Archive for Musings
Yanks in need of a shake-up (that isn’t coming)
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(Mike Stobe/Getty Images)
I can’t remember the last time the Yankees played this poorly for an extended period of time like they are right now. It wasn’t 2008, so you have to go back to the early-1990s and I don’t want to think back that far. Yes we’ve been spoiled and yes, the Yankees have been terrible for the last three weeks or so. They’ve scored two or fewer runs in five of their last seven and 11 of their last 21 games. Impossible to win like that.
Back in the day, George Steinbrenner probably would have fired someone by now. Or at least I think he would have, that’s what everyone else is telling me. I wasn’t really old enough to appreciate his heyday. Anyway, the Yankees need some kind of shake-up right now, but I don’t mean firing Joe Girardi or a coach or anything like that. More like … drop Tony Womack and Jaret Wright and recall Robinson Cano and Chien-Ming Wang. That type of thing. You know, inject a little youth into a team that seems to be sleepwalking for 27 outs a night.
Unfortunately, the Yankees can’t make a move like that. The current roster is completely inflexible, with big contracts all of the place and nowhere to move these guys. I mean, I suppose they could bench Russell Martin and insert Frankie Cervelli into the lineup, but that’s not exactly what I have in mind when I talk about a shake-up. Brandon Laird isn’t doing to replace Alex Rodriguez, Colin Curtis isn’t going to replace Nick Swisher, there’s nothing to do. The Yankees made their bed with these guys and now they have to sleep in it.
Pretty much the only move the club can realistically make right now is dumping Freddy Garcia, but no one cares about the 12th man on the staff. Adding a new long reliever isn’t exactly the kind the move that will light a fire under the team. That’s not a shake-up, that’s a pretty typical roster move. Other than getting Brett Gardner back at some point in the next two weeks (hopefully), there’s no change coming and that’s a problem. The guys already in the clubhouse are responsible for turning things around and that’s not easy to do.
The Yankees fell into last place last night and are lucky no one is running away with the AL East. They’re still only five back in the loss column with 120 games to play, many of them intra-division games. We’ve seen them go on huge second half runs before and after 42 games, we have to hope they have another one in them. Different doesn’t always mean better, but a roster shake-up of some kind is something we’d probably see when things got this bad. There just aren’t any moves that can be made, so instead we get Mark Teixeira batting seventh. That’s the only shake-up they can make because the roster is so inflexible.
How do you consume your baseball?
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Every season it seems to amaze me more and more. Even though my day job involves technology, particularly mobile technology, I’m still in awe of all the ways I can follow baseball at any time. This isn’t just knowing how the Yankees did and who did what for them. It’s following the news as it happens, interacting with other fans, and even getting live accounts of the games while I’m not in front of a TV. All these new features and apps mean I can follow baseball as closely or as loosely as I desire. Better, I can alter my consumption habits to fit current circumstances.
Tablets in particular provide an excellent all-around media experience. Their relative light weight and unhinged hardware make it more like reading a book than using a laptop. That means I can sit back on the couch without something sitting on my lap and keep up to date on the latest news. This comes from a variety of sources.
The latest news always comes across Twitter, so if I’m using that and I’m following the right people I know what’s going on. Many people I know think that Twitter is just a waste of time. In large part they are correct; I’ve never actively used something that has effectively wasted so much of my time. But at the same time it’s also incredibly useful if you want to stay up to date. Follow beat writers and national reporters, and you’ll see the news pass on your timeline as it happens.
(If you do decide to sign up and lurk on Twitter, you can always follow @RiverAveBlues. Mike (@mikeaxisa), Ben (@bkabak), Larry (@Larry_Koestler), Moshe (@yagottagotomo), Stephen (@sprotster), and I (@joepawl) all have individual accounts, but we’re mostly time wasters. I also wouldn’t recommend anyone follow me or Stephen. We’re big jerks, apparently.)
