Archive for Derek Jeter
The New York Yankees Remix
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Flawless combining of sports and music. (Used under a creative common license from flickr user vtooky)
Sports have a lot in common with music.
First off, it’s easy to get over-invested. You love a band? Suddenly, you’re seeing three of their shows in a row, driving up and down the state and maybe into (shudder) Massachusetts. You might be listening to the same album over and over again. Likewise, I’m sure plenty of Yankees fans are going to Boston, DC, Queens, and Baltimore to check out your team. Also, there’s the fact we end up watching these guys play the same game 162+ times. That’s a lot to watch the same damn thing. I think we’re all crazy.
Additionally, there is nothing more pointless than arguing either music or sports with your friends. Your friend is Mets fan? Get new friends, but first, try to convince them to be a Yankees fan. Sadly, futile. Meanwhile, your friend likes that band you hate? There is no way they will ever tell you it’s not the best thing they’ve ever listened to. Meanwhile, you will make an equal fool of yourself singing in your cubicle or talking avidly about your fantasy team. (Hint: No one cares about your fantasy team.)
With this, I present Yankees as songs from my iPod.
Derek Jeter as “The Lightning Strike,” by Snow Patrol
There are lots of great things that Jeter presents: as a baseball player, he’s really good, really consistent, determined, disciplined, and talented. As a front presented to the media, he’s calm, with no surprises and no big crises; he doesn’t get into trouble, and as a result he doesn’t ever have to wiggle out of it. Jeter’s the golden boy, as everyone knows.
“The Lightning Strike” off A Hundred Million Suns, gives the listener all these things. Not only does it match Jeter’s lengthy career (the song has four parts and combines for a whopping 16:18 in play time), but the song starts with an intriguing intro before being played with a dramatic flare through all four parts. It even comes with a part around 9:35 where you thought it was over, but then you realize there’s a lot more to go. Despite the dramatic notes, there’s no surprises – gravitas is the norm, like Jeter, and there’s no random cymbal banging or screaming guitar solos where you didn’t expect them. The song ends leaving the listening feeling fulfilled, like this whole story was written and told perfectly, and couldn’t have been any other way, and when Jeter’s career is over… well, how could it have been any better? Ain’t no one out there like El Capitan.
David Robertson as “Don’t Stop Me Now,” by Queen
In the Non-Mariano Rivera division of things that happen in baseball games, is there anything that made you feel more secure in 2011 than David Robertson? The man was flat-out amazing on the mound in relief, and as such I think he’s worthy of such a great song.
Quite frankly, no one could have stopped Robertson, both last year and ’11, and even with a little regression he’d still be a downright amazing reliever. He had a real good time. He felt alive. He was floating around in ecstasy.
You get the point.
While there was usually a tenseness that came with Robertson’s appearance, they almost always ended in the impossible-to-frown-at cheeriness that also accompanies this song. Both the song and his at-bats tended to follow an easy routine: he throws fastballs, and curveballs, and strike guys out. Meanwhile, the song, like the baseball season, becomes bigger both in terms of leverage and Freddie Mercury’s voice, and Robertson still has it in the bag. With his strikeout rate’s rocket ship already reached Mars, he’s going to make a supersonic man out of you. By that, I mean he’s going to embarrass you with his pitches and make you ashamed as you walk back to your dugout.
Whether you think 200 degrees means the heat on his fastball or the break of his offspeed pitches, it was all enough to earn him a pretty awesome nickname (sadly, not Mr. Fahrenheit).
(Shameless Plug: I did a Yankees year in review video to this song.)
Phil Hughes as “Vida La Vida” by Coldplay
Phil Hughes used to be everything. He was the future. He was brilliance. He was the next 6-year-100M contact. He was the Yankees’ pride and joy. He was the kind of guy you ran off to get the jersey of, the one you knew was gonna mean everything.
But that was when he ruled the world.
