The Yankee Clipper: The Outfield

As the All-Star break comes to a close, it feels like a good time to review the season so far. We'll try to roll a different one of these out for the next week reviewing the Yankees different positional groups to see how they've performed so far this season. We'll also be reviewing this to see where weaknesses are before the July 31st non-waiver trade deadline. Let's start out with the outfield:

1. Brett Gardner. One of my favorite players coming into this season has rewarded the Yankees' faith in making him an everyday player. He's hitting a robust .309/.396/.415 and at his current pace would finish the season with 10 HR and almost 50 SB. He's 10th in the AL in runs (56), 5th in OBP (.396), and 4th in SB (25). Baseball-Reference has his defense in left rated as tops in the American League. In my opinion, the best thing about his game is the amount of pitches he sees. He averages 4.58 P/PA which would be the highest average since Rickey Henderson had 4.55 in 1997 (and if you want to read up on the correlation of P/PA and production, I found this Hardball Times piece from 2005). Better yet, FanGraphs says that only 5 players in the Majors swing at less balls outside the strike zone than Gardner--then again, he's also swung at the least amount of pitches inside the strike zone in the Majors and overall meaning he only swings 31.3% of the time (but he makes contact at balls inside the strike zone a league-leading 98.1% of the time when he does swing). FanGraphs tracks Gardner's Wins Above Replacement number at 2.3 which already surpasses his 2009 value and puts him in the top 15 among American League outfielders and Baseball-Reference has Gardner's WAR at 3.4 with would be tied for 6th among all AL positional players (with Carl Crawford and Kevin Youkilis). Whether it's "Gardner Planted One" (for his Inside-the-Park home run), "Gardy Goes Yardy" (his regular home run call), or "Brett The Jet" (his stolen base call), Gardner has not only turned into an important Yankee regular, but he may be a reason the Yankees second-guess giving big money to Carl Crawford in the off-season. Best Month: June .383/.472/.533.
2. Nick Swisher. I will repeat: the Yankees acquired Nick Swisher for Wilson Betemit. Wow. Swisher came into camp this year in even better shape than last year and it has showed. The Yankees starting rightfielder is having his best Major League season with career highs at every slash (.298/.377/.524) as well as his Weighted On Base Average (wOBA) of .391 (only Robinson Cano has a better mark. He's projected to have 28 HR, 93 RBI and 72 XBH. And although UZR rates him as a negative defender, he's shown definite improvement in right with both his arm and his glove. His 2.7 WAR in both FanGraphs and Baseball-Reference means that he's on pace to greatly surpass last year's output. And as shown by his recent All-Star Final Ballot selection, he's having a lot of fun doing it, bringing a loose atmosphere to the clubhouse that the Yankees needed after guys like Johnny Damon and Jason Giambi left. Swisher has moved around in the lineup a lot, hitting 2nd some games and anywhere from 4th to 8th in others--but wherever he's hit in the lineup, he's produced. Although he hasn't walked as much in 2010 (mostly due to who he's had hitting behind him), Swisher has still taken over 18% of his at bats to a full count and done damage when he's gotten there (.554 OBP). Swish has been extra Swishalicous in 2010 and the Yankees can control him for cheap through 2012 (according to Cot's Contracts, signed for bargains of  $6.75 M this year, $9 M in 2011 and a $10.25 M club option in 2012 with a $1 M buyout). Best Month: May .374/.441/.670 with 7 HR. Picture from the New York Daily News

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Biggest Fantasy Baseball Surprises: Outfielders, DHs and Pitchers

Yesterday we looked at the biggest fantasy baseball surprises in the infield, today we'll look at those that play the outfield, are solely utility, starting pitchers or relief pitchers. All stats and rankings courtesy of Yahoo! Fantasy Baseball. Here we go:

Utility (AKA DH)

