Blog to be Named Later

It’s been a while since I last posted (do people even read or write blogs anymore?), but its tough to watch this past Yankees season and not have some thoughts, so I figured I would jump back into it with a review of the Yankees around the diamond.

With that in mind, let’s start behind the dish.

Coming into the season, New York had reason to be optimistic about their options at catcher. Jose Trevino was coming off an all star season, a gold glove and had just enjoyed his best offensive season since the COVID-shortened 2020 campaign. While he was turning 30, and some regression on offense was surely expected, most were quite comfortable penciling in Trevino for something like 100-120 games as the starting catcher heading into 2023. As expected, Trevino’s bat took a step back in 2023, his glove was still solid, logging (according to Fangraphs 12.9 runs saved in 2023 compared to 29 in 2022 in just over half as many innings.) What torpedoed Trevino’s season was that lack of availability on the field. A wrist injury bothered the catcher from spring training onward, and finally forced him onto the DL for season-ending surgery in July. Some age related decline will hopefully be offset by a rebound from injury next year, and the glove will still make him a solid contributor going into next season.

Backing up Trevino was Kyle Higashioka, and he delivered a pretty similar season in 2023 as he did in 2022. Kyle offers solid pop for a catcher, but not a ton else offensively. He bat has graded out as below average the last 3 season, albeit with some batting-average driven improvement each season. His glove was again solid, and he was a perfectly acceptable backup catcher. In 2023he was pressed into more regular playing time, and while it wasn’t a disaster, he was below replacement level according to bWAR. Fangraphs had him pegged at a more rosy 1.7 WAR…a realistic assessment of somewhere in between seems fair. Kyles’s turning 34 next season, so what you see is what you get here – a solid backup catcher who is stretched in a starting role. The presence of the next two guys likely means that he’ll be a backup for another team next season, but offseason trades could change that outlook.

Ben Rortvedt took over the backup duties when Trevino went down, and his bat left a lot to be desired, while the glove was solid despite some very public hiccups with Gerrit Cole during their games together. Injuries have derailed what the Yankees hoped to be a promising career, and at 26, Ben’s window to develop into much more than a backup catcher is quickly closing. Rortvedt as the backup next season is workable depending on what the Yankees see in Austin Wells after his September audition, but it would be tough to envision breakout from him at this point.

Wells is the wild card here. While the bat was always likely to carry him and provide most of his value at the big league level, questions have lingered around his glove, and whether the bat would still hold up playing first or and outfield corner if he couldn’t stick at catcher. After a relatively slow start in his end-of-season call up, Wells bat seemed to come alive, flashing signs of power as the season wound down. The glove seemed acceptable to the naked eye, but small sample size impacts that view pretty significantly. Statistically, Fangraphs saw his glove as a negative during that limited time, so the questions will remain heading into next season. It is telling that the Yankees gave him significant time behind the plate though, and they seem committed to seeing if he can deliver value from the position. An offense/defense, left/right platoon between him and Trevino would not be the worst risk to take heading into next season considering the needs around the rest of the roster, and you have to believe that the Yankees will give Wells every chance to develop into an everyday offensive weapon given Trevino’s offensive shortcomings.

Thanks for reading, and feel free to comment on anything I’ve missed. Next up we’ll take a look at first base for the Yankees.

So long time, no post.  Just some thoughts that have been going through my head with the lack of baseball, but the promise that it might be coming soon.  The title says it all, and as much as there is plenty of (potential) blame to go around, it seems to me that the Player’s Union has been thoroughly out-maneuvered and has a lot more to lose if an agreement can’t be reached to get games moving again.

Its a repeat of the Millionaires v. Billionaires war from the 1994-95 Strike, but with a twist.  The owner’s have provided a road map to the players and fans to bring baseball back this summer.  It will be without fans, it will be a shortened season, with bastardized divisions, but it will be baseball.  The country desperately wants this to happen, and seem ready to accept it in whatever form possible.  Anything else is just details.