The tablet brings more opportunities for recent news. For instance, a few times a day I’ll open up the NBC Pro Sports Talk app, which quickly loads all the recent posts on Hardball Talk. At the very least I get the latest news. At the most I get some insightful commentary from Craig, Aaron and the crew. The key, to me, is that I can consume as much or as little as I’d like. If I just want the news, I can scan headlines and read the first paragraphs. If I want a bit more depth, the option is right there.
Both tablets and smartphones are perfect for consuming baseball itself. MLB has done a mostly wonderful job of offering up its product on mobile devices. If you’re an MLB.tv subscriber you can link up to the At Bat app on both tablets and smartphones. This lets you not only watch the live Gameday account of every game, but if you have a subscription you can also listen to radio feeds of the games. If the game you want to watch is out of market, you can even watch it live. It might be kinda small on a smartphone screen, but small-screen baseball is better than no baseball.
The one area where MLB lags is with its in-market blackout restrictions. Obviously, TV networks want you watching on your television if possible. They run ads and their rates are largely determined by viewership size. If you’re watching on a tablet rather than on television, they can’t count you as a viewer. This kind of metric should change soon enough, given the rapidly changing media landscape, but for now it’s a hindrance. If you’re in the NY area but don’t have access to a cable TV that has YES, you’re out of luck. You have to be a savvy tech dude if you want to pull up the game.
The saving grace is that many cable companies offer apps for tablets. I’m stuck with Cablevision where I live, but they do have an app that lets me watch live TV on my tablet. This includes YES. This way when my fiancee is watching her shows, I can hang out with her on the couch and watch the Yankees at the same time. The live TV feature doesn’t work off of your home WiFi network, unfortunately, but it’s still something. Watching the Yankees while cooking dinner, for instance, becomes a bit easier.
What’s even better about these technologies is that they’re more widespread than ever. You can get a cheap smartphone or cheap tablet almost anywhere. I’m an iPhone/iPad user, and I make no apologies for it. These tend to be expensive, but with refurbished units showing up at stores such as GameStop, they’re even more affordable. If you’re not into that, there are plenty of Android phones and tablets to choose from. There’s really something for everyone in mobile tech.
If there’s one big issue with all this, it’s cellular data. Previously carriers offered unlimited data plans, but with more and more people buying highly advanced devices, that got to be too much. In search of further profits, most carriers decided to restrict data usage — while, of course, charging the same rate. What used to be unlimited data on Verizon, for example, is limited to just 2GB. AT&T has a similar restriction. Sprint, however, has unlimited data. It also carries the iPhone and many Android devices. There are also many Android phones on T-Mobile that serve the same purposes. T-Mobile has generally cheap plans that allow for a decent amount of high-speed data usage.
It’s getting to be an exciting time in the world of tech. We’re able to use our smartphones and tablets to stay as up-to-date, and as in-depth, as we would like on any topic. For baseball it’s a prefect fit. You can get anything you can imagine on both devices. And it’s all about how much you want to consume.
Missing Montero
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(AP Photo/Elaine Thompson)
For the first time since January’s trade, the Yankees will get a look at Jesus Montero, Seattle Mariner tonight. The deal already looks like a disaster on New York’s end with Michael Pineda out of the season (torn labrum) and Jose Campos out indefinitely (elbow inflammation), but luckily for the Yankees, you can’t pass final judgment on a trade of this magnitude after four months. The early returns are horrible, however.
Montero has settled in as a middle of the order bat for Seattle. That has more to do with the state of the team than his actual production though, because a .268/.282/.420 batting line (.298 wOBA and 91 wRC+) is hardly deserving of a primo lineup spot. I am surprised Montero is off to such a relatively slow start but not entirely. I mean, he is only 22. We all knew a slow start was possible just because rookies tend to suck. Add in a pitcher-friendly home park and offensively incompetent teammates, and you have a recipe for a slow start. It happens and I’m sure he’ll be more than fine in the long run.
