The Yankees’ last four primary first baseman. Interesting to see Tex’s curve compared to Donnie’s. Stupid back problems.
Food For Thought: Mark Teixeira
Tex’s hamstring rehab going well
I stumbled across this short video interview USA Today’s Michael McCarthy conducted with Mark Teixeira recently, and although it’s not much more than a few cream puff questions, there is some useful info in there regarding his injured right hamstring. Tex says that everything is going well and he’s working out six days a week, three of which are focused exclusively on the hamstring. He added that if this was the middle of the season, he’d be able to play in about a week, four weeks out from the injury. The original diagnosis called for a six-to-eight week recovery.
So that’s good, glad he’s healing well. Check out the rest of the video, Tex picks on Jimmy Rollins a bit towards the end.
With Lee, Yanks would have to increase payroll
When it comes to the Yankees’ budget we hear, for the most part, vague statements. Last winter Brian Cashman kept saying that ownership gave him a number he had to stay under. This year Hal Steinbrenner has said that 2011 payroll will be on par with 2010. But does that mean the 2010 Opening Day payroll, or the final number that included Kerry Wood and Lance Berkman? With the work the Yanks have to do on the roster I’d hope it’s the latter. But we just don’t know. What we do know — or at least what we can reasonably assume — is that if the Yankees sign Cliff Lee this off-season, the team payroll will increase considerably by 2014.
If you head over to Cot’s you can see every team’s payroll obligations through 2014. For the most part you see one, maybe two players per team in that column, if any. What’s most common is an option buy-out. Most teams do not have significant commitments four years into the future, and for good reason. Even one bad contract can significantly hamper their flexibility. The Yankees are in a different position than every other team. They can make these commitments, knowing that there will be money in the checking account.
The only question the Yankees face is of how far they’re willing to expand future payroll. If they play their cards carefully they can probably sign Cliff Lee and still come in with a payroll under $210 million. That will include big contracts for Mariano Rivera, Derek Jeter, Alex Rodriguez, CC Sabathia, and Mark Teixeira. They’ll shed some of those contracts in the next few years, but they won’t shed all of them. In fact, if they sign Lee to a five-year contract worth the same $23 million Sabathia earns annually, they will have $96.5 million committed to four players in 2014. That does not bode well for payroll flexibility.
What’s worse, in 2014 those four players will be at the tail end of their primes, if they haven’t already exited. Alex Rodriguez will be 38; Mark Teixeira will be 34; CC Sabathia will be 33; Cliff Lee will be 35. We’ve seen players put up superb numbers at those ages, but those are the exceptions. While all four of the above are exceptional players, I think it’s a bit optimistic to think that they’ll all be producing at elite levels in 2014. Even if they are, they’ll still cost nearly half of what the Yankees have paid for the entire team in recent years. Should that then cause them to back off Lee?
If the Yankees plan to stand firm and not raise payroll significantly above $200 million, they probably need to give serious thought to the Lee question. To put it into perspective, the Yankees currently have roughly $140 million committed to eight players (plus Marte, who is dead weight) in 2011. That’s $17.5 million per player, with 17 more spots to fill. In 2014, with Lee in tow, they’d be committing $24.125 million per player, with 21 more spots to fill. I’ll leave that without commentary as to let it sink in.
If the Yankees do sign Cliff Lee this off-season, they’ll have made one thing clear: that they’re going to raise payroll, perhaps by a significant amount, over the next four years. With those four mega contracts running through 2015, at the earliest, the Yankees need more money in order to put players around them. Good players do not come cheap. Unless the Yankees’ farm system produces a string of stars in the coming years, there isn’t much of an alternative.
Jeter, Cano Teixeira take home Gold Glove awards
Three Yankee fielders — but arguably not the most deserving one on the team — took home AL Rawlings Gold Glove Awards this afternoon. Derek Jeter took home his fifth award while Mark Teixeira captured his fourth overall and second straight Gold Glove. Robinson Cano, an MVP candidate in his own right, grabbed his first at second base. Brett Gardner, with his 12 assists and an AL-leading 22.3 UZR in left field, was not honored.
In addition to the three Yankee winners, Ichiro Suzuki took home his record-tying 10th straight Gold Glove while Joe Mauer nabbed his third straight award and Mark Buehrle and Evan Longoria both won for the second straight year. Rays left fielder Carl Crawford, now a free agent, won his first award and Seattle’s Franklin Gutierrez took home the honors as well.
“It is particularly gratifying to be recognized for defense, as it is something I take a lot of pride in and am constantly working to improve,” Jeter said in a statement this afternoon.
The Gold Glove, of course, usually lead to a lot of hand-wringing because the awards aren’t a true measure of defensive prowess. Unlike the Cy Young, MVP and Rookie of the Year awards chosen by the BBWAA, baseball’s players and coaches vote on the Gold Glove winners, and the award is as much a popularity contest based upon name recognition and offensive production as it is on defensive ability. As Tim Marchman wrote last year, we should give the Gold Gloves the same deference movie buffs give the Academy Awards.
