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| Tino rounding 1st after Coney gave up the bomb. (Daily News) |
Showing posts with label Bernie Williams. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bernie Williams. Show all posts
Monday, June 27, 2011
(Constant) Tino Martinez Hits A Bomb On Old-Timers' Day
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
Who Was Better? Mattingly vs Posada vs O'Neill vs Bernie
It's a slow Tuesday so I thought I'd throw this up here. I wanted to start a winter series of "Who Was Better?", a look at a few baseball players and trying to figure out who was better. The first one is Don Mattingly vs. Jorge Posada vs. Paul O'Neill vs. Bernie Williams. All four of these will probably be together in Monument Park someday but it's interesting to debate who was the best out of the 4. Below is their WAR graphs from FanGraphs and I'll talk about each candidacy briefly below. But I'm going to put up a poll on the right side and I would like you to let us know who you voted for and why in the comments below. Let's get started:
So which one was the best? Let's examine:
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| Click to expand. Original graph here |
Friday, November 12, 2010
In Favor of a Catching Competition This Spring
In 2003, Bernie Williams looked to be about done manning centerfield. He was only one year removed from a tremendous 2002 campaign, but after only playing 119 games in 2003 and with bad knees in centerfield to boot, the Yankees weren't content just letting Williams flounder around in center (his UZR was -20.2 in 2003 after -16.2 in 2002) and in the off-season they brought in Kenny Lofton as a free agent and told Williams he could fight it out with Lofton for CF and Ruben Sierra for DH. That's tough love for one of the most important Yankees of the past few decades, but it was just what Williams needed. That tough love--that competition--lit a fire under Williams. Williams would never be that pre-2003 player again, but at least in 2004 he gave the Yankees what he had given them in 2004, beat out Lofton in CF*, and, more importantly, he worked hard to win the job--and stuck around for two more years after that.
The Yankees are in a similar situation with Jorge Posada. They have a very important player to their organization, a player who has probably been one of the top catchers of all-time (at least on the offensive side), a border-line Hall of Famer. But Posada's defense has gotten so bad and his hitting isn't anymore to the point where you can excuse that defensive liability just because of the hitting he provides. Having gone through the entire slate of external back-up catchers and realizing that Posada was eventually was going to turn into a pumpkin like Williams did, Brian Cashman and the Yankees organization has done a good job of stockpiling catching prospects. Jesus Montero, Austin Romine, Francisco Cervelli, Gary Sanchez, JR Murphy and others fill the Yankees organization throughout and provide themselves with an opportunity to not go out there and pay for old, mediocre players (as they did with Lofton in 2004).
But they shouldn't just hand the reigns of the DH to Posada nor the hands of the catching game to Montero, Romine, or Cervelli. After the 2007 season, the Yankees decided to hand the pitching over to a youth movement without any competition. Ian Kennedy and Phil Hughes managed to win zero games in 2008 as the Yankees back-of-the-rotation starters. Now this would be fine if the Yankees could afford a rebuilding year because look at what Hughes and Kennedy did this past season--they won a combined 27 games in each of their first full years as starters. But this is the Yankees and with most of their top players on the wrong side of the baseball age, they need to field a team next year that will make the playoffs.
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| Montero will righfully have to earn it this Spring (LoHud) |
The Yankees are in a similar situation with Jorge Posada. They have a very important player to their organization, a player who has probably been one of the top catchers of all-time (at least on the offensive side), a border-line Hall of Famer. But Posada's defense has gotten so bad and his hitting isn't anymore to the point where you can excuse that defensive liability just because of the hitting he provides. Having gone through the entire slate of external back-up catchers and realizing that Posada was eventually was going to turn into a pumpkin like Williams did, Brian Cashman and the Yankees organization has done a good job of stockpiling catching prospects. Jesus Montero, Austin Romine, Francisco Cervelli, Gary Sanchez, JR Murphy and others fill the Yankees organization throughout and provide themselves with an opportunity to not go out there and pay for old, mediocre players (as they did with Lofton in 2004).
But they shouldn't just hand the reigns of the DH to Posada nor the hands of the catching game to Montero, Romine, or Cervelli. After the 2007 season, the Yankees decided to hand the pitching over to a youth movement without any competition. Ian Kennedy and Phil Hughes managed to win zero games in 2008 as the Yankees back-of-the-rotation starters. Now this would be fine if the Yankees could afford a rebuilding year because look at what Hughes and Kennedy did this past season--they won a combined 27 games in each of their first full years as starters. But this is the Yankees and with most of their top players on the wrong side of the baseball age, they need to field a team next year that will make the playoffs.
