 | Cliff Floyd | .275 | Mark Reynolds | .273 | Gregg Zaun | .293 |
| 266 | Jay Payton | .296 | Darin Erstad | .284 | A.J. Pierzynski | .291 | Jason Bartlett | .274 | #N/A | #N/A | Maicer Izturis | .293 |
| 267 | Juan Uribe | .296 | Ryan Sweeney | .283 | Joey Gathright | .291 | Gregor Blanco | .274 | Jeffery Mathis | .273 | Gary Sheffield | .292 |
| 268 | Bobby Crosby | .296 | Melky Cabrera | .282 | Garrett Atkins | .290 | Mark Ellis | .273 | Mike Cuddyer | .271 | A.J. Pierzynski | .291 |
| 269 | Jose Castillo | .295 | Jose Molina | .282 | Joe Inglett | .289 | Austin Kearns | .273 | Ivan Rodriguez | .271 | Brian Schneider | .290 |
| 270 | Gary Matthews Jr. | .294 | Shannon Stewart | .281 | Ivan Rodriguez | .289 | Jose Vidro | .272 | Willy Taveras | .270 | Scott Hairston | .290 |
| 271 | Wes Helms | .293 | Luis Rivas | .281 | Adam Lind | .289 | Ryan Howard | .272 | Joey Gathright | .270 | Bill Hall | .289 |
| 272 | Juan Rivera | .293 | Wily Mo Pena | .280 | Mark Teahen | .288 | Aramis Ramirez | .272 | #N/A | #N/A | Adam Lind | .289 |
| 273 | Juan Pierre | .292 | Brandon Inge | .279 | Felipe Lopez | .286 | Matt Stairs | .271 | Carlos Gomez | .269 | Carlos E Gonzalez | .289 |
| 274 | John Buck | .292 | Mike Cuddyer | .279 | Cesar Izturis | .284 | Blake Dewitt | .269 | Jose Bautista | .269 | Gary Matthews Jr. | .288 |
| 275 | Alfredo Amezaga | .292 | Carlos Gomez | .279 | Aaron Hill | .284 | Carlos Gomez | .268 | Shin-soo Choo | .269 | Michael Bourn | .287 |
| 276 | Jeff Clement | .291 | Tadahito Iguchi | .278 | Paul Bako | .284 | Cesar Izturis | .268 | Aaron Hill | .268 | Jeremy Hermida | .287 |
| 277 | Adam Kennedy | .291 | Daric Barton | .278 | Brad Wilkerson | .284 | Michael Bourn | .267 | Mike Jacobs | .267 | Eric Byrnes | .286 |
| 278 | Shannon Stewart | .291 | Geoff Blum | .276 | Richie Sexson | .284 | Matt Treanor | .266 | Jason Michaels | .264 | Aaron Miles | .286 |
| 279 | Endy Chavez | .290 | Mike Jacobs | .276 | Kenji Johjima | .281 | Andruw Jones | .266 | Joey Votto | .264 | Damion Easley | .285 |
| 280 | Jack Hannahan | .289 | Paul Bako | .275 | Michael Bourn | .281 | Ryan Sweeney | .266 | Juan Uribe | .264 | Jose Castillo | .285 |
Had to cut off the list at 280 to fit it in one post. That just chops off Melky and Molina from most of the lists, where they have both displayed consistent suckiness
Saturday, August 23, 2008
Yankees.com: Big night for the Bombers’ bats
BALTIMORE—Friday’s game summary reads like a laundry list of accomplishments: nine runs, two sets of back-to-back home runs, a five-hit night for Bobby Abreu, Derek Jeter’s 2,500th career hit and a 9-4 victory over the Orioles.
The Bombers’ bats were a little too late to get Moose his 18th win.
Now for the delicate Carl Pavano tomorrow. Vegas could establish a line for whether or not he injures himself. Again.
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Yankee Offense, Pitching and Defense since the All Star Break Winning Streak
Remember that eight game winning streak after the All Star Break? Me either.Anyway, here's how the Yankees have done over the 18 games since then.
Offense
| Player | G | AB | R | H | 2B | 3B | HR | RBI | BB | HBP | K | SB | CS | GDP | AVG | OBP | SLG | BR | BRAA |
| Xavier Nady | 17 | 62 | 10 | 21 | 5 | 0 | 6 | 17 | 2 | 3 | 16 | 0 | 0 | 2 | .339 | .388 | .710 | 15 | 7.0 |
| Johnny Damon | 17 | 72 | 12 | 26 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 11 | 8 | 0 | 10 | 4 | 0 | 1 | .361 | .425 | .486 | 14 | 5.4 |
| Bobby Abreu | 18 | 72 | 15 | 24 | 5 | 0 | 4 | 12 | 8 | 0 | 14 | 1 | 2 | 1 | .333 | .400 | .569 | 14 | 5.3 |
| Alex Rodriguez | 18 | 66 | 14 | 17 | 5 | 0 | 6 | 9 | 8 | 4 | 17 | 1 | 1 | 6 | .258 | .372 | .606 | 14 | 3.9 |
| Jason Giambi | 16 | 45 | 5 | 13 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 9 | 8 | 2 | 13 | 0 | 0 | 0 | .289 | .418 | .489 | 9 | 3.3 |
| Richie Sexson | 14 | 21 | 2 | 6 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 4 | 3 | 0 | 7 | 0 | 0 | 0 | .286 | .375 | .476 | 4 | 0.9 |
| Jose Molina | 12 | 31 | 7 | 8 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | .258 | .324 | .387 | 4 | -0.4 |
| Justin Christian | 11 | 18 | 2 | 4 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 4 | 0 | 0 | .222 | .222 | .278 | 2 | -0.8 |
| Chad Moeller | 4 | 6 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | .167 | .167 | .167 | 0 | -0.9 |
| Ivan Rodriguez | 11 | 27 | 5 | 7 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 2 | .259 | .286 | .407 | 3 | -1.2 |
| Derek Jeter | 17 | 65 | 6 | 18 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 10 | 8 | 0 | 13 | 2 | 1 | 4 | .277 | .347 | .354 | 8 | -1.4 |
| Wilson Betemit | 14 | 39 | 5 | 11 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 5 | 0 | 0 | 11 | 0 | 0 | 2 | .282 | .282 | .385 | 3 | -1.9 |
| Robinson Cano | 17 | 62 | 7 | 13 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 6 | 6 | 0 | 8 | 0 | 0 | 5 | .210 | .279 | .323 | 5 | -4.8 |
| Melky Cabrera | 17 | 45 | 5 | 8 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 5 | 1 | 0 | 1 | .178 | .213 | .222 | 1 | -5.4 |
| Total | 203 | 631 | 95 | 177 | 25 | 3 | 27 | 88 | 55 | 11 | 126 | 13 | 4 | 24 | .281 | .348 | .458 | 95 | 8.9 |
BR: Batting runs using linear weights
BRAA: BR compared to average (not position-adjusted)
I know we like to pick on WOE, but overall they haven't been the biggest problem on the team, although the Melky and Cano two-headed monster of disappointment continues to be a problem. We have enough data that shows that Cano is better than this that I'm inclined to think this is just a blip season for him and we should expect better next year. How much better? Who knows? With Melky, the Yankees have to do something to upgrade CF next year. The free agent market is thin, so it may take a trade.
Xavier Nady has been very good, and that bodes well for next season. He's not this good, but he'll probably project to be better than he ever has been in the past. Bobby Abreu has been solid lately too, which will hopefully make him attractive to other teams in the offseason. I don't see the sense in the Yankees bringing him back with Nady around.
Pitching
| Player | G | GS | CG | GF | W | L | Sv | IP | H | R | ER | HR | BB | K | HBP | ERA | RA | FIP | RSAA |
| Daniel Giese | 5 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 14.0 | 10 | 4 | 4 | 1 | 6 | 8 | 1 | 2.57 | 2.57 | 4.49 | 3.4 |
| Mike Mussina | 4 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 26.0 | 26 | 11 | 10 | 2 | 5 | 20 | 0 | 3.46 | 3.81 | 3.24 | 2.7 |
| Jose Veras | 8 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 8.3 | 6 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 12 | 2 | 2.16 | 2.16 | 4.88 | 2.4 |
| Billy Traber | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.3 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 3.20 | 0.2 |
| Mariano Rivera | 6 | 0 | 0 | 5 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 5.7 | 7 | 3 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 4 | 0 | 4.76 | 4.76 | 6.91 | 0.0 |
| Brian Bruney | 6 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 5.3 | 5 | 3 | 3 | 0 | 5 | 5 | 0 | 5.06 | 5.06 | 4.14 | -0.2 |
| Sidney Ponson | 4 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 25.0 | 25 | 14 | 14 | 3 | 8 | 8 | 1 | 5.04 | 5.04 | 5.20 | -0.9 |
| Christopher Britton | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 3.7 | 7 | 3 | 3 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 7.36 | 7.36 | 6.20 | -1.1 |
| Joba Chamberlain | 2 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 10.7 | 13 | 7 | 6 | 2 | 2 | 11 | 0 | 5.06 | 5.91 | 4.14 | -1.4 |
| Kyle Farnsworth | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1.0 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 18.00 | 18.00 | 12.20 | -1.5 |
| Ian Kennedy | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 2.0 | 9 | 5 | 5 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 22.50 | 22.50 | 3.70 | -3.9 |
| Darrell Rasner | 4 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 19.3 | 24 | 15 | 14 | 3 | 7 | 10 | 1 | 6.52 | 6.98 | 5.42 | -4.8 |
| Damaso Marte | 8 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 7.0 | 9 | 9 | 9 | 1 | 5 | 10 | 0 | 11.57 | 11.57 | 4.34 | -5.3 |
| Edwar Ramirez | 8 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 5.3 | 8 | 9 | 8 | 2 | 2 | 7 | 0 | 13.50 | 15.19 | 6.58 | -6.2 |
| David Robertson | 5 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 7.0 | 11 | 11 | 11 | 2 | 6 | 10 | 0 | 14.14 | 14.14 | 6.63 | -7.3 |
| Andy Pettitte | 3 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 17.3 | 27 | 17 | 17 | 3 | 8 | 12 | 0 | 8.83 | 8.83 | 5.45 | -7.9 |
| Total | 67 | 18 | 0 | 17 | 6 | 12 | 3 | 158.0 | 190 | 115 | 111 | 25 | 58 | 121 | 5 | 6.32 | 6.55 | 4.92 | -32.0 |
FIP: Fielding independent pitching ERA (13 times HR plus 3 times (BB + HBP) - 2 times SO)/IP + 3.2). Regresses BABIP to league average.
RSAA: Runs saved above average, using earned and unearned runs
The pitching staff has been really bad, although it's not entirely their fault as we will soon see.
