Written by Josh W. | 16 January 2011

After a solid but unremarkable season in 2008, doubts about Derek Jeter were starting to creep into the news much more often. People wondered if the great #2 was finally slowing down. By that point we all knew about the miserable defense; the dismal defense metric ratings, the meeting with Yankees' GM Brian Cashman about his defense, and more. So when he produced his worst full season numbers of his career in 2008, there was cause for concern. Then 2009 happened, the year of the ageless Derek Jeter. He prevented his defense from decaying further, and had a monster offensive season. All combined, 2009 was arguably one of the best two seasons of his hallowed career. He successfully put all doubts on pause. Some wondered if he would have the same ageless career as his long time teammate, Mariano Rivera.  
Unfortunately, he was not able to continue his age defiance in 2010. The once great Derek Jeter was basically an average player in 2010, producing 2.5 fWAR. His defense was as porous as ever, and he now paired it with below average offense (97 wRC+). Was he a bad player this past season? Certainly not; he was arguably the third best shortstop in the American League (he still hit very well for a shortstop). He's just no longer the player that he used to be. Thankfully, he still appears to be eager to improve and work hard. According to reports, Jeter will work on rediscovering his offensive prowess by arriving at spring training early to work with the Yankees' hitting coach, Kevin Long. Perhaps 2010 was not a marker of decline after all; players can simply have down seasons if hitting mechanics get of of whack for an extended period of time. I would like to explore in this post whether or not such a glaring flaw is clear by looking at his performance in the strikezone and his ability to hit the ball to the opposite field. 




This graph shows the difference in run value, based on location, in Jeter's 2010 and 2009 seasons. It is from the catcher's perspective, and the black box represents the strikezone. Red (negative run values) indicate that Jeter performed worse in these areas in 2010 compared to 2009. Blue shows where he performed better than 2009, and white is neutral, meaning that he performed the same in white areas in both 2010 and 2009. Unfortunately for Jeter, it appears that he was worse pretty much everywhere except for a few pitches down in the zone and pitches down and away. There doesn't really seem to be a glaring hole hear, unless he (unintentionally) changed his swing plane to hit pitches lower in the zone, but that seems unlikely. 

*The reason there is a significant amount of blue and red in the left most area of the graph (-2 on the x axis) is because hit by pitches have a positive run values, so the difference in colors just shows he was hit by pitches in different places in 2010 than 2009.

It's possible that this strikezone 'heat map' might not indicate a swing issue in the desired manner, so I decided to look at the quality of his hits based on where he hit them. My initial guess was that he was the same at pulling in the ball in 2010 as he was in 2009, but worse at going to the opposite field. 



These lines show a loess regression of run value by hit angle. The left side of the graph corresponds to the left half of a baseball field, and the right side corresponds to the right half of a baseball field. The black line is the average right handed hitter. As is expected, the average hitter is best when pulling the ball, and worst when going to the opposite field.* Jeter, unlike most players, is actually better when going to the opposite field. 
As you can see, my initial guess was quite wrong. Jeter was worse at hitting the ball to the opposite field than he was in 2009, but he was also significantly worse at pulling the ball too. The only place where there was no drop off was dead center. Much like the 'heat map' above, he was worse almost everywhere. Does this mean that there is no clear flaw in his swing that, if corrected, will resurrect his tremendous offense out of decline? Not necessarily, but this information is not encouraging for Jeter or Kevin Long. Based on the data, it seems like he's declining across the board, perhaps with the sole exception of plate discipline. Kevin Long has worked wonders before with Robinson Cano and Nick Swisher but it appears that this time, there's not a whole lot he will be able to do. 

*The reason the black line slopes downward right around the -50 degree mark (left field) is because not all of the gameday hit location coordinates mean the exact same thing in every ball park (home plate has a different (x,y) coordinates depending on the park), so at the extremes some of the angle calculations got a little weird. 

*This information was calculated using Darrel Zimmerman's pitch fx database and Ricky Zanker's run value mysql code.

Written by Josh W. | 13 December 2010

Lee has a tremendous variety of movement in his pitches. He has three pitches that tail away from righties (fourseam, twoseam, changeup) and a nasty curveball with a ton of movement. For most pitchers this would be plenty; but Cliff Lee is not like most pitchers and also packs a cutter with as much horizontal movement as most sliders.

We can see this with the following graph, which is from the catcher's perspective (same with all following graphs):

CU=curveball, FC=cutter, FF=fourseam, FT=twoseam, CH=changeup. The black box represents the strikezone and has the average pitch locations for each pitch.·

Looking at a pitcher's entire repertoire like this is useful, but it can be more interesting to look at pitches individually when it comes to pitchers like Lee.

Against righties his location is pretty varied with the fourseam. He mainly locates the pitch middle-away, but often goes up and in too. Against lefties, he consistently pounds the outer half.·

Against righties he primarily throws the twoseam pitch up and away, which explains why he has a high flyball rate on a pitch typically associated with groundballs. Against lefties the pitch is pretty much thrown low and over the middle of the plate.·

Against righties the pitch is a real weapon; the cutter results in many whiffs and a solid amount of groundballs. Against lefties the pitch isn't as remarkable, but still solid. His location against lefties with the cutter is very similar to his location with his fourseamer against lefties.·

His location against righties and lefties is pretty much the same, though he does backdoor the pitch occasionally to righties. He pretty much only throws his curve late in counts for strikeouts.