On a personal level, I’ve already accepted the trade and said my goodbyes to Montero. That sounds incredibly lame and cheesy, but it’s hard not to get attached to these guys as you follow their progress through the minors. Heck, here’s the DotF from his pro debut in 2007. We know when these kids sign, when they hit, when they struggle, when they do anything in the minors before reaching the big leagues these days. If you read RAB regularly, they become as much a part of the Yankees experience as Derek Jeter and CC Sabathia and Yankee Stadium. You get attached to them and when they get traded, it bums you out. It’s only natural.
Regardless of what they said publicly, the Yankees didn’t believe Montero was a big league catcher defensively. Actions speak louder than words and when Frankie Cervelli went down with a concussion last September, it was Austin Romine who took over behind the plate. That’s why he was traded. If he was a corner outfielder or something, chances are he’d still be in pinstripes. And that’s fine, when the pieces don’t fit you adjust. I thought Montero could be serviceable enough behind the plate in my completely amateur opinion, enough to catch 50-80 games a year for the next few seasons. He didn’t have to catch forever, but a few years back there seemed doable. The Yankees didn’t agree so they made the move.
Like everyone else, I have favorite players around baseball and Montero is one of them. I disliked the trade at the time and am pretty annoyed at how it’s played out so far, but at the end of the day I root for the laundry. I hope Montero does well this weekend (and going forward) but I hope the Yankees do even better. I miss Jesus and really wish he was the regular DH/backup catcher this year, but he’s not and that’s just the way it is. I enjoyed his short time in pinstripes but as usual, the players change. The Yankees are the constant and that’s where my allegiance lies.
The Future of Right Field
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(Brian Bissell/Future Star Photos)
Earlier today I wrote about the importance of having Nick Swisher in the lineup, and that got me thinking about the future of right field in general. Obviously Swisher will become a free agent after the season and with the 2014 payroll plan looming, he might not fit into the team’s plans going forward. He’s going to make it very hard for the team to let him walk given his early-season performance, but parting ways with a soon-to-be 32-year-old corner outfielder isn’t the craziest thing in the world.
The problem is that the Yankees don’t have an obvious in-house candidate to step into the outfield. Zoilo Almonte had an outside chance at being that guy, but that looks unlikely at this point. Melky Mesa is another Greg Golson/up-and-down type, ditto Colin Curtis to a certain extent. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the Yankees moved prospects Rob Segedin and Tyler Austin (pictured) to right field on a full-time basis this season, but those two are still in Single-A and are years away from the bigs. Hopefully they become factors down the line, but they certainly won’t help next year or even the year after that.
If the Yankees do let Swisher walk, the best way to replace him probably involved a platoon of some sort until Segedin and/or Austin pan out, if they do at all. Andruw Jones seems like a logical candidate for the right half of that platoon assuming he doesn’t completely fall off a cliff this summer, but finding a lefty to go with him will be easier said than done. I’m partial to Kelly Johnson, who played the corner outfield earlier in his career and has everything the Yankees look for offensively: left-handed power, the willingness to take a walk, and the ability to steal double-digit bases. Would he take a one or even two-year deal to change positions for the Yankees at age 30? I highly doubt it. Heck, he might require a bigger contract than Swisher, but I digress.
The 2014 payroll plan is really going to throw a wrench into the team’s roster plans going forward, but frankly I think there’s a pretty good case to be made for keeping Swisher at say, something a little north Michael Cuddyer money (three years, $31M) and skimping elsewhere (coughsecondbasecough). He already has the “old player skills” that tend to age well and has been very durable throughout his career, which sounds kinda funny after he just sat out a week with a hamstring issue. There’s value in reliability, and it’s hard to find a more reliable and consistent Yankee over the last three years than Swisher. The best bridge from Swisher to the theoretical Segedin/Austin era just might be Swisher himself.