Thursday, August 5, 2010
Working the Count: Yankees Pitches Per Plate Appearance Over the Years
We talked a bit in the last post about the gritty, gutsy Yankee teams of the past. One of the observations brought forth was that this was not only a team that seemed to be good at taking pitches and working counts, but one that also produced the results in good hitter who got on base at a good clip. Let's change the subject now and look at pitches per plate appearance. The general logic in P/PA is that the more pitches a player sees, the better chance he has to either get a good pitch to hit or draw a walk, and the more pitches that team sees, the faster they tire the starting pitcher or face inferior pitchers in the bullpen (although the results don't always correspond). Let's work back from 2010 to see how those teams fared in P/PA (for qualified hitters only in the years we talked about in the last post):
2010 (3.90 P/PA)
The Yankees sport 6 regulars above league average with Brett Gardner on a historic P/PA pace. Cano and Granderon's spots on this list show, however, that 2010 results haven't exactly been tied to P/PA (though 3.42 ties Cano's career high). Swisher continues to be a high P/PA guy for the Yankee and A-Rod, Posada, and Teixeira provide a patient middle of the order to wear down opposing pitchers. 3.9 P/PA is a lot: if you think about it, this means that an average run through the Yankees batting order produces over 35 pitches meaning that starters will be lucky to get around the lineup 3 times.
2009 (3.88)
Nick Swisher was a huge addition to this team and the list as he came over to the Yankees after leading the majors in 2008 (at 4.53) and takes over for Bobby Abreu who was a P/PA cog in the Yankees lineup. Mark Teixeira has impressive first-year results as well as he takes over for the patient Jason Giambi in the lineup. Amazingly only Jeter (who had an MVP-type season but has been below league average his entire career) and Cano fall below the league average putting this group at a very impressive 3.88 P/PA for the entire 2009 season.
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| Gardner's patience has made him an even more valuable asset (Yahoo) |
2010 (3.90 P/PA)
The Yankees sport 6 regulars above league average with Brett Gardner on a historic P/PA pace. Cano and Granderon's spots on this list show, however, that 2010 results haven't exactly been tied to P/PA (though 3.42 ties Cano's career high). Swisher continues to be a high P/PA guy for the Yankee and A-Rod, Posada, and Teixeira provide a patient middle of the order to wear down opposing pitchers. 3.9 P/PA is a lot: if you think about it, this means that an average run through the Yankees batting order produces over 35 pitches meaning that starters will be lucky to get around the lineup 3 times.
| Pit/PA ▾ | |
|---|---|
| Brett Gardner* | 4.61 |
| Curtis Granderson* | 4.11 |
| Nick Swisher# | 4.04 |
| Alex Rodriguez | 3.96 |
| Jorge Posada# | 3.95 |
| Mark Teixeira# | 3.87 |
| League Average | 3.83 |
| Derek Jeter | 3.54 |
| Francisco Cervelli | 3.54 |
| Robinson Cano* | 3.42 |
| Team Total | 3.90 |
2009 (3.88)
Nick Swisher was a huge addition to this team and the list as he came over to the Yankees after leading the majors in 2008 (at 4.53) and takes over for Bobby Abreu who was a P/PA cog in the Yankees lineup. Mark Teixeira has impressive first-year results as well as he takes over for the patient Jason Giambi in the lineup. Amazingly only Jeter (who had an MVP-type season but has been below league average his entire career) and Cano fall below the league average putting this group at a very impressive 3.88 P/PA for the entire 2009 season.
The "Nitty Gritty" Yankee Teams of the Late 90s
Last night I got into a discussion with a few friends about baseball. The discussion moved at one point to the Joe Torre teams of the late 90s. I had mentioned how on base percentage was, in my opinion, the most important statistic to measure a team's offensive efficiency--though I mentioned a hollow OBP without power was worthless. I was trying to explain weighted on base average (or wOBA, a category that Dave Cameron of FanGraphs does much better and Alex Remington of Big League Stew adds to) when one of my friends piped up and said that the the offense of those 90s Torre teams were built less on OBP and more on taking pitches and their nitty, gritty mentality. Although I think that pitches per plate appearance has a good deal to do with OBP (more pitches seen usually means patience, more pitches wears out the pitcher and causes them to throw more balls, etc.), I thought that this idea that these Yankee teams didn't win because of OBP and wOBA was false. It turns out I was right.