These days, Hughes is but a shadow of the flawless prospect we imagined him as. Injuries and ineffectiveness have kicked him down from the position, and he’s gone from being The Future to fighting for a rotation spot. Given as how entertaining the “Phil Hughes is Fat” jokes can sometimes be, there’s a good chance that even if he returns to form, they’ll persist, and that possibility is even greater if he doesn’t. Both Hughes and Coldplay tell stories about rising and falling from power, and how easy it can be. After all, baseball’s almost as difficult as ruling a country, I bet.
While the song ends on a morbid, depressing note, I’m hoping Phil can break the trend here and get himself together in 2012. It wouldn’t be legitimately awful for him to end up as a reliever, but it does seem a little a let-down when he was so good in the first half in 2010. That seems far away now, doesn’t it?
Anyway, because this is music, I’m sure there will be many differing opinions on song choice. And because this is sports, I’m sure lots of people will disagree with me. That’s what the comments are for.
(I shamelessly modified this idea from where Friend of the Blog Rebecca Glass discusses the Yankees as mythical creatures. Derek Jeter is a unicorn.)
Behind Derek Jeter’s unexpected second-half resurgence
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(Bill Kostroun/AP)
I’ve given Derek Jeter a considerably hard time since his offensive game started to fall off a cliff back in May 2010, and so it seemed appropriate to reverse course and give Derek proper due for the remarkable turnaround that saw him hit .327/.383/.428 in the second half of 2011 after a .270/.330/.353 first half and a .270/.340/.370 2010 season. Additionally, while many have acknowledged Derek’s resurgence, few (if any) have taken a look into the why, and so here’s a deeper dive into how Derek Got His Groove Back (and no, it has nothing to do with gift baskets).
The below chart (as always, click to enlarge) shows Derek’s plate discipline numbers graphed against his wOBA on a month-by-month basis, beginning in April 2010.
There’s obviously quite a bit going on here, and I was actually surprised to find that a lot of this data didn’t correlate the way I was expecting it to. I figured Jeter’s best months would feature low O-Swing% and O-Contact% rates; and yet his best month (August 2011′s .398 wOBA) featured his third-highest O-Contact% (77.6%) out of the 12 months shown here. For a player with a career 62.0% O-Contact%, I really have no idea what to make of that.
Fortunately his four best months of the last 12 — August 2011, April 2010′s .380 wOBA, July 2011′s .352 wOBA and September 2011′s .344 — were each among his top four Z-Swing% rates (though not in that exact order), lending some sense of order to the proceedings. Although only two of those four months — again, April 2010 and August 2011 — were among the top four Z-Contact% rates.
The other data type that correlated with Derek’s top monthly wOBAs was Swing%, as his three highest Swing% months were also his three best wOBA months. So based on this data it seems like Derek is at his best the more frequently he swings, which is also driven home by the below table:
| O-Swing% | Z-Swing% | Swing% | O-Contact% | Z-Contact% | Contact% | Zone% | Sw-Strk% | |
| 2010 | 28.2% | 67.2% | 47.1% | 69.2% | 92.9% | 85.5% | 48.3% | 6.7% |
| 1H 2011 | 26.9% | 66.8% | 45.8% | 73.1% | 91.6% | 85.9% | 47.3% | 6.4% |
| 2H 2011 | 29.9% | 71.7% | 48.9% | 71.5% | 90.6% | 84.3% | 45.5% | 7.5% |
Although that probably isn’t terribly surprising news to anyone who’s watched Derek with any frequency of late. While Derek’s never been a notorious hacker (his career 8.9% BB% is certainly respectable) he has seemed less inclined to take ball four as he’s gotten older, and indeed, he’s only exceeded the league average BB% once in the last five seasons (though he did match it last year). This past season his walk rate was 7.6% against a league average of 8.1% — a five-year league-average low.
Of course, plate discipline only tells part of the story; we also need to see what Derek did with the balls he put into play.
