Pending Pinstripes - A New York Yankees Minor League Blog

Has Jeter Lost His Swing?

Josh82093@gmail.com (Josh W.) — Mon, 17 Jan 2011 02:26:36 +0000

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.

A Pitch F/X Look at Cliff Lee

Josh82093@gmail.com (Josh W.) — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 01:14:22 +0000

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.

Pitch Type	Count	Selection%	Swing%	Swing-Miss%	HR%	GB%	LD%	FB%
vs RHB
FF	352	13.8	50.9	12.3	0.9	28.9	25.0	46.1
vs LHB

FF ··

305

36.4

47.2

13.2

0.7

45.6

12.3

42.1

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.·

Pitch Type	Count	Selection%	Swing%	Swing-Miss%	HR%	GB%	LD%	FB%
vs RHB
FT	1174	46.2	48.2	14.5	0.5	31.0	21.0	48.1
vs LHB

FT ··

241

28.8

46.1

11.7

0.0

59.6

27.7

12.8

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.·

Pitch Type	Count	Selection%	Swing%	Swing-Miss%	HR%	GB%	LD%	FB%
vs RHB
FC	510	20.1	54.9	20.4	0.6	47.0	23.0	30.0
vs LHB

FC ··

185

22.1

49.7

17.4

1.1

41.9

18.6

39.5

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.·

Pitch Type	Count	Selection%	Swing%	Swing-Miss%	HR%	GB%	LD%	FB%
vs RHB
CU	170	6.7	44.1	37.3	0.0	76.0	12.0	12.0
vs LHB

CU ·

5.8

36.7

38.9

0.0

20.0

60.0

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.

Pitch Type	Count	Selection%	Swing%	Swing-Miss%	HR%	GB%	LD%	FB%

CH	293	11.5	58.7	29.7	0.3	42.5	17.5	40.0

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.

Why the Yankees Need Russell Martin

seanbon15@gmail.com (Sean P) — Fri, 10 Dec 2010 23:04:21 +0000

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!

Yankees and...Crawford?

Josh82093@gmail.com (Josh W.) — Fri, 03 Dec 2010 21:06:25 +0000

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.

Trenton BB and K Rates for Pitchers

seanbon15@gmail.com (Sean P) — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 02:14:55 +0000

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.

Tampa Pitchers BB and K Rates

seanbon15@gmail.com (Sean P) — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 00:18:11 +0000

Next up is Tampa, where a lot of positive stuff happened for Yankee pitchers in 2010. The FSL is a pretty well known pitchers league, so keep that in mind while evaluating these numbers.

Hector Noesi picked up exactly where he left off in 2009. He opened the year in Tampa and only pitched 43 innings here before getting bumped up after displaying more of his exceptional command and control. He was working in his slider a lot this year to go along with the plus curve, fastball and change....Dellin Betances jumped back onto the map in 2010 after breaking out in Tampa. He smoothed out his mechanics and his control improved markedly which was huge for him...Andrew Brackman had a very similar season to Betances. Bouncing back from the injuries of the past few years, he too worked out his mechanical flaws and posted results which befit one of his talents. One thing I liked especially about Brackman's season was his ability to keep the ball on the ground...Manny Banuelos really was fantastic this year. After recovering from his appendectomy he was brilliant in Tampa. He found some extra life on his fastball and has certainly emerged as the Yankees top pitching prospect, at least for me. His plus change up works to both LH and RH batters and his curve is rounding into shape.

What Contract Will Jeter Get?

Josh82093@gmail.com (Josh W.) — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 15:32:24 +0000

There has been a lot of spectacular writing about Derek Jeter these days. This is because there is simply so much to talk about with one of the game's most prominent characters - the icon, number 2, shortstop for the New York Yankees. Better writers than me have discussed, ad nasuem, his gold glove award, his imminent contract, his on the field value vs. his off the field value, etc. Today I will take a much easier approach to discussing the issues surrounding the face of the Yankee franchise. So simple, in fact, that I will only look at one question: what contract will Jeter get?

Earlier this year Fangraphs started crowdsourcing for predictions of free agent contracts. After they did the first of these crowdsourcing polls, I got the idea to do crowdsourcing for Derek Jeter. I decided to to this at an internet venue where the respondents would know Jeter the best - NYYFans forum.

Here are my results, combined with the crowdsourcing polls ran by Baseball Prospectus and Fangraphs:

	NYYFans	Fangraphs	Baseball Prospectus	Average
Avg. years	3.49	3.38	3.35	3.41
Avg. salary	16.31	14.91	16.20	15.81
Med. years	3	3	3	3
Med. salary	16	15	15.5	15.5
StdDev. years	1.22	.82	.93	.99
StdDev. salary	4.36	4.20	4.28	4.28

*Timeframe: my poll started 8/31, Fangraphs poll started 9/7, and the BP poll started 9/2

From this data we can predict that Jeter will recieve a contract of around 3 years and 46.5 million. From this data we can also see that Yankee fans (the posters at NYYFans) value Jeter a little more than other respondents, which is unsurprising.

