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16 May 2010
In his career, Randy Winn has posted a .334 wOBA and a 104 wRC+. This tells us that he has been a slightly above average hitter since his debut in 1998. When the Yankees signed him in the offseason, he was coming off a down year where he posted a sub-par 82 wRC+. Yet there were reasons to believe that he would return to previous offensive norms; he had a ridiculously low HR/FB rate of 1.4% (7.8% since 2002) and a lower than usual BABIP, despite hitting more line drives than ever. Unfortunately, Randy Winn has only performed worse this year. Not including today's game, he has posted a miserable 59 wRC+, meaning he has been 41% below average. Gross.
Of note is his contact rate of 70.7%. For his career, Winn has been an above average contact hitter; he has generally posted good strikeout and contact rates. Yet this year he is swinging through many more pitches, particularly the fastball. According to Trip Somers' pitch f/x tool, this year Winn has whiffed at 11.6% of four-seam fastballs. This is quite a paltry figure when compared to a league average of about 6%.
With the help of Joe Lefkowitz's pitch f/x tool we can see that Win has struggled in particular with fastballs up in the zone.
Yet it isn't all bad for Winn. He has walked in 13% of plate appearances this year (compared to a career average of 7.6%), which compensates nicely for his increase in strikeouts. He also has a very low BABIP of .207, which is very likely to increase. His poor luck is also evident in a .307 xBABIP.
Another thing going for Winn is that he's only had 39 at-bats so far (not including today's game). In this small of a sample size, almost anything can happen. In all likelihood, he'll regain some of his ability to hit high fastballs (or what we have seen so far is just a product of SSS) and he will regress to career norms. ZiPS agrees, and sees Winn ending this season with a .312 wOBA.
Over a full season, a .312ish wOBA combined with the excellent defense Winn provides creates about a 1.5 WAR player. Now Winn is probably not going to get more than 350 plate appearances, which means that he probably won't contribute more than 1 WAR for the season. Even so, he's getting paid 2 million this season, and if we assume the market value of 1 win above replacement to be about 4 million, Winn only has to produce half a WAR to justify his contract. This means that even with this early dismal performance, Winn will probably end up being a decent value.
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15 May 2010
And we let him off the hook!
Towards the end of April, I penned a little blog post looking at the apparent improvements Eduardo Nunez had made. Well, Nunez sure fooled me, and reminded me not to fall prey to small sample sizes. Let's have some fun by splitting up Nunez's season down at Triple-A.
April 10 to April 22: 47 AB, 18 H, 4 2B, 1 HR, 3 K, 7 BB, .383/.463/.532
April 23 to May 13: 74 AB, 22 H, 3 2B, 11 K, 2 BB, .297/.316/.338
Well, that's a drastic difference, and one is much more representative of the player Nunez has been over the course of his career. When he started off with seven walks in his first 12 games, I was impressed. The fact that he wasn't striking out anymore suggested to me that maybe he had started to gain control of the strike zone.
I was wrong.
Since then, Nunez has walked just two times in 18 games, and it's not like he has been trading that plate discipline in for more power or contact: he has hit for less power, and has made less contact.
Whatever Nunez was doing at the start of the season, he needs to get back to it. In plain words, he has been terrible over the past 18 games. I doubt it's that simple and Nunez has changed his approach. It's more likely that this is just an example of the vagaries of small sample sizes in baseball.
Photo Credit: Mike Ashmore
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14 May 2010
Majors
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Seattle Mariners Rule 5 pick from the Yankees Kanekoa Texeira had a good outing. He pitched two no hit innings, allowing one walk while striking out three. Seattle probably isn't going to do much contending this season, so it looks like Texeira is going to stick. He's a solid reliever, but it isn't too big of a loss for the Yanks.
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Former Yankee and current Diamondback Ian Kennedy had another strong start. He started out with six shutout innings and then gave up a lead-off home run to Brian McCann in the seventh inning. After that, he gave up two more singles and was taken out of the game. Both of those runners scored against a reliever, so Kennedy's final line doesn't look too good: 6.1 IP, 7 H, 4 ER, 2 BB, 5 K, 1 HR.