Now this chart makes a little more sense. Derek’s worst month — April 2011 — also featured his highest GB% of the 12 months surveyed here, a ridiculous 72.3%. On the flip side, Derek’s best month, August 2011, saw the fewest ground balls (55.8%). His best LD% months were, unsurprisingly, August ’11 (31.6%) and September 2011 (26.2%). He’s only exceeded 20% line drives in a full season once in the last five seasons, so Derek really turned back the clock this past summer.
I also thought it’d be interesting to see how pitchers attacked Derek over the last two seasons. Instead of drilling down on each individual pitch type, I decided to borrow Mike’s binning of Fastballs (FB%=FF, FT, SI, FC, FA and FS), Breaking Balls (BrB%=SL, CU, KN) and Changeups (CH%).
First-half Derek saw a slight decrease in fastballs from 2010, an uptick in breaking balls and a very small decrease in changeups. However, pitchers on the whole seemed to start challenging Derek with more heat in the second-half, which is probably at least partially responsible for his offensive resurgence, as Derek’s been an above-average fastball hitter for all of the years in which we have data for.
Pitchers did continue to exploit his difficulty with the offspeed pitch, and in fact, 2011 was the worst season of Derek’s career in terms of pitch type linear weights for the changeup. Opposing teams undoubtedly know that you can beat Derek with the change, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see that CH% rise even higher next season.
Lastly, I wanted to take a look at where Derek was hitting the ball. Here’s Derek’s first-half 2011 spray chart:
We all know Derek’s made his living going the other way, but Derek rarely pulled anything with power in the first half, hitting 11 balls to left field (though seven went for hits).
Here’s the second-half spray chart:
That’s a nice-looking spray chart. By my count Derek hit 22 balls to left field in the second half, and 21(!) of them went for hits. I’m not saying Derek needs to become a pull hitter or anything crazy like that, but it’s rather remarkable how much different the results were after he started using the entire field.
The one angle I was curious about but didn’t have the tools to dig too deeply into was whether the Yankees faced a disproportionate amount of lefthanded pitching in the second half, though unfortunately none of the usual suspects have the capability of showing platoon splits by half. However, the Yankees only faced (by my count) 21 lefthanded starters out of their 74 second-half games, so even if Derek did presumably continue to feast on southpaws, his numbers were likely also very good against righthanders in the second half as well, a subset whom he has really struggled against (81 wRC+ on the whole in 2011, and 71 wRC+ in 2010).
To summarize, it would appear that the keys to Derek’s second-half resurgence were, in part, as follows: swinging a lot more frequently than he had been doing (and more frequently than league average, but slightly less than league average on pitches out of the zone), hitting the ball in the air, getting a lot of fastballs and pulling the ball to left field. Of course, this begs the question whether any of this is sustainable for the 2012 season (and beyond, if we’re extremely lucky), or if Derek will regress back to being the groundout-to-the-shortstop-on-the-first-pitch machine that frustrated the heck out of Yankee fans for roughly a year-and-a-half’s worth of plate appearances.
What Went Right: Post-DL Derek Jeter
Posted by: | CommentsOver the next few weeks, we’re going to look back at what went right, what went wrong, and what went as expected during the 2011 campaign.
(AP Photo/Bill Kostroun)
Earlier today we looked at the first half of Derek Jeter’s season, when he posted a measly .295 wOBA through the Yankees first 64 games before suffered a Grade I calf strain running out a fly ball. The injury was originally supposed to keep the Cap’n out for ten days, but it ended up shelving him for three weeks and 20 team games. Jeter rehabbed in Tampa and played in two minor league rehab games with Double-A Trenton before returning to the lineup on Independence Day.
Although that first game back against the Indians (the same team he hurt himself against) went poorly (0-for-4), the difference was noticeable the very next day. Jeter went 2-for-6 with a booming double the other way, and several of the outs were very hard hit line drives a well. Another double followed the next day. And then another the next game. And then came the fourth straight game with a double. In his sixth game back, Jeter took David Price deep for his 3,000th career hit, a no-doubt shot pulled to left. That was part of a 5-for-5 day. The time off seemed to do wonders, but it wasn’t just rest.