Only one graph here because he only threw 20 changeups to lefties the entire year, so I'm just going to ignore those. According to Fangraphs pitch run values, his changeup was his most effective pitch this year. And you can see why; he was great and locating the pitch down and away.·

*all data and tables are from Joe Lefkowitz' site. 

Written by Sean P | 10 December 2010

Ok, I lied. The Yankees don’t NEED Russell Martin. But he would be a rather nice addition to the roster.

About a week ago, the Yankees were first reported to be interested in signing Russell Martin and this led to several levels of hell breaking lose. Many Yankee fans/commentators saw Russell Martin, who was recently non-tendered by the Dodgers, as an impediment to heir apparent, Jesus Montero. After Cashman made it clear Jorge Posada was done as an everyday catcher and that Montero would have a shot to win the job outright in spring training, excitement for the Jesus went off the charts. And rightly so I might add. Look at this projection from Bill James:

.285/.348/.519, 21 HRs, .376 wOBA

That's pretty damn exciting. I still think we should pump the breaks a bit though and here's why. 

First off, I think for as exciting as Montero is we’re forgetting his age and experience. While he’s an extraordinary talent, he’s also just 21 and has one full season at AAA under his belt. We should also remember that it took him almost a half season to adjust fully to the level before he settled into his typical groove and destroyed the International league. Also while I expect good things from Montero this year, that projection above is ridiculous. That batting line would have made Montero the 5^th best catcher (offensively) in baseball this year. While great things are certainly possible with Montero, he should still be afforded some adjustment period. Additionally, Montero will arrive in New York surrounded by an obscene amount of hype that will surely dwarf the Ike Davis brouhaha from last year. Dealing with the New York media Cluster f**k, adjusting to MLB pitching and further developing his defensive catching skills while learning how to handle the Yankee starters is a giant task, for any 21 year old. 

This is why Russell Martin would be a great stop gap. Even if Montero doesn’t make the team out of spring training to delay his arbitration clock, Martin would be a good fit. Russell has two skills which no MLB ready Yankees catcher has in the same package: he takes walks and he’s a good defender.

Martin was never quite the same after two straight season of catching 150+ games. So while the power and batting average are far removed from the 2007 version of Russell Martin, the 27 year old still has plenty of value- at least compared to the alternative, Francisco Cervelli.

Look, I’ve been 8-year-old-on-Christmas-excited for Montero’s debut for a few years now. But the one thing I don’t want is for him to be rushed too quickly into what is going to be an overwhelming situation and burn out. We’ve been preaching patience with Montero here for a long time, so why stop now? We’ll see the big Jesus in pinstripes this year folks, I can almost promise you that. Let’s just be smart about this.

Can you swim buddy?! Hope so! 

Written by Josh W. | 03 December 2010

Buster Olney: Sources: the Yankees are very much engaged in conversations with free agent outfielder Carl Crawford.

This is very strange for two reasons: (A) the Yankees already have a good outfield and (B) if they signed Crawford they would not have enough money for Lee. One doe not need to go far to verify (A); the Yankees' three outfielders, Gardner, Granderson, and Swisher, had a combined fWAR of 13.1 in 2010, a tremendous figure and one of the best in the league. There's also a very strong argument to be had in support of Gardner being more valuable to the Yankees than Crawford would be. While Crawford is better, the difference not large, and he would obviously make a lot more money. It's pretty easy to conclude that the outfield is not really an issue for the Yankees. 

This leads us to point (B). Signing Crawford would likely put the payroll at it's limit, and thus preclude the Yankees from signing Lee. This would be problematic because the current state of the rotation is not that good; Its' basically the same as last year (right now), without Vazquez but with an older CC, AJ, and (likely) Pettitte. If the Yankees were to sign Lee, he would be replacing the innings (and more) of Vazquez, which would make a huge difference. 

Thankfully, there are two other explanations for this activity that make more sense. It's possible the Yankees are just trying to raise the price of Crawford for other potential bidders, like the Red Sox. The other explanation is that the Yankees feel that they either will not be able to sign Lee or that he won't be worth the price. If this is the case, the Yankees might be planning on signing Crawford to make a package of one of their other outfielders for a starting pitcher. 

In the end, it's important to understand that we really don't know how serious these talks are. It's very possible that this could be a non-story in a week. 

Written by Sean P | 15 November 2010

AA Trenton is our next stop. 

The BB/9 is listed on the X axis while the K/9 is on the Y axis, meaning of course the quadrant you want to show up in is the upper left. With the short season teams, sample size is a pretty big issue- a lot of these guys bounced around and didn't get anywhere near the proper amount of innings pitched to stabilize their numbers. So don't get too excited/bummed about any of these graphs, especially for the short season guys.

Adam Warren kind of gets lost in the prospect discussion with Betances, Brackman and Banuelos but he's no slouch himself. Yes, he's a tremendous slouch. Warren actually pitched slightly better in Trenton than he did with Tampa (tRA would suggest it's mainly due to park and defense adjustments). He keeps the ball on the ground and has pretty decent stuff as well...David Phelps is another guy who is slightly under the radar. He has that mid 90's fastball and the good control he's had since being drafted in 2008. The curve and change have come together nicely and the results have certainly been impressive. It's amazing that Phelps has never had a FIP under 3.42 at any point during his professional career- I keep expecting him to run into problems, but he's in Scranton and still not experiencing any serious set backs. Shows what I know.