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Juan Miranda started for the second straight game and got his first hit of the season. He is slotted at eighth in the lineup and is hitless in his first 8 plate appearances with one walk.
Scranton/Wilkes-Barre
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Chan Ho Park made his first rehab appearance and pitched well. He was sitting in the low 90s and pitched a shutout inning. In the process, he struck out two and allowed one hit.
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Coming in relief for Park was Romulo Sanchez, who pitched phenomenally: 7 IP, 3 H, 1 ER, 2 BB, 9 K. In his last three appearances(one in the majors), Romulo has thrown 17.2 innings, allowed 10 hits and 4 walks while striking out 21. This is a nice stretch from Sanchez that shows just how dominant he can be.
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SS Eduardo Nunez had three singles in five at-bats today. I have a post on him coming up tomorrow, as he has seemingly tailed off over the past few weeks.
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Jesus Montero caught and went 1 for 4 with a triple. It was the third triple of his career and first since sometime in Tampa last season.
Trenton
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I need to do a better job of paying attention. Apparently Justin Christian is back with the Yankees organization and playing for the Thunder. He isn't off to a very good start and has a sub-.500 OPS on the season.
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Austin Romine DH'd again today. He has a sore arm, which explains why he has been at DH for the past few games.
Tampa
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Melky Mesa got himself over the Mendoza line by going 2 for 4. He is now hitting .212 on the season. On the other hand, Neil Medchill went 0 for 3 and is now hitting a paltry .183 on the year. Not that expectations were high, but that has to be at least a little disappointing considering how well he hit in the NYPL last season.
Charleston
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Kyle Higashioka had another rough game, going 0 for 4 with a strikeout. He is now batting .196 on the season, which is very disappointing. Hopefully he can turn it around. Jimmy Paredes went 2 for 4 with a double and two strikeouts. Luke Murton went 3 for 5 with 2 doubles. He has been very good so far this season.
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14 May 2010
Via LoHud, the Yankees released injured starter Christian Garcia and claimed RHP Shane Lindsay from the Rockies.
Going through Lindsay's stats, it's easy to see why he was available. Over 269.1 minor league innings, Lindsay has walked 6.1 batters per nine. On the other hand, he has also struck out a whopping 12.5 batters per nine.
This season, he has struck out 19 and walked 10 so far in 13.2 innings. He clearly has nasty stuff, he wouldn't be able to strike out so many guys if he didn't. The problem with him is that he can't always throw his pitches for strikes. Mike Axisa says his fastball touches 98 and he also possesses a knuckle-curve that he can throw for strikes(via Baseball America). I'll believe he can throw his breaking pitch for strikes when he stops walking over six guys per nine innings.
Anyway, I don't have too high hopes for Lindsay. The strikeout numbers are immensely impressive, they're on David Robertson's level. He's 25 years old so I don't foresee a situation where he considerably cuts down on the walks, and with his current walk rate, he cannot contribute in the big leagues.
Hopefully, the Yankees are able to re-sign Christian Garcia, as he seems like a really good guy and I'd like to see him rehab in the Yankee organization.
Photo Credit: Les_Stockton
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13 May 2010
I won't be around tonight to do my usual notes, but there were just a few things I wanted to mention while I have some time.
Ivan Nova made his big league debut and pitched two shutout innings. I thought he looked pretty good, especially his curveball. I'll take a look at his pitch f/x tomorrow, but I liked what I saw out of him. He'll probably stick around for a little bit with Alfredo Aceves on the DL.
Reegie Corona hit his second home run of the season and is now on a six game hitting streak. For a guy who was awful in Triple-A for a while, this is an encouraging sign.
Graham Stoneburner made his first A+ start for Tampa and was dominant. In six innings, he allowed only two hits, one walk, and two earned runs while striking out 7 hitters. This guy is legit. Pat Venditte came on in relief and was good: 1.1 IP, 1 H, 2 K. The corresponding roster move for when Stoneburner was called up was that Jairo Heredia was sent down. Hopefully Heredia will be able to turn it around in Charleston.
That's all for tonight, but I thought these things were worth noting. We'll have some fresh content for you tomorrow.