“Staying back,” said Jeter when asked what the difference was before and after the DL trip. “Stay back better and obviously you’re going to drive balls more. That’s what I’ve been doing since I’ve been back, so I just want it to continue. You can get a lot more work in when you don’t have to play games, so I sort of look at it as a blessing in disguise, I hope. I’ve felt good since I’ve been back.”
The results were stunning. Jeter was hitting the ball with authority after getting healthy, especially to the pull side, and the result was a .346/.393/.472 batting line in his first 38 games back. That’s not far off from the .334/.406/.465 batting line he posted during his MVP-caliber 2009 season. A sixth inning single against the Athletics on August 25th raised Jeter’s batting average to .300683, the first time he’d been over .300 since May 8th of last season, a span of 157 team games.
From the day he returned to the lineup through the end of the season, Jeter hit a remarkable .331/.384/.447 (.367 wOBA) in 314 plate appearances. His ground ball rate went from a 2010-esque 65.9% before the injury to 58.9% after, which is in line with the 57.6% grounder rate he posted from 2008-2009. The strong finished raised Derek’s overall season line to a very respectable .297/.355/.388, a .332 wOBA that ranked ninth among shortstops.
Whenever a player improves their performance after coming back from a DL stint, the vast majority of the time it’s just a matter of getting healthy. In Jeter’s case though, it was about taking advantage of the time off to work on some mechanical fixes, namely staying back on the ball so he can drive it with authority. Post-DL Derek Jeter was the Derek Jeter we’ve watched for the last 15 years, a dynamic force atop the order that hit for average, got on base, and would sneak up on pitchers with some power.
What Went Wrong: Pre-DL Derek Jeter
Posted by: | CommentsOver the next few weeks, we’re going to look back at what went right, what went wrong, and what went as expected during the 2011 campaign.
(AP Photo/LM Otero)
There’s no denying that 2010 was a down season for Derek Jeter. Just one year removed from a .334/.406/.465 batting line (.390 wOBA) during the Yankees run to the World Series, the Cap’n hit a punchless .270/.340/.370 (.320 wOBA) last season. His ground ball rate (65.7%) was the highest by a non-Luis Castillo hitter since the data started being recorded in 2002, and most of those grounders were weak, as you know. At 36-years-old, it was fair to wonder if this was the beginning of the end of one of the greatest Yankees ever, and early this season, it certainly looked like it was.
Jeter picked up just two hits through the team’s first four games, and just two extra-base hits (both doubles) through the season’s first month. His ground ball rate sat at a sky high 72.3% though April, explaining the utter lack of power. And yet, because he’s Derek Jeter, he remained atop the lineup despite a paltry .303 OBP in his first 211 plate appearances, essentially the first third of the season.
Every once in a while there would be a flash of the old Jeter, like the four-hit game against the Orioles on April 24th or the two-homer game against the Rangers on May 8th, but he was never able to build on it. That two-homer game in Texas was followed by a .247/.321/.301 batting line through the end of the month, and yet he continued to lead off. Joe Girardi stood by the Captain through it all, saying they would wait 150 at-bats, 250 at-bats, 350 at-bats, whatever it took until Jeter was right. Problem was, those arbitrary at-bat milestones kept passing by without improvement.
On the morning of June 13th, Derek was hitting .259/.324/.324 through 64 team games. The Yankees had one of the best offenses in baseball and were scoring boatloads of runs in spite of his presence as leadoff hitter, not because of it. That night, Jeter tapped a harmless fly ball to right to lead off the fifth inning in a game against the Indians, and appeared to have a little hitch in his step as he ran down to first. Eduardo Nunez took over at shortstop in the next half inning, indicating that the Cap’n did have some kind of physical problem.
