Who’s genius idea was it to have night games in Spring Training? Sheesh…
Optimizing the Yankees’ lineup
Unless Joe Girardi does something completely crazy, there’s almost no wrong way for him to put his lineup together. He has eight better than league average hitters at his disposable, so there’s really nothing he can do wrong except bat the leftfield first or Alex Rodriguez last. Sky Kalkman took a shot at optimizing the Yanks’ lineup according to The Book, and he ends up with Derek Jeter batting sixth. I don’t know why he thinks Nick Johnson will only play against righties, but his lineup is:
1. Nick Johnson – high OBP
2. Mark Teixiera – high OBP
3. Curtis Granderson – lots of homers & less likely to GIDP
4. Alex Rodriguez – high OBP & SLG, maximize his SB
5. Robinson Cano – less likely to GIDP
6. Derek Jeter – maximize his SB
7. Nick Swisher
8. Jorge Posada
9. Brett Gardner
Again, there’s really no wrong lineup, but I wonder how the masses would take it if Girardi ran that lineup out there on Opening Day.
This one’s a few days old, but I finally got around to reading it this morning. The great Joe Posnanski gives his take on one of baseball’s most traditional metrics, the RBI. As you know, the problem with the ol’ run batting in is that it’s so dependent on the rest of your team. You can’t drive anyone in if there’s no one on base in front of you. For example, Joe Mauer came to the plate with 292 men on base last year, and drove in 69 of them, or 23.6%. AL RBI leader Mark Teixeira came to the plate with 420 men on base and drove in 83 of them, or 19.8%. If you gave Mauer the same number of baserunners as Tex last year, he would have had 99 RBI, not counting all the times he drove himself in with the long ball.
Anyway, Posnanski does a much better job of explaining why RBI’s suck than I ever could.
Another look at Brandon Workman
A few weeks ago I highlighted Texas starter Brandon Workman as a player the Yankees could target in June’s amateur draft, and now we get an updated look at him courtesy of Dustin McComas. Workman has apparently worked to add a cutter recently, and there’s a chance he could add a few more miles an hour to a fastball that already touches the mid-90’s by ironing out his mechanics. There’s plenty of high end high school talent in this draft, but if a team with a top 15 or 20 pick doesn’t want to be risky, they could turn to Workman.
As a bonus, we get a look at another Texas starter, righty Taylor Jungmann. He’s expected to be a top five pick in 2011, which means the only way the Yankees will have a chance to get him is if they sign Elijah Dukes and he destroys the clubhouse chemistry.
The crew over at NoMaas landed the sponsorship for Josh Beckett’s B-Ref page, and needs your help coming up with a snarky message. While you should go over there and give a suggestion, the real reason I posted this is because I want people to post links to their favorite B-Ref sponsorship messages. There’s plenty of great ones out there, but Marvin Benard’s still takes the cake for me: “I loved this guy. He couldn’t hit me with a tree trunk.”
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