Defense*
| Player | Team | AL | Pos | G | GS | Ch | INN | PO | A | E | DP | ZR | PM | Avg PM | Diff | RS |
| Cabrera, Melky | NYY | AL | CF | 14 | 10 | 28 | 92.7 | 26 | 0 | 0 | 0 | .929 | 26 | 24 | 2 | 2 |
| Betemit, Wilson | NYY | AL | 2B | 2 | 2 | 6 | 16 | 2 | 6 | 1 | 1 | 1.000 | 6 | 5 | 1 | 1 |
| Betemit, Wilson | NYY | AL | 1B | 3 | 2 | 4 | 17.3 | 18 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 1.000 | 4 | 3 | 1 | 1 |
| Christian, Justin | NYY | AL | CF | 3 | 3 | 5 | 22.1 | 5 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1.000 | 5 | 4 | 1 | 0 |
| Betemit, Wilson | NYY | AL | SS | 4 | 1 | 9 | 18 | 4 | 9 | 0 | 3 | .889 | 8 | 7 | 1 | 0 |
| Betemit, Wilson | NYY | AL | 3B | 2 | 2 | 6 | 18 | 0 | 5 | 0 | 1 | .833 | 5 | 5 | 0 | 0 |
| Nady, Xavier | NYY | AL | LF | 10 | 10 | 21 | 87 | 18 | 2 | 0 | 0 | .857 | 18 | 18 | 0 | 0 |
| Damon, Johnny | NYY | AL | CF | 3 | 3 | 9 | 27 | 8 | 0 | 0 | 0 | .889 | 8 | 8 | 0 | 0 |
| Christian, Justin | NYY | AL | LF | 3 | 1 | 3 | 11 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | .667 | 2 | 3 | -1 | 0 |
| Jeter, Derek | NYY | AL | SS | 15 | 15 | 47 | 124 | 17 | 38 | 0 | 3 | .809 | 38 | 39 | -1 | 0 |
| Nady, Xavier | NYY | AL | RF | 2 | 2 | 5 | 17 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | .600 | 3 | 4 | -1 | -1 |
| Sexson, Richie | NYY | AL | 1B | 11 | 3 | 8 | 44 | 44 | 2 | 0 | 3 | .625 | 5 | 7 | -2 | -1 |
| Damon, Johnny | NYY | AL | LF | 7 | 5 | 13 | 44 | 9 | 0 | 0 | 0 | .692 | 9 | 11 | -2 | -2 |
| Rodriguez, Alex | NYY | AL | 3B | 14 | 14 | 29 | 122 | 4 | 21 | 0 | 5 | .690 | 20 | 22 | -2 | -2 |
| Abreu, Bobby | NYY | AL | RF | 14 | 14 | 46 | 122 | 38 | 1 | 0 | 0 | .804 | 37 | 40 | -3 | -3 |
| Giambi, Jason | NYY | AL | 1B | 11 | 11 | 17 | 80.7 | 72 | 4 | 0 | 6 | .588 | 10 | 14 | -4 | -3 |
| Cano, Robinson | NYY | AL | 2B | 15 | 14 | 60 | 126 | 29 | 43 | 3 | 9 | .650 | 39 | 48 | -9 | -7 |
| Total | 133 | 112 | 316 | 988.8 | 300 | 133 | 4 | 33 | .769 | 243 | 264 | -21 | -16 |
*Defensive numbers don't include today's debacle.
INN: Defensive Innings at Position
Ch: Playable Chances
PO: Putouts
A: Assists
E: Errors
DP: Double Plays
ZR: Zone Rating (PM/Ch)
PM: Plays Made
AvgPM: Estimated Plays Made over the same # of chances by an average defender
Avg ZR: ZR by average defender at the same position and in the same league
Diff: Difference between PM and AvgPM
RS: Runs Saved
This is just a lost season for Cano on both sides of the ball. He now rates below average defensively according to zone rating. I am sure his offensive struggles aren't helping his defense.
Giambi and Abreu being bad on defense isn't exactly a surprise, although Damon and A-Rod were both having solid seasons until recently. There's some double-counting between the pitching and the defense here, but it's safe to assume the Yankees have been somewhere between 20-30 runs worse than average over this stretch. An average team would in theory go 9-9 over 18 games, although the split of 8 home games and 10 road games might make that 8-10 instead. So the Yankees 6-12 record is right in line with their overall crappy performance.
I'm pretty sure this road trip has knocked the Yankees out of playoff contention at this point, but maybe they've got one more good streak in them.
Baltimore Aquarium Contest
The Yankees are going to be in Baltimore next weekend and I've been offered a prize package to give to anyone who may be interested in attending any of the games by the Baltimore National Aquarium. The prize consists of:
- A family four-pack of tickets to the National Aquarium
- An overnight stay at one of three Harbor Magic Hotels
National Aquarium in Baltimore (501 East Pratt Street, Baltimore, Maryland, 21202)
The National Aquarium was rated #1 for all Baltimore things to do and is a favorite attraction among visitors to the area. Home to over 16,000 animals, the Aquarium features habitats from around the world including Animal Planet Australia: Wild Extremes, an exciting dolphin show and a new 4-D Immersion Theater. The Aquarium's location in Baltimore's Inner Harbor, which is in walking distance to the stadium, makes it easy to plan a visit before or after a game.
410-576-3800
www.aqua.org
Hotel (Three locations in downtown Baltimore)
Harbor Magic Hotels consist of three unique boutique hotels located in and around Baltimore's famous Inner Harbor. Each is delightfully different, yet all three are centered on delivering exceptional personalized visits that let you experience Baltimore as few others can.
866-583-4162
www.harbormagic.com
I'm going to offer the prize to whomever can answer the following question first. If no one answers by EOD tomorrow I'll just take the first email that expresses interest by EOD Friday
Who is the Yankees' career leader in runs saved by zone rating? (Note: Zone rating has only been tracked since 1987)
Just email me through the site if you are interested.
Monday, August 11, 2008
Clutchness and the 2008 Yankees
In the previous thread, PhilRizzuto raised a question about how bad the Yankees have been hitting this year with runners in scoring position. I think anyone who's watched this team all season knows they've been bad even without looking at the numbers, but since I'm a stat dork, let's look at some stats.First off, let's take a look at the 2008 Diamond Mind Projection Blowout. According to the aggregate of six different projection systems, the Yankees projected to score 924 runs this year. Losing Alex Rodriguez for a month and losing Jorge Posada obviously put a damper on that.
In addition, the run environment in the AL is down this year. Last year, AL teams averaged 4.93 runs per game and hit for a line of .271/.338/.423. This year they are averaging 4.71 runs per game and are hitting .266/.334/.416. So that's around a 4% reduction in run scoring. The standard deviation on the AL runs scored using last year's total of 11185 is 106 runs, so one standard deviation in either direction gives us 4.88 runs per game to 4.98 runs per game. Two standard deviations gives us 4.84 runs to 5.02 runs per game. So the lower AL scoring this season appears to be statistically significant.
| Rank | Team | RF/G |
| 1 | Texas | 5.61 |
| 2 | Detroit | 5.09 |
| 3 | Chicago Sox | 5.01 |
| 4 | Boston | 5.00 |
| 5 | Minnesota | 4.97 |
| 6 | Baltimore | 4.92 |
| 7 | NY Yankees | 4.82 |
| 8 | LA Angels | 4.73 |
| 9 | Cleveland | 4.66 |
| 10 | Tampa Bay | 4.61 |
| 11 | Toronto | 4.24 |
| 12 | Kansas City | 4.20 |
| 13 | Seattle | 4.12 |
| 14 | Oakland | 4.02 |
Still, the Yankees are 7th in the league in actual runs scored.
But what about the park factors you ask? Using a weighted average of 2006-2008, here's how the rankings would look (park factors from The 4 letter.com).
| Rank | Team | PkAdj RF/G |
| 1 | Texas | 5.39 |
| 2 | Minnesota | 5.30 |
| 3 | Detroit | 4.91 |
| 4 | Tampa Bay | 4.81 |
| 5 | Chicago Sox | 4.81 |
| 6 | Boston | 4.75 |
| 7 | Baltimore | 4.73 |
| 8 | NY Yankees | 4.66 |
| 9 | LA Angels | 4.61 |
| 10 | Cleveland | 4.60 |
| 11 | Toronto | 4.33 |
| 12 | Seattle | 4.26 |
| 13 | Oakland | 4.23 |
| 14 | Kansas City | 4.14 |
Either way, the Yankee offense has been mediocre this year, despite projecting to be one of the better ones in the league. They are on pace to score 781 runs, That's a falloff of almost 200 runs from last season.
According to linear weights, the context-independent batting events that the Yankee offense has accrued this year should total 586 runs. Using runs created instead of linear weights says they should have scored 598. So why have they only scored 568?
First of all, the Yankees have hit into what seems like a million double plays. The actual number is 109, which is the fourth highest total in the league. Adding those DPs into linear weights knocks the runs scored estimate down by 11 runs. But getting back to the clutch thing, The Hardball Times tracks a stat called 'clutch' coincidentally enough. Now the whole concept of clutch is murky and hard to define, so this is just one of probably a million different ways to measure it. Anyway, the definition of clutch they are using is based of the 2002 version of Bill James's runs created and is defined as:
Hits(with runners in scoring position) - (AB with RISP times BA) + HR(with runners on base) - (AB(with runners on base) times HR)/AB).
or
Clutch is expressed in terms of runs above and below average. Here's how the Yankees rate.
| Tm | Clutch |
| MIN | 37 |
| LAA | 35 |
| BAL | 27 |
| OAK | 22 |
| KC | 20 |
| CHA | 14 |
| CLE | 14 |
| TEX | 12 |
| DET | -9 |
| TOR | -11 |
| SEA | -11 |
| BOS | -15 |
| TB | -18 |
| NYA | -26 |
I know it's hard to believe, but yes, the Yankees are the unclutchest(is that a word?) team in the AL this year. Here are the individuals and their clutch rankings.
| Last, First | Tm | Lg | Pos | Clutch |
| Damon, Johnny | NYA | AL | LF | 7 |
| Abreu, Bobby | NYA | AL | RF | 4.5 |
| Gardner, Brett | NYA | AL | LF | 3.6 |
| Christian, Justin | NYA | AL | LF | 1.8 |
| Matsui, Hideki | NYA | AL | DH | 0.8 |
| Sexson, Richie | NYA | AL | 1B | 0.5 |
| Moeller, Chad | NYA | AL | C | 0.4 |
| Jeter, Derek | NYA | AL | SS | 0.1 |
| Stewart, Chris D | NYA | AL | C | 0 |
| Duncan, Shelley | NYA | AL | 1B | -0.3 |
| Posada, Jorge | NYA | AL | C | -1.2 |
| Gonzalez, Alberto R | NYA | AL | SS | -1.3 |
| Ensberg, Morgan | NYA | AL | 3B | -1.6 |
| Cano, Robinson | NYA | AL | 2B | -1.7 |
| Nady, Xavier | NYA | AL | LF | -2.1 |
| Molina, Jose | NYA | AL | C | -3.5 |
| Betemit, Wilson | NYA | AL | 1B | -3.9 |
| Rodriguez, Ivan | NYA | AL | C | -5.3 |
| Cabrera, Melky | NYA | AL | CF | -5.5 |
| Giambi, Jason | NYA | AL | 1B | -10.3 |
| Rodriguez, Alex | NYA | AL | 3B | -13.2 |
Now I'm not really going to get into the whole clutch hitting as a skill thing here. Well, maybe just for a second. This is not a measure of a player's clutch skill/ability, it's a measure of their value in the current season. Last year, Alex Rodriguez's clutch rating was +9.8. Did Madonna make him unclutch? In 2006 it was +3.2, in 2005 it -8.8.
