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River Ave. Blues » Designated Hitter

To need a DH or not to need a DH

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When Nick Johnson went down with a wrist injury in early May, the Yankees found themselves with a lineup problem. As with any team, they had no back-up plan for the designated hitter spot, and although Brian Cashman and Joe Girardi had spoke of their desires to use the DH as a rotation half-day spot for their aging veteran core, that move meant far too many at-bats for the likes of Francisco Cervelli and Ramiro Pena. It does the team no good if having an above-average designated hitter for a day leads to, in the cases of Pena and Cervelli, a combined 307 plate appearances of well below-average hitting.

As Johnson’s injury morphed into something that will probably be season-ending, the Yankees have scrambled a bit to fill the DH spot. Jorge Posada has earned the bulk of at-bats over the last few weeks, and while Marcus Thames can hit against lefties, his production against right-handed pitcher leaves him on the bench until the late innings. And so a meme emerged: The team needed a more permanent solution to the DH hole.

Recently, those rumblings have turned into full-fledged dissent by the Yankee faithful. Even with the arrival of Juan Miranda — a career minor league slugger with little Major League experience or success — commentators believed the Yankees would look to upgrade the designated hitter spot before the July 31st trade deadline. Adam Dunn could be had for the right price, and if the Yanks got creative, a few other hitters could wind up on the open market.

A funny thing happened on the way to trade deadline though. Down in Scranton, Jesus Montero got hot. His streak isn’t just your average hot streak; it’s a blistering, sweltering, Yankee Stadium-on-Old Timers’ Day hot. In 50 at-bats since the start of July, Montero is hitting .420/.531/.740 with four home runs. He’s walked 13 times and struck out just seven, the last K coming 10 days ago. After a horrendous cold stretch, Montero has, since June 1, poured it on. He’s hitting .329/.402/.584. He’s 20. He’s at AAA. Chew on that.

The drumbeat grew louder. Bring him up to DH, they say. He’ll hit at least as well as Juan Miranda and probably better. He’s truly the real deal, they say. I’ll admit it: I’m very, very tempted by the idea.

Yet, promoting Montero may just be an attempt to solve a problem that doesn’t really exist. It’s true that the Yankees could use a more permanent solution at designated hitter, but their offense isn’t suffering. As their positional splits reveal, the Yankees have been above average at every position this year except three: 1B because of Juan Miranda and Nick Johnson’s production while in the field; 3B because of Kevin Russo and Ramiro Pena’s inability to hit; and CF because Curtis Granderson is having a disappointing season. Notice that for two of these positions, the rotating DH actually drags down the overall production to below-average totals. Mark Teixeira and Alex Rodriguez individually are both putting up above-average OPSs relative to the league average at their positions.

At the DH spot, the Yankees aren’t suffering. Their make-shift DHs are putting together an sOPS+ of 111, far above the league average. (Considering the combined batting line of .244 with a .779 OPS for Yanks’ DHs, that’s a sad commentary on the state of American League DHs, but I digress.) Take a look at the positional breakdown:



On an individual level, the numbers are too small to draw many conclusions, but Juan Miranda’s and Marcus Thames’ production doesn’t look bad when we isolate their DH totals. In fact, both hitters are faring better than average in very limited plate appearances. At the very least, this platoon deserves an extended look.

This DH/Jesus Montero conundrum doesn’t end there. Right now, I have little doubt that Montero will be a productive bat in the Majors. I’m not sure the Yankees are convinced he’ll be a catcher, and I’m not sure there’s much to gain keeping him behind the dish at AAA for the sake of appearances. The Cliff Lee dealings illustrated how the Yankees value Montero, and if they truly saw him as the catcher of the future, he wouldn’t have been included in that trade. That title will be reserved, for now, for Austin Romine.

But the compelling reason to keep Montero in AAA is one of track record. Take a look at the list of 20-year-olds in the expansion era who had at least 200 PAs at the Major League level. With a few notable exceptions, these players all put up below average numbers. It’s just not easy to be 20 and a Major Leaguer. The Yanks need Montero to be great in the long run; they don’t need him to be merely adequate in 2010.