The injury was announced as a sore right calf after the game, and an MRI confirmed a Grade I calf strain. The Yankees waited a day before placing Jeter on the disabled list, a move he strongly opposed. It’s not a big deal for the team to play a man short he said, but the team couldn’t afford to play short-handed with the NL leg of interleague play coming up. An injury that was supposed to take ten days to heal wound up taking three weeks.
At the time of the injury, Jeter was hitting a lowly .260/.324/.324, a well-below-average .295 wOBA. For a defensive whiz, that would be tolerable production at short. Derek is no defensive whiz though, and his age made his already shaky defense play even worse. The Yankees had one of the worst regulars in baseball not just suiting up for them every night, but also getting more plate appearances than everyone else on the team while playing a key position. In a way, the injury was a relief, almost like it put him (and us) out of his (and our) misery, at least temporarily. A little later today we’ll look at the other side of the Jeter coin, his resurgence following his return from the disabled list, but for now there’s no way around admitting that pre-injury Jeter went very, very wrong.
Derek Jeter on The Rosie O’Donnell Show, circa 1999
Posted by: | CommentsRAB’s own Hannah Ehrlich found this the other day and passed it along to me, and … just watch. Words really can’t describe it. The hamburger desk just pulls the whole thing together. Just amazing.
(h/t the shark doctor)
Baseball Prospectus on the 1996 Yankees
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Going back to a time when this happened a bit more frequently. (Photo via SI.com)
The fine folks at Baseball Prospect put their entire 1996 Annual online over the weekend, and it’s free for all to see. You don’t need a subscription to see the 28 team sections (no Devil Rays or Diamondbacks yet!), complete with overviews, player comments, and projections for the 1996 season. I think it goes without saying that it’s amazing to look back and see what was being written about some of these guys, even moreso when you consider everything we know now. Hindsight can be an amazing thing.
Given his recent historical accomplishments, I think it’s only fair that we start with Mariano Rivera, who was just a 26-year-old kid with a 5.51 ERA in 67 career innings at the time …
Skinny swingman who has good control of the corners of the strike zone. His K rate seemed to jump up a little as of late, and if that’s development rather than a fluke, this kid could really be something special. Looks way too skinny to be durable, but you never know.
Unfortunately the annual did not provide a projection for Rivera, but I highly doubt it would have come close to what he actually did that year, a 2.09 ERA with 130 strikeouts and just 34 walks in 107.2 relief innings. He’s still way too skinny, but the durability thing proved to be a complete non-issue.
Jeter out with right knee contusion, he and A-Rod likely out Monday
Posted by: | CommentsUpdate (10:44pm): X-rays on the kneecap came back negative, but Jeter is unlikely to play tomorrow. In other news, Alex Rodriguez was unavailable tonight and is also unlikely to play tomorrow because his sore thumb is acting up again. The Yankees aren’t in a position where they need these two every single game, so let them rest up and get healthy.
Original (7:48pm): Derek Jeter was a very, very late scratch from tonight’s game because of a right knee contusion. He fouled a ball off his knee in the first game of the doubleheader, but managed to finish the game. Wasn’t all that hard to do since he was the DH. No idea on the extent of the injury, but hopefully it’s a day-to-day thing.
The Complete Team
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Team Necessities. (Photo copyright Amanda Rykoff, on flckr)
Over the course of the season, we’ve seen that this Yankees team really has strong components, even if they don’t all work at the same time. They pitch pretty damn well, they hit just fine, they’re pretty strong defensively, and they have an amazing bullpen. And while the stats may back this up, what’s more important is that the Yankees have players that embody the concepts that make a team great. You can have a great FIP or wOBA, but who cares if your team isn’t filled with true ballplayers? Let’s break down the team and make sure that, along with the best run differential, the third best bullpen ERA, and the sixth best ERA as a team, the Yankees know how to play baseball.
