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The Incomparable Didi Gregorius [2018 Season Review]

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(Getty)

In 2016, Didi Gregorius set career-best marks in runs, home runs, RBI, strikeout rate, and wRC+. In 2017, he once again set new high water marks in those metrics, to go along with a career-high 4.0 fWAR. And this time last year we were all wondering what he was capable of for an encore.

As a reminder, here is what the projection systems had to say:

  • Steamer: .269/.314/.436, 20 HR, 5.3% BB, 13.4% K, 566 PA
  • ZiPS: .267/.306/.430, 20 HR, 4.7% BB, 13.5% K, 593 PA
  • PECOTA: .262/.312/.411, 18 HR, 5.8% BB, 14.7% K, 636 PA

All three systems predicted a bit of regression for Gregorius, essentially predicting a return to his (still good) 2016 form. And, while that would have been disappointing, I’m sure that most of us would have accepted a solid defensive shortstop with a league-average bat. That’s not what happened, though.

The Ridiculously Hot Start

Gregorius reached base safely in his first five games, by the end of which he was slashing .444/.524/1.111 with two home runs and nine RBI. He also drew three walks in those five games, which might just be the most impressive aspect of that stretch. Well, that or his 8 RBI game against the Rays on April 3:

He didn’t quite maintain that torrid start, but he finished April hitting .321/.427/.735 (197 wRC+) with 10 HR and more walks (18) than strikeouts (16). And when the calendar flipped to May he was tied for the major league lead in fWAR with Mookie Betts. It was amazing and surreal to watch, and I loved every single second of it.

Unfortunately…

A Ridiculously Awful May

Gregorius was as bad in May as he was good in April; and that might be underselling his badness. His slash line was .149/.184/.213, which is good for a -1 wRC+. He stopped walking and hitting for power, and he looked helpless at the plate more often than not.  Gregorius’ batted ball profile shows a clear change in contact, too:

(FanGraphs)

His line-drive rate tumbled, his groundball spiked, and flyballs stopped leaving the yard. His HR/FB rate can be attributed to a simple yet aggressive bit of bad luck and/or regression to the mean – but the quality of contact was clearly not there. And at the end of May he was hitting .240/.315/.479, which isn’t all that far removed from his 2017 line of .287/.318/.478 (with way more power and walks).

The Return to Form

Gregorius closed out May with a little hot streak, reaching base in four straight games via five singles, a walk, and an HBP. And from June 1 through August 19 he raked once more, batting .292/.347/.485 with 11 HR, 7.3% walks, and 11.4% strikeouts (124 wRC+) in 289 PA. His batted ball profile basically split the difference between April and May, to the tune of 21.3% line drives, 40.9% grounders, 37.8% flyballs, and 12.6% HR/FB. That’s basically his career norms, with the exception of the still-elevated HR/FB rate, so it wasn’t difficult to say that this was probably who Gregorius is at this point.

Why the arbitrary cut-off of August 19, you ask? Well, with the news of his impending Tommy John surgery you may have forgotten that he missed nearly three weeks with a heel injury:

I still don’t know how he bruised his heel there, but I suppose that’s not terribly relevant. And, more importantly, he returned with a vengeance, batting .250/.344/.596 with 5 HR (149 wRC+) from September 7 through the end of the season. It’s worth noting that there was another injury scare mixed-in there, as torn cartilage in his wrist kept him out from for a handful of games in late-September, but he looked fine in what amounted to two tune-up games against the Red Sox to close the regular season.

All told, Gregorius hit .268/.335/.494 (121 wRC+) with 27 HR and 4.6 fWAR. If you’re keeping score at home, he once again set career-bests in runs, home runs, strikeout rate, wRC+, and fWAR, as well walks, OBP, and SLG. By FanGraphs’ reckoning he was the 8th best shortstop in the game, between Trea Turner and Jean Segura. That’s not too shabby.

