The Futility Infielder

Remaking the Yankees, Part I: Introduction and First Base

Smokescreens and noxious fumes continue to emanate from the Hot Stove, thanks to Bud Selig's contraction gambit. But the team least concerned with revenue problems (theirs or anybody else's) is itching to begin the rebuilding process, still smarting from a ninth-inning rebuke of their quest for four straight World Championships. The Yankees have been applying the full-court press to A's slugger Jason Giambi, with owner George Steinbrenner recently proclaiming Giambi "our kind of player," and manager-without-contract Joe Torre phoning in to reassure the big lug that he won't be simply a DH if he signs on the dotted line.

Giambi is clearly at the top of the Yanks' shopping list, but he's far from the only gifted player Yankee fans can expect from the Boss this holiday season. George Steinbrenner may be a lot of things, many of them unprintable even in a self-edited web site, but Scrooge he ain't. This year's team, as close as they came to winning a World Championship, was a rebuilding effort waiting to happen, with Tino Martinez, Paul O'Neill, Scott Brosius, and Chuck Knoblauch all in the final year of their contracts. Those four players, despite their accomplishments, their populatity, and their big-game experience, were drags on the Yankee offense last season. Now that they've scattered to the four winds (O'Neill retired immediately after the World Series, Brosius on Monday), the Yanks are left with holes to fill and money to spend.

Before anyone gets too uppity and starts complaining that buying expensive free-agents is what the Yanks always do, consider that the only REGULARS on the Yanks' string of four straight Series teams who signed as free agents were designated hitters Darryl Strawberry and Chili Davis. The pitching has had a sprinkling of free agents; Mike Mussina was last winter's big signing, El Duque signed after defecting from Cuba in 1998, David Wells signed back in 1997, as did Mike Stanton, and David Cone re-upped a couple of times after being traded from Toronto in 1995. But the nucleus of this championship run was either homegrown (Jorge Posada, Derek Jeter, Bernie Williams, Mariano Rivera, Andy Pettitte, Ramiro Mendoza, and to lesser degrees Alfonso Soriano and Shane Spencer) or acquired via trade (the departed foursome, plus David Justice, Roger Clemens, and Jeff Nelson, to name a few). Some of those trades were contract-motivated, but that's not the same thing as buying off the rack. Unlike the bygone Steinbrenner years, the Yanks have been very cautious with their cash of late.

Before we get to the Yankees' options with regards to new faces and big dollars, it's important to examine the team as it stood. The Yankees, despite their four consecutive trips to the World Series, have been in decline since their lofty 1998 season. Their offense has declined from being the best in the league to being slightly above average, their pitching has declined from being the best in the league to being merely among the best (life is tough being a Yanks fan, I know). If you chart it out, the trend is apparent. The Yanks went from outscoring their opponents by an average of 1.91 runs per game in '98 to doing so by 0.56 runs per game in 2001--and that represented an improvement over their 2000 performance (the columns below represent the Yanks' runs scored and runs allowed per game and league rank, followed by the league average, the differential, their actual number of wins, their Pythagorean projection, and their performance against that projection).

       RS (rank)   RA        LG     Dif    W    PyW   Dif

1998   5.96 (1)   4.05 (1)  5.00   1.91   114   108   +6

1999   5.56 (3)   4.51 (2)  5.18   1.05    98    96   +2

2000   5.41 (6)   5.06 (6)  5.30   0.35    87    85   +2

2001   4.99 (5)   4.43 (3)  4.86   0.56    95    89   +6

total  5.48       4.51      5.09   0.97

Despite the general decline, the Yanks have consistently outpaced their Pythagorean projection for wins. This uncommon trend is a testament to their ability to win close games and to general good luck, and it's the reason (along with the rings) the Knoblauchs and the Martinezes have been allowed to stick around. The figures for 2000 are blurred a bit by their season-ending 3-15 swoon, which saw them get outscored 148-59; take that away and the Yanks averaged 5.64 runs per game and allowed 4.62, for a differential of 1.02 runs per game--right in line with 1999.

The Yanks' offensive makeup this past season was a unique one. Traditionally, teams get most of their run production from the corner positions--first and third base, left and right field. The Yanks's run production (I'm using Baseball Prospectus's Equivalent Runs here) at those postions was below average on the whole; only Scott Brosius (6.5 runs) was above. Tino Martinez, for all of his homers and ribbies, was 3.9 below average, Paul O'Neill -2.4, Chuck Knoblauch -15.7, Shane Spencer -7.7, and David Justice -9.6. On the other end of the defensive spectrum, catcher Jorge Posada (26.5), shortstop Derek Jeter (41.6), and centerfielder Bernie Williams (41.4) were all well above average. Thanks to those three (not coincidentally homegrown and locked up--or soon to be, in Posada's case--with long-term contracts), the offense was still relatively solid. The only Yankee regular not accounted for on this laundry list, Alfonso Soriano, was 2.2 runs above average.

The offense that the Yanks are "losing" to free agency and retirement should not be too difficult to replace, and they have a plethora of options, most of which hinge on a certain aforementioned Bay Area slugger. So let's start with the first base situation.