It's definitely a problem when your two best offensive players aren't hitting with runners in scoring position though. And how the hell is Pudge -5.3 already? He's only played in like 5 games.
If we add those clutch values to the players' position-adjusted batting runs above replacement level here's how the players rank.
| Last, First | Tm | Lg | Pos | PA | BA | OBP | SLG | pBRAR | Clutch | Total |
| Damon, Johnny | NYA | AL | LF | 443 | .322 | .392 | .459 | 26.9 | 7 | 33.9 |
| Rodriguez, Alex | NYA | AL | 3B | 420 | .315 | .402 | .599 | 45.4 | -13.2 | 32.2 |
| Abreu, Bobby | NYA | AL | RF | 500 | .287 | .358 | .467 | 19.2 | 4.5 | 23.7 |
| Giambi, Jason | NYA | AL | 1B | 397 | .252 | .393 | .517 | 29.5 | -10.3 | 19.2 |
| Jeter, Derek | NYA | AL | SS | 499 | .283 | .346 | .398 | 18.9 | 0.1 | 19.0 |
| Matsui, Hideki | NYA | AL | DH | 285 | .323 | .404 | .458 | 14.5 | 0.8 | 15.3 |
| Posada, Jorge | NYA | AL | C | 195 | .268 | .364 | .411 | 8.6 | -1.2 | 7.4 |
| Nady, Xavier | NYA | AL | LF | 58 | .365 | .431 | .731 | 8.0 | -2.1 | 5.9 |
| Christian, Justin | NYA | AL | LF | 39 | .278 | .333 | .361 | 1.0 | 1.8 | 2.8 |
| Sexson, Richie | NYA | AL | 1B | 30 | .292 | .400 | .458 | 1.7 | 0.5 | 2.2 |
| Moeller, Chad | NYA | AL | C | 84 | .227 | .310 | .333 | 0.4 | 0.4 | 0.8 |
| Stewart, Chris D | NYA | AL | C | 3 | .000 | .000 | .000 | -0.7 | 0 | -0.7 |
| Gardner, Brett | NYA | AL | LF | 68 | .153 | .227 | .169 | -4.8 | 3.6 | -1.2 |
| Duncan, Shelley | NYA | AL | 1B | 65 | .175 | .262 | .281 | -2.9 | -0.3 | -3.2 |
| Cano, Robinson | NYA | AL | 2B | 461 | .263 | .300 | .397 | -3.1 | -1.7 | -4.8 |
| Rodriguez, Ivan | NYA | AL | C | 19 | .278 | .316 | .444 | 0.2 | -5.3 | -5.1 |
| Gonzalez, Alberto R | NYA | AL | SS | 58 | .173 | .232 | .212 | -3.9 | -1.3 | -5.2 |
| Betemit, Wilson | NYA | AL | 1B | 153 | .253 | .276 | .411 | -2.2 | -3.9 | -6.1 |
| Ensberg, Morgan | NYA | AL | 3B | 80 | .203 | .263 | .243 | -5.1 | -1.6 | -6.7 |
| Molina, Jose | NYA | AL | C | 237 | .230 | .278 | .315 | -4.1 | -3.5 | -7.6 |
| Cabrera, Melky | NYA | AL | CF | 435 | .245 | .299 | .341 | -7.9 | -5.5 | -13.4 |
Alex Rodriguez and Jason Giambi's clutch performances hurt their value, but they still have been valuable this year, just not as valuable as the raw numbers may show. Johnny Popup isn't a bad player, but if he's your most valuable offensive performer you probably have issues. And boy, does Melky stink.
Do I think clutch hitters exist? Not really, but I do think unclutch hitters can exist, and I do think pressure can have some impact, although it's my opinion that it's not nearly as big of a deal as it's made out to be by the mass media. Also, this is just one definition of clutch, a different definiton may show something totally different, so keep that in mind.
So yeah, the 2008 Yankees have been unclutch by this measure. I'm guessing you didn't need a blog entry to know that though.
Sunday, August 3, 2008
Yankees.com: Nady, Angels errors help Yanks survive
NEW YORK—Xavier Nady homered among his four hits and had a career-high six RBIs, as the Yankees pulled off a wild eighth-inning rally, defeating the Angels on Sunday, 14-9, and earning a split of the four-game series at Yankee Stadium.
Trailing by one run after Mark Teixeira connected for a grand slam, the Yankees came back with thunder, scoring six unearned runs in the decisive eighth against relievers Scot Shields and Darren Oliver. Ivan Rodriguez opened the frame with a single and was replaced by pinch-runner Justin Christian, who moved to second when shortstop Erick Aybar booted a ground ball.
Johnny Damon showed bunt on a double-steal and the throw went down the left-field line, allowing Christian to score the tying run as his helmet fell off. Damon and Bobby Abreu walked before Alex Rodriguez hit a sharp ground ball to third base that Chone Figgins couldn’t handle, allowing Melky Cabrera to score the go-ahead run on the error.
Well, that was a wild one. Now off to Texas and some lovely 100 degree weather.
Before and After
Although the Yankees are scuffling a bit right now, they're still a better team than they were a few weeks ago with the acquisitions of Ivan Rodriguez and Xavier Nady. I've already broken down the Rodriguez and Nady deals, but here's how the whole team looks.| Player | Pos | PA | AVG | OBP | SLG | BR | DR | TR | BR/162 | DR/162 | TR/162 | |
| 1 | Damon,Johnny | DH | 264 | .292 | .367 | .427 | 37 | 0 | 37 | 112 | 0 | 12 |
| 2 | Jeter,Derek | SS | 255 | .300 | .372 | .424 | 35 | -2 | 33 | 107 | -6 | 11 |
| 3 | Abreu,Bobby | RF | 250 | .283 | .377 | .455 | 37 | -4 | 33 | 113 | -12 | 11 |
| 4 | Rodriguez,Alex | 3B | 246 | .309 | .408 | .580 | 48 | 0 | 48 | 145 | 0 | 16 |
| 5 | Giambi,Jason | 1B | 239 | .248 | .390 | .480 | 38 | -3 | 35 | 115 | -9 | 11 |
| 6 | Cano,Robinson | 2B | 232 | .291 | .332 | .459 | 31 | 1 | 32 | 95 | 3 | 10 |
| 7 | Cabrera,Melky | LF | 225 | .268 | .332 | .385 | 26 | 1 | 27 | 79 | 3 | 9 |
| 8 | Molina,Jose | C | 220 | .235 | .278 | .329 | 18 | 2 | 20 | 55 | 6 | 7 |
| 9 | Gardner,Brett | CF | 204 | .237 | .318 | .303 | 19 | 0 | 19 | 59 | 0 | 6 |
| Total | 2134 | .275 | .354 | .429 | 288 | -5 | 283 | 881 | -15 | 865 |
On a full season basis, the pre-trade Yankees starting nine would project to score 881 runs if they played all 162 games using their revised projections including YTD performance, while being around 15 runs below average defensively.
| Player | Pos | PA | AVG | OBP | SLG | BR | DR | TR | BR/162 | DR/162 | TR/162 | |
| 1 | Damon,Johnny | DH | 267 | .292 | .367 | .427 | 37 | 0 | 37 | 113 | 0 | 12 |
| 2 | Jeter,Derek | SS | 258 | .300 | .372 | .424 | 35 | -2 | 33 | 108 | -6 | 11 |
| 3 | Abreu,Bobby | RF | 252 | .283 | .377 | .455 | 38 | -4 | 34 | 115 | -12 | 11 |
| 4 | Rodriguez,Alex | 3B | 249 | .309 | .408 | .580 | 48 | 0 | 48 | 147 | 0 | 16 |
| 5 | Giambi,Jason | 1B | 242 | .248 | .390 | .480 | 38 | -3 | 35 | 117 | -9 | 11 |
| 6 | Cano,Robinson | 2B | 235 | .291 | .332 | .459 | 31 | 1 | 32 | 96 | 3 | 11 |
| 7 | Nady,Xavier | LF | 227 | .288 | .350 | .493 | 34 | 0 | 35 | 104 | 0 | 11 |
| 8 | Rodriguez,Ivan | C | 222 | .281 | .312 | .412 | 25 | 3 | 27 | 78 | 9 | 9 |
| 9 | Cabrera,Melky | CF | 206 | .268 | .332 | .385 | 24 | 1 | 29 | 72 | 3 | 9 |
| Total | 2157 | .285 | .361 | .457 | 310 | -4 | 310 | 949 | -12 | 937 |
The post-trade Yankees would project to score 949 runs, again using their revised projections, while being 12 runs worse than average defensively. So over a full season, the new Yankees are 68 runs better offensively and three runs better defensively, so about six wins better overall on the position player side.
Over the remaining 52 games, the post-trade Yankees are about 24 runs better if you look at offense and defense, which is a little more than two wins better.
Now obviously the starting nine wouldn't play all the games, so we should knock down the runs to account for bench playing time. If we add in 500 replacement level plate appearances to the pre-trade Yankees over the rest of the season, we lose about 18 runs. If we do the same to the post-trade Yankees we lose 23. So it's still basically about a two win difference overall.
Giving the team 1500 replacement level PAs over a full season knocks the run totals down by 54 and 72 respectively, so you're looking at a 826 run team versus a 877 run team.
One key thing to note is that these numbers are calculated against the number of outs the team will make. As you can see, the improved OBP for the post-trade Yankees gives them an extra 23 plate appearances.
If only they didn't have to play the damn Angels 50 more times...
Saturday, August 2, 2008
Yankee Stats for Offense, Pitching and Defense - July 27 - August 1, 2008
| Player | AB | R | H | 2B | 3B | HR | RBI | BB | HBP | K | SB | CS | GDP | AVG | OBP | SLG | BRAA |
| Bobby Abreu | 22 | 7 | 9 | 4 | 0 | 3 | 7 | 4 | 0 | 4 | 1 | 0 | 0 | .409 | .500 | 1.000 | 11 |
| Alex Rodriguez | 22 | 4 | 7 | 2 | 0 | 2 | 3 | 2 | 2 | 5 | 0 | 0 | 0 | .318 | .423 | .682 | 7 |
| Xavier Nady | 15 | 5 | 5 | 2 | 0 | 2 | 4 | 1 | 1 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 1 | .333 | .412 | .867 | 5 |
| Johnny Damon | 23 | 3 | 8 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 6 | 4 | 0 | 4 | 1 | 0 | 0 | .348 | .444 | .478 | 5 |
| Richie Sexson | 8 | 1 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | .500 | .556 | .500 | 2 |
| Jose Molina | 9 | 2 | 3 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | .333 | .455 | .444 | 2 |
| Derek Jeter | 22 | 2 | 5 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 3 | 0 | 5 | 1 | 0 | 2 | .227 | .320 | .273 | 2 |
| Melky Cabrera | 22 | 4 | 5 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | .227 | .261 | .318 | 2 |
| Jason Giambi | 18 | 1 | 5 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 5 | 0 | 0 | 0 | .278 | .278 | .278 | 1 |
| Wilson Betemit | 12 | 1 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | .250 | .250 | .250 | 1 |
| Justin Christian | 3 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | .333 | .333 | .333 | 0 |
| Ivan Rodriguez | 6 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 2 | .167 | .167 | .167 | 0 |
| Chad Moeller | 6 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | .167 | .167 | .167 | 0 |
| Robinson Cano | 26 | 1 | 3 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 1 | .115 | .115 | .154 | -3 |
| Total | 214 | 31 | 60 | 11 | 1 | 8 | 28 | 17 | 4 | 45 | 4 | 0 | 6 | .280 | .345 | .453 | 36 |
BRAA: Batting runs above average using linear weights (not position-adjusted)
So much for Cano's hot streak...