The Doubly Dreadful Playoffs

Gregorius, like many Yankees, didn’t do so well in the postseason. He hit .234/.222/.294 in 19 PA, and didn’t draw a walk in five games. He was a big part of the failed comeback in the final game of the team’s season, though, hitting a single in the bottom of the 9th to give the team two on and none out. It was a disappointing ending to a brilliant season.

Of course, that wasn’t quite the end, was it? As I mentioned above, shortly after the Yankees bowed out of the playoffs we found out that Gregorius would undergo Tommy John surgery, which has an unclear recovery period. Jay Jaffe of FanGraphs found that infielders that had TJS on their throwing arms have taken anywhere from 6 to 15 months to return to the field; and one player, T.J. Rivera, hasn’t returned since having the procedure in September of last year. The mean is right around 10 months, which would put Gregorius on-track to return sometime in August. Which is … less than ideal.

What’s Next?

Of all of the players that we’re slated to review, Gregorius might be the most difficult to think about going forward.

The soon-to-be 29-year-old is a free agent after next season, and he currently lacks a timetable for return. The Yankees anticipate a return in 2019, and there are rumblings that they expect him to play the majority of the season. That seems aggressive, given what we know – but they know way more about the severity of the tear than we do, so it wouldn’t be out of the question that he could be on an expedited recovery plan. And if he could return before the midpoint of the season (say, sometime in June), it might be worth discussing short-term replacements – a return engagement with Neil Walker or signing a similarly versatile utility player (while moving Gleyber Torres to short), perhaps? – as opposed to acting as though the sky is falling.

If, however, the Yankees expect him back in August, it might be worth pursuing another full-time option in the infield. They have a ready-made replacement at short in Torres, which is great because it broadens their pool for replacements. But counting on a core player to return for 50 or so games and immediately return to form for a contending team feels irresponsible. And then there’s also the fact that he’s slated to earn over $12 MM through arbitration next year, which is a hefty figure for someone that might play less than a third of the season; a non-tender or contract extension buying out this year and a year or two of free agency might be in the cards in that case. These are not the issues that I was hoping to tackle in this review at all – but here we are.

On the none doom-and-gloom side of the equation, I do think it’s safe to say that the Gregorius of 2017 and 2018 is the real deal. So there’s that.

The Redemption of Dellin Betances [2018 Season Review]

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The 2018 season ended far earlier than we all would’ve liked. Now that the season is over, it’s time for our annual season review series, which continues today with Dellin Betances. Aside from post a day Monday through Friday, there is no set schedule for these posts. We’ll write about players when we feel like writing about them, so each day’s review post will be a surprise (even to us!).

(Omar Rawlings/Getty)

Had many folks gotten their way last offseason, Dellin Betances would not have been a Yankee in 2018. He collapsed so spectacularly down the stretch in 2017 that he seemed almost unsalvageable. We’ve seen Betances go through ups and downs for years now, often extreme ups and downs. What he went through last season was the lowest point of his big league career.

Things went so poorly for Betances down the stretch late last season — at one point Dellin walked ten batters in 9.2 innings, and he would’ve walked more had Joe Girardi not had a quick hook — that he was basically unusable in the postseason, which meant a larger workload for David Robertson and Chad Green in October. Would the Yankees trade Betances? Non-tender him? Many were ready to cut ties with Dellin.

Fortunately, the Yankees aren’t the kind to give up on high-end talent, so they stuck with Betances and were rewarded with a spectacular 2018 season, one in which he was their best reliever and again a dominant bullpen force. Dellin went from persona non grata in the 2017 postseason to Aaron Boone’s top weapon in the 2018 postseason. Quite a difference a year makes, eh?

In 66.2 innings this past season Betances posted a 2.70 ERA (2.47 FIP) with an excellent strikeout rate (42.3%) and an acceptable walk rate (9.6%). That is the highest strikeout rate of Dellin’s career — only Josh Hader (46.7%) and Edwin Diaz (44.3%) had a higher strikeout among the 89 relievers to throw at least 60 innings this year — and a walk rate that is far below his 2017 number (16.9%) and career average (11.0%). He was awesome.

