Daily Archives: November 17, 2008

This week, Bronx Banter will be collaborating with our new hosts here at the SNY.tv Blog Network to take a look at the Yankees, position by position. We start today at first base.

2008 Yankee First Basemen

*adjusted for position

Organizational Depth Chart

*on May 1, 2009

Having bought out Jason Giambi’s $22 million option for $5 million, thus ending Giambi’s seven years with the team, the Yankees had a gaping hole at first base until last week’s acquisition of Nick Swisher, which I covered in full here. Swisher is coming off his worst major league season, but there’s plenty of reason to expect a return to form in 2009. Still, Swisher’s career rates of .244/.354/.451 are actually a bit shy of the .272/.353/.464 line of the average major league first baseman in 2008, and almost an exact match for the production the Yankees got out of the position last year. Swisher’s real value lies in his ability to hit like a typical first baseman while providing flexibility by bouncing between first and the outfield corners and spotting in center field when needed. As a full-time first baseman, he’s a stop-gap, but there’s no gap for the Yankees to plug. The best opportunity they’ll have to field a superior first baseman exists in this year’s free agent market.

Looking down the depth chart, the Yankees don’t have anything resembling a first-base prospect unless you count catcher Jesus Montero, who is the best hitting prospect in the system. The Venezuelan Montero, who made his full-season debut this year at age 18, could prove to be a poor fit for his current position, and is thus likely to shift to first base as he progresses through the system. Still, he has yet to play a single game at first base as a pro and would be just as good a fit at designated hitter. At low-A Charleston this year, Montero hit .293/.333/.440 as a catcher and .356/.417/.548 as a DH in a similar number of plate appearances. What’s more, the Yankees would be well advised to make every attempt to keep Montero behind the plate given the tremendous competitive advantage that a productive offensive catcher can provide.

Given all of that, there’s no good reason for the Yankees not to make every attempt to sign Mark Teixeira to a huge contract. (more…)

Darrell Rasner made a real-life decision about baseball the other day. The 27-year-old pitcher asked the New York Yankees to sell his contractual rights to the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles of Japan’s Pacific League.

It’s a sound financial move for Rasner, who is coming off his best Major League season. A two-year deal with the Golden Eagles will pay him far more than he could make with the Yankees – a reported $1.2 million guaranteed with the chance to earn $3.5 million – and there won’t be any worries about going down to Scranton.

“I just have to hope and pray that this is good for me and my family,” Rasner told Tyler Kepner of The New York Times. “Having another kid, that kind of changes everything. I just think now’s the time to try to do something and try to get the stability that I need for those guys. This is what I’m doing it for, anyway. My family is everything to me.”

Baseball collides with real life all the time, but players are conditioned to ignore it. They dream of the Major Leagues from the time they are old enough to throw a ball and swing a bat. It’s an all-consuming obsession until one day they realize that big-league dreams don’t pay the bills.

Rasner woke up to that reality last week.

A pitcher named Shannon Withem got the same wake-up call 10 years ago.

Withem went 17-5 with a 3.27 ERA for the Syracuse Chiefs in 1998. That AAA performance earned him a September promotion to Toronto where he pitched once in relief: Three innings, one run, two strikeouts. There was talk that he could earn a spot in the Blue Jays’ bullpen with a strong spring in 1999, but he chose to sign a two-year contract with the Nippon Ham Fighters of Japan’s Pacific League.

“It’s tough to give up when I’m so close to my dreams,” said Withem, who had just turned 26. “But I’ve played pro ball for seven years and never made a whole lot of money. This is a chance to help my family and I just can’t pass that up.”

Withem never made it back to the Major Leagues and there is a chance that Rasner won’t either.

Pitchers are taught to be fearless. They learn to locate their fastball and throw curves and sliders and cutters and splitters. They pitch until their shoulders ache and their elbows burn, but the hardest lesson is the one that Rasner and Withem had to figure out on their own: That big-league dreams don’t pay the bills.

No truth to the rumor that Cashman has been canned for not signing “all the pitchers” yet. 🙂

Here now the news …

• Anthony McCarron of the News notes the elephant in the C.C. Sabathia free agent bargaining room … pressure from the union:

Whether it is suspicion or reality, some in the baseball industry believe Sabathia has a responsibility to other players and the Players Association to accept the biggest offer, which perhaps would lead to bigger contracts for other top free-agent pitchers. If he accepts a lower deal to stay in Milwaukee or go to the West Coast, where he’s from, he might fix the pitching market at a lower price.

• McCarron’s article also has a link to a nice Yankee Stadium photo gallery, tracing the history-making events there.
• Over at LoHud, Pete Abraham lists the following five free agents the Yanks should have reservations about signing: Abreu, A.J. Burnett, Oliver Perez, Pettitte and Manny Ramirez.  Pete also has some interesting notes for those that like career projections:

As always, there were some interesting findings in the Bill James Handbook. Derek Jeter has a 93 percent chance to get to 3,000 hits but Alex Rodriguez has only a 49 percent chance at a record 762 home runs. James also sees Mike Mussina having a 47 percent shot at 300 wins. Of course that will fall to zero percent if he retires this week, as many expect he will.

• BP.com’s John Perrotto believes that “the focus on pitching, coupled with the recent acquisition of Nick Swisher from the White Sox, means that first baseman Mark Teixeira will most likely either return to the Angels or sign with the Red Sox, though the Nationals and Giants are both wild cards in that sweepstakes.”
• Also at BP.com, Joe Sheehan applauds the Swisher deal:

Now the Yankees have acquired Nick Swisher while giving up nothing that they’ll miss: Jeff Marquez, a 24-year-old finesse pitcher who has yet to succeed at Triple-A; Wilson Betemit, a longtime stathead favorite with a .260/.325/.437 career line and a 314/98 K/BB ratio; and Jhonny Nunez, a 22-year-old right-hander who could eventually end up as a high-leverage reliever. Then again, Nunez was traded for Alberto Gonzalez—no, the other one—about 15 minutes ago, which speaks against the idea that he’s about to go all Carlos Marmol on the world. The package, in toto, is nothing; you can make a case for each of the players individually, but you can’t make the three of them add up to a switch-hitter with plate discipline, power, and his peak in front of him.

Swisher may not be the perfect solution to the Yankees’ offensive woes, but he brings upside, a plate approach that they missed last year, and positional flexibility that leaves a range of off-season options open to them. His lost 2008 season—.219/.332/.410, a career-low .259 EqA—was largely the product of a down year on balls in play. He hit .249 on them, after marks of .301 in 2007 and .283 in 2006. There was a slight uptick in his strikeout rate, but nothing alarming. What’s missing from his season are 15 singles and 15 doubles, and there’s not much reason to believe those won’t come back in 2009. When they do, his contract, which pays him $21 million through 2011 with a $10 million option for ’12, is going to look like an absolute bargain.

(more…)