Barring a big deal, the DH spot will remain in flux for the Yankees. If Montero’s torrid stretch continues throughout August, we can reconsider the issue for September. But the Yanks keep winning, Montero keeps mashing, and we’ll patiently await a designated hitter and eventually Jesus Montero too.

Doing the DH shuffle

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Since Nick Johnson hit the disabled list with a sore wrist last weekend in Boston, the Yankees have had the luxury of an open designated hitter spot. Never one to pass up an opportunity to mix-and-match, Joe Girardi has done just that, and the Yankees have used five different DHs in as many days. I’m beginning to think, however, that the team could use some stability at this offensive spot.

As we know, the Yankees are an old team. The left side of the infield features one guy who will turn 36 this year and another 35. Their catcher is a sprightly 38 and often runs as though he’s 83. Getting these guys some days off becomes an important consideration for Joe Girardi, and to that end, since Johnson left Friday’s game, Robinson Cano, Jorge Posada, Marcus Thames, Alex Rodriguez and Derek Jeter have, in that order, held down the DH spot.

On the surface, it’s tough to bemoan these moves, but these lineup changes come at a price. With these guys DHing, we’ve seen both Ramiro Peña and Francisco Cervelli appear in three of the last five Yankee games, and while Cervelli is hitting well in the early going, neither player can caddy offensively for those he is tasked with replacing in the lineup. For what it’s worth, Ramiro Peña is hitting .138/.188/.172 in his 33 plate appearances with a WAR of -0.2 this year after hitting just .255/.315/.320 through parts of five years in the minors.

In the early going, at least, the Yankees had to deal with some nicks and bruises, and to that end, Girardi made good use of Nick Johnson’s absence. Robinson Cano took a fastball off the knee on Friday and played as the DH on Saturday. Jorge Posada sat out for four days nursing a sore calf before DHing on Sunday. But beyond that, Girardi needs to find a better solution.

Over at Baseball Prospectus yesterday afternoon, Christina Kahrl, in a subscriber-only piece, took the Yankees to task for getting sloppy with their roster and, in particular, the DH spot. She questions if “using the absence of a regular DH to feed additional playing time to Ramiro Pena and Francisco Cervelli (and [Marcus] Thames too)” is “really a good idea.”

Is that really such a good idea? It’s a way to keep the benchies fresh, of course, and it gives lineup regulars partial days off. Those are nice things to do if you’re talking about a temporary fix and a temporary absence. That’s probably not the scenario the Yankees are in, however. Losing Johnson until the end of the month—at least, given his horrendous track record—on top of losing Curtis Granderson makes this a situation where courtesy starts for Ramiro Pena in a lineup already stuck with Randy Winn shouldn’t fly. And no, Greg Golson is not an answer, at least not to a question you need to ask.

Instead, sorting out who should be the Yankees’ DH really ought to involve someone like Miranda now, and perhaps Jesus Montero eventually. Montero’s future still seems to be someplace other than behind the plate, but he’s not hitting much in Scranton; it’s understandable to not want to advance his timetable any until his bat starts setting the clock. With Miranda, there is no such consideration: the 27ish-year-old Cuban defector’s already on the 40-man, and the poor serf’s now in his third spin in Scranton—I’m sure it’s a nice enough place, but it’s probably not the paradise you defect from Castroland to achieve. Given his (questionable) age, Miranda has no future outside if not one in the present, and he’s a nice enough patch in that he has lefty power and some patience.

As the Yankees are amidst a stretch of the schedule where they are forced to play 27 innings of baseball within 27 hours, the team has tried to get creative with its roster flexibility. Brian Cashman and Girardi had to face the reality of back-to-back starts by Sergio Mitre and Javier Vazquez a few days after losing Alfredo Aceves, the team’s swing man in the bullpen, and a few days after a rain delay pushed the pen into 4+ innings of service on Saturday.