| Player | G | W | L | IP | H | R | ER | HR | BB | K | HBP | ERA | FIP | K9 | BB9 | HR9 | RSAA | FRSAA |
| Joba Chamberlain | 1 | 1 | 0 | 6.0 | 5 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 6 | 0 | 1.50 | 1.73 | 9.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 2 | 2 |
| Jose Veras | 2 | 0 | 0 | 2.0 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 4 | 1 | 0.00 | 2.30 | 18.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 1 | 0 |
| Edwar Ramirez | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0.7 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.00 | 8.00 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0 | 0 |
| Daniel Giese | 2 | 0 | 0 | 5.0 | 5 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 3.60 | 4.44 | 0.0 | 1.8 | 0.0 | 0 | 0 |
| Damaso Marte | 3 | 0 | 0 | 3.0 | 4 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 5 | 0 | 6.00 | 1.93 | 15.0 | 3.0 | 0.0 | -1 | 1 |
| Mariano Rivera | 2 | 0 | 1 | 2.0 | 3 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 9.00 | 11.80 | 4.5 | 4.5 | 4.5 | -1 | -2 |
| Darrell Rasner | 1 | 0 | 1 | 6.0 | 8 | 4 | 4 | 1 | 3 | 1 | 1 | 6.00 | 7.57 | 1.5 | 4.5 | 1.5 | -1 | -2 |
| Christopher Britton | 1 | 0 | 0 | 3.7 | 7 | 3 | 3 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 7.36 | 7.07 | 2.5 | 0.0 | 2.5 | -1 | -1 |
| Kyle Farnsworth | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1.0 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 18.00 | 15.40 | 18.0 | 0.0 | 9.0 | -2 | -1 |
| Sidney Ponson | 2 | 0 | 1 | 11.0 | 12 | 7 | 7 | 1 | 5 | 2 | 0 | 5.73 | 5.67 | 1.6 | 4.1 | 0.8 | -2 | -2 |
| Mike Mussina | 1 | 0 | 1 | 5.0 | 8 | 6 | 6 | 2 | 1 | 4 | 0 | 10.80 | 8.04 | 7.2 | 1.8 | 3.6 | -4 | -2 |
| David Robertson | 2 | 0 | 0 | 2.3 | 5 | 6 | 6 | 2 | 3 | 3 | 0 | 23.14 | 17.00 | 11.6 | 11.6 | 7.7 | -5 | -3 |
| Andy Pettitte | 1 | 0 | 1 | 5.3 | 11 | 9 | 9 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 0 | 15.19 | 8.86 | 6.8 | 5.1 | 3.4 | -7 | -3 |
| Total | 21 | 1 | 5 | 53 | 72 | 45 | 44 | 11 | 18 | 33 | 2 | 7.47 | 5.85 | 5.6 | 3.1 | 1.9 | -20 | -14 |
FIP: Fielding independent pitching ERA
RSAA: Runs saved above average
FRSAA: RSAA using FIP
There's Joba, Veras and then a bunch of suck.
| Player | Team | Lg | Pos | G | INN | Ch | PM | ZR | Avg PM | Diff | RS |
| Cabrera, Melky | NYY | AL | C | 5 | 45 | 14 | 13 | .929 | 12 | 1 | 1 |
| Jeter, Derek | NYY | AL | RF | 5 | 40 | 14 | 12 | .857 | 11 | 1 | 0 |
| Betemit, Wilson | NYY | AL | 3B | 1 | 9 | 2 | 2 | 1.000 | 2 | 0 | 0 |
| Betemit, Wilson | NYY | AL | SS | 2 | 5 | 2 | 2 | 1.000 | 2 | 0 | 0 |
| Nady, Xavier | NYY | AL | RF | 1 | 9 | 2 | 2 | 1.000 | 2 | 0 | 0 |
| Christian, Justin | NYY | AL | LF | 1 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1.000 | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| Betemit, Wilson | NYY | AL | 1B | 1 | 9 | 1 | 1 | 1.000 | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| Rodriguez, Alex | NYY | AL | 2B | 4 | 34 | 5 | 4 | .800 | 4 | 0 | 0 |
| Nady, Xavier | NYY | AL | LF | 2 | 18 | 5 | 4 | .800 | 4 | 0 | 0 |
| Damon, Johnny | NYY | AL | CF | 3 | 25 | 9 | 7 | .778 | 7 | 0 | 0 |
| Sexson, Richie | NYY | AL | 1B | 3 | 7 | 1 | 0 | .000 | 1 | -1 | -1 |
| Giambi, Jason | NYY | AL | Pos | 4 | 29 | 6 | 4 | .667 | 5 | -1 | -1 |
| Abreu, Bobby | NYY | AL | LF | 4 | 33 | 23 | 19 | .826 | 20 | -1 | -1 |
| Cano, Robinson | NYY | AL | 1B | 5 | 45 | 20 | 9 | .450 | 16 | -7 | -5 |
| Total | 41 | 310 | 105 | 80 | .762 | 89 | -9 | -7 |
INN: Defensive innings at position
Ch: Fieldable chances
PM: Plays made
ZR: Zone rating (PM / Ch)
Avg PM Plays made by an average defender at the same position
Diff: PM - Avg PM
RS: Runs saved (Diff time run value of a play not made at the position)
And WTF is up with Cano's glove now?
Sunday, July 27, 2008
Top MLB hitters Since the 2008 All Star Break
| Rk | Player | G | AB | Runs | Hits | 2B | 3B | HR | RBI | BB | K | SB | CS | GDP | AVG | OBP | SLG | BR |
| 1 | Ryan J Braun | 9 | 37 | 6 | 16 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 12 | 3 | 5 | 1 | 0 | 0 | .432 | .465 | .973 | 13.1 |
| 2 | Carlos Delgado | 9 | 34 | 7 | 14 | 2 | 0 | 5 | 14 | 7 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 1 | .412 | .523 | .912 | 12.9 |
| 3 | Matt Holliday | 9 | 34 | 10 | 14 | 4 | 0 | 3 | 9 | 6 | 3 | 1 | 0 | 0 | .412 | .512 | .794 | 11.4 |
| 4 | Conor Jackson | 8 | 33 | 10 | 16 | 2 | 1 | 3 | 7 | 4 | 5 | 1 | 0 | 1 | .485 | .541 | .879 | 11.4 |
| 5 | Adam LaRoche | 10 | 37 | 7 | 14 | 3 | 0 | 4 | 8 | 5 | 9 | 0 | 0 | 0 | .378 | .452 | .784 | 10.8 |
| 6 | Brad Hawpe | 9 | 40 | 7 | 17 | 4 | 0 | 3 | 10 | 2 | 11 | 0 | 0 | 0 | .425 | .452 | .750 | 10.7 |
| 7 | David Wright | 9 | 35 | 11 | 13 | 3 | 0 | 2 | 10 | 10 | 5 | 2 | 0 | 0 | .371 | .500 | .629 | 10.7 |
| 8 | Jeff Baker | 8 | 31 | 11 | 15 | 3 | 1 | 2 | 5 | 4 | 6 | 2 | 0 | 2 | .484 | .543 | .839 | 10.6 |
| 9 | Melvin Mora | 10 | 39 | 7 | 15 | 3 | 0 | 4 | 15 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | .385 | .442 | .769 | 10.5 |
| 10 | Robinson Cano | 8 | 35 | 6 | 18 | 3 | 0 | 3 | 10 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 2 | .514 | .528 | .857 | 10.4 |
| 11 | Carlos Quentin | 8 | 29 | 11 | 10 | 1 | 0 | 5 | 8 | 5 | 5 | 0 | 0 | 3 | .345 | .472 | .897 | 9.8 |
| 12 | Alex Rodriguez | 8 | 30 | 8 | 13 | 3 | 0 | 2 | 9 | 5 | 6 | 2 | 0 | 0 | .433 | .514 | .733 | 9.8 |
| 13 | Adrian Gonzalez | 10 | 37 | 6 | 13 | 4 | 0 | 3 | 11 | 5 | 5 | 0 | 0 | 2 | .351 | .429 | .703 | 9.5 |
| 14 | Luke Scott | 10 | 30 | 5 | 10 | 3 | 0 | 4 | 10 | 6 | 7 | 0 | 0 | 1 | .333 | .432 | .833 | 9.4 |
| 15 | Troy Glaus | 10 | 40 | 8 | 12 | 4 | 0 | 3 | 10 | 6 | 9 | 0 | 0 | 0 | .300 | .391 | .625 | 9.1 |
| 16 | Mark Teixeira | 8 | 28 | 8 | 10 | 2 | 0 | 3 | 8 | 8 | 5 | 0 | 0 | 1 | .357 | .500 | .750 | 9.0 |
| 17 | Ken Griffey Jr. | 9 | 33 | 6 | 11 | 4 | 1 | 2 | 6 | 5 | 5 | 0 | 0 | 0 | .333 | .436 | .697 | 8.9 |
| 18 | Jeremy Hermida | 9 | 29 | 7 | 9 | 1 | 0 | 5 | 5 | 3 | 9 | 1 | 0 | 0 | .310 | .394 | .862 | 8.8 |
| 19 | Alexis Rios | 9 | 40 | 7 | 12 | 4 | 0 | 4 | 8 | 1 | 6 | 4 | 1 | 2 | .300 | .310 | .700 | 8.7 |
| 20 | Edwin Encarnacion | 9 | 30 | 7 | 9 | 1 | 0 | 4 | 7 | 7 | 5 | 0 | 0 | 2 | .300 | .447 | .733 | 8.7 |
BR: Batting runs by linear weights(not position-adjusted or compared to average)
And here's how just the Yankees have done since the ASB.