Tino Martinez was a popular ballplayer during his time in New York, a favorite among fans who was faced with the unenviable task of replacing Don Mattingly and who capably did so for a time. Unfortunately, that time long since passed. Despite Tino's solid Triple Crown stats (.280, 34 HR, 113 RBI) this season, he was merely a middle-of-the-pack hitter among first basemen, thanks mostly to his .329 On Base Percentage. Where the elite slugging first basemen are disciplined hitters who know how to take a walk, Tino falls dreadfully short in this category.

Here he is, along with the other regular AL first basemen, using numbers from Baseball Prospectus's Equivalent Runs chart and some other relevant stats. BP ranks players according to runs above a replacement-level at their position (RARP), not a league-average one. I prefer the latter measure, because it penalizes mediocrity (below average production spread out over longer periods of playing time), and so I've reordered them based on the Runs Above Position (RAP) column. Outs, OBP and SLG you are familiar with. SL*OB, Slugging Percentage times On Base Percentage, is a better measure of productivity than OPS (SLG + OBP), and approximates the number of runs produced per at bat. I've written about it before.

          EqR   RAP   Outs   OBP   SLG  SL*OB

Giambi   160.4  82.7   342  .477  .660  .315

Thome    130.1  45.1   374  .416  .624  .260 

Delgado  123.9  29.8   414  .408  .540  .220

Palmeiro 124.0  24.6   437  .381  .563  .214

Olerud   115.4  24.5   400  .401  .472  .189

Sweeney  104.2  15.1   392  .374  .542  .203

Segui     57.9  11.3   205  .406  .473  .192

Conine    91.5  10.5   369  .386  .443  .171

Clark     76.5   6.9   306  .374  .481  .180

Daubach   70.7   2.9   300  .350  .509  .178

Mientkw   89.8   2.7   383  .387  .464  .180

Konerko   97.5   2.5   418  .349  .507  .177

Martinez  92.9  -3.9   426  .329  .501  .165

Cox       45.5 -12.4   256  .323  .427  .138

Spiezio   61.9 -12.9   335  .326  .438  .143

Martinez ranks 12th among the 14 regulars in RAP and SL*OB, roughly half as productive per at bat as Giambi, and a significant step below the rest of the league's good-hitting first basemen. Yes, Tino did have a strong second half of last season (a .190 SL*OB after the All-Star break, compared to .146 before), had numerous clutch hits, and played his usual excellent defense. But given his age, his cost, and the general decline in his play over the past four years, it simply makes no sense for the Yankees to hang onto him. Giambi, on the other hand, was hands-down, the best hitter in the league, leading in Equivalent Runs, OPS, and RARP (of better use than RAP when comparing across positions, say to Alex Rodriguez).

There is no doubt that Giambi would provide an immediate boost to the Yankee offense. But a long-term contract, on the level being discussed by G and the Yanks (six to eight years at $16-$17 million per year) makes me nervous. Giambi is a hulking player, not particularly mobile, and closer to the David Wells School of Fitness than he is to being a lean, mean hitting machine. It's been pointed out that players with his body type don't necessarily age well--look at beefy guys like Mo Vaughan and Frank Thomas, both of whom should be on the above list. They're roughly three years older than G, and have been battling injury and general decine since they were Giambi's age--averaging only 102 games a year in the three years since passing 30. To be truthful, they're both considerably bigger men--while G is listed as 200 lbs on Baseball-Reference.com, Vaughn weighs in at 230 (yeah, riiiight, is that without the piano?) and Thomas at a whopping but significantly better-chiselled 257. Still, it's not difficult to forsee Giambi struggling with injuries (he's proven vulnerable in the hamstrings and back) and dropping to a merely solid level of production in the near future. [A late note: ESPN.com lists Giambi at 235 now, whihc brings him into the heavyweight division. Vaughn and Thomas have been upgraded to zepplin-weights at 275 pounds. Somebody, please tell me that Cecil Fielder has NOT returned to Japan to take up sumo-wrestling.]

There's another monkey-wrench in the works. The Yanks have a highly-touted prospect, Nick Johnson, who they feel is ready to play regularly. Johnson, who just turned 23, is a 6'3", 224 lb lefty first baseman. At AA Norwich in 1999, he hit.345 with 14 HR and a .525 OBP--tops in the minors. After missing the entire 2000 season due to a mysterious wrist injury, Johnson hit only .256 at AAA Columbus in 2001. But he posted a .407 OBP and a .467 slugging percentage, with 18 HR in 359 ABs. He walks a ton (211 times over his last two seasons at all levels), strikes out a lot, and has a penchant for getting hit by pitches--14 this season. In a late-season cup of coffee with the big club, he hit .194/.308/.313, with 2 HR in 67 ABs. Clearly he has potential, though whether his power will develop is open to some debate. I see him as more of a Mark Grace/Sean Casey/John Olerud type--good average, good OBP, below-average power--than a true slugger. He's been tagged as Tino's heir-apparent for quite some time, and if the Yankees are committing to playing Giambi regularly at first base, they will be hindering the development of their top prospect. On the other hand, Johnson is now their most marketable commodity, who could be packaged with a pitching prospect or two to net a legitimate corner-outfield producer.

So is signing Giambi a good move? I'd be much more comfortable with a shorter deal at a higher annual salary than what's being discussed. I don't like the idea of a 35 year old league-average first-baseman making $17 million while battling injuries. But the Yankee brass seems less concerned, and if/when they sign Giambi, the rest of their offseason plans, including perhaps moving Johnson, will come into focus.

I'll have more on the Yanks' options at other positions in the coming days.