Yet, with Cano back on the field and Jorge seemingly healthy, the team has kept Kevin Russo around for bench decoration and have let Ivan Nova idle in the pen with a “break glass in case of emergency” sign taped around his neck. Now that this stretch of games has passed, the team should call up Miranda and let him DH against right-handers until Johnson’s back. Unless the club wants to commit to using Cervelli as an everyday catcher and Posada as the DH, Miranda is the guy to use unless he absolutely can’t hit. Ramiro Peña, 23rd man, is a solid defensive backup who just shouldn’t be getting too many ABs with better options in the wings.

Backing up the brittle DH

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Updated (9:50 a.m.) When Nick Johnson was scratched from the lineup yesterday afternoon with a sore back, the Yankee Universe let out a collective groan. Here it goes again; the injury bug bites Nick Johnson.

Of course, the injury ended up being nothing very much, and the Yankees say the team is just taking it slow during day two of Spring Training. Nick caught his cleat while taking some swings in the cage, and he could have played had it been the regular season. He’ll sit out a day or two and find himself right back in the lineup this week. Lest we forget, Jorge Posada’s surgically repaired shoulder was giving everyone conniptions last spring as well. There’s always a sore something somewhere.

But Johnson’s injury got me thinking. What if Nick were to go down? What would the Yankees do with that DH slot? Johnson has been summoned to replace Hideki Matsui as the Yanks’ go-to guy for DH. The team rightly doesn’t want to use the DH as a rotating half-day rest slot for their veterans because that would necessarily force Ramiro Peña or Francisco Cervelli, weak offensive options, into the lineup nearly every day. So Johnson, a high OBP guy with a lefty swing designed for Yankee Stadium, seemed an ideal choice.

In a sense, the Yankees don’t need a lot from Nick Johnson. Hideki Matsui hit .274/.367/.509 with 28 home runs last year in 142 games, and he put up a WAR of 2.7, eighth best in a powerhouse lineup. If Johnson, a 2.5-win player last year, can give the Yanks a pair of wins for $5.5 million, the team will be quite pleased.

A problem emerges, though, if Johnson can’t do that. If he doesn’t make 135 starts, doesn’t get his 500 plate appearances, doesn’t produce a few wins out of the DH slot. If he gets injured and misses significant time, always a distinct possible with him, the Yankees will be out a DH.

Behind Johnson, the options for designated hitter are slim. The team has Randy Winn, Marcus Thames and Jamie Hoffmann in camp fighting for two roster spots. Last year, Winn was a 1.7-win player based on WAR, but that’s because he was 16.5 fielding runs above average. His offensive output — a .302 wOBA with 2 home runs in 538 plate appearances — makes him a non-option for the DH spot. Marcus Thames had a 0.1 WAR last year. No matter how that breaks down, he wasn’t doing much hitter at all. Jamie Hoffmann has played just 72 games at AAA.

Beyond these guys making waves in camp, Juan Miranda would offer the Yanks another lefty option for DH. He’s the first guy called up when the team needs a bat, and as his prodigious home run in Tampa at the end of 2009 showed us, he can certainly hit. He’s a career .280/.366/.474 hitter in the minors and blasted 19 home runs last year at AAA. He isn’t too vulnerable to lefties either, hitting .291/.367/.507 against them in just under 200 ABs last year. His Major League Equivalents don’t scream out success, but he’s an option.

The Yankees do have a rather tantalizing ace in the hole, but would they dare use it? Jesus Montero is, acccording to a video interview he did with YES, working hard to get to the Majors, and by all accounts, he has put on a hitting clinic in batting practice this spring. In his one in-game at-bat, he singled. He has the power and the stick to DH, but the Yanks shouldn’t rush him. He needs his AAA seasoning, and when the 20-year-old shows he can mash at AAA, the Yanks can begin to think about it. In the meantime, the team has three in-house choices, and Gary Sheffield remains a free agent.

For now, we’ll rely on Nick Johnson to carry the designated hitter slot for six months this year. He gets an Interleague Play break when the Yanks hit the NL in May and June, and with Robo-Tex manning first, Johnson won’t be asked to exert himself in the field. He should be able to withstand the pressures of the season, but if any player can’t stay healthy at DH, it’s Nick Jonson. And, please, no more cleats in the batting cages.