If we were going to nitpick the awards, though, we can. Based on UZR — a flawed metric — the following fielders should have won: Gardner, Crawford and Suzuki in the OF; Daric Barton at first base (Mark Teixeira had a negative UZR in 2010); Mark Ellis or Orlando Hudson at second; and Kevin Kouzmanoff at third. Pitchers and catchers should be assessed on non-UZR metrics. Gutierrez is an excusable choice but Brett Gardner wuz robbed.
And because it’s much in the news these days, this award shouldn’t impact the Yanks’ contract negotiations with Derek Jeter. His winning simply highlights how the Gold Glove process is broken. Few, if any, Yankee fans would put forward a compelling argument that Jeter deserves the award, but baseball seems content to allow the process to move forward without any attempt at achieving an objective standard. It simply means we won’t put much stock in the award.
Anyway, congrats to the three Yankee winners. Deserved winners or not, this team’s defense has come a long way since the mid-2000s.
Photo Credit: AP Photo/Bill Kostroun
What Went Wrong: Teixeira’s Down Year
Over the next week or two or three, we’re going to recap the season that was by looking at what went right as well as what went wrong for the 2010 Yankees.
April struggles are no stranger to Mark Teixeira. In his career he has a .329 wOBA in April, easily his worst month of the year. He makes up for it in the following five months, producing at an elite level. We saw him do that in 2009, which left us with faith that he would do the same in 2010. Unfortunately, his season did not unfold in a similar manner.
For all that’s made of Teixeira’s early season woes, it is actually something that developed fairly recently. In 2004 he had a .422 wOBA in April, but then dipped in May to .323. In 2005 his .347 April wOBA surged to .416 in May and .419 in June. The next year he posted a .375 wOBA in April. Even in 2008 he had a .341 wOBA in April — not up to his normal standard, but certainly better than what we’ve seen lately.
Teixeira’s first April in New York actually didn’t go that poorly, or at least not as poorly as it felt at the time. While a .330 wOBA is low for him, it’s not terrible. His problem, unsurprisingly, was the inability to hit the ball on a line. He had a mere 11.9 percent line drive rate and a 57.6 fly ball rate. That poor contact led to a .196 BABIP. But after he got into a groove he started to hit the ball much better, raising both his line drive and ground ball rates. That led to more hits and more power.
When Tex again struggled in April 2010, it was easy to write it off as a repeat of 2009. In fact, there were indicators that he might make an even better recovery. While his numbers were worse — an abysmal .270 wOBA — his hit tendencies were a bit better. He hit 19 percent of balls in play on a line and just 39.7 percent in the air, but still had a .148 BABIP. Yet that recovery took a while. And once it did kick in, Tex hit further troubles.
May started with a bang. Teixeira went 6 for 9 with a double in the first two days. A few days later he hit three home runs in a game against Boston (though one, to be fair, was off non-pitcher Jonathan Van Every). But the slump resumed shortly thereafter. After he went 0 for 4 with three strikeouts in a game against the Mets reporters flooded to his locker and asked what was wrong. Tex took it as well as he possibly could have, but his struggles were undeniable. He didn’t help his case with another good, but not to Teixeira standards, month of June.
Recovery was in the cards, but it would be short lived. Teixeira went berserk in July, 33 for 96 (.344) with 20 walks (.462 OBP) and 18 extra base hits (.698 SLG). August was another quality month, .289/.355/.629 (.411 wOBA). The team streaked towards the end of the month, and it appeared as though they would soar to another AL East title. But then the injuries happened.
At the end of August he missed a day with a thumb injury; the team admitted that he wouldn’t fully heal until the off-season. Then in mid-month he fractured his little toe. That caused him to overcompensate, which led to knee inflammation. It’s unclear whether that was a big factor in his season-ending hamstring strain, but the cascade does make sense. Teixeira, for his part, produced a mere .312 wOBA in September, his power noticeably absent. In the playoffs he did hit a big home run in Game 1 of the ALDS, but after that he went just 2 for 22, both singles.
Even the best players have down years. It’s unfortunate that the Yankees experienced them from their Nos. 3 and 4 hitters, but that will sometimes happen. The good news is that one down year does not render a player useless in the future. After an off-season of recovery and reflection Teixeira will be back in 2011, and I expect he’ll return to his normal production. And who knows: maybe he’ll produce in April as he did in 2004 and put together a career year.
Add swollen right knee to Teixeira’s list of injuries
Mark Teixeira’s season ended unceremoniously two nights ago when his right hamstring popped, but that was just the latest in a long line of the injuries the Yankee first baseman was dealing with. He’s been playing through a broken toe since Vin Mazzaro hit him with a pitch on August 31st, and he also received a cortisone shot in September after bruising his hand diving for a ball not long before that. Well, we can now add a swollen right knee to the list according to Marc Carig, and who knows how that happened. I don’t remember seeing Tex get hit by a pitch or fouling a ball off the knee, but I could very easily be wrong. For what it’s worth, he thinks that overcompensating for the toe injury led to the knee and hammy issues. One thing I do know for sure is that Teixeira really needs the time off this winter, dude took an absolute beating at the end of the year.
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