I think most of this misconception lies in the fact that OBP wasn't exactly a mainstream topic before 2003 when Michael Lewis' Moneyball hit the scene. The truth is that teams were thinking about this before that time, but like good organizations do, they decided not to share that trade secret with others. If you take a look at those Yankee teams, you remember Paul O'Neill's warrior-like ABs, but you forget how they ended many times: with him jogging to first base. Using FanGraphs and Baseball-Reference (and a 50 PA minimum), here was what those Yankee teams looked like:
1995
I add this one in just to show when the change occurred. Obviously, this was not a Torre team (Buck Showalter ran the show), but some of the seeds of Torre teams were planted. The 1995 Yankee team put up a .357 OBP which was good for 2nd in the American League. But the OBP was pretty empty of power. Although they had 280 doubles (2nd in the AL), they had only 122 HR (12th out of 14). Paul O'Neill had 22, Bernie Williams 18, Mike Stanley 18...and no one else had more than 7. The starting infield of Don Mattingly, Pat Kelly, Tony Fernandez, and Wade Boggs accumulated 21 combined. While Paul O'Neill (.387 OBP, .388 wOBA), Bernie Williams (.392 OBP, .385 wOBA), and Wade Boggs (.412 OBP, .373 wOBA) carried the offense, Dion James (.317 wOBA), Luis Polonia (.304), Tony Fernandez (.296), and Pat Kelly (.293) all were black holes. The team made the playoffs as the first American League Wild Card but they were disposed of in a tough 5-game loss in the American League Division Series to the Seattle Mariners.
1996
In 1996, the Yankees got rid of most of the dead weight from the 1995 lineup. They replaced Dion James with Tim Raines (.383 OBP/.377 wOBA), Luis Polonia with Ruben Rivera (.381/.368), Tony Fernandez with Derek Jeter (.370/.353), and Pat Kelly with Mariano Duncan (.352/.364). The team OBP ticked up to .360 and the hitting improved even further when they swapped Ruben Sierra for Cecil Fielder mid-season. Paul O'Neill continued to be a force in the Yankees lineup, walking 15.5% of the time and putting up a .411 OBP. The team gave way too many PAs (219) to Andy Fox (probably the worst Yankee hitter of the past 20 years that they've given that many PAs to) and Gerald Williams was never the answer in left, but this team was able to win the World Series because of those improvements it made.
I think most of this misconception lies in the fact that OBP wasn't exactly a mainstream topic before 2003 when Michael Lewis' Moneyball hit the scene. The truth is that teams were thinking about this before that time, but like good organizations do, they decided not to share that trade secret with others. If you take a look at those Yankee teams, you remember Paul O'Neill's warrior-like ABs, but you forget how they ended many times: with him jogging to first base. Using FanGraphs and Baseball-Reference (and a 50 PA minimum), here was what those Yankee teams looked like:
 |
| "The Warror" did more than just foul off pitches (Yankee Yapping) |
1995
I add this one in just to show when the change occurred. Obviously, this was not a Torre team (Buck Showalter ran the show), but some of the seeds of Torre teams were planted. The 1995 Yankee team put up a .357 OBP which was good for 2nd in the American League. But the OBP was pretty empty of power. Although they had 280 doubles (2nd in the AL), they had only 122 HR (12th out of 14). Paul O'Neill had 22, Bernie Williams 18, Mike Stanley 18...and no one else had more than 7. The starting infield of Don Mattingly, Pat Kelly, Tony Fernandez, and Wade Boggs accumulated 21 combined. While Paul O'Neill (.387 OBP, .388 wOBA), Bernie Williams (.392 OBP, .385 wOBA), and Wade Boggs (.412 OBP, .373 wOBA) carried the offense, Dion James (.317 wOBA), Luis Polonia (.304), Tony Fernandez (.296), and Pat Kelly (.293) all were black holes. The team made the playoffs as the first American League Wild Card but they were disposed of in a tough 5-game loss in the American League Division Series to the Seattle Mariners.
1996
In 1996, the Yankees got rid of most of the dead weight from the 1995 lineup. They replaced Dion James with Tim Raines (.383 OBP/.377 wOBA), Luis Polonia with Ruben Rivera (.381/.368), Tony Fernandez with Derek Jeter (.370/.353), and Pat Kelly with Mariano Duncan (.352/.364). The team OBP ticked up to .360 and the hitting improved even further when they swapped Ruben Sierra for Cecil Fielder mid-season. Paul O'Neill continued to be a force in the Yankees lineup, walking 15.5% of the time and putting up a .411 OBP. The team gave way too many PAs (219) to Andy Fox (probably the worst Yankee hitter of the past 20 years that they've given that many PAs to) and Gerald Williams was never the answer in left, but this team was able to win the World Series because of those improvements it made.
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