It’s starting to look a little like 2005
Posted by: | CommentsThe Baltimore Orioles find themselves in a strange position today. At 19-9 they hold the best record of any major league team. True, we’re through just 28 games, less than 20 percent of the season. But it’s still a remarkable feat for a consensus last-place team.
It seems like forever ago, but just seven years ago the Orioles found themselves in nearly the identical position. In 2005 they surged out to a 19-9 record through 28 games; only the 22-7 White Sox owned a better record. At the same time the Yankees got off to their infamously poor start, going 11-19 through the first 28 games. It certainly seemed like an odd twist of fate.
I’m not certain what the expectations were for the 2005 Orioles, but with the powerhouse Yankees and Red Sox in the division they couldn’t have been too high. The O’s had finished six games below .500 in 2004, despite having RBI leader Miguel Tejada and doubles leader Brian Roberts powering the offense. They made few changes on the offensive side of the ball in 2005, and it appeared their pitching staff could improve. Perhaps their performance wasn’t so out of line, then.
As we know, though, the Orioles slid heavily after their hot start. From Game 29 through Game 162 they went 55-79, done in by an underperforming outfield crew and horrible starting pitching. They avoided a last-place finish, however, due to Tampa Bay’s still-inept team; they finished 67-95, still two full seasons of losing away from their first winning season.
This isn’t so much to rag on the Orioles’ inevitable fall from the top as it is to put the Yankees’ record in perspective. At 15-13 they’re still fourth in the AL East, but in 2005 they were tied for last with the Rays. They also had a negative-19 run differential through 30 games in 2005, while through 28 games this year they’re plus-12. Things aren’t so bad from that vantage point.
From Game-31 through Game-162 in 2005 the Yankees went 84-48, the best record in the AL by four games. Yet this year they appear perhaps better equipped for a surge. The pitching staff is solider and deeper — there will be no Sidney Ponson appearances this year. The offense, too, has a few more weapons than the 2005 team. They might have had the heavy hitters, and Jason Giambi‘s second-half surge certainly played into the Yanks’ winning ways, but the 2012 Yankees have a bit more speed to go with their power. The current team also doesn’t have to overcome one of the worst defenses in baseball history.
Slow starts are never fun, but sometimes it just takes the Yankees a while to click. It’s happened plenty of times in the past, and it’s likely to happen again this year. Hell, through 28 games in 2009 the Yankees were 13-15, again with a negative run differential. The Yankees have the right players in place; it’s just a matter of time before they start rolling.
The end of the world as we Mo it
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(AP Photo/YES Network)
I can’t remember the last time baseball made me feel sad. Maybe it was in September 2008, when the old Yankee Stadium closed. I remember walking out of that place with a pit in my stomach knowing I would never get to go back there again. 1995 sucked, 2001 sucked, and 2004 sucked, but I wasn’t sad. I was angry more than anything. Those were games though, the Yankees played and lost. It happens.
This … this was a freak accident. And that’s sad. It’s sad because I don’t know if I’m ever going to get to see Mariano Rivera pitch again. I’m not ready for this. I wasn’t even ready for him to hint at retirement in Spring Training and now you’re telling me his career could be over? That’s not fair. It’s not supposed to end like this. It’s supposed to end with Rivera throwing the final pitch in the World Series for the sixth time, with him pouring champagne on Derek Jeter and riding the last float down Canyon of Heroes. That’s the send off Rivera was supposed to get, not carried off the field following a freak accident.
After last night’s game, Mo said he wouldn’t change a thing. If he had a chance to do it over again, he still would have been out there shagging fly balls before the game. He’s been doing it his entire professional life and it’s part of what makes him so great. Rivera wasn’t just the greatest relief pitcher the game has ever known, he was the best athlete on the team and if they stuck him in center field, he’s run everything down from gap to gap. He was extraordinary at everything he did, including shagging fly balls.