This season Betances became the first reliever in history with five straight 100-strikeout seasons — Betances and Hall of Famers Goose Gossage and Rollie Fingers are the only relievers with five 100-strikeout seasons in their career — and he jumped into 15th place on the franchise’s all-time appearance list (357). He could move into the top ten next season. Let’s review Dellin’s season.

A Summer of Dominance

From May 19th through September 22nd, a span of 44 appearances, Betances pitched to a 1.74 ERA (2.00 FIP) with 81 strikeouts in 46.2 innings. The numbers are comical: 46.2 IP, 23 H, 9 R, 8 ER, 17 BB, 76 K. Opponents hit .158/.266/.253 against him. Only nine times in those 44 appearances did Betances allow multiple baserunners and only five times did he allow an earned run.

Those dates are not necessarily cherry-picked. May 19th is the day Betances started his American League record 44-appearance streak with a strikeout and September 22nd is the final appearance in that stretch. Here are the longest reliever strikeout streaks in baseball history:

  1. Aroldis Chapman, 2013-14 Reds: 49 games
  2. Corey Knebel, 2016-17 Brewers: 46 games
  3. Dellin Betances, 2018 Yankees: 44 games
  4. Bruce Sutter, 1979 Cubs: 39 games
  5. Josh Hader, 2017-18 Brewers and Eric Gagne, 2003-04 Dodgers: 35 games

Betances set both the American League record and the MLB single-season record this year. His record streak came to an unceremonious end on September 24th, in his second-to-last appearance of the season. He didn’t get hit around or anything. Betances faced three batters and got three quick ground ball outs on eight pitches. The strikeout streak is over. Long live the strikeout streak.

“Honestly, I’m not a guy that puts much attention into stretches or stats, but this is probably the best I’ve felt in a long time,” Betances said in August. “I’ve been feeling good all year. Even when I was going through some stuff early on, I felt like it was just a matter of results changing and maybe paying attention a little bit more to detail and what I need to do to make sure I wasn’t giving up as many runs as I was earlier. I just feel like I’ve been good with my delivery, repeating my delivery and using both my pitches equally, so I think that’s helped me.”

Dellin was not selected for the All-Star Game this season, ending his run of four straight All-Star selections. Betances, Chris Sale, Clayton Kershaw, and Max Scherzer were the only pitchers selected to every All-Star Game from 2014-17. Betances could’ve been an All-Star this year though. Even after his early season hiccup, he had great numbers, but pitching spots were hard to come by because the Twins (Jose Berrios), Blue Jays (J.A. Happ), and Tigers (Joe Jimenez) all needed a token All-Star. Oh well. Dellin did not get selected but was still worthy.

The Highest Leverage Situations

Regular season Leverage Index tells us Betances was not among the league leaders in high-leverage appearances. He didn’t even lead the Yankees in such appearances. One-hundred-and-forty-seven relievers threw at least 50 innings this past season. Here are Dellin’s Leverage Index numbers:

  • Average LI:  1.43 (46th in MLB)
  • Average LI when entering game: 1.34 (65th in MLB)
  • Appearances with 1.5 LI or higher: 24 (60th in MLB)

For the Yankees, Betances was second to Chapman (1.90) in average Leverage Index and third behind Chapman (1.56) and David Robertson (1.41) in average Leverage Index when entering the game. His 24 appearances with a 1.5 Leverage Index — anything at 1.5 or above qualifies as high leverage — were third on the Yankees behind Robertson (27) and Chapman (25).

Betances settled in as the Eighth Inning Guy™ early in the season and that meant he didn’t always pitch in the highest leverage situation. Sometimes he’d pitch with a two or three run lead after Robertson or Chad Green entered with a one-run lead an inning earlier. Betances did, however, get some of the biggest outs in the postseason. He was Boone’s middle of the order specialist and that mean crucial outs in the middle innings.