A Team Leader
One of the most important parts of a team is having a leader that can accurately explain what your team is going through at any given time, push their own problems and accomplishments by the wayside, and really encompass what a team is all about. Luckily, the Yankees have been gifted in this area of team chemistry for a long time with Derek Jeter at the helm. Three thousand hits? Winning is more important. Horrible, ground ball-induced slump? Small stance changes. Red-hot streak? Trying to help the team. Even before his anointment as captain in 2003, Jeter has always lead the team. The other important thing is that Jeter bats leadoff. The only places a true leader can bat are leadoff and cleanup, which helps noble fans distinguish who is a real leader and who is faking it. You don’t want to be mislead by fake leaders such as Jason Varitek (bats 8th) or Chipper Jones (bats sixth). But Derek Jeter and Dustin Pedroia….those players can really carry a team to victory.
A Professional Hitter
Sure, some hitters can get on base, hit homers, see a lot of pitches or take walks. Sure, some hitters can spray hits everywhere or beat out infield singles. While these are moderately important traits for a hitter, the most important tool is the professional at-bat. You want a guy who goes up there, spits on his hands, kicks the dirt, and really gets into a batting stance. In that case, there’s only one player that really qualifies: Andruw Jones. You can tell, from his massive biceps to his amused smile, that he knows how to hit. He goes up there with his doctorate degree in “sitting dead-red,” and he swings the bat. And he really swings the bat! He is never cheated out of hits, which is one of the most important parts of being a professional hitter. Also, only a man who truly knew how to swing the bat could do this. I don’t see Brett Gardner putting homers in the third deck, all right?
A Proven Veteran
Six hundred plate appearances is a lot. That’s a lot of time to practice something you have to be good at. Multiply that by ten or fifteen years, and you’re talking about thousands and thousands of plate appearances. While some people might just have a knack for baseball the minute they hit the bigs, the more important thing is having a player who’s had more plate appearances than you can even count. You don’t even have to hit in most of them. The experience is all that counts, and the Yankees have plenty of experience. The most experienced member of the Yankees? Jorge Posada.
I’m not talking about this in number of actual plate appearances, even if he has the most (I’m not checking because this article isn’t about numbers), but in the way Posada has had almost an unfair amount of experience at the plate. Blowouts both ways, playoffs galore, every possible situation leverage-wise that you could think of – the man’s done it all in style. He’s the kind of guy who can share his knowledge on how to get hits in the clutch with the young core of the team. It’s insane to think he might be cut or left off the playoff roster. A resume like Posada’s is a necessity.
Getting dirty. Just the way he likes it. (Photo copyright Amanda Rykoff, on flickr)
A Gritty Grinder
You know what’s coming with this one, right? In every baseball game, there are times where nothing is more important than hustle and grit. A player with a lot of grit can make close plays, dive headfirst into first base, and isn’t afraid to get their uniform dirty with a steal. A grinder goes out there and plays every day, every inning, every at-bat as hard as they can, with an almost indescribable amount of ferocity.
It’s true that no player on the Yankees can match up to the absolute grittiness of Dustin Pedroia. There is no one better than him at playing every inning as hard as he can. Even those jumps before each play – what does that say about him? He’s ready. He’s ready for the line drive that jumps up on him, the diving catch and the dramatic double-play. There is no one in the history of baseball more ready than Pedroia.
That being said, the Yankees will have to settle for a fairly gritty man themselves: Brett Gardner. Even though his outfield station takes away from some of his grittiness, the way he plays practically makes it all back. Gardner makes every play interesting, from his on-the-run catches to his crazy dives. His real hustle, however, comes from the basepaths. THere is something to be said for the way he busts his ass to first base. There is even more to be said about his constant first base sliding. Why, only a person who really knew how to play the game would dive into first base. Additional speed? Momentum? Pfft! These are all things Gardner knows are less important than his incredible grittiness. His dirty uniform says it all: I move. I move fast. I play every inning as hard as I can. I am truly gritty.