| Player | G | AB | Runs | Hits | 2B | 3B | HR | RBI | BB | K | SB | CS | GDP | AVG | OBP | SLG | BR |
| Robinson Cano | 8 | 35 | 6 | 18 | 3 | 0 | 3 | 10 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 2 | .514 | .528 | .857 | 10.4 |
| Alex Rodriguez | 8 | 30 | 8 | 13 | 3 | 0 | 2 | 9 | 5 | 6 | 2 | 0 | 0 | .433 | .514 | .733 | 9.8 |
| Bobby Abreu | 8 | 32 | 9 | 11 | 3 | 0 | 1 | 7 | 5 | 3 | 1 | 1 | 1 | .344 | .432 | .531 | 6.5 |
| Derek Jeter | 8 | 37 | 7 | 11 | 4 | 0 | 1 | 5 | 3 | 6 | 0 | 0 | 0 | .297 | .350 | .486 | 6.0 |
| Xavier Nady | 8 | 25 | 8 | 10 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 4 | 0 | 1 | 0 | .400 | .464 | .600 | 5.5 |
| Jason Giambi | 6 | 17 | 1 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 4 | 9 | 8 | 0 | 0 | 0 | .235 | .500 | .412 | 4.5 |
| Melky Cabrera | 8 | 33 | 4 | 11 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 1 | 1 | 1 | .333 | .353 | .394 | 3.8 |
| Wilson Betemit | 5 | 9 | 1 | 3 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | .333 | .400 | .444 | 1.5 |
| Justin Christian | 4 | 4 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | .500 | .600 | .750 | 1.3 |
| Richie Sexson | 8 | 7 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 3 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 1 | .143 | .364 | .143 | 0.8 |
| Brett Gardner | 6 | 23 | 2 | 3 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 6 | 0 | 0 | 0 | .130 | .167 | .174 | 0.1 |
| Total | 77 | 252 | 47 | 87 | 20 | 0 | 9 | 43 | 32 | 43 | 5 | 5 | 5 | .307 | .397 | .461 | 50.3 |
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
AL RF sorted by Total Offensive and Defensive Runs Above Average - July 8, 2008
| Player | Tm | Lg | Pos | pBRAA | RSAA | Total |
| Markakis, Nick | BAL | AL | RF | 15 | 3 | 18 |
| Drew, J.D.* | BOS | AL | RF | 20 | -4 | 16 |
| Dye, Jermaine | CHA | AL | RF | 14 | -3 | 11 |
| Ordonez, Magglio | DET | AL | RF | 8 | 3 | 10 |
| Gross, Gabe | TB | AL | RF | 0 | 4 | 4 |
| Hinske, Eric | TB | AL | RF | 6 | -4 | 2 |
| Guerrero, Vladimir | LAA | AL | RF | 4 | -2 | 2 |
| Span, Denard | MIN | AL | RF | 1 | 0 | 2 |
| Rios, Alex | TOR | AL | RF | -4 | 5 | 0 |
| Morse, Mike | SEA | AL | RF | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Murphy, David | TEX | AL | RF | -2 | 2 | 0 |
| Reed, Jeremy | SEA | AL | RF | -1 | 0 | 0 |
| Ruggiano, Justin | TB | AL | RF | 0 | 0 | -1 |
| Moss, Brandon | BOS | AL | RF | -1 | 0 | -1 |
| Choo, Shin-Soo | CLE | AL | RF | 0 | -1 | -1 |
| Wilkerson, Brad | SEA | AL | RF | -3 | 1 | -1 |
| Haynes, Nathan | TB | AL | RF | -4 | 1 | -3 |
| Teahen, Mark | KC | AL | RF | -6 | 3 | -3 |
| Wilkerson, Brad | TOR | AL | RF | -6 | 1 | -5 |
| Gutierrez, Franklin | CLE | AL | RF | -15 | 10 | -5 |
| Buck, Travis | OAK | AL | RF | -9 | 1 | -9 |
| Balentien, Wladimir | SEA | AL | RF | -9 | -2 | -10 |
| Cuddyer, Michael | MIN | AL | RF | -7 | -4 | -11 |
| Abreu, Bobby | NYA | AL | RF | -1 | -15 | -16 |
pBRAA: Position-adjusted batting runs above average using linear weights
RSAA: Defensive runs saved above average
*All Star selection
Remember when people were calling J.D. Drew Nancy? Who's laughing now?
I have no idea what's up with Abreu's zone rating. He's been horrific statistically but he hasn't looked quite that bad to me. Right now, he's the worst RF in the league. For the bargain price of $16 million.
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Revising Projections In-Season
As most of the regular readers and commenters here know, I make extensive use of projections on this blog, but I also try to make it clear that projections are inherently limited. Projections are basically an estimate of the talent of a player at the time they are run, but player talent is not a constant. Injuries, conditioning, adjustments and aging are all factors that can change a player's talent, for better or for worse.So with that in mind, let's look at the projections for the Yankee starters coming into 2008 and compare them to how they've performed to this point. We can also use this to try and figure out what we can expect from the player in question going forward. I'm using Dan Szymborski's in-Season ZiPS projection tool for this, but I've updated the 2008 projections to be an average of five different systems (CHONE, Marcel, PECOTA, ZiPS, and CAIRO).
So here's a look at each of the nine primary starters. BR/650 are non-position adjusted batting runs using linear weights compared to zero, not average. Since we are comparing each player to their expectations I figured it was best to just look the raw batting runs on a rate basis.
| Damon,Johnny | AB | R | H | 2B | 3B | HR | RBI | BB | SO | HP | SB | CS | AVG | OBP | SLG | BR/650 |
| Projection | 521 | 59 | 146 | 27 | 3 | 14 | 65 | 57 | 75 | 3 | 18 | 4 | .280 | .355 | .423 | 87 |
| YTD | 263 | 44 | 86 | 20 | 3 | 6 | 31 | 29 | 35 | 0 | 12 | 5 | .327 | .394 | .494 | 107 |
| Rest of Year | 337 | 44 | 100 | 20 | 2 | 9 | 42 | 37 | 47 | 1 | 13 | 4 | .297 | .370 | .448 | 94 |
| Year End Total | 600 | 88 | 186 | 40 | 5 | 15 | 73 | 66 | 82 | 1 | 25 | 9 | .310 | .380 | .468 | 99 |
Johnny Popup is killing his projections so far. While that's good, it also means he's probably going to regress some. His revised projection for the rest of the year gets boosted by his performance to this point, so a line of .297/.370/.448 is forecast for the rest of the year, and expectations are that Damon will be about 12 runs more valuable at the end of the season than he was originally projected.
| Jeter,Derek | AB | R | H | 2B | 3B | HR | RBI | BB | SO | HP | SB | CS | AVG | OBP | SLG | BR/650 |
| Projection | 593 | 66 | 182 | 32 | 3 | 13 | 74 | 60 | 100 | 10 | 16 | 5 | .307 | .381 | .438 | 94 |
| YTD | 261 | 36 | 71 | 9 | 3 | 4 | 32 | 16 | 30 | 6 | 4 | 1 | .272 | .329 | .375 | 71 |
| Rest of Year | 335 | 40 | 99 | 16 | 2 | 7 | 41 | 30 | 51 | 6 | 8 | 2 | .297 | .366 | .420 | 88 |
| Year End Total | 596 | 76 | 170 | 25 | 5 | 11 | 73 | 46 | 81 | 12 | 12 | 3 | .286 | .350 | .401 | 80 |
Robinson Cano and Melky Cabrera are rightfully getting a lot of the grief for the poor offense the Yankees have shown so far, but Derek Jeter is also hitting poorly compared to expectations. Over a full season, Jeter would be 23 batting runs worse than projected if he continues at his current pace. The good news is we should expect a slight bounceback, but overall Jeter looks to be 14 runs worse than expected entering 2008.
| Abreu,Bobby | AB | R | H | 2B | 3B | HR | RBI | BB | SO | HP | SB | CS | AVG | OBP | SLG | BR/650 |
| Projection | 530 | 79 | 147 | 33 | 2 | 16 | 88 | 90 | 114 | 4 | 22 | 6 | .277 | .386 | .439 | 97 |
| YTD | 269 | 37 | 76 | 16 | 3 | 8 | 43 | 26 | 55 | 0 | 6 | 3 | .283 | .346 | .454 | 89 |
| Rest of Year | 345 | 50 | 96 | 21 | 2 | 10 | 56 | 50 | 73 | 1 | 12 | 4 | .279 | .372 | .439 | 93 |
| Year End Total | 614 | 87 | 172 | 37 | 5 | 18 | 99 | 76 | 128 | 1 | 18 | 7 | .280 | .361 | .445 | 91 |
Bobby Abreu's slugging better than expected but his walk rate has dropped quite a bit. In theory his walk rate should go up a bit and his SLG should go down a bit over the rest of the year, but he should be a little bit more valuable than he's been to this point, although overall down from expectations (by around 6 runs).
| Rodriguez,Alex | AB | R | H | 2B | 3B | HR | RBI | BB | SO | HP | SB | CS | AVG | OBP | SLG | BR/650 |
| Projection | 564 | 114 | 169 | 28 | 1 | 41 | 127 | 89 | 126 | 13 | 18 | 4 | .300 | .407 | .574 | 123 |
| YTD | 189 | 37 | 62 | 16 | 0 | 13 | 38 | 24 | 38 | 4 | 6 | 1 | .328 | .415 | .619 | 134 |
| Rest of Year | 339 | 68 | 104 | 20 | 0 | 24 | 75 | 51 | 74 | 8 | 12 | 2 | .306 | .409 | .578 | 125 |
| Year End Total | 528 | 105 | 166 | 36 | 0 | 37 | 113 | 75 | 112 | 12 | 18 | 3 | .314 | .411 | .593 | 128 |
Alex Rodriguez can play ball. He was projected to be very good, and on a rate basis he's exceeding that. The missed time with his quad strain will end up hurting his counting stats, but on a rate basis he came into 2008 expected to be worth about 123 BR/650 PA and is in a good position to be better than that.
| Matsui,Hideki | AB | R | H | 2B | 3B | HR | RBI | BB | SO | HP | SB | CS | AVG | OBP | SLG | BR/650 |
| Projection | 483 | 78 | 139 | 28 | 3 | 20 | 87 | 61 | 67 | 3 | 3 | 2 | .287 | .370 | .477 | 97 |
| YTD | 240 | 36 | 77 | 13 | 0 | 7 | 34 | 30 | 28 | 3 | 0 | 0 | .321 | .403 | .462 | 101 |
| Rest of Year | 308 | 48 | 92 | 17 | 1 | 11 | 51 | 38 | 40 | 2 | 1 | 1 | .298 | .379 | .468 | 97 |
| Year End Total | 548 | 84 | 169 | 30 | 1 | 18 | 85 | 68 | 68 | 5 | 1 | 1 | .308 | .390 | .466 | 99 |
Hideki Matsui is a pretty consistent performer when you look at his full seasons performances, although he's pretty streaky in-season. He's traded some power for average this year, but the net result looks to make him about as valuable as he was projected to be. Taking him out of LF most of the time also helps by preventing his negative defensive impact.
| Giambi,Jason | AB | R | H | 2B | 3B | HR | RBI | BB | SO | HP | SB | CS | AVG | OBP | SLG | BR/650 |
| Projection | 321 | 56 | 79 | 13 | 0 | 20 | 62 | 65 | 81 | 10 | 1 | 0 | .245 | .389 | .474 | 101 |
| YTD | 190 | 37 | 51 | 11 | 0 | 17 | 40 | 35 | 33 | 10 | 1 | 1 | .268 | .409 | .595 | 124 |
| Rest of Year | 292 | 53 | 75 | 13 | 0 | 22 | 58 | 57 | 64 | 12 | 1 | 0 | .255 | .397 | .525 | 111 |
| Year End Total | 482 | 90 | 126 | 24 | 0 | 39 | 98 | 92 | 97 | 22 | 2 | 1 | .260 | .401 | .552 | 116 |
I've been writing quite a bit about Giambi and his resurgence so there's not much need to go into more detail here. He should be expected to fall off some, but his YTD performance boosts our expectations for the rest of the year, from the .245/.389/.474 he was projected to hit entering to 2008 to .255/.397/.525. Add that to what he's already done and he's looking to be about 15 runs better on a rate basis than expected.