Championship Probability Added is essentially Win Probability Added on steroids. It tells you how much closer an individual play brings you to a World Series title rather than how much closer it brings you a single win. Here are the five biggest outs of the 2018 Yankees season by CPA:

  1. Wild Card Game: Luis Severino strikes out Marcus Semien to end fourth (+0.011 CPA)
  2. Wild Card Game: Betances gets Matt Chapman to fly out for the first out of the fifth (+0.009 CPA)
  3. ALDS Game Four: CC Sabathia gets Ian Kinsler to fly out to end the first (+0.008 CPA)
  4. Wild Card Game: Betances gets Jed Lowrie to fly out for the second out of the fifth (+0.007 CPA)
  5. Wild Card Game: Betances strikes out Khris Davis to end the fifth (+0.007 CPA)

Severino striking out Semien with the bases loaded to preserve the two-run lead is, pretty clearly, the biggest out of the season. That passes the eye test and the CPA test, I think. Three of the next four biggest outs of the season came in the next inning, with Betances on the mound. He inherited runners on first and second with no outs from Severino, and the A’s had their 2-3-4 hitters up. Dellin sat them down in order. He then tossed a 1-2-3 sixth inning as well.

“I’ve been waiting for that moment since last year,” said Betances following the Wild Card Game. “Obviously, last year I didn’t finish the season the way I wanted to. So for me to be able to go out there and do that, it’s a dream come true.”

Several pitchers still playing in the postseason have since passed Betances on the 2018 leaderboard, but, after ALDS Game Four, he was top five among all pitchers in CPA. He’s still top ten. Betances led Yankees pitchers in CPA this season and rather easily as well. Here’s the leaderboard:

  1. Aaron Judge: +0.056 CPA
  2. Dellin Betances: +0.050 CPA
  3. Masahiro Tanaka: +0.024 CPA
  4. Aroldis Chapman: +0.022 CPA
  5. Neil Walker: +0.018 CPA

Neil Walker? Neil Walker! Anyway, this is all a very long way of saying Betances got some incredibly important outs this season. He was the team’s best reliever this summer and, in the postseason, Boone used him in what he considered the game’s biggest moments. Dellin was my platonic ideal of a high-leverage guy in October. He faced the other team’s best hitters with the score close. It was awesome.

“Dellin is a stud. I told him before the (Wild Card Game), you may be who I go to in the fourth or the fifth inning potentially, if it’s a part of the lineup that I want you facing in that spot,” Boone said. “I just felt he was the guy and so we got him ready for it and he was lights out.”

A Small Adjustment Pays Big Dividends

Betances did not have command problems last season. He had basic strike-throwing problems. Severino had command problems this year. He threw plenty of strikes but they weren’t great strikes. He left pitches out over the plate rather than dotting the corners. Betances couldn’t get the ball over the plate late last season. It was ugly. Relievers who don’t throw strikes tend to find themselves outside the Circle of Trust™ rather quickly.

Never will Betances be a pristine control guy. He’s not someone who will run a 4% walk rate or something like that. He overpowers hitters with upper-90s fastballs and a wicked breaking ball — it’s actually two breaking balls — and he just needs to be around the zone to be effective. He doesn’t have to paint the corners or hit the knees. Just be around the plate enough and in the zone enough, and things’ll work out. Dellin couldn’t do that last year.

To correct that problem, the Yankees and Betances worked to simplify his delivery a bit, specifically shortening up his leg kick and eliminating some extraneous movement. Here is the obligatory before-and-after GIF. That is 2017 Betances on the left and 2018 Betances on the right.

Last season Betances brought his left knee up high during his delivery. Right to his chest, basically. This year the leg kick was much more abbreviated. Up and down, quickly. Last year it was this clunky leg kick that seemed to slow everything down. Now the leg is up, the leg is down, and the ball is heading toward the plate. The simplified delivery helped Betances throw more strikes and get back to being one of the game’s best relievers.

