Mark Teixeira is probably happy to be leaving Toronto. In the three game set versus the Blue Jays, Mark tallied just one hit and one walk, while striking out seven times, including a Platinum Sombrero performance on Saturday.
I think it’s time to drop Mark Teixeira down in the batting order. He’s still not hitting for power and he just looks terrible at the plate. He’s struggled against both fastballs and curveballs and his presence in the number three spot in the lineup is starting to hurt the team. Moving him from there will definitely help the team and it could help Teixeira himself.
There are two things we could see happen if Mark Teixeira is indeed moved out of the three spot. The more popular idea seems to be to flip Mark with second baseman Robinson Cano. This is something I could definitely get on board with–Cano’s been hitting fantastically pretty much all season and he handled the “promotion” to the fifth spot well. I presume he could handle a move to the three spot as well. If Joe Girardi does indeed switch Mark Teixeira and Robinson Cano, it puts a hot hitter, rather than a cold one, in an important spot. That will generate more runs in two ways. His hot hitting will likely drive in the surging Derek Jeter (1.026 OPS in his last ten games) and the hot hitting Nick Swisher. It also puts another runner on base for Alex Rodriguez, and that’s always a good thing.
Another strategy could be to simply flip flop Teixeira with A-Rod. When they’re both going right, there’s little difference between the two. The differences between a good three hitter and four hitter are pretty small when you think about it, so maybe switching them could help jump start them.
Of course, there are reasons not to do this. Letting Teixeira work his way out of his slump from the number three spot is not undesirable. He’s too good of a hitter to play this poorly all season and maybe he just needs time and reps. Then, there’s the “protection” issue. People say that Tex will get fewer pitches to hit without Alex Rodriguez behind him. I say, “Well, he hasn’t done much with those pitches in front of Rodriguez, and I can think of worse players to bat behind you than either Robinson Cano or Jorge Posada.” Not to mention, the idea of protection is dubious.
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6 Responses to Time to Drop Tex?
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TIQ IQ
Long overdue. Personally I would drop him to eighth but I don’t think that would help his head. A switch to fifth with Jorge behind him is the best he could hope for. How many teams have a three hitter hitting .215? Hell, they eventually dropped Papi. Tex has had a chance to hold his spot, he failed. He’s lucky he’s in the lineup.
Great minds think alike! This exact topic is my poll this week. I think flipping Cano and Tex is the move to make. For me, you’re best hitter hits third and your most powerful hitter hits fourth. Right now, Cano is by far the team’s best hitter and would be leading the league in runs if he’d been hitting third all year.
I’d drop Tex further down. I’d bat Alex 3rd, Cano 4th and Posada 5th.
I wouldn’t switch Tex with RC. The better hitter is supposed to be in the five spot. I mean it’s close, but the three spot is more for someone who has is a legit, big time HR threat. The five spot is also good for someone who doesn’t walk so much like RC.
Now the question is, who do you put 3? Until Tex gets fixed RC could be alright in the 3 spot since we’re talking about scoring a smaaaaaaaaaaaaaall amount of more runs with him at 5, but I wonder how Po would fit there with Tex six.
In the end, it’s not a big deal though. I mean when we optimize the lineup, we’re thinking of ways to generate like 15 more runs over the course of 162 games. In the case, a whole lot less games and fewer runs.
The opening sentence of this post – that Teixeira is happy to be leaving Toronto – suggests that there is a city where he can hit the ball. Where (presently) is that city?
The question of what to do with Tex in the batting order should have been asked (and answered) a month ago, IMO. I’m not totally down on him, and I never boo a Yankee, but good grief, what does it take to shuffle the order? Tex is killing the offensive output, whether it’s by not advancing Jeter and Swisher, or by not getting on base for A-Rod and Cano. By all means let him work out his swing and become the 180-million dollar man again, just don’t let him work it out at a .211 pace in the #3 hole. That’s just crazy.
And so what if it only means 10 runs over the rest of the season? One or two of those runs will inevitably come at the right time, and lead to a couple of wins (like in Toronto on Saturday). Has anybody checked the AL East standings lately? Are we saying that a couple of extra wins wouldn’t come in handy?
I live in Canada, where everything is measured against hockey. In hockey, if a player – even a star player – isn’t producing on the team’s top line, he gets moved to the 2nd or 3rd line for a while, and the coach doesn’t wait a third of the season to do it (unless he wants to get fired). Goalies get pulled if they’re playing badly, just like quarterbacks who are having a bad game or a point guard who isn’t seeing the floor. Why is baseball the only sport where people seem to think that moving the #3 hitter will bring 40 days of rain and a plague of locusts? I guarantee that if Tex spends, say, the month of June in the 7-hole, the sun will come up every one of those days. We all know his swing will come back sometime; that’s not the point. The point is that until it does, he’s a black hole in the heart of a lineup that could be doing much better.
I love Tex but right now, until he goes opposite field against the shift, I’d use this as my Batting order:
Jeter
Granderson – About to get hot
Swisher
ARod
Cano
Tex
Posada
Cervelli
Gardner