One of those key details is compensation.  The owner’s stand to lose money by staging games without fans, and the players have been asked to share that cost.  To the average person right now, stuck in their home since March watching Korean baseball and E-sports, that seems like an awfully small price to pay.  If the players hold up the plan based on something as ugly as money, they become the bad guys in the story.  The owners are willing to take their lumps, but the players just won’t play ball.

Its not fair to the players, but its how this will play out.  And statements by players like Blake Snell have give the fans obvious targets.  If their argument was that they feared for the health of themselves, their families, and the families of all the staff who would be asked to endanger themselves, it would make perfect sense, and would much more clearly align with the concerns of everyday Americans.

Instead, fans see a guy slotted to make $10 Million, who’s already made more in the few short year’s of his professional career, and who is getting paid to play a game complaining that he’s going to only make a couple of million instead.  That isn’t going to sit well with many people, and if games are not played this year because a compromise can’t be reached, the damage to the sport is going to be deep and lasting.

With Hall of Fame voting going on right now, I’ve spend some time thinking about defense, and how it impacts a players overall value.  Players like Derek Jeter and Gary Sheffield have their overall value significantly impacted by poor defensive performances, while someone like Andruw Jones builds a borderline Hall-of-Fame case from exception performance.

There is no denying that defense plays a part in overall value, and obviously contributes to a team’s success or failure, and therefore can’t be dismissed from an evaluation of the player.

At what point though is this “not fair” to the player.  Derek Jeter remained at shortstop for his entire career, despite poor fielding numbers.  Gary Sheffield and Manny Ramirez spend most of their careers in the outfield, Bernie Williams and Jorge Posada remained at premium defensive positions long after the numbers made it clear that they had lost an edge there.  These decisions, while certainly impacted by the player (directly or indirectly) were ultimately management’s decision.  Joe Torre and Joe Girardi kept running Derek Jeter out to short, and they didn’t have to.

Derek Jeter almost certainly should have been moved off of shortstop years before his career ended – I remember discussing it when Alex Rodriguez first became a free agent that it was a perfect opportunity to sign the superstar, and move Jeter to the OF where his defense would have been less impactful.  Similarly, after Carlos Beltran finished driving the Astros to the playoffs in 2004, I called for signing him and shifting Bernie Williams into a corner or DH slot.

In these, and other cases, the Yankees (for various reasons) did not.  So again, the “fault” for the negative defensive contributions really does need to lie at least partially with the team, not the player.  When it is clear someone can not do a job in the workplace, you do not keep them in the same spot – you either reassign them or replace them.  The Yankees had that option, and chose to maintain the status quo for years.  We can argue whether or not that was the right move, and that Jeter’s production at the plate justified it, or that moving the Captain would have been an unnecessary distraction, or a hundred other issues, but the point remains that Jeter was placed in a role ill-suited for him, and his overall stats suffered accordingly.

Now – Jeter will go into the Hall of Fame with no issue, and most of those who vote for him will either do so with firm knowledge that his bat outplayed his glove (or blind faith to the Gold Gloves he “earned” earlier in his career), so this might seem like a non-issue.  But for someone like Sheffield, he is getting dinged for his defense – taking significantly away from a fantastic offensive profile, simply because his teams were slow to move him down the defensive spectrum (first off of 3rd where he was historically terrible, and eventually out of the outfield.)

Just a thought given the Marlins and Rays inability to consistently draw well and maintain solid teams for more than a few seasons at a time once the guys get expensive.  Move one of the teams (Montreal, Portland, wherever), and make the remaining team a Florida team – splitting games between Miami and Tampa (with a few thrown in in Orlando at the Wide World of Sports Complex maybe?).  This would have worked better before the Marlins secured a brand new stadium I think, but it would certainly be easier to fill each ballpark 35-40 times a season than 81.  Build a new park in the Tampa area, but lower capacity, lower cost than what most brand new parks are, and just work on filling each park for half a season.  As I recall, the Rays actually do pretty well in TV viewership, so its not like the fans aren’t out there – doing something like this might be more cost effective than the current arrangement.  And if you play a couple of games a year in other locations (Disney, maybe a college/spring training park in one of the other cities in the state) it will help build a regional fanbase.