I’ve been stuck in the fourth stage of The Five Stages of Grief since I went to bed last night. I denied it at first. “He’ll be fine, he was smiling as he was being carted off the field,” I said to myself. Then I was mad. “Why the hell is he shagging fly balls anyway? That’s so stupid and dangerous!” Then I bargained and that stage is always the ugliest because it makes you desperate. “I’ll do anything for him to be okay, please! … Ewww, anything?”
Now I’m just depressed. It can’t end like this. Rivera deserves better, but I know he’s a deeply religious man. This could be a sign that it’s time for him to move onto the next phase of his life. Who knows? I don’t and I don’t think Mo does yet. That’s the worst part, the not knowing. Not knowing what the injury was, not knowing how severe it was, not knowing if he’ll ever play again. Maybe I’ll accept it at some point and complete the five stages, but right now that seems impossible. We all know Rivera was going to leave us eventually, but he wasn’t supposed to be ripped away from us like this.
This is a sad day. A sad day for me, a sad day for the Yankees, a sad day for Mariano, and a sad day for baseball. Yankeeland may never be the same.
On the Yankees and developing pitchers
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(AP Photo/Matt Slocum)
It’s no secret that the Yankees have been unable to develop any quality starting pitching over the last … I dunno, five or ten or fifteen years. It’s part of the reason why they had to go out and trade for a young arm like Michael Pineda, because they haven’t been able to produce someone like that on their own. In fairness, the farm system was ignored for a long time in the early-to-mid-aughts, but guys like Joba Chamberlain, Andrew Brackman, and Phil Hughes haven’t pan out in recent years.
I had been planning to write about the Yankees and their pitching development program for a few weeks now, though I just never got around to it. It’s going to appear as though this is stemming from Phil Hughes’ performance last night and Pineda’s injury, but that honestly is not the case. This post has been in the works for a while. This quote from that anonymous scout guy (he gets around quite a bit, no?) in John Harper’s latest column finally gave me the motivation to get this together…
“I know we all baby these guys now,” one scout said, referring to young pitchers throughout baseball, “but I don’t know, maybe the Yankees take it to an extreme with the innings limits and pitch counts, and their kids never learn how to push themselves when they’re a little tired in situations where they need to get out of trouble.
“It’s not just them, but you can only protect arms so much, and sometimes it doesn’t matter at all because pitchers are going to get hurt. I just look at Hughes and Chamberlain and I can’t figure out what happened to them, and now I don’t like what I’m seeing from [Manny Banuelos and Dellin Betances] either.”
I feel like the Yankees have managed to find this perfect balance between being both overly conservative and overly aggressive with their pitchers. They’re conservative in the sense that they hold them to strict pitch counts, but aggressive in the sense that they run them up the ladder after a good half-season at a level. Just take Ivan Nova for example. He’s the exception, a generally unheralded prospect who threw 575.1 IP in the minors before making his first MLB start. Compare that to Hughes (275 IP) or Joba (88.1 IP (!)) and it’s not hard to see why Nova come up a more complete pitcher and able to contribute. Now obviously every pitcher is different and not everyone needs 500+ IP in the minors before being ready for the show, this is just one example using three guys we’re all familiar with.
I think the scout in Harper’s column has a really good point about kids being unable to learn “how to push themselves when they’re a little tired in situations” while on strict workload limitations in the minors. Getting to the bigs and being effective as a young pitcher is hard enough, but you don’t want to compound the problem by having the kid standing out there in the fifth or sixth inning with his pitch count at 100 when he’s only thrown that many pitches in an outing a handful of times in his life. The big leagues is neither the time nor place for a pitcher to learn how to turn over a lineup three times or throw 100+ pitches in a start. It’s possible — not necessarily easy — to have a young player extend himself in the minors for the benefit of development without putting him at serious risk of injury. We know too much work can be bad for a young pitcher, but too little work can be harmful in a different way.