| Posada,Jorge | AB | R | H | 2B | 3B | HR | RBI | BB | SO | HP | SB | CS | AVG | OBP | SLG | BR/650 |
| Projection | 469 | 70 | 134 | 29 | 1 | 18 | 78 | 67 | 94 | 6 | 2 | 1 | .286 | .382 | .469 | 99 |
| YTD | 89 | 12 | 29 | 7 | 1 | 3 | 17 | 12 | 16 | 0 | 0 | 0 | .326 | .406 | .528 | 113 |
| Rest of Year | 285 | 42 | 84 | 18 | 1 | 10 | 48 | 41 | 56 | 3 | 1 | 0 | .294 | .386 | .477 | 101 |
| Year End Total | 374 | 54 | 113 | 25 | 2 | 13 | 65 | 53 | 72 | 3 | 1 | 0 | .301 | .391 | .489 | 104 |
Posada's another player who is hitting better than expected, but he's missed so much time that it's tough to say if it's a small sample size fluke or the continuation of a possible change in approach that led to him having a career year in 2007. My guess is the truth is in the middle, and we should probably expect the projected falloff, which still makes him one of the top offensive catchers in baseball. His overall value will be hurt by significant missed time but hopefully he can stay healthy for the rest of the year.
| Cano,Robinson | AB | R | H | 2B | 3B | HR | RBI | BB | SO | HP | SB | CS | AVG | OBP | SLG | BR/650 |
| Projection | 561 | 77 | 173 | 38 | 4 | 17 | 86 | 32 | 74 | 5 | 4 | 3 | .308 | .350 | .482 | 94 |
| YTD | 261 | 28 | 60 | 14 | 0 | 4 | 24 | 14 | 24 | 3 | 1 | 3 | .230 | .277 | .330 | 51 |
| Rest of Year | 335 | 43 | 95 | 22 | 2 | 8 | 45 | 19 | 40 | 3 | 2 | 2 | .283 | .327 | .436 | 82 |
| Year End Total | 596 | 71 | 155 | 36 | 2 | 12 | 69 | 33 | 64 | 6 | 3 | 5 | .260 | .305 | .389 | 68 |
Robinson Cano makes me cry. I know he's better than he's played this year, but I had high hopes for a breakout this season. Instead, he's gotten worse and projects to be close to three wins worse offensively. He's improved defensively to the point where he may get a win of value back (projected to be +5 defensively, on pace to be around +13), but that's still a major disappointment for one of the few young Yankee position players. We all know he has the talent to blow away that going forward projection, but at this point it's going to be tough to salvage his 2008 numbers.
| Cabrera,Melky | AB | R | H | 2B | 3B | HR | RBI | BB | SO | HP | SB | CS | AVG | OBP | SLG | BR/650 |
| Projection | 502 | 59 | 141 | 25 | 5 | 9 | 65 | 47 | 65 | 3 | 12 | 4 | .282 | .348 | .406 | 81 |
| YTD | 240 | 24 | 61 | 8 | 0 | 7 | 31 | 21 | 34 | 1 | 3 | 1 | .254 | .317 | .375 | 69 |
| Rest of Year | 308 | 34 | 84 | 14 | 2 | 6 | 40 | 29 | 41 | 2 | 6 | 2 | .272 | .339 | .393 | 77 |
| Year End Total | 548 | 58 | 145 | 22 | 2 | 13 | 71 | 50 | 75 | 3 | 9 | 3 | .264 | .329 | .385 | 74 |
If Melky Cabrera is your worst hitter, you've got a pretty good team. He's not a good hitter, but he's still pretty young and his defense is solid in center. He's shown flashes of offensive adequacy at times but his droughts tend to be too long for me to expect much more than a league average upside. That's really not that bad.
So let's see, we have Damon, Rodriguez, Giambi and Posada playing better than expected. We have Jeter, Cano, and Melky underperforming. Then we have Abreu and Matsui doing about what we'd expect.
Update: Yankees sign Sidney Ponson. I'd thank yankeemonkey for the link, but this is not the type of news worthy of a thanks.
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Yankee Defense by Zone Rating through May 18, 2008
| Player | Pos | G | INN | PO | A | E | DP | Ch | ZR | Avg ZR | PM | AvgPM | Diff | RS | RS/162 |
| Giambi, Jason | 1B | 31 | 268.2 | 296 | 13 | 2 | 26 | 59 | .814 | .867 | 48 | 51 | -3 | -3 | -14 |
| Duncan, Shelley | 1B | 8 | 63 | 59 | 3 | 1 | 5 | 8 | 1.000 | .867 | 8 | 7 | 1 | 1 | 19 |
| Ensberg, Morgan | 1B | 6 | 34 | 38 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 4 | 1.000 | .867 | 4 | 3 | 1 | 0 | 18 |
| Betemit, Wilson | 1B | 2 | 11 | 12 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 1.000 | .867 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 28 |
| Posada, Jorge | 1B | 1 | 8 | 7 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 3 | .667 | .867 | 2 | 3 | -1 | 0 | -86 |
| Damon, Johnny | 1B | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | .000 | .867 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Cano, Robinson | 2B | 43 | 364.2 | 86 | 140 | 4 | 32 | 151 | .841 | .829 | 127 | 125 | 2 | 1 | 5 |
| Gonzalez, Alberto | 2B | 3 | 21 | 3 | 6 | 0 | 1 | 9 | .778 | .829 | 7 | 7 | 0 | 0 | -24 |
| Rodriguez, Alex | 3B | 21 | 178 | 15 | 47 | 2 | 6 | 56 | .893 | .800 | 50 | 45 | 5 | 4 | 34 |
| Ensberg, Morgan | 3B | 17 | 124 | 8 | 30 | 1 | 2 | 45 | .689 | .800 | 31 | 36 | -5 | -4 | -47 |
| Gonzalez, Alberto | 3B | 10 | 53.2 | 5 | 11 | 1 | 2 | 14 | .857 | .800 | 12 | 11 | 1 | 1 | 17 |
| Betemit, Wilson | 3B | 5 | 30 | 3 | 9 | 1 | 2 | 15 | .667 | .800 | 10 | 12 | -2 | -2 | -77 |
| Cabrera, Melky | CF | 42 | 352.2 | 98 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 107 | .907 | .901 | 97 | 96 | 1 | 0 | 2 |
| Damon, Johnny | CF | 4 | 33 | 5 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 7 | .714 | .901 | 5 | 6 | -1 | -1 | -48 |
| Damon, Johnny | LF | 33 | 272.1 | 60 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 65 | .892 | .846 | 58 | 55 | 3 | 2 | 13 |
| Matsui, Hideki | LF | 14 | 113.1 | 27 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 36 | .694 | .846 | 25 | 30 | -5 | -5 | -58 |
| Abreu, Bobby | RF | 42 | 353.2 | 77 | 4 | 1 | 1 | 94 | .830 | .867 | 78 | 81 | -3 | -3 | -12 |
| Matsui, Hideki | RF | 3 | 18 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 1.000 | .867 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 18 |
| Duncan, Shelley | RF | 3 | 14 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 1.000 | .867 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 23 |
| Jeter, Derek | SS | 38 | 328.2 | 45 | 95 | 4 | 19 | 113 | .796 | .837 | 90 | 95 | -5 | -3 | -15 |
| Gonzalez, Alberto | SS | 5 | 41 | 10 | 14 | 0 | 2 | 12 | 1.000 | .837 | 12 | 10 | 2 | 1 | 52 |
| Betemit, Wilson | SS | 3 | 16 | 2 | 6 | 0 | 1 | 6 | .833 | .837 | 5 | 5 | 0 | 0 | -2 |
Pos: Position
G: Games
INN: Defensive Innings at Position
PO: Putouts
A: Assists
E: Errors
DP: Double Plays
Ch: Playable Chances
ZR: Zone Rating (PM/Ch)
Avg ZR: ZR by average defender at the same position and in the same league
PM: Plays Made
AvgPM: Estimated Plays Made over the same # of chances by an average defender
Diff: Difference between PM and AvgPM
RS: Runs Saved
RS/162: Runs Saved pro-rated to 162 games
Friday, May 9, 2008
SportingNews.com: Cabrera and Cano are the Yankees’ future
If the Yankees have a battery, it’s a twin job—Cabrera and Cano, two guys born and raised just miles apart in the Dominican Republic who have become the best of friends in their short big league stints. Cano was only 22 when he was called up from the minors early in the 2005 season, but Cabrera was even younger, 20, when he was summoned later in the year. Cano, always an effervescent extrovert, immediately took the shy Cabrera under his wing. They’re not related, but the two call each other “primo,” Spanish for cousin. “Ever since I came up,” Cabrera says, “he’s been there, helping me. He’s like my brother.”
If you’re looking for something to read at work, here’s an interesting article about Cano and Cabrera by Sean Deveney at SportingNews.
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Winning Ugly
It wasn’t pretty, but the Yankees managed to take the last game of their four game set with Cleveland last night, 5-2. Mike Mussina pitched well although he was only able to last through five innings. I’m pretty happy with how Moose is pitching this year, although I have to be honest that I don’t know how he’s doing it.
The Yankees didn’t get a hit until the sixth inning, then came the weakest rally ever.
Yankees sixth. Cabrera infield single to third. Jeter infield single to third, Cabrera to second. Abreu singled to left, Cabrera to third, Jeter to second. Rodriguez was hit by a pitch, Cabrera scored, Jeter to third, Abreu to second. Giambi grounded out, first baseman Garko unassisted, Jeter scored, Abreu to third, Rodriguez to second. Matsui grounded out, first baseman Garko unassisted, Abreu scored, Rodriguez to third. Lewis pitching. Ensberg infield single to third, Rodriguez scored. Cano grounded out, pitcher Lewis to second baseman Carroll to first baseman Garko.
That turned out to be enough, as the Yankee pen pitched four scoreless to back up Moose and the Yankee offense added an insurance run in the 8th for the final margin of victory.
At this point, let’s look back at the April Expectations post. Using log5 and the projected winning percentages of the Yankees and their opponents, we see that at this point in the season we should have expected the Yankees to be 15.4 - 11.6. They’re 14-13 instead, so they underperformed by about 1.4 wins. All things considered with injuries and individual players disappointing, that’s not too bad in my opinon.
Alex Rodriguez looks to be out for at least the next two games after re-aggravating his quad injury.
Yanks finally come home after playing more April road games than any team in baseball history to take on the Detroit Tigers, who started out 0-7 but have gone 11-8 since.
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Grand Bobby, Just Grand
After 20 games, the Yankees had yet to hit any homers besides 15 solo shots and 5 two-run shots. This was a big part of the team’s offensive underperformance to this point. That changed in last night’s 9-5 victory over the Chicago White Sox, as Bobby Abreu hit an opposite field grand slam with two outs in the top of the seventh to turn a 3-2 deficit into a 6-4 lead. Johnny Damon added a three run HR in the ninth to give the Yankees a 9-4.
For all the clamoring in some places about releasing Damon or at least benching him, he’s now hitting .243/.357/.471 which is an OPS+ of 123.
Chien-Ming Wang didn’t pitch very well but got through six innings and allowed just three runs. His command was all over the place and he gave up 7 line drives but all’s well that ends well.
It was a nice win to start off another long stretch on the road. We’ll see if Mike Mussina and his power changeup can continue the streak tonight against Javy Vazquez, who’s pitching very well so far this season.