 

Like I said, stupid idea of the day, but would be interesting to see.  If it worked, some other marginal cities might make sense for a split team – Nashville/Memphis, Norfolk/Charlotte, and places like that where they’re border-line MLB towns, and it might push it over the edge.

That game was everything that a fan with no rooting interest in either team could ask for in the playoffs.

Little late for my preseason preview – but we’ll continue our trip around the field with first base this Mother’s Day.  The month’s worth of games already in the books can’t hurt this analysis, so we’ll include them in this post.

Mark Teixeira’s signing before the 2009 season was a big part of the championship run that year, but it has been largely down hill since then.  Seemingly unable to adjust effectively to the increasing prevalence of shifts in today’s game, Teixeira has transformed into a more and more one dimensional player since that year.  Following the 2009 season, Tex boasted a .290 Batting Average.  Since then (and through yesterday) he’s at .241.  In 2009, Mark took advantage of the short porch in right – posting solid power numbers with 33 and 39 home runs.  Since then, injuries have sapped some of that power – costing him both pop and at bats. – including limiting the first baseman to just 15 games in 2013.

What does that mean for the future?  More of he same if April is any indication.  While the 10 home runs Teixeira has blasted coming into play on May 10th are fantastic, and drive a 153 OPS+, they confirm his reliance on the long ball as his primary offensive weapon.  His batting average is in line with last year’s .216.  One other promising sign is an increased walk rate – a little more than 1 walk per 15 PA – up from 1 per 11 last year.  If that proves sustainable, then Teixeira can be an asset even with a batting average in the .215 range (provided the power keeps up as well).

The biggest danger however is a recurrence of injury.  Teixeira is proving unable to stay on the field every day – last year the team was ill-prepared to handle his absences – giving significant time to Kelly Johnson and Brian MCann last year = along with anther 11 starts to Chase Headley, Francisco Cervelli, and Scott Sizemore.  McCann and Carlos Beltran each made their first MLB appearances at first last season – and on the whole the composite performance of first base for the Yankees was underwhelming.

To address that need this season, and provide insurance for both Teixeira and Carlos Beltran in right, the team brought in Garret Jones in the same deal that netted them Nathan Eovaldi.  Jones has been right around league average the last two seasons, so expecting the same over the course of an extended Tex injuring would be reasonable for this season.  Solid play from both Teixeira and fellow back up Chris Young has limited Jone’s at bats, and his batting line is thoroughly unimpressive so far.  April’s results notwithstanding, somewhere around league average is probably still likely for Jones if he were getting consistent at bats – but the team would do well to leave Jones on a short leash given some of their other options.

The most attractive of those two options are at very different portions of the career spectrum.  Alex Rodriguez has started hot and stayed strong so far this year – while the batting average leaves something to be desired, Alex should be able to replicate Teixeira’s expected production if Mark were to end up on the DL.  His defense in his first start at first could best be described as stiff – but with just 9 innings there during games that matter, drawing any conclusions would be fool-hearty.  Alex’s best role with the team is DH – but if he can handle first it would also allow Beltran the occasional DH start – sure to keep the outfielder healthier and hopefully reignite his bat.

Longer term , there is optimism at first base in the person of Greg Bird.  Bird has hit at every level of the minors since being drafted in 2011 (besides a rough 4 games to start his career that here) – and added a strong Arizona Fall League performance at the end of last season.  He opened eyes this spring as well – but has scuffled so far his year in a return to AA Trenton.  It is clear he could use some more seasoning in the minors, but a few could months could have in the picture late in the year, and knocking on the door of the big leagues in 2016.

All in all, the Yankees have reason for cautious optimism at first base.  Teixeira’s power surge, plus realistic backup options in Jones and Rodriguez paint a rosier picture than last year.  While expecting vintage 2009 Tex this season and beyond would be unrealistic, it should be safe to predict average at worst production from the spot this year, with the potential for plus production likely if Tex can sustain his walk rate and maintain strong power numbers.