Stephen Goldman has a new piece up on the YES Pinstriped Bible site. I disagree with his take, and he makes some common mistakes in his evaluation.
Hitting through Sunday: Nady is batting .244/.262/.488. Swisher is batting .265/.409/.324. He’s taken drawn nine walks in 14 games. Nady has drawn no walks in 14 games. Why even pretend to have a competition?
Huh? I hate quoting spring training stats for veterans, but Nady’s OPS this spring is .750 wheras Swisher’s is .733. Swisher didn’t win the job with an outstanding spring, and coming off both players production last year, that’s what he would have needed to do. Also, Nady was likely working on getting his swing down, and had no interest in drawing walks. That means nothing as to what will happen in the regular season. There WAS a competition, Nady was the lead horse going in and Swisher didn’t do enough to win the job.
If you’re Brett Gardner, currently batting over .400, you now have to be very nervous, as Melky Cabrera is hitting in the upper part of his range and may tempt the Yankees to see something that’s not there — Melky Cabrera is to the Yankees as toxic assets are to Tim Geithner. More to the point, why even pretend to have a career? Nady is a lifetime .280/.335/.458 hitter, subpar for a corner outfielder. Last season, he hit .268/.320/.474 for the Yankees, which is very close to what he had done in his career prior to his half-season of hot hitting with the Pirates (.272/.327/.441). This is what the Yankees are signing on for.
Nady has evolved from a platoon player who couldn’t hit righties when he came up, to an all around hitter who actually hit righties BETTER than lefties last season. And it wasn’t a career year, it was the steady progression of an improving player. Here’s his platoon splits:
2004 vs R .178 .213 .311 .524
vs L .344 .417 .563 .979
2005 vs R .223 .270 .431 .700
vs L .323 .400 .452 .852
2006 vs R .263 .312 .424 .736
vs L .336 .418 .551 .969
2007 vs R .274 .322 .479 .802
vs L .295 .356 .463 .819
2008 vs R .317 .357 .529 .886
vs L .262 .361 .444 .805
Note the steady annual progession in OPS vs Righties. Last year was no fluke, it was something he was building towards his entire career.
Also, he cites the weaker second half he had with the Yankees last year. The implication is he regressed to his career averages or had trouble in the AL. There’s one problem with that theory, he had an almost identical dropoff in the 2nd half of 07.
1st Half 07 .291 .344 .504 .848
2nd Half 07 .255 .303 .425 .728
1st Half 08 .321 .377 .525 .901
2nd Half 08 .284 .333 .492 .825
Roughly an 80 point dropoff in OPS both seasons. Its worth noting that he was more of a platoon player when he came up in 04, so this could be a result of wearing down over the course of the year as he evolved into a full time player, or a simple lack of conditioning. But it has nothing to do with switching leagues.
I haven’t even addressed the most obvious reason why Nady gets the job over Swisher, which is the absence of A-Rod. Nady’s righty bat is needed to provide some much needed balance to the batting order. While Swisher is a switch hitter who has hit lefties and righties equally well over the course of his career, last year’s line of .197/.359/.386 vs lefties is something the Yanks can’t risk repeating. Not after the difficulty they had against Lefthanders last season and with Nady entering prime in a contract year.
Compare that to Nick Swisher before his season of difficulty in Chicago. His career rates were .251/.361/.464. In all the important areas, he kicks Nady all over the yard, and he has shown this spring that his batting eye is still just fine. It really is amazing that a club’s decision-makers can have all of the information in front of them and still come to a judgment that has no relationship to the facts. If Girardi insists on making Nady the regular over Swisher, we’re talking a two-win swing in the standings for the Yankees.
Two wins? Their career lines are virtually identical and the difference between the two defensively is a few plays a year. That doesn’t add up to 2 wins by any metric. If anything, Nady would be worth two wins over Swisher if they both repeated last year’s offensive numbers.
He brushes off last season as an anomaly for both players, but I’m not so sure. I view this as two players whose careers may be heading in opposite directions. Also, if Nady is typically a 1st half player then take advantage of that until the All Star break. I still keep an open mind towards Swisher, and want him to get plenty of ABs and a chance to earn more playing time. If he does so, I’d be open to dealing Nady at the trade deadline if an offer is enticing enough. But Swisher has to prove last year was a fluke before I hand him the everyday job.
If you enjoyed this article, please consider sharing it!
0 Responses to Goldman "Girardi got it wrong in right"
Leave a Reply
TIQ IQ
Is shelley duncan out of options?
I think so. I’ll look into it.
Could not have said it better myself. I think Swisher is the better player. However, Nady deserves the job based off of last season and the fact that no one seized the job in spring.
When Girardi was a YES announcer, he used to watch tape on all the teams he would be calling games for. He could have simply looked up their numbers, or had someone at YES do that for him. But he’s a big believer in advance scouting, looking at what players are doing right now to see where they are and how it can be exploited. Given that, its hard for me to imagine he would find what Swisher did 2-3 years ago in Oakland all that useful or persuasive. To be honest, Swisher and the league have probably adjusted and adjusted back to each other multiple times in those 3 seasons. The most meaningful data is what happened most recently.
When you factor in the various situational differences that occured for Swisher in 2008, I think it’s safe to say that the year itself should be seen as an outlier.
People think that he simply didn’t deliver last year, however, the context that he was in was very different which probably made it difficult for him to adjust. He was hitting leadoff for most of the year (new to him), he was playing CF for most of the year (new to him), he was playing with a new team, so all of these factors could have contributed to his season. In addtion, he was extremely unlucky in terms of BABIP.
Also, to a certain extent, I don’t know if I would look at the most recent data as a sign of what one could deliver or as the most meaningful. I would think that an entire career’s worth of data is more significant than one season. That’s how the Yankees ended up with guys like Jaret Wright — they looked at a season rather than a career.
..and Carl Pavano. Yet on the flip side teams that looked at Dontrelle Willis and Andruw Jones coming off bad seasons likely thought what you did, and were proved horribly wrong in those instances. I’m not arguing against looking at the largest statistical sample you have, far from it. I’m just saying its not everything. The career numbers give you his framework as a player, but advance scouting tells you what’s going on with him right now. The two should be weighed against each other to determine when someone’s just had a down year and when they’re done. Its not an either or, its both.
I’m also not a big fan of BABIP for a few reasons. First, it was designed for pitchers and yet its used constantly by people explaining away hitters bad seasons as ‘bad luck’. Second, it doesn’t account for the quality of contact. When a hitter is going well (or a pitcher has nothing) and the ball is being hit hard it is far more likely to fall in for a hit. Fielders dont have time to react. Kei Igawa has a very high BABIP against, and it has nothing to do with luck. Conversely, when Cano was struggling last April I heard many cite his BABIP wasn’t all that bad, yet anyone who saw his AB’s knew he was hitting the ball horribly.
BTW-Loved the use of the word “outlier”.
I agree with Goldman about Swisher’s 2008 being an anomaly (and he still hit over 20 homers). I also agree with Steve in that the jury can’t be out on Nady yet and maybe he has evolved into a great player (not elite, but good). Although I think Swisher should get the job in RF, I’m fine with Nady starting there and having to earn his job (the same with Swisher) ever step of the way.
That’s the thing. Nady starting on opening day doesnt mean the job is his to keep. If Swisher shows a bounceback and Nady a regression, Swish will get the job.
Exactly. It’s good to have them both around.