“You’d rather not go through those (struggles), but with relievers that have pitched a lot, it happens quite a bit,” said pitching coach Larry Rothschild in August. “He’s come out on the right side of that more times than not. His track record is impressive. Four All-Star Games is not something you ignore. It was just a matter of him getting back into a real solid delivery and repeating it. He’s been able to do that.”

Betances was not perfect this season. No relievers are. He struggled out of the gate this season and looked #stillbroken, then, late in the season, he had that back-to-back homers blown save against the Tigers. By and large though, Betances was excellent, and a dominant force at the end of the games. And it’s not like we’d never seen that guy before. This season didn’t come out of nowhere. Dellin has been outstanding the last five years. The dominance outweighs the hiccups and that was especially true in 2018. He was great.

What’s Next?

The 2019 season will be Betances’ final season of team control. He is arbitration-eligible for the third and final time this winter — MLBTR projects a $6.4M salary next year — and I suppose the Yankees could approach him about a long-term contract. Betances is obviously very good and very valuable. He also turns 31 in March and can be unpredictable. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Yankees give him a one-year arbitration contract for next season, and then worry about 2020 after the season.

Either way, there shouldn’t be any (or many, I guess) calls to trade or non-tender Betances this offseason. At least not like last offseason. He was great throughout the regular season and postseason, and other than the general “this guy can be unpredictable” worries, there’s no real reason to believe Betances is about to see his performance slip. He’ll be back in a high-leverage role again in 2019.

Another Lost Season for Greg Bird [2018 Season Review]

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The 2018 season ended far earlier than we all would’ve liked. Now that the season is over, it’s time to begin our annual season review series, which kicks off today with Greg Bird. Aside from post a day Monday through Friday, there is no set schedule for these posts. We’ll write about players when we feel like writing about them, so each day’s review post will be a surprise (even to us!).

(Adam Hunger/Getty)

This was supposed to be the year. The year Greg Bird finally stayed healthy and took over as the Yankees’ first baseman of the present and future. Injuries sabotaged him in 2016 (shoulder surgery) and 2017 (ankle surgery), though we did get a reminder of what Bird is capable of last October, when he hit .244/.426/.512 (151 wRC+) with three home runs and 12 walks in 13 postseason games.

Who can forget Bird’s home run against Andrew Miller in ALDS Game Three last year? Aside from Didi Gregorius’ three-run home run in the Wild Card Game, the Yankees didn’t have a bigger hit all season.

Bird’s postseason performance combined with the perpetual hope that This Is The Year Greg Bird Stays Healthy had everyone excited coming into this season. I’m not the biggest Greg Bird fan out there but he has Yankee Stadium friendly pull power plus military style plate discipline. The Yankees didn’t need him to be their best (or second best, or third best, or even fourth best) hitter. He was expected to be a strong complementary piece.

Instead, for the third straight season, we were left disappointed. First it was another injury, then it was poor performance. Bird hit .199/.286/.386 (81 wRC+) with eleven home runs in (a career high!) 311 big league plate appearances in 2018. Not only did Luke Voit steal away the first base job in August, Bird didn’t even get a spot on the postseason roster. The Yankees carried six bench players on the Wild Card Game roster. Bird was not one of them. He wasn’t on the ALDS roster either. His potential to poke a ball into the short porch was deemed not necessary. Ouch.

Unfortunately, this year’s Greg Bird season review is like the last two. He was hurt, he didn’t live up to expectations, and we’re left wondering what the future holds. And, moreso than at any point before, it seems Bird may no longer be in the Yankees’ long-term plans. They love the guy, they’ve made it clear these last few years, but things don’t always play out as hoped. Let’s look back at Bird’s season.

Another Year, Another Injury

Bird did not even make it out of Spring Training healthy. He finished last season and the postseason healthy, had his first normal offseason in several years, and then his ankle started acting up again. Bird was held out of a Grapefruit League game on March 24th with inflammation in his right foot and sent to see a specialist. Two days later, the Yankees announced he needed surgery to remove a bone spur. The recovery time: 6-8 weeks.

