The following post was written by weekend writer Brock Cohen.
I fell hard for Shane Spencer in the summer of 1998. These were the days before B-ref and Fangraphs were standing by, 24-7, to challenge my snap judgments and gut my deluded visions of spunky fringe players one day morphing into perennial all-stars. Not that it would’ve mattered. In my eyes, Spencer represented the next wave of talent produced by a Yankees farm system that was starting to grow suspect. Like Jeter, Bernie, Pettitte, and Posada before him, Shane Spencer would blossom into a homegrown superstar, a five-tool phenom when finally given the opportunity.
Spencer indeed solidified his presence on the Yankee roster with a 5-for-5, 2-homer demolition against the Royals on August 7th. He would follow this rookie performance for the ages with a four-week exhibition of offensive dominance during which the small sample size gods played Trading Places with Spencer and budding superstar Magglio Ordonez, who slugged an eye-gouging .354 during the same span. In addition to slamming clutch home runs, Spencer performed admirably at all three outfield positions and gave the veteran Yankees a needed dose of versatility and athleticism in a push that culminated with a 24th World Series championship. In the end, he crushed 10 homers in 67 at-bats in 1998, posting an absurd 1.321 OPS.
Nevermind that Spencer was having his way with a pile of September call-ups, feasting on obscurities like Albie Lopez, Tim Byrdak, Matt Whisenant, and Mike Sirotka. Knowing this now, it’s little mystery why he didn’t skip a beat from his .967 OPS showing in Columbus prior to his call-up.
In reality, Spencer was organization fodder from the beginning, despite his month-long destruction of American League tomato cans. Drafted in the 28th round in 1990, he did put up some impressive power numbers in the minors, including a .967 OPS at Triple-A Columbus in 1998. But the Yankees organization must’ve seen something ominous about the hulking outfielder, whom the New York media predictably likened to Mickey Mantle, Harmon Killebrew, whatever other big, white, countrified sluggers they could invoke from yesteryear. For one thing, there was the fact that he couldn’t hit right-handed pitching: over seven major league seasons, Spencer slugged .392 against righties verses .497 when facing southpaws. And then there was his age. At 25 and after toiling in the bush leagues for a decade, Spencer had reached his prospect expiration date. In fact, he’d actually played on the same Class-A Greensboro Hornets squad with Mariano Rivera, Ramiro Mendoza, and Jeter. He wasn’t the next generation of Yankees prospects; he was the prospect who never was.
Ultimately, Spencer’s career probably split the difference between the Yankees organization’s ceiling for him, which was Triple-A lifer, and my own hysterical expectations. He turned out to be a useful major league platoon outfielder, playing solid defense, getting on base at a decent clip, and running into the occasional gap double (.326 wOBA). Other than a rapid decline that was accelerated by injuries and substance abuse, the biggest hindrance to Spencer’s game was the absence of one standout offensive tool. He was a nice player to have around. But corner outfielders need to rake. Unless they play for the Mets.
Like Spencer, Shelley Duncan exploded onto the scene with an all-out assault on American League pitching in 2007. Except unlike back in ’98, I was now nine years older and wiser and remained cautiously optimistic about the raw, rowdy giant’s long-term prognosis. Although he’d been a second round pick in 2001, it quickly became apparent why Shelley remained mired in the minors despite impressive power numbers, which included a .926 OPS in 387 plate appearances prior to his 2007 call-up: he was the quintessential all-or-nothing slugger. Although Duncan had crushed 148 homers in seven minor league seasons, he’d done so while amassing 606 strikeouts. And while he proved early on his ability to destroy an average major league fastball – while scaring the soul out of opposing infielders as he careened, crazy-eyed, toward them – Duncan was prone to flailing at breaking pitches in the dirt or fastballs at his numbers.
I was tempted to buy into the narrative of Duncan as a crazed Frank Howard whose dose of WWE moxie was precisely the ingredient that the methodical Yankees had lacked since their championship string of the late-90s. But I refused to bite. Still, it would be interesting to see the degree to which he adjusted when major league pitchers started finding the inevitable holes in his looping swing.
Duncan’s rush to glory also lasted about a month. Between July 20th and August 21st of ’07, prior to him being exposed as a poor-man’s Dave Kingman on speed, Shelley posted a Playstation-like 1.072 OPS and played solid corner outfield defense (0.4 UZR). In addition to unleashing his maniacal energy, Duncan also brought back the forearm bash from its late-80s cocoon. As a kid, I’d always been envious of the Canseco-McGwire mullet-fortified version. Now, two decades later, there was Shelley, plotting in the dugout, ready to pounce on the next wincing, flinching teammate trotting toward the plate. Judging from the expressions of players who were forced to placate the uber-rambunctious Duncan, the 2007 iteration of the Yankee forearm bash had literally nothing to do with anyone on the team beyond Shelley. As soon as he was gone, it was gone. But really, who was going to be the one to tell this 6’5” monster to cut it out?
Unlike Shane Spencer, who can always brag to his kin of helping the Yanks capture a World Series ring in his rookie campaign while simultaneously playing on one of the greatest dynasties ever assembled, Shelley Duncan’s 2007 season appears insignificant to the casual observer in retrospect.
Despite Shelley’s four-week window of dominance in ‘07, then-manager Joe Torre, perhaps sensing that Duncan’s early success had been an aberration, scaled back Shelley’s playing time for the balance of the season. While there were few decisions that Joe Torre made in 2007 that I didn’t find maddening, Shelley Duncan’s inconsistent usage was a battle I was willing to concede. In hindsight, Torre was probably right: As a hitter, Duncan had already been exposed, and in his final 12 games of the season, he hit just .200 with a .646 OPS. As a Yankee, Duncan’s early promise as a long-ball threat never fully materialized, and he ended up signing with Cleveland in 2010, where he put up a serviceable .722 OPS in 259 plate appearances while reaching base almost never (.317 OBP).
And now for the small-sample-size throw-down for the ages:
I think we have a winner, and it’s not close. While Shelley was superb, Shane was freakish.
Sample size notwithstanding, both Spencer and Duncan captured the excitement of Yankees fans and the attention of hero-mongering sportswriters. But even when accounting for significant regression, neither player’s output would prove reflective of their actual skill sets or prologue to their future production. Yankees fans know this now and probably even grudgingly realized it then. It’s funny, though: As pro sports become even more fraught with cynicism, the unheralded farm-filler call-up who makes a big initial splash has a way of turning us into quixotic dreamers.
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