Daily Archives: February 23, 2009

With the Grapefruit League schedule kicking off on Wednesday, I wanted to take these last two day of inaction to take a look at the key position battles being waged in Yankee camp. I’ll start today with the most significant: the center-field battle between Melky Cabrera and Brett Gardner.

First the tale of the tape:

Cabrera is theoretically the incumbent, but Gardner started in center in 12 of the Yankees’ last 15 games of 2008 after Cabrera effectively lost the center field job in early August. Cabrera made just five starts in center after August 3 and was even demoted to Triple-A for three weeks and recalled only after rosters expanded in September. In that sense, Gardner is the incumbent, but really, despite the large discrepancy in their major league service time, neither player entered camp with the upper hand in this battle.

This battle is topsy-turvy in other ways. For example, the less experienced Gardner is the win-now player given his minor league promise of solid on-base numbers (.389 mL career OBP), excellent defense, and spectacular speed on the bases (153 minor league stolen bases at an 83% success rate, 13 for 14 on the bases in the majors). Meanwhile, the appeal of Cabrera, the experienced major leaguer, is his potential. Cabrera has shown flashes of power at the plate, particularly early last season when he slugged .505 with six homers through May 4. Cabrera is unlikely to ever develop into a serious home-run threat, but Gardner is a pure slap hitter, with just nine career home runs as a pro and an isolated slugging in the minors of just .094. Gardner seems unlikely to ever hit for much power, but there remains some hope that Cabrera, who is a year younger, may yet blossom into a complete hitter.

The problem is that Cabrera’s performance on the field has been heading in the opposite direction. Cabrera hit .280/.360/.391 as a rookie left fielder in 2006, displaying solid plate discipline for a 21-year-old as well as some doubles power (26 in 524 PA) and falling just short of a league-average performance overall. In 2007, however, his plate discipline melted away without a corresponding increase in power (.273/.327/.391), and last year, after that hot start, he simply stopped hitting, batting .235/.280/.286 from May 5 through the end of the season, a line worse than Gardner’s seemingly pathetic rookie showing.

Given that Gardner was just breaking into the majors last year, been reliably productive in the minors, and seemed to heat up at the end of last season, hitting .294/.333/.412 in 73 PA his second of two major league stints, there’s every reason to believe that Gardner will significantly improve on his overall major league line if given the chance this season, but given Cabrera’s steady regression, there are far fewer reasons to continue to believe in Melky. It’s not as though Melky does anything else better than Gardner. Melky can steal bases, but he might steal 15, while Gardner could easily steal more than 50 and lead the league if he starts every day, and he’ll do it at a higher success rate than Cabrera’s. Melky has shown flashes of brilliance in the field, but Gardner, thanks in part to his superior speed, is going to turn more balls into outs in center, just as he’s likely to make fewer outs at the plate.

According to Dave Pinto’s Probabilistic Model of Range, Melky was the best defensive left fielder in baseball in 2006 but has displayed merely average range in center over the last two years. Gardner did not play enough to register on Pinto’s major league-only system, but per Ultimate Zone Rating, Gardner’s defense in center was worth  9.1 runs to Melky’s pedestrian 0.6 last year, a remarkable stat given that Gardner played just 160 2/3 innings in center for the Yankees, while Melky played 973 2/3. Of course, the small sample warnings about Gardner’s major league statistics are particularly acute when it comes to fielding, both because he spent a significant chunk of his first major league stint in left, and because fielding stats are so suspect to start with. It would be cherry-picking to write off Gardner’s poor performance at the plate in the majors as a small sample while emphasizing his absurd advantage over Cabrera in UZR. That said, what I saw watching the games supported the statistics’ assertion that Gardner has the superior range in center. Cabrera still has the better arm, but not by as much as one might think;  Gardner recorded four assists in his 22 major league games in center, showing a strong and accurate throwing arm that opposing runners would be ill-advised to test.

So Melky’s case comes down to power and potential, and it seems unlikely that he has shown enough of either to outweigh Gardner’s advantages on the bases, in the field, and in getting on-base. Melky’s 2008 season cracked the lenses of the rose-colored glasses that looked at his first two seasons and saw shades of fellow switch-hitting center fielder Bernie Williams’ early-career struggles. Bernie didn’t really start to come on until his age-25 season, which would give Cabrera another year, but it’s hard now look at the stocky, stumbling Cabrera and see any resemblance to the fawn-like awkwardness of the blossoming Bernie.