The whole point of the minor leagues is to help players develop the skills they need to be successful in the big leagues, and for pitchers that includes working deep into games — sometimes without their best stuff — and going through a lineup multiple times. That doesn’t mean they should run everyone out there for 120 pitches every five days, but this arbitrary five innings/80 pitches threshold we’ve seen employed so often in recent years accomplishes what, exactly? Hughes with Double-A Trenton in 2006 is a perfect example. He destroyed that league after his midseason promotion — 30.8 K% and 7.1 BB% with a 2.26 FIP in 116 IP — but he only threw more than five innings in 13 of 21 starts and not once in his final eleven outings. Again, we don’t have all the information from where we sit, but it’s hard to see how he was being challenged in that environment. More learning occurs when mistakes are made, not when things are easy.
Now obviously not every pitching prospect is going to work out, there’s some level of attrition that’s just unavoidable. Injuries are going to happen as well; pitchers can be babied to the nth degree and they’ll still get hurt. They’re cool like that. That said, I do think it’s fair to question how the Yankees have gone about developing their young pitchers in recent years, though we also have to acknowledge that as outsiders, we only have a small piece of the information pie. All we know about player development is what we’ve picked up as laymen over the years while reading Baseball America and Keith Law and checking box scores on a nightly basis. In the wake of Pineda’s injury and the failures of Hughes and Joba as starting pitchers, I do think that some level of self-reflection — more than the usual — has to take place on the Yankees’ part. What they’ve been doing has not been working.
A Golden Opportunity
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(Al Messerschmidt/Getty Images)
The Yankees wrapped up the toughest stretch of their early-season schedule over the weekend, going 5-3 with a rain out in nine games against the Red Sox, Rangers, and Tigers. They woke up this morning 2.5 games out of first place after splitting the first two games of their three-game series with the Orioles, not an ideal position but hardly one worth getting worked up over on May 2nd. You can’t win a division title this early in the season, but the Yankees are in a position to improve their odds of winning a second straight AL East crown in a big way in the coming weeks.
The Rays announced yesterday that Evan Longoria will be out 6-8 weeks with a partially torn left hamstring, and injury he suffered running the bases on Monday night. Tampa Bay has a really, really good team, but it’s impossible for any club to replace a player of Longoria’s caliber. Joe Maddon & Co. will try to get by with in-house replacements like Jeff Keppinger, Elliot Johnson, and Will Rhymes for the time being. Longoria’s injury is obviously a major blow to a chief division rival.
Needless to say, the Yankees have a golden opportunity now. Not only will the Rays be without their best player for the next two months, but New York will also enjoy a rather cushy schedule. Only three of their next 27 games are against 2011 playoff teams — a three-game set in the Bronx against the Longoria-less Rays next week — and only nine of their next 55 games are against 2011 playoff clubs (including interleague play). That stretch takes them almost all the way to the All-Star break. It’s hard to ask for anything more.
Thanks to the new Collective Bargaining Agreement, winning the division is of the utmost importance now. The Yankees have a chance to pad their win total during what appears to be an easy stretch of the schedule while Tampa will have to try to survive without one of the game’s very best players. The two clubs are in very different situations, and there’s an opportunity for New York to create some separation between themselves and a primary AL East competitor over these next few weeks. The sooner the starting rotation sorts itself out and the Yankees can get on a roll, the better.
Thinking about Bobby Abreu
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(Photo by Stephen Dunn/Getty Images)
The Angels came into the season with a very crowded outfield/DH picture, but they cleared things up a bit last night by releasing Bobby Abreu following their fifth straight loss. Top prospect Mike Trout was recalled to hopefully inject some life into their season. Anaheim is still on the hook for the $9M left on Abreu’s contract, less the pro-rated portion of the league minimum should he sign elsewhere.
The Yankees, as you may recall, actually agreed to trade for Bobby this past offseason before A.J. Burnett invoked his no-trade clause because he didn’t want to go to the West Coast. It stands to reason that they’ll at least explore the idea of signing Abreu as a free agent now even though they brought in a different left-handed hitting DH type after the trade fell through. It doesn’t hurt to look.