Photo by Kathy Willens/AP

Evaluating the DHs

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This off-season, the Yankees, Angels and Rangers all landed themselves shiny new injury-prone but solid-hitting guys to man the DH spot. The Yanks picked up Nick Johnson and his .426 OBP, the Angels Hideki Matsui and his World Series MVP award and the Rangers Vlad Guerrero and his ability to hit any pitch. The Yanks like their guy because of his on-base prowess. He’ll hit second and give Mark Teixeira and A-Rod numerous opportunities to drive home runs. But what of the other two? Yesterday, Jay Gargiulo at Fack Youk analyzed the DH signings and came out a bit bearish on Vlad and Matsui. I predict, not too boldly, that the best one of the three will be whichever avoids the disabled list the longest this year.

By the Decade: More designated, less hitting

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The offensive part of our Yankees By the Decade retrospective is coming to an end. After looking at the eight position players, we’ve landed on that catch-all designated hitter spot. Through the 2000s, the Yanks used 61 players at least one at the DH spot. From A-Rod to X-Nady, nearly everyone had a chance to DH. To whittle down the candidates, the chart shows those with at least 10 games as a designated hitter.

[TABLE=53]

What leaps out at me from this chart is how the Yanks’ designated hitters weren’t that great at hitting. Most of the regulars who DH’d hit well below their career averages, and the team never really had a true DH this decade either. Jason Giambi led the pack with 22.3 percent of all DH at-bats, and Hideki Matsui was second with 16.4 percent. Beyond those two, the Yanks used the DH spot to rest regulars and give aging stars a spot in the lineup.

Early in the decade, the Yanks went after sluggers for the DH spot. They used a Glenallen Hill/Jose Canseco tandem in the second half of 2000 to some stellar results. Hill, acquired on July 21, 2000, from the Cubs for Ben Ford and Oswaldo Mairena, turned in a 175 OPS+ in 143 at bats, and around half of those came as a DH. Canseco, acquired on August 7, 2000, in a waiver move designed to block him from going to the Red Sox, had a great power spurt too. The duo combined for 15 home runs in just 175 DH at-bats.

After that though, the Yankees used the DH as a spot of convenience. They tried Chuck Knoblauch there in 2001 and Nick Johnson to some success in 2002 and 2003. After Johnson was traded, the Yanks turned to Jason Giambi, and he surprisingly hit significantly worse as a DH than he did as a first baseman. As the first baseman of the decade, Giambi hit .280/.420/.567. As the DH, he hit .234/.384/.458. That’s a swing of .145 OPS points.

Back in my younger and more ignorant days as a rookie baseball blogger at Talking Baseball, I explored the differences amongst hitters when they DH and when they play the field. My study then confused causation with correlation, but I’ve always believed that many hitters are better when they play the field too. Giambi always said that he preferred to play first because it kept him more in the game. It kept him warmer and more ready to bat. The decade’s numbers seem to bear him out.

At the same time, though, Giambi DH’d when he wasn’t healthy enough to play the field, and he would, in all likelihood, hit better when healthy. He DH’d, when he could, in 2004, 2006 and 2007 when sapped by injuries, and he played first in the years he was healthy. Somewhere, somehow, it’s probably a mixture of both.

Beyond Giambi, the Yankees’ DH numbers really highlight their love for the concept of the rotation DH. Hideki Matsui took over with great success over the last two years, but the team has used A-Rod, Derek Jeter and Jorge Posada as the DH enough times to put them on this list. A-Rod, it seems, just loves to hit.

And so as Nick Johnson prepares to take over the DH mantle, I will anoint Jason Giambi as the Yanks’ DH of the decade. Had Hideki closed the playing time gap, he probably could have stolen this one from the Giambino; after all, he put up a better DH-only OPS this decade. But with over 300 at-bats, 28 home runs and approximately 43 runs created separating the two, Jason takes the crown but only barely.