Photo by Stephanie Quartaro
The Yankees need a slugger in the three-hole. I am a Mark Teixeira fan, and want nothing more than for him to find his stroke. But, until someone invents a GPS to track down such a thing, or hitting coach Kevin Long and Tex combine to find a solution, it's increasingly harder to watch what is happening with The Bronx Bombers’ third-place hitter.
I'm fully aware stats can be spun any way you like to make them work in support of an argument you are trying to make. Extreme example--if NY wanted to put their top two batting average guys in the lineup, strictly based on stats, they'd have pitcher CC Sabathia, who is hitting .500, and minor league/temp fill-in Greg Golson at .400. Of course, that's ridiculous. So, please hang with me.
Shouldn't sluggers have a decent slugging percentage? Slugging percentage is a simple, yet meaningful stat, which takes the total numbers of bases and divides it by the number of official at-bats—in other words, how productive a hitter is per plate appearance. As you might expect, Robinson Cano, who is 4th in the AL in slugging percentage, is leading the Yankees with a lofty .611 mark. Citing stats for just the regular players, all of whom have 100+ at-bats, the following in order are: Jorge Posada (.542), Nick Swisher (.532), Alex Rodriguez (.491), Derek Jeter (.433), Brett Gardner (.421) and Curtis Granderson is at .420 before we finally get to Tex.
In putting a yellow highlighter through his .363 slugging percentage, Tex is just .013 ahead of Francisco Cervelli's .350....and Cervi has a bagel in the HR column! How's that for a slugger? You know what I am getting at. In all fairness, despite the extremely low batting average (.212), Tex has still managed to drive in 34 runs, which tie him with Yankee lead-off hitter, Derek Jeter. Feel free to interpret that as you like...your lead-off man and #3 hitter with the same amount of RBI.
In the super long marathon of a baseball season there are still 95 games to go. But for those residents of Pinstripe Land, the sooner the three-hole hitter gets those slugging and batting average numbers up, the better they’ll sleep at night.
Posts
Moving Tex out of the number three slot to maybe the six spot might bruise his ego a bit, but it may also allow him to relax and get his stroke back. Cano should be three and Posada five. Posada has been a very productive hitter despite fewer at bats both last year and this year. This "slow start" of Texiera's is getting old and I'm sure Girardi is contemplating some kind of lineup change.
ReplyDelete