Yesterday, the Yankees announced that they are going to sign Raul Ibanez to a deal worth $1.1M in base salary that can be worth around $4M with incentives. This is a low-risk signing that could have a decent pay off for the Yankees. Ibanez has proven himself to be effective against righties in his career, and even last year he had a 101 wRC+ and a .184 Iso against RHP. This deal will be a success for the Yankees if two things happen: 1. He bats exclusively against right handers. 2. He doesn’t touch the field as a defensive player unless there is an extreme emergency. Since we can (sort of) hint at how the former will be, let’s take a look at that.
The CAIRO projection system from RLYW.net forecasts a .349 wOBA against right handers and that was the highest of the potential DH candidates. I’d sign up for that in a heartbeat, but it could be better as Ibanez has a .363 wOBA against righties in his career. To add another dimension to this, let’s take a look at the Yankee Stadium park factors from StatCorner and apply the to Ibanez. To do so, let’s look at his home splits from 2011 and apply the appropriate increases/decreases to his production. To warn you, we’re going to use a relatively small sample size, but I think it’s worth looking at how a lefty-friendly park will affect Raul. And, to make him look even better, I’m just going to use his stats against righties (I was never Ibanez’s biggest fan, so I’m totally overcompensating for it now).
At Citizen’s Bank Park against right handed pitchers last year, Ibanez hit .282/.324/.518 with 13 doubles, 0 triples, 11 homers, 13 walks, 0 HBP, and 28 strikeouts in 195 at bats. Because he hit 0 triples and was hit by 0 pitches at home against righties, I’m going to take those out of the equation (but I’ll plug them back in at the end to calculate a potential “home vs. RHP line” for Ibanez).
The Park Factors are as follows for LHB in YS3:
K: 107 (7% decrease for the hitter)
BB: 108 (8% increase for the hitter)
1B: 96 (4% decrease for the hitter)
2B: 94 (6% decrease for the hitter)
HR: 143 (43% increase for the hitter)
If we apply those to Ibanez, his line looks like this (remember, we’re assuming the same rates as 195 AB at home vs righties):
29 singles; 12 doubles; 0 triples; 16 home runs; 14 walks; 0 HBP; 26 strikeouts. Let’s spit that out to a line and see what we get: .292/.338/.600. Using those numbers and plugging them in to the wOBA formula, we get a .395 wOBA. It appears that most of this value is added because of the ridiculous home run spike Ibanez could get from playing in the Bronx.
As great as this looks, I’m being a bit simplistic here. I’m not adjusting for anything but park factor and ignoring things like quality of pitchers faced, the fact that Ibanez will be a season older, and the fact that park factors go from the league average; the improvements from Ibanez may not be as drastic. Still, it’s worth thinking about. Despite the fact that Ibanez is changing parks and leagues, he’s coming to a park friendly to his skillset. Hopefully, the Yankees can put him in a position to succeed and set him up to reach the incentives in his contract.
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Am I missing something in your application of YS3 park factors? The percentage of increase/decrease for various hits/actions at YS3 is as compared to a totally neutral park, not as compared to Citizen’s Bank Park, no?
good point, especially since the wOBA park factor for both for LHB is an equal 103
comparing the 2 park factors, most are fairly similar though the HR factor for YS is much higher (143-116)
Seems like it can be expected that Ibanez could gain some HR but lose some singles
It is strange how the Yankees will bring in lefty hitter after lefty hitter who “has the perfect swing for the short porch in right”. I’m wondering what percentage of lefty specialists were brought in and became post tweak Grandersons, or how many became Ken Phelps?