Unfortunately, given Brian Cashman's recent comments about Jeter being a "legacy" player, I think it is likely the contract Jeter will receive will be a lot closer to (gasp!) around 4 years and 80 million, which is pretty close to one standard deviation above average for these polls (in both years and salary). But that's just my opinion.

Baseball America's Top 10 Yankee Prospects

seanbon15@gmail.com (Sean P) — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 20:42:11 +0000

Baseball America today released their top 10 Yankee prospect list.

Overall I think the list is pretty solid. Baseball America is obviously privy to a ton of information I am not, but here are my only objections on this list:

- I would have had Banuelos higher than Betances. I suppose this could be a matter of preference but for me the age difference, injury history and Banuelos being a lefty now sitting in the mid 90s pushes him over the top.

- Brandon Laird and Eduardo Nunez would not have made my top 10 list (which I'll put together at some point, I swear). Laird doesn't really have a position and if you figure him as a corner outfielder, I'm not sure he can hit enough to be anything more than bench option. My "prospect list philosophy" tends to be skewed towards upside- I'm a big ceiling type guy. Laird doesn't have that for me. I think David Adams would sneak in there on my list.

Nunez....well I just can't understand what Baseball America sees in him. He's a career minor league hitter of .274/.318/.369. He's never had a walk rate higher than 7%. The one legitimate skill he probably does have is the ability to avoid striking out. Despite what you'll see in a moment, he's not a good fielder either. According to TotalZone, in 6 minor league years he's been -40 runs below average. That's NEGATIVE 40. If you don't like TotalZone, he's made 167 errors in those 6 years. That's um, not any good either. In a ridiculously small, minuscule, microscopic sample, UZR had him at -2.5 runs below average. John Dewan's system, +/-, had him at -2 runs below average as well. There just isn't anything to hang your hat on, no matter how hard you look. The notion that he could be a starting shortstop in this league, to me at least, is an insult to all current starting shortstops. Keith Law in his last chat and a tweet I think summed it up best:

My sentiments exactly.

My favorite part of the Baseball America lists are actually the "Best Tools" component.

These are pretty hard to quibble with as they're all just opinions of their scouting staff. I think it's fairy obvious I would disagree strongly with Best Defensive Infielder. I guess they try to pick a SS for that slot since it's the most important infield defensive position. On the other hand, last year they picked Cervelli as best defensive catcher- Oops! Cito Culver could be a candidate for best defensive infielder in the future. Best strike zone discipline would definitely fit with David Adams. Corban Joseph was another guy that immediate sprung to mind for me, as well as Kevin Mahoney. Also I'm kind of surprised Banuelos didn't win best change up, but Jose Ramirez is supposed to have a nasty one himself.

Finally as a last shot at Eduardo Nunez, I offer you this:

Oh, yo no lo creo, señor Villa. Yo no lo creo.

Staten Island Pitcher BB/K Rates

seanbon15@gmail.com (Sean P) — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 01:39:37 +0000

Next up is the NY Penn League Staten Island Yankees.

Staten Island was home to some really bad defense this year, as our eyes on the ground can attest too. That would explain why the SI ERAs are significantly higher as a group than their FIPs- poor fielding definitely hurt the pitching staff. The staff as a whole looks like it may have some decent future relievers on it, but as always with the short season leagues, it's hard to tell for sure.

Zach Varce is a name that's getting some buzz out of the 2010 draft. Projected as a reliever, he throws in the low 90s and mainly features a pretty solid curveball as well as slider....It feels like Nick Turley has been around forever, but he was just 20 this past year. He's a big lefty but the velocity hasn't developed as the Yankees probably hoped it would. He's still in that iffy potential stage....Shane Greene has some decent stuff and probably also projects as a reliever down the road. Low to mid 90s fastball with some sink on it, makings of a good slider and change up. Mechanical issues can be an issue at times but the 2009 15th rounder shows the outline of a quality bullpen arm....Preston Claiborne is another relief pitcher, taken in the 17th round out of Tulane- he has a mid 90s fastball and a real good change up along with an iffy slider. If he gets his mechanics ironed out, he'll have a real promising future.

GCL Pitcher BB/K Rates

seanbon15@gmail.com (Sean P) — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 20:35:09 +0000

After a lengthy absence due to a particularly busy time of the year for me, I'm back. I think. For awhile. Anyway, I'm gonna start posting more of our "Season in Review" type stuff starting with the BB and K rates for pitchers at each minor league level.

I was pretty excited about Bryan Mitchell's debut this year and he wound up posting decent numbers. After being a little dinged up to start the year, the 2009 draftee worked mostly on developing his change up to compliment his plus fastball and curve ball. He was reportedly working on command issues with his delivery and finished the year strong....Conor Mullee was the Yankees 24th round selection in the 2010 draft who was converted from SS. He had pitched something like 4 or 5 innings in college but the Yankees must have seen the potential in his arm and he had a nice debut. Literally learning how to pitch all year, Mullee has a 95+ fastball that was enough to blow away the younger GCL competition (2.34 FIP). He's also got a slider that is a work in progress but the results are encouraging for a first time pitcher....Evan DeLuca got a lot of attention for being a promising left handed prospect but really had some issues in terms of command this year. It was nice to see the 19 year old be able to miss some bats though....