Biggest Surprise - Vladamir Guerrero. Former Angels made popular fantasy baseball draft picks from John Lackey to Chone Figgins. But who would have thought that the best former Angel was going to be Vladamir Guerrero. He was ranked the 145th best player coming into this season and is now the second best player in baseball and looking like his MVP form of the past (as well as a sure-fire candidate to go back to Anaheim for the All-Star Game). He's hitting .339 with 29 runs, 12 HR, 42 RBI, and 4 SB.  Two points to make. One is that the weather hasn't really gotten hot so the balls are going to start jumping out even more in Texas this summer. And two, the craziest point about this whole thing is that if the Rangers had completed their trade for Mike Lowell in the off-season, Vlady may be sitting with Jermaine Dye at home still looking for work. Picture from USA Today 

Biggest Disappointment - Pat Burrell. This is pretty bad. Burrell was drafted in a fair amount of leagues for those hoping to get a bounce-back year from the Tampa DH. But he rewarded those people (and the Rays) with a .202 average, 9 runs, 2 HR and 13 RBI in 84 ABs before being released. Ouch. For a small market team such as Tampa, that's gotta hurt.

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Former Mets Dominating the American League

From Peter Gammons:

As of this weekend, Jason Bay and Nelson Cruz are 1-2 among American League outfielders in homers and extra-base hits, and seemingly certain to make the All-Star team. Talk about scenic routes:

Nelson Cruz

• 1998: Signed by Mets as undrafted free agent
• 2000: Traded from Mets to A's for Jorge Velandia
• 2004: Traded from A's to Brewers for Keith Ginter
• 2006: Traded by Brewers with Carlos Lee to Texas for Francisco Cordero and Kevin Mench
• 2008: Cleared waivers at the end of spring training, accepted demotion to Triple-A

Jason Bay

• 2000: Drafted in 22nd round by Montreal Expos
• 2002: Traded by Expos to Mets for Lou Collier
• 2002: Traded by Mets to Padres for Steve Reed
• 2003: Traded by Padres to Pirates with Oliver Perez for Brian Giles
• 2008: Traded by Pirates to Red Sox for Craig Hansen, Brandon Moss, Andy LaRoche and Bryan Morris

Amazingly, both of these guys were in the Mets system. In 3 seasons with the Mets, Velandia's line looked like .149/.281/.216. And Steve Reed pitched well in 24 games with the Mets, but left as a free agent when the season was over. The Mets weren't the only team who passed on those two players, but they sure could use them this season. Here is the homerun output of the Mets corner OFs this season:

  Cnt Player            **HR** Year Age Tm  Lg  G   PA  AB  R   H  2B 3B RBI  BB IBB  SO HBP  SH  SF GDP  SB CS   BA   OBP   SLG   OPS  Positions
+----+-----------------+------+----+---+---+--+---+---+---+---+---+--+--+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+--+-----+-----+-----+-----+---------+
   1 Gary Sheffield       5   2009  40 NYM NL  46 137 112  26  29  5  1  20  24   2  19   1   0   0   3   2  1  .259  .394  .455  .849 79       
    2 Daniel Murphy        4   2009  24 NYM NL  51 174 150  21  36  5  1  18  19   1  15   0   3   2   2   1  1  .240  .322  .367  .689 *73      
    3 Ryan Church          1   2009  30 NYM NL  39 138 125   9  34  7  0   8  10   3  18   1   1   1   5   2  1  .272  .328  .352  .680 *9       
    4 Fernando Martinez    0   2009  20 NYM NL   9  35  30   3   6  3  0   4   4   0   4   1   0   0   0   2  0  .200  .314  .300  .614 /*97     
    5 Emil Brown           0   2009  34 NYM NL   3   6   5   0   1  0  0   0   1   0   0   0   0   0   1   0  0  .200  .333  .200  .533 /9       
    6 Jeremy Reed          0   2009  28 NYM NL  47  63  60   5  19  3  1   3   3   1  15   0   0   0   1   0  1  .317  .349  .400  .749 *7/839   
    7 Angel Pagan          0   2009  27 NYM NL  14  51  42   7  14  3  0   3   7   0   9   0   2   0   2   4  0  .333  .429  .405  .834 /978