“He was really emotional the other day when he came out, when he was dealing with the pain. Because he knows, obviously, he hasn’t gotten to put it together yet,” said Aaron Boone after the surgery was announced. “And he understands in his mind what kind of player he is and what he thinks he can be. So there were a couple days of some real frustration: ‘What’s going on? What’s the problem?’ … (He) got some closure and feels like this could be the answer to the problem, even though it’s going to cost him some weeks on the front end of the season.”

The initial injury was fairly concerning because Bird had surgery on the ankle last year and there was no play that caused the new injury. He played a full nine-inning game at first base and had discomfort the next day. Those non-contact injuries are always the worst. The Yankees sent him for tests, which revealed the bone spur. A quick recap of Bird’s surgeries:

  • 2016: Missed entire season with right shoulder injury.
  • 2017: Missed three and a half months with right ankle surgery.
  • 2018: Missed roughly two months with right ankle surgery.

Bird had his surgery and was shut down six weeks before beginning a minor league rehab assignment. I remember being pretty stoked that he returned to game action on the low end of that 6-8 week rehab time frame. Bird hit .205/.367/.436 (132 wRC+) with three home runs in his 12 rehab games and rejoined the Yankees on May 26th, two months to the day after it was announced he needed surgery.

All things considered, Bird’s injury and rehab went about as well as everyone could’ve hoped. The injury was unfortunate and the fact he needed surgery stunk, but Bird completed his rehab in six weeks and showed power and patience during his rehab assignment, and that was encouraging. I naively thought the ankle surgery would only be a bump in the road and not a season-derailer. Bottom line though, two surgeries on the same ankle within 12 months is bad news.

A Troubling Decline in Contact Quality

To Bird’s credit, he initially played well after returning from the disabled list. He went 7-for-28 (.280) with two doubles and two homers in his first six games back, and he also had a two-homer game against the Red Sox on June 29th. During his best stretch of the season, from June 29th to July 29th, Bird hit .286/.357/.548 (138 wRC+) with six home runs in 23 games. Who knew? It happened though.

Once the calendar flipped to August, Bird’s production cratered. He hit .135/.210/.260 (26 wRC+) the rest of the season and lost his first base job to Voit. The nosedive in graph form:

Bird started only three games in September — one of those three was the meaningless Game 161 after the Yankees clinched homefield advantage in the Wild Card Game — and appeared in only seven of the team’s final 27 regular season games. He was healthy. He just stunk and didn’t deserve a lineup spot. “It’s frustrating. It sucks to suck,” he said in August.

“Performance matters. The matchups matter,” said Boone late in the season when asked about Bird being mostly glued to the bench. “(I’m) trying to keep both guys relevant and put both guys in positions to succeed as best we can. But I would say it’s a fluid situation … If we can get (Bird) going in the right direction, I’m positive he can not only help us down the stretch, but, hopefully, if we get into the playoffs.”

Watch enough baseball and you’re bound to see a talented player struggle for a long stretch of time. Everyone falls into a rut now and then, you know? Bird’s slump was beyond a normal baseball slump, however. He was struggling and he looked terrible while doing it. This wasn’t one of those “eventually one of these hard-hit balls will fall in” slumps, you know? I keep going back to this GIF:

That is a middle-middle 90 mph fastball and Bird swung through it like it was 99 mph. He could not catch up to fastballs all season. Bird hit .175 with a .174 ISO against fastballs this season (.278 wOBA and .319 xwOBA). That is horrible. The league averages are .269 and .175 (.344 and .344), respectively. Bird couldn’t handle even bad fastballs, opponents noticed, so they kept throwing him fastballs. MLB is unforgiving. Show a weakness and it will be attacked.