I’m glad to see that this team has just as much (if not more) heart and soul than it has power numbers. From Posada’s sagedom to Jones’ at bats and Gardner’s hustle, there’s nothing we have to worry about in terms of the product on the field. Sure you could talk about the numbers – Granderson’s home runs, Cano’s batting average- but anyone could do that stuff. What’s valuable is our team plays the game the right way – and they certainly do.
The League Average Derek Jeter
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(AP Photo/Kathy Willens)
On the afternoon of June 13th, Derek Jeter limped off the field in the fifth inning of an eventual loss to the Indians. The Cap’n had flown out to right to open the frame, but he appeared to hurt something coming out of the box and was replaced in the next half inning by Eduardo Nunez. At the time, Jeter was hitting .260/.324/.325 in 296 plate appearances, and the calf strain he suffered on the play would keep him on the shelf for just about three weeks.
Nunez filled in capably while Jeter was on the shelf, adding the kind of life and electricity to the shortstop position that the Yankees haven’t had since 2009. The Yankees went 14-5 in Derek’s absence, going from 2.5 games back in the AL East to 1.5 up. As great as Jeter has been for the Yankees, there was definitely a sense of dread immediately before his return, because we all knew that not only would his unproductive bat be back in the lineup every day, it would be in the leadoff spot getting more plate appearances than everyone else. We all knew this, except we were all wrong.
Since coming off the disabled list on Independence Day against the same Indians he faced on the day of his injury, Jeter has hit .326/.382/.457 in 154 plate appearances with the same number of extra base hits (12) as he had before the injury in almost half the trips to the plate. That has raised his season line to .283/.344/.370, a performance that is exactly league average in terms of wRC+. That’s a top eight mark among full-time big league shortstops, an indication of how much Jeter has turned his season around and how weak the position is around the league. A 100 wRC+ at an up-the-middle position is pretty damn good.
“Staying back,” said Jeter after last night’s three hit (including a triple) effort. “Stay back better and obviously you’re going to drive balls more. That’s what I’ve been doing since I’ve been back, so I just want it to continue.” Derek has been driving the ball with much more authority since coming back, as the increased rate of extra base hits suggests. As we tend to do with stuff like this, let’s turn to the spray charts. First, it’s pre-DL Jeter…
Almost everything he hit in the air went the other way or to center field. I count what, ten balls pulled into left (hits + outs)? That’s out of 231 balls in play. The majority of his hits came on balls right back up the middle or filleted through the right side (remember, the points indicate where the defender fielded the ball, not where it landed). Now let’s look at the post-DL spray chart…
This one is much more spread out. The majority of his balls in play are still to center and right, that’s just the kind of hitter he is and always has been, but there’s also way more balls pulled into left. I count 12 balls hit to the outfield on the pull side, including one right to the warning track and one actually over the fence. That’s 12 balls to left in 115 balls in play after the DL stint versus ten in 231 before. It could be small sample size noise, but give how he’s been actually driving the ball these last few weeks, I’m guessing there’s something more to it than just coincidence.
Of course, we have to acknowledge that Jeter still does the vast majority of his damage against lefties (.500/.538/.750 in 39 PA) and is mediocre at best against righties (.265/.327/.353 in 115 PA). That’s a similar split to his pre-DL performance (.299/.405/.403 vs. LHP and .246/.294/.297 vs. RHP) and last year as well (.321/.391/.481 vs. LHP and .216/.316/.317 vs. RHP). At his age, I think we’re just going to have to accept the platoon split, which is made somewhat more tolerable because the best starters in the AL East are generally southpaws.
“You can get a lot more work in when you don’t have to play games,” said Jeter shortly after coming off the DL, referring to the work he did to stay back on the ball with rehabbing the calf. “So I sort of look at it as a blessing in disguise, I hope. I’ve felt good since I’ve been back.” The Cap’n has been performing to his career averages for about six weeks now, bringing his overall season performance to the league average, which is both encouraging and refreshing.