Monday, April 21, 2008
April 21 - Yankee Offense Projections vs. Actuals
So the team that I projected to score around 930 runs this year is on pace to score 689, which would rank ninth in the AL if things held up. Here's a look at each player's contributions to that.| Player | pAVG | pOBP | pSLG | pBR | aAVG | aOBP | aSLG | aBR | Brdiff |
| Jose Molina | .243 | .280 | .360 | 3 | .333 | .333 | .528 | 6 | 3 |
| Chad Moeller | .225 | .299 | .348 | 2 | .350 | .435 | .600 | 5 | 3 |
| Hideki Matsui | .287 | .367 | .477 | 11 | .323 | .405 | .523 | 13 | 2 |
| Melky Cabrera | .282 | .344 | .406 | 8 | .281 | .353 | .456 | 10 | 1 |
| Alberto Gonzalez | .253 | .301 | .348 | 2 | .333 | .400 | .467 | 3 | 1 |
| Morgan Ensberg | .248 | .365 | .446 | 3 | .333 | .333 | .500 | 3 | 0 |
| Shelley Duncan | .243 | .311 | .453 | 1 | .200 | .200 | .200 | 0 | -1 |
| Johnny Damon | .280 | .353 | .423 | 11 | .215 | .333 | .400 | 10 | -1 |
| Bobby Abreu | .277 | .383 | .439 | 12 | .306 | .367 | .458 | 11 | -1 |
| Alex Rodriguez | .300 | .406 | .574 | 16 | .308 | .357 | .551 | 14 | -1 |
| Wilson Betemit | .258 | .333 | .445 | 2 | .154 | .214 | .154 | 0 | -2 |
| Derek Jeter | .307 | .379 | .438 | 8 | .309 | .339 | .418 | 7 | -2 |
| Jorge Posada | .286 | .380 | .469 | 7 | .261 | .306 | .391 | 5 | -2 |
| Jason Giambi | .245 | .387 | .474 | 9 | .109 | .288 | .283 | 5 | -4 |
| Robinson Cano | .308 | .348 | .482 | 12 | .169 | .200 | .234 | 2 | -9 |
| Total | .280 | .362 | .453 | 107 | .265 | .331 | .425 | 93 | -13 |
pAVG: Projected batting average
pOBP: Projected on base percentage
pSLG: Projected slugging average
pBR: Projected batting runs (pro-rated to actual playing time, not position-adjusted)
aAVG: Actual batting average
aOBP: Actual on base percentage
aSLG: Actual slugging average
aBR: Actual batting runs (pro-rated to actual playing time, not position-adjusted)
Brdiff: Difference between projected batting runs and actual, pro-rated to actual playing time
There are some rounding issues in the table above so if things don't seem to add up here, trust me, they actually do in Excel. The batting runs are adjusted for actual playing time so it's a direct comparison, but no position-adjusment is included. The Yankee offense theoretically should have scored 13 fewer runs than you'd expect given the allocation of playing time and the players' projections on offense. They're actually even worse than that at 85 runs, thanks to poor hitting in the clutch primarily.
God bless Molino and Moello, or they'd be six runs worse than that. Add in the pitching staff, which has the fifth worst RA in the AL at 4.82 and has saved five fewer runs than average, and you have a 23 run deficit, which is about 2.3 wins. Not coincidentally, they sit 10-10 while log5 says they should have expected to be 11.6 - 8.4 to this point.
For all the crap Giambi's been getting, Cano is the single biggest problem on this team. He's been so bad offensively that even with the +1 defense he's played so far, his overall "value" to the team is -8 runs. Let's hope for a heat wave soon.
Friday, April 11, 2008
Worst Offense Ever Takes a Night Off
In a shocking turn of events, the Yankees managed to score a decent number of runs last night, beating the Royals 6-1. Granted, two of the runs came in the ninth inning against Hideo Nomo, who I could have sworn has been retired for a few years, but it was still good to see. Jorge Posada's HR was especially nice considering the way he has started the season off with his injury and ineffectiveness.More important than the offensive outburst was Andy Pettitte's good pitching. Pettitte went six and two-thirds innings and allowed just one run and five hits. The Yankees really need Pettitte and Wang to do what they are projected to do this season if they want to have a shot at the postseason. it was still a save situation when Pettitte was pulled so Joba Chamberlain pitched the end of the seventh as well as the eighth. I like seeing Joba pitch more than one inning because I still think he should end up in the rotation. Mariano Rivera came in to pitch the ninth despite the Yankees adding a couple of runs, which was fine, he hadn't pitched for a few days and was already warmed up anyway. One thing that I noticed last night is Mo was throwing a lot of two-seamers. I'd like to see him continue to do that.
Now comes three games against some .500 team. Your pitching matchups for the weekend:
Friday April 11: C. Wang (2-0,1.38) vs. C. Buchholz (0-1,5.40)
Saturday April 12: M. Mussina (1-1,3.09) vs. J. Beckett (0-1,9.64)
Sunday April 13: P. Hughes (0-1,5.00) vs. D. Matsuzaka (2-0,1.47)
I hate these series, mainly because of the ridiculous hype certain media outlets try to give these games. It's an interesting set of matchups. Wang makes his first road start of the year and the Yankees haven't seen Buccholz before, so hopefully he doesn't no-hit them. Beckett's still working his way back to full strength but Moose is going to have to try to trick one of the better lineups in baseball, and who knows what either Hughes or Matsuzaka will bring on Sunday night?
Since I don't know how long this will last, here's an early meaningless and small sample size look at how the Yankee defense has performed according to zone rating so far this season.
| Player | Pos | G | INN | Ch | ZR | PM | AvgPM | Diff | RS | RS/162 |
| Giambi, Jason | 1B | 6 | 43 | 11 | .818 | 9 | 10 | -1 | 0 | -15 |
| Ensberg, Morgan | 1B | 3 | 17 | 3 | 1.000 | 3 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 26 |
| Betemit, Wilson | 1B | 2 | 11 | 2 | 1.000 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 27 |
| Duncan, Shelley | 1B | 1 | 9 | 0 | .000 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Cano, Robinson | 2B | 10 | 88 | 43 | .837 | 36 | 36 | 0 | 0 | 6 |
| Rodriguez, Alex | 3B | 10 | 87 | 29 | .931 | 27 | 23 | 4 | 3 | 50 |
| Betemit, Wilson | 3B | 1 | 1 | 0 | .000 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Molina, Jose | C | 7 | 55 | 1 | 1.000 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 4 |
| Posada, Jorge | C | 4 | 33 | 1 | 1.000 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 7 |
| Cabrera, Melky | CF | 8 | 70 | 21 | .810 | 17 | 19 | -2 | -2 | -31 |
| Damon, Johnny | CF | 2 | 18 | 3 | 1.000 | 3 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 21 |
| Damon, Johnny | LF | 6 | 53 | 9 | 1.000 | 9 | 8 | 1 | 1 | 28 |
| Matsui, Hideki | LF | 3 | 27 | 7 | .571 | 4 | 6 | -2 | -2 | -90 |
| Abreu, Bobby | RF | 8 | 70 | 10 | .900 | 9 | 9 | 0 | 0 | 2 |
| Matsui, Hideki | RF | 1 | 9 | 1 | 1.000 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 15 |
| Duncan, Shelley | RF | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1.000 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 137 |
| Jeter, Derek | SS | 7 | 56 | 26 | .731 | 19 | 22 | -3 | -2 | -54 |
| Gonzalez, Alberto | SS | 2 | 17 | 5 | 1.000 | 5 | 4 | 1 | 1 | 52 |
| Betemit, Wilson | SS | 2 | 15 | 5 | 1.000 | 5 | 4 | 1 | 1 | 58 |
| Total | 84 | 680 | 178 | .854 | 152 | 150 | 2 | 1 | 21 |
INN: Defensive Innings at Position
Ch: Playable Chances
ZR: Zone Rating (PM/Ch)
PM: Plays Made
AvgPM: Estimated Plays Made over the same # of chances by an average defender
Diff: Difference between PM and AvgPM
RS: Runs Saved
RS/162: Runs Saved pro-rated to 162 games
Melky's had some tough chances so I wouldn't pay much heed to his numbers yet, but I think Hideki Matsui needs to be kept out of the outfield whenever possible. For those of you thinking Alex Rodriguez is playing Gold Glove caliber defense this year, you're right.
In bad news down on the farm, Alan Horne suffered some kind of injury in his start last night and will have an MRI today. Let's hope for good news there.
Thursday, April 10, 2008
Oh Where, Oh Where Has My Little Offense Gone?
While my head knows that nine games is still way too small of a sample size to draw undue distinctions from, it sure didn’t feel like it while I watched the again punchless Yankees fall to Kansas City 4-0 last night. Granted, sometimes you run into a Roy Halladay. Sometimes you run into A.J. Burnett. Sometimes you run into Dustin McGowan. Sometimes you run into Andy Sonnastine. Sometimes you run into Edwin Jackson. Sometimes you run into James Shields. Sometimes you run into Jason Hammel. Sometimes you run into Brian Bannister. Sometimes you run into Zach Greinke. But come on, ALL NINE OF THEM?
With a forecast of rain all night, Joe Girardi pulled Ian Kennedy from starting the game and went with Brian Bruney to start the game. The reason given was so that they wouldn’t start the game with Kennedy and then lose him if the rain stopped the game. Considering the grief Girardi got for bringing back Josh Johnson from a long rain delay when he managed the Marlins in 2006 and Johnson’s subsequent breakdown which may or not have been related, this was pretty interesting out of the box thinking. For the most part it seemed to work well, although it likely cost the Yankees the use of Bruney and Farnsworth in today’s game. That’s probably bad in the former case but not necessarily so in the latter case. Kennedy ended up pitching the 6th through 8th, starting off poorly but finishing off pretty well.
The pitching didn’t really matter because the offense continued to stink. Here’s how the Yankees rate by position-adjusted batting runs above average using linear weights to this point.
Matsui : 2
Abreu : 1.5
Rodriguez : 0.7
Molina : 0.3
Gonzalez : 0.2
Cabrera : 0.1
Ensberg : -0.5
Damon : -0.5
Duncan : -0.5
Betemit : -1
Jeter : -1.5
Posada : -1.9
Giambi : -2.4
Cano : -4.4
How is Damon not worse? Hey Robinson, feel free to stop sucking. How bad has Cano been? Here are the five worst offensive players so far in the AL this season by position-adjusted BRAA:
Crawford : -4.3
Johjima : -4.3
Ortiz : -4.3
Cano : -4.4
Polanco : -4.6
Only Placido Polanco has been worse. He’s in good company with David Ortiz and Carl Crawford at least.
Like I said, it’s still too early to panic, but it’s probably not too early to get irritated or annoyed.
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
Kansas City Here We Come
Behind Bobby Abreu and Mike Mussina the Yankees took the final game of their series with Tampa last night, 6-1., salvaging a series split after losing the first two games. Moose was brilliant, allowing just two hits and one run over six innings. Tampa doesn’t look to have a great offense this season, but they are probably middle of the pack and have some dangerous players in the lineup, so this was a very encouraging outing. Moose’s fastball sat around 85 most of the night, but he had a great slow curve going that helped him keep the Rays off balance. I feel a little more comfortable that Mussina will be serviceable after this game than I did after his first start.
Abreu started the offense off with a two-run HR in the first inning, one of his three hits and a walk on the night. Hideki Matsui also chipped in a couple of hits.