The timing works out well given Brett Gardner‘s injury. The Yankees are carrying a 13-man pitching staff at the moment, so they could easily option Cody Eppley to Triple-A and create 40-man roster space for Abreu by shifting either Cesar Cabral or Joba Chamberlain to the 60-day DL. That would give them a very short window to see what he still has to offer as the left-handed half of a DH platoon without having to jettison Raul Ibanez. It’s worth noting that Gardner performed bunting drills yesterday and was scheduled to visit the doctor, though no update was given. He is eligible to come off the DL next Friday.
Joe wrote about Abreu at length at the end of Spring Training, noting that he’s unlikely to be much an upgrade over Ibanez, if he is one at all. Since both guys are relatively cheap and terrible on defense, the decision would essentially come down to Ibanez’s power vs. Abreu’s on-base skills and base running. The Yankees value makeup and clubhouse presence, though they obviously have first hand knowledge of what Bobby is like in that department. Signing Abreu for what amounts to a week-long audition seems like a decent idea given the lack of risk, though I don’t think it’s the most imperative of moves. There are valid reasons both for it and against it.
The Teixeira Analysis: Closing Thoughts
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(AP Photo/Kathy Willens)
Over the last three days I spend way too much time looking at Mark Teixeira‘s declining offensive production — part one, part two, and part three. To save you the headache of readhing, here’s a quick recap of the findings…
- Teixeira is still a monster as a right-handed hitter. Nothing’s changed from that side of the plate in recent years.
- Teixeira’s walk, strikeout, and homerun power rates as a left-handed batter have not declined at all. His batting average and BABIP have steadily dropped, however.
- The shift is a problem given Teixeira’s new pull-happy ways, but he’s also added an uppercut to his swing that has resulted in more fly balls. Fly balls turn into outs more than any other type of batted ball, hence the BABIP and average decline.
That uppercut swing was on full display last night, as Tex flew out to relatively deep right field to end the game. He’s a notoriously slow starter, we knew this before he ever played a game in pinstripes, but this was probably the one year he could have used a strong start to help silence all the critics. He has come around a bit of late, with three straight two-hit games and nine hits in his last 25 at-bats. Strangely enough, Tex has yet to hit a homer in 2012, and that includes Spring Training. I know people are going to freak out about that, but I have a hard time taking it seriously after a dozen regular season games.
Teixeira acknowledged the problems with his swing late last year and has reportedly worked to correct them with hitting coach Kevin Long, but it’s still far too early to know if the adjustments are working. He’s only had 35 plate appearances as a left-handed batter so far, and in only 25 of the 35 did he actually put the ball in play (five walks, four strikeouts, one hit-by-pitch). Here’s his spray chart as a lefty…
He’s hit two balls pretty deep to left field — one came in last night’s game — but we’re still weeks away from being able to say anything definitive about an adjustment to his left-handed swing. This is all just window dressing at the moment.
I think the most important we have to realize is that the old Teixeira, the MVP-caliber hitter from 2005-2009, is probably never coming back even if Long’s fixes manage to stick. Tex just turned 32 a week ago and is leaving his prime years, so some semblance of decline is inevitable. Similarity scores hardly qualify as analysis, but Baseball-Reference says the most similar player to Tex through age 31 is Carlos Delgado. Delgado was one of the best hitters of his generation, but his production started to drop off at age 32. It’s the baseball circle of life.
The best case scenario probably calls for the adjustments to halt any further decline, at least temporarily. You can’t control age, but Teixeira can control his swing and perhaps break some of the bad habits he’s developed over the last two seasons or so. Remember, he wasn’t a bad hitter last season by any means, but his performance has fallen below his expected level of production. I think I know how this is going to turn out, but I’m going to ask the question anyway…