When he first broke into the big leagues, Bird was touted for his ability to hit the ball hard and get the ball in the air. He was a launch angle guy before launch angle was cool. The sample sizes are not big because of the injuries, but Bird’s ability to drive the ball in the air is trending in the wrong direction:

Average Exit Velocity
2015: 93.0 mph
2016: Injured
2017: 89.7 mph
2018: 86.9 mph

Average Launch Angle
2015: 21.3°
2016: Injured
2017: 20.2°
2018: 18.9°

I should note that an 18.9° average exit velocity is pretty good. You want to average somewhere in the 10° to 25° range, the closer to 25° the better. Below 10° means too many grounders and above 25° means more fly balls and pop-ups than line drives. Bird is still in that ideal range, but his launch angle is trickling down, and his exit velocity is way down. He simply did not hit the ball hard this past season.

Remember Allen Craig? Craig put up a .312/.364/.500 (139 wRC+) batting line in nearly 1,300 plate appearances from 2011-13, then he suffered an ankle injury in 2014 and was just done. Like done done. Hasn’t played in the big league since 2015 and didn’t even hit in Triple-A pitching from 2015-17. Craig lost that explosiveness in his lower half after the injury and just couldn’t hit any more. He didn’t have a good base underneath him. His swing was all arms. I worry about that with Bird.

“I think he’s over it and past it, but I think there’s a level of building up that stamina and explosion and the fact that you’re still recovering from a surgery,” said Boone about Bird a few weeks ago. “I don’t think there’s any question that if he can stay healthy, a month from now, six months from now, it’s better, it’s more explosive. That’s something that we kind of monitor, talk about and hopefully he can get through this while building up that stamina that makes him special when he’s really on time and impacting the ball.”

Bird has now had three surgeries in the last three years on two important body parts. His right shoulder had to be rebuild and his right ankle had to be repaired twice. That’s his front shoulder and front ankle when hitting. That’s the power shoulder and the weight transfer ankle. Pretty important! It’s not like he tore a finger ligament or pulled a hamstring. These have been some very serious injuries.

We’ve seen Bird be an impact hitter. For very short stretches of time, but we’ve seen it. The natural talent is there and it’s not like he’s an older player. He turns 26 in November. He should be in his prime or just about to enter it. Can Bird still be an impact hitter, physically? Or have the shoulder and ankle trouble compromised him too much? I hope that’s not the case, but it might be.

What’s Next?

The Yankees went into the 2017 and 2018 seasons counting on Bird to be the man at first base. It was his job and he never even had to compete for it. That is not the case now. During his end-of-season press conference last week Boone was quick to note Voit had won the first base job and that, at best, Bird would get a chance to compete for it in Spring Training next year.

“(Voit) certainly came over here and was given that opportunity and took it and kicked the door in,” said Boone. “I’m sure there will continue to be competition on all kinds of levels. The one thing with Greg that I never lost is we’ve seen him be an impact player at times in his career … This year, in a lot of ways, was a little bit of a lost season for him.”

Believe it or not, Bird is arbitration-eligible this winter. He accrued service time while on the disabled list these last few years. Those injuries and the lack of production mean Bird’s salary won’t be exorbitant — for what it’s worth, MLBTR projects Bird for $1.5M — so the Yankees won’t non-tender him or anything like that. Bird has all three minor league options remaining. Technically, he was called up in 2015 and hasn’t been sent down to the minors since. It’s been rehab assignments only.

Point is, Bird is going to be (relatively) cheap and the Yankees will be able to send him to Triple-A next season. At this point, that’s probably the best course of action. No more handing him a job, no more overvaluing a big Spring Training, nothing. Give Bird a look in Spring Training, send him to Triple-A and make him show he’s healthy and productive, then call him back up. That’d be my plan.

When it comes to Greg Bird, nothing would surprise me at this point. I wouldn’t be surprised if he showed up to camp next season, seized the first base job, and raked all summer. I wouldn’t be surprised if he got hurt again and was a non-factor (again). I wouldn’t be surprised if he did something in-between, which is kinda what happened in 2017. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Yankees traded him either. This past season was another lost year for Bird, and time is starting to run out for him to carve out a role in the Bronx.