The news wasn’t all good as Derek Jeter left the game with a strained quad and is being listed as day-to-day. While losing Jeter hurts, it shouldn’t be for too long. Also, having Wilson Betemit to replace him instead of my beloved Miguel Cairo makes it sting a little less. With Jason Giambi seemingly unavailable this looks like Morgan Ensberg’s chance for some PT. He hasn’t looked good at scooping throws at first although he seems pretty good at fielding batted balls.
LaTroy Hawkins finally pitched a full scoreless inning as a Yankee. I’m willing to give Hawkins a bit of a long leash because he has a long track record of being useful and he seems like a good guy, as well as our experience with Luis Vizcaino last year. It seems like the fans at the Stadium don’t care about that because he’s had the audacity to wear Paul O’Neill’s number. Hopefully he can get himself sorted out.
Next up, a three game set with the Kansas City Royals. They’re 4-2 and in second place in the AL Central.
To hammer home how early it is, here’s how the final AL standings would look if each team played to their PythagenPat record for the rest of the season.
AL East
TOR 121-41
BAL 98-64
TB 94-68
NYA 65-97
BOS 57-105
AL Central
CHA 105-57
KC 101-61
CLE 78-84
MIN 57-105
DET 26-136
AL West
TEX 94-68
OAK 90-72
LAA 84-78
SEA 76-86
Somewhere Steve Phillips is weeping.
Friday, April 4, 2008
Hughes The Man
There was plenty of reason to be happy about the Yankees’ 3-2 victory over Toronto last night, but the biggest reason was a very strong outing by Phil Hughes. Hughes was perfect until the fourth, when the incomparable David Eckstein led off with a double. We get it, he’s scrappy. Enough. Hughes showed me something this inning by striking out Vernon Wells and Frank Thomas with Alex Rios sitting on third after a stolen base and an error with one out.
Hughes gave up another run in the fifth but was great in the sixth, when he was pulled after 87 pitches, 58 of which were strikes. Hughes probably had another inning in him, but if he’s on an innings limit this year, expect this to be the norm. Hughes’s velocity wasn’t particularly impressive, as his fastball sat around 91 most of the game, but it seems that he has something deceptive in his delivery that makes him hard to hit so I’m not overly worried about that.
Billy Traber made his Yankee debut and fanned Lyle Overbay before giving away to the freshly-mulleted Brian Bruney. Bruney got the last two outs in the seventh then handed off to Joba Chamberlain who pitched a scoreless eighth. Mo pitched around a leadoff single in the ninth to nail it down. Of note was a play by Derek Jeter with one out and with Wells on second, where Jeter got to a sharply hit ball by Overbay up the middle for the second out. I don’t think Jeter would have made that play last year, although it looked like he was shading up the middle slightly.
On the offensive side, not a whole hell of a lot happened. Dustin McGowan was tough, throwing mid 90s gas with a tough breaking pitch and holding the Yankees scoreless over the first five innings. McGowan tired in the sixth and the Yankees scored on a wild pitch and a sac fly. Bobby Abreu blooped in the go-ahead and eventual winning run in the 8th and that was that.
Toronto’s front three starters are as good as anyone in baseball’s so I’m not worried about the lack of offense in this series. The Yanks took two of three and played pretty well all around. Next up are the new and improved Rays.
Update: Enjoy this while it lasts.
| Player | TM | LG | Pos | INN | Ch | PM | ZR | Avg ZR | AvgPM | Diff | RS | RS/162 |
| Jeter, Derek | NYY | AL | SS | 27 | 11 | 10 | .909 | .832 | 9 | 1 | 1 | 34 |
Ch: Playable Chances
PM: Plays Made
ZR: Zone Rating (PM/Ch)
Avg ZR: Average Zone Rating for league/position
Avg PM: Avg ZR times Ch
Diff: Difference between PM and AvgPM
RS: Runs Saved
RS/162: Runs Saved pro-rated to 162 games
Update Part Deux: Jonathan noticed that we got a plug from Kat O'Brien at Newsday.com.
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
A Good Start
Well, for at least one more day we can dream of the Yankees going 162-0. The Yankees edged Toronto 3-2 in a well-played game by both teams. Chien-Ming Wang pitched 7 effective innings, although he didn’t seem particularly sharp at times. Roy Halladay matched Wang pitch for pitch and inning for inning and run for run until the seventh, when the Yankees scratched out their third run. Joba Chamberlain and Mariano Rivera finished it off, and the Yankees are tied for first place.
So much attention has been paid to Phil Hughes, Ian Kennedy and Chamberlain, but Wang is probably the key guy in the rotation this year. After his disastrous post-season and poor spring training it was good to see him pitching pretty well.
I’ve written way too much about the Yankee defense during the last few years, surely to the point where a lot of you are sick of reading about it. Melky Cabrera made a couple of fine catches in center field, justifying his zone rating and projection. An OF of Bobby Abreu, Melky and Johnny Damon has a chance to be the best defensive Yankee OF since the late 90s. Even the much-maligned Jason Giambi played a solid defensive game. I’m not expecting either good defense or good health out of Giambi this year, so whatever he can contribute will be a big boost.
In the big picture, it’s just one game, but it’s great to have meaningful baseball back, and it’s even better when it starts out with a win.
Saturday, March 8, 2008
Looking Ahead to 2008 - Position Player Wrapup
So now that I've gone through the position players, it's time to close out what the outlook is on a team level. To do that I've built depth charts on offense and defense which we can use as a rough gauge,Offensively, there's little question that the Yankees are probably the most talented team in baseball. The one question that could impact that is the health of their regulars given their ages. Projections of single players are for the most part objective, but when we try to roll them up into a team-wide performance we will run into subjective issues with playing time, so keep that in mind.
This is my projected lineup for the Yankees this year. I am basing the playing time on their projected playing time with some downward adjustments for potential injuries. I am allocating total playing time based on expected outs by each player, with the assumption that the team will have 27 outs per game minus about 80 outs to account for ninth innings in home victories, so a total of 4294 outs. I didn't subtract more outs than that to account for extra innings.
The projections below are the average of five systems (CHONE, MARCEL, PECOTA, ZiPS and CAIRO). The last column (BR) is batting runs by linear weights. There are no position adjustments or comparisons to average in the batting runs calculated here, since I am looking for a total number.
| Starters | POS | AVG | OBP | SLG | PA | Outs | BR |
| Johnny Damon | LF | .280 | .353 | .423 | 585 | 379 | 78 |
| Derek Jeter | SS | .307 | .379 | .438 | 600 | 373 | 86 |
| Bobby Abreu | RF | .277 | .383 | .439 | 600 | 370 | 89 |
| Alex Rodriguez | 3B | .300 | .406 | .574 | 650 | 386 | 123 |
| Jason Giambi | 1B | .245 | .387 | .474 | 300 | 184 | 46 |
| Jorge Posada | C | .286 | .380 | .469 | 500 | 310 | 76 |
| Hideki Matsui | DH | .287 | .367 | .477 | 500 | 316 | 74 |
| Robinson Cano | 2B | .308 | .348 | .482 | 585 | 381 | 84 |
| Melky Cabrera | CF | .282 | .344 | .406 | 550 | 361 | 68 |
| Starters Total | .289 | .372 | .465 | 4870 | 3060 | 724 |
I can't account for the event of catastrophic injury here, so I tried to spread the injury risk among everyone with the exception of Giambi, who I'm assuming will be restricted to around 300 plate appearances. Outs are just calculated as (1 - OBP) times PA.
Here's how the bench looks.
| Bench | POS | AVG | OBP | SLG | PA | Outs | BR |
| Wilson Betemit | 3B | .258 | .333 | .445 | 350 | 233 | 46 |
| Morgan Ensberg | 1B | .248 | .365 | .446 | 290 | 184 | 40 |
| Jose Molina | C | .243 | .280 | .360 | 250 | 180 | 23 |
| Shelley Duncan | 1B | .243 | .311 | .453 | 250 | 172 | 32 |
| Brett Gardner | OF | .253 | .325 | .327 | 150 | 101 | 15 |
| Alberto Gonzalez | SS | .253 | .301 | .348 | 140 | 98 | 13 |
| Nick Green | UT | .246 | .308 | .397 | 129 | 89 | 14 |
| Jason Lane | OF | .235 | .311 | .414 | 127 | 87 | 15 |
| Chris Woodward | UT | .234 | .294 | .339 | 125 | 88 | 11 |
| Bench Total | .247 | .312 | .404 | 1811 | 1234 | 209 |
I have no idea if any of Jason Lane, Nick Green or Chris Woodward will see any playing time but I figure they will be stashed at Scranton so there's at least some possibility of it. What should be obvious is that the Yankees have two potentially strong bench players in Betemit and Ensberg, who both project well enough to be starters at their respective positions. That helps mitigate any potential injuries in the infield with Betemit's ability to cover any position and with Ensberg presumably able to cover 3B and 1B.
Add it up, and here's what you get.
| Team Total | AVG | OBP | SLG | PA | Outs | BR |
| Starters + Bench | .277 | .355 | .448 | 6681 | 4294 | 933 |
The sigma on a team's runs scored in a season is around 30, so that puts the Yankees in a range of 903-963 runs scored this year on paper using the projections I'm using and the playing time assumptions I'm using.
Looking at baserunning using Lee Panas's bases gained above average, here's how the players that Lee had data for did last year:
| Player | Team | BGAA Hits | BGAA Ground | BGAA Air | BGAA Other | BGAA Total |
| Damon | NYA | 3.7 | 2.3 | 12.3 | 15.3 | 33.6 |
| Rodriguez | NYA | 11.8 | 2.7 | 2.5 | 11.1 | 28.1 |
| Abreu | NYA | 1.1 | 1.2 | 5.7 | 0.7 | 8.7 |
| Jeter | NYA | 9 | -3.6 | 1.3 | -3 | 3.7 |
| Matsui | NYA | 4.5 | 1.5 | -2.3 | -2.8 | 0.9 |
| Cabrera | NYA | 4.9 | 2.6 | -6.9 | -1.4 | -0.8 |
| Cano | NYA | 4.6 | 6 | -5.3 | -8.7 | -3.4 |
| Giambi | NYA | -9.1 | 0.5 | -1 | -0.6 | -10.3 |
| Posada | NYA | -7.5 | -5 | -5.1 | -0.6 | -18.2 |
| Ensberg | NYA | -6.3 | 2.8 | -2.4 | -0.2 | -6.1 |
| 16.7 | 11 | -1.2 | 9.8 | 36.2 |
A team total of 36 would be worth an additional 10 runs, but we should regress that towards average since we only have one year of data. Let's assume the Yankees will be about 5 runs better than average on the bases this year.
So we've got 933 runs at the plate and another 5 on the bases, but unfortunately, we're not quite done yet.
Projecting defense is tricky, but I'm going to take a stab at it anyway. Using zone rating projections and defensive depth charts, here's how that looks.
First up, the expected starters. A full season is about 1450 defensive innings.
| Starters | POS | Inn | Proj CH | Proj ZR | Proj PM | Avg ZR | Avg PM | PMAA | RSAA |
| Jason Giambi | 1B | 500 | 96 | .796 | 77 | .841 | 81 | -4 | -3 |
| Robinson Cano | 2B | 1300 | 479 | .833 | 399 | .823 |