Hitting coach Kevin Long seems to believe that he can get Gardner to hit with doubles power by increasing the involvement of Gardner’s lower body in his swing. If Gardner shows any signs of proving Long right this spring, the job should be his. The catch is that, due to Cabrera’s pennant-race demotion last year, Melky is now out of options, meaning the Yankees would have to either keep him on the 25-man roster as a fifth outfielder (a platoon with Gardner wouldn’t work–Melky hit just .213/.279/.299 against lefties last year and has hit just .251/.319/.329 against southpaws in his major league career, while Gardner actually had a reverse split in Triple-A last year), or expose him to waivers in an attempt to outright him to Scranton. The latter would almost surely result in Cabrera being claimed by another team. The Yankees avoided arbitration by signing Cabrera to a $1.4 million contract last month, which would seem to strongly indicate that the Yankees have no intention of divesting themselves of Cabrera, but as a fifth-outfielder, Cabrera would be  a drain on the roster and would stand little chance of restarting his development. Then again, perhaps that $1.4 million price tag is just enough to prevent the sort of team that might make a claim on Cabrera from doing so. If Cabrera can’t win the center field job in camp, that may be a chance the Yankees have to take, particularly with Austin Jackson headed for Triple-A already having already unseated Cabrera as the team’s Center Fielder of the Future.

Let’s get right to it …

• PeteAbe has a longer-length column on Joe Girardi “more personal approach” this season:

Girardi approached the Yankees last season like one of the industrial engineering assignments he undertook as a student at Northwestern. If he applied enough of his own hard work and logic to whatever issue came up, he would find the solution. But those pesky variables, other people, kept getting in the way. …

Eight days into his second spring training with the Yankees is not enough time to determine whether Girardi truly has changed the methods that led to the reconfiguration of his coaching staff, tension in the clubhouse, and a fractured relationship with the reporters who cover the team. But his reaction to the Rodriguez scandal reveals a man willing to change.

Relentlessly positive a year ago, Girardi has been measured in his support of Rodriguez – a position that reflects the mood of the team – while at the same time using the situation as a way to better connect to his players. The bridges that he vowed to build last fall are falling into place, plank by plank.

• Steve Serby has a fluffy but fun Q&A with CC Sabathia, including this instant classic exchange:

Q: Why do you wear your hat cocked?

A: It feels straight to me when I have it on.

• John Harper details the financial risks Andy Pettitte took in the off-season:

When all the haggling was finally done this winter, Andy Pettitte turned down $10 million and wound up signing for $5.5 million with incentives, which is the kind of deal you think would get an agent fired in most cases.

Pettitte says no, he has no problem with Randy Hendricks and no problem with his deal. He was determined to get the $12 million he thought he was worth, and in the end maybe he paid a price for playing his hand too boldly, but he insists it was worth it for the chance to prove the ugly finish to last season doesn’t mean he’s one step from being washed up.

“Hey, around July last year I thought I was going to win 20 games,” Pettitte was saying Saturday. “I felt that good. So don’t tell me that based on my last 11 or 12 starts I’m done. I had a shoulder problem.”

As it turns out, he’s essentially betting $4.5 million that he can stay healthy and reach the incentives that could get him to $12 million, and for a 36-year-old pitcher with a history of elbow injuries to go with last year’s shoulder problem, that’s a risky bet.

• Wallace Matthews profiles the always energetic Nick Swisher:

Wedged in among the dramatics of A-Rod, the stoic professionalism of Jeter and the quiet dignity of Mariano Rivera, Swisher sticks out like a lunatic in a library.

“Swish is very energetic, I’ll tell you that,” said a bemused Posada, who sits four lockers away, still close enough to feel the bass vibrations in his sternum. “He looks like he’s really enjoying being here.”

Think Jack Black with a first baseman’s mitt or Ozzy Osbourne with the ability to draw a walk, and you’ve got Swisher pegged.

And his high-energy pre-workout routine – a little air guitar, a little wrestling with the kids running around the clubhouse, some mosh pit writhing – was just a warm-up for his post-workout session. That’s when he spent an hour in the batting cage with hitting coach Kevin Long, honing his swing from both sides of the plate while shouting “Nobody else is working like this!” between hacks.

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