Wednesday, July 16, 2008

Analyze This: Yankees At The Break

How are we doing? What are our chances? Who do we need to trade for? Who's having a good year/bad year? How's Girardi as manager? WHat say you?

NOTE: THIS IS MICHAEL'S POST, NOT PETE'S.

6 comments:

priv8pete said...

We still seem to be in the thick of things -- thanks more to a weak AL east than the Yankees themselves. With our pitching in surprisingly good form (we probably lost about six games in the last two weeks our pitchers deserved to win), we can look forward to maybe at least one of our starters (Wang, Hughes, Kennedy) coming back and doing well. I assume we'll stumble into the post-season but certainly don't have the feeling we'll get to the World Series or even dserve to do so. And Jeter had one of his weakest first halves in a long time -- which means I can look forward to him over-producing in the second half.

priv8pete said...

Okay, first off, log me out!

Second, it sounds like Hughes will not make it back to the majors this year to save him from becoming a free agent a year earlier.

And lastly, just because Jeter has underperformed until now does not mean that he will overperform the rest of the way. He is statistically likely to perform at his career average the rest of the way and end up with a sub-par year by his standards. For him to overperform equal to his first-half underperformance is just as likely a scenario as Jeter continuing to underperform the rest of the year. And due to his age, I would say that isn't even true since at this point in his career he would be more inclined to underperform relative to his career averages than match them.

Michael in New York said...

They're going to keep a potentially crucial arm away from the home stretch because of contract years? can't imagine they'd be that short-sighted. Where did you read that about Hughes?

As for Jeter, obviously I'm HOPING he'll over-perform in the second half. And really, he's basically on target to have the typical numbers in fielding and batting that he always has. I know we're six games into the second half, but for ease of comparison, let's just double the numbers he has now. More to come.

Michael in New York said...

Jeter stats:

Runs 52/doubled is 104, certainly lower than usual

Hits 110/200 -- right on target for another 200+ season

Doubles 18/36 -- right on target, compared to th3 20s and 30s he always hits in doubles

Triples 3/6 -- on pace to hit the most triples since he hit 9 in 1999

Home Runs 5/10 -- well below his typically modest totals -- but the last five years he hit 12, 14, 19, 23, 10. I can easily see him getting a little hot and getting 12-14.

RBI 42/84 -- just fine for a #2 batter, if a tad low. The last five years he had 73, 97, 70, 78, 52

Strikeouts and walks are both lower. Stolen bases way lower.

His errors -- 8/16 -- last five years he's had 18, 15, 15, 13, 14

In short, his numbers are fine and won't be anywhere near the injury-plagued lows of 2003. They'll fit in right nicely with his career trends.

joe said...

Not looking to argue about Jeter's stats because (1) its meaningless, (2) he transcends them, if that's even possible, and (3) I'm biased into HOPING he picks it up...but just wanted to point out that doubling his first half numbers doesn't really work considering the Yanks have played 95 games, which leaves just 67 remaining.

Michael in New York said...

Erp. I didn't realize Jeter had missed 7 games. You're right, so trim a bit off everything. Not a good year, but just lower than usual, not the flop of 2003.