Baseball mortality during the dog days of August
Posted by: | CommentsAs Jorge Posada, the Yanks’ once and former designated hitter, has come to grips with his newfound role on the bench, the hot-tempered elder statesman has not been in the best of spirits. “I’m not happy with it,” he said to reporters this week. “I don’t need to tell you again that I’m not happy with it. But I’m moving on, and I’ll be ready to play whenever I happen to play.”
Of course, Jorge isn’t happy, and he has many reasons not to be. At the tail end of a career that could land him in the hallowed halls of Cooperstown, Posada has been told by his one and only employer that he’s no longer with a job, and if he were anyone other than Jorge Posada, the Yanks probably would have flat-out released him a few weeks ago. Since he has a legacy, though, and rosters expand in three weeks, the Yanks will allow him to bow out somewhat gracefully at the end of the season.
For Posada, the end has been jarring. As the Yanks’ seemingly full-time DH for much of the season, he hit just .230/.309/.372 with nine home runs. He hasn’t homered since June 29, the date of A.J. Burnett‘s last win, and Posada posted just a .207/.258/.244 in 89 plate appearances since then. The league average DH is hitting .262/.338/.416. That sound Jorge hears isn’t the end of the road fast approaching.
For the past 15 seasons, Jorge Posada has been a stalwart. Often underappreciated for his hitting, he was a five-time All Star and finished third in the MVP voting in 2003. For the first few years of his career, he split catching duties with Joe Girardi and did not emerge as the Yanks’ full-time catcher until 2000 when he started 136 games the plate. His career numbers — .273/.374/.474 with 270 home runs — are particularly impressive as a backstop.
Posada was one of those Yankees with whom I grew up. We all know the stories of the core of the Yankee Dynasty as the team’s farm system produced Jorge along with his buddy Derek Jeter, their lefty Andy Pettitte, the closer Mariano Rivera and the graceful centerfielder Bernie Williams. Bernie’s slide into baseball oblivion was a quick one, spurred on by a slowing bat and a knee injury. He too was unhappy when the Yanks offered him only a Spring Training invite and only recently has re-embraced his turn in the Yankee spotlight.
Getting older though is what baseball is about. It’s a game dictated not by a clock but by the more leisurely pace of outs. As our favorite players age, the outs melt away much like innings on a scorecard. Jorge Posada isn’t the first former great to grow old before Yankee fans’ eyes, but he’s the first of the group that formed the core of my first Yankee Dynasty to suffer the fate. Andy Pettitte retired because his body couldn’t withstand the beating of another season, but he still had the skill to match.
Jorge isn’t alone here. We’ve seen Derek Jeter’s magical age-defying offensive streak come to a screeching halt lately as well. Even though he’s hitting better after coming off of the DL, his numbers are right-handed pitching are painful to see, and his overall line is a far cry from the halcyon days of 2009. The .273/.335/.360 slash line makes him seem like just another middle infielder and not Derek Jeter. One day in the future, in 2012 or 2013, the Yanks will be faced with a Jorge Posada situation with Jeter, and the boyish short stop won’t seem quite as timeless.
On the mound too, we’ve seen Mariano Rivera lose a little something. It’s not much, but it’s enough. Last night, it was the difference between missing middle-in on a 3-1 pitch that didn’t cut enough at 91 and missing middle-in on a 3-1 pitch that didn’t cut enough at 93 or 94 as he would have thrown five or six years ago. At 41, Rivera is the oldest Yankee, and baseball time marches on.
But baseball too is about renewal. Although no one will be the Next Mariano Rivera, young kids with live arms and lots of promise pass through the Yankee Stadium doors. We know the names of the players who are supposed to be the Next Big Thing, and we see a pitcher like David Robertson turn into a star. Soon, in ten or 12 weeks if the Yanks make a big October run again, it will be time to say good bye to Jorge Posada. But another feisty player with a hot temper will take his place. That’s the circle of baseball life.
Just 6 days 'til pitchers and catchers report.
