The Yankees of recent years have been a terrible defensive team. During the eras of players like Derek Jeter, Bernie Williams, Bobby Abreu and Jason Giambi, Yankee pitchers have suffered tremendously from their ineptitude. The Yankee’s team defense effiency ratio (the percent of balls in play converted into outs) in 2008 was .6932, or fifth-worst in the majors and second worst in the American League.
How will it look this year? The Yankees have subtracted Bobby Abreu, have a competitive situation in center field, and have replaced Jason Giambi with Mark Teixeira. All numbers below are runs above or below average according to UZR (Ultimate Zone rating) and Fangraphs.
- Bobby Abreu: -26 runs
- Jason Giambi: -2.5 runs
- Melky Cabrera: 0 runs
And the new guys:
- Nick Swisher, CF: -10.5 runs
- Nick Swisher, RF career: +14.2 runs (limited playing time in RF in 2008)
- Xavier Nady, RF: +1.2 runs
- Mark Teixeira: +10 runs
- Brett Gardner, OF: +33 runs (extremely small sample, let’s just call it +15)
Switching Giambi with Teixeira yields the Yankees an automatic 12.5 run gain. What about the outfield, versus a Melky-Abreu CF-RF combination?
- Melky CF, Abreu RF: -26.2 runs
- Swisher CF, Nady RF: +16 runs
- Gardner CF, Swisher RF: +55.2 runs
- Gardner CF, Nady RF: +42 runs
- Melky CF, Swisher RF: +40.2 runs
- Melky CF, Nady RF: +27.2 runs
There are a few problems with these numbers. UZR does not take into account the throwing out of base runners in its calculation. That said, range has always been demonstrated to be much more important. Looking at these numbers, it seems like it might not be the best idea to put Swisher in center field. Once the free agent markets starts to settle down, it seems to make sense to trade one of Nady or Swisher – but you knew that already.
If you enjoyed this article, please consider sharing it!
11 Responses to Will Team Defense Improve?
Leave a Reply
TIQ IQ
I was with you until the last sentence. What is so bad about having a good player on the bench? They need to avoid the anemic benches of the last few years.
I think you can have your cake and eat it, too. Return on Nady/Swisher + bench replacement (Edmonds, e.g.) + $6M (including luxury tax) can be > Nady/Swisher.
I think it depends on what that return is. If it is something like what the Yankees gave up for Swish, I would disagree with that.
For Gardner: “Let’s just call it +15″?? Do you know how rare a +15 CF is? To my knowledge, it’s rare enough to never assume someone will just go ahead and be +15. If you want to have a better chance of accurately predicting Gardners worth, put his projected UZR somewhere in the +4-+8 range
Interesting article, EJ. Greg, it is definitely a tough number to reach, but Andruw Jones is a +22.3 for his career (even with his recent, “I ate all the pies” years. It’s possible with Gardy’s speed. Like EJ said, his sample size is small but extremely impressive.
So, you’re right at +15 would put Gardner in the top CF in baseball range. I don’t think that is all that important if Gardner is a +10 or +12 or +15 or whatever, because the difference is fairly negligible. I just used 15 as a round number. Mentally subtract 5 from each of the Gardner calculations if you must. The point is that he’s very good.
I think OF defense is next to last on my ‘important factors in building a winning MLB team’ list, but I think we got so bad last year that it became something that really needed to be addressed. I hope Gardner can produce enough offense to make him being the CF a net positive. Either that or we get somebody in there that can run down a fly ball and hit a little in his place.
Nice to see you posting again, EJ. I was a fan of your stuff over on MVN.
Thank you sir. Just wait until we have some actual minor league baseball to comment on.
There’s a few more defensive upgrades to consider
Cano 2007 +17
Cano 2008 -16
If Cano decides to party half as much this year as last year, he could at least revert to being league average. If he decides to take Baseball seriously, it could be a huge swing.
Also, wherever Swisher plays he will be a bench upgrade over Betemit. Not much info to back this one up, you’ll just have to guesstimate this one. But Betemit was such a liability, it stands to reason.
[...] assume that Swisher is the choice pick to sit on a normal day. Disregarding defense for the moment (Swisher is better), let’s look at the [...]