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Brandon Drury and Bad Timing

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(Presswire)

Imagine starting a new job, one you weren’t necessarily expecting. Then imagine having to miss an indefinite amount of time just a week or so later, because a medical condition of yours flared up. It’d probably be hard to be anything but disappointed in that, even if there’s no fault on your end. I’d guess that’s what Brandon Drury felt after having to hit the DL with migraines just eight games into his Yankee career. Now, as he returns, his role might be a little more in flux than it originally was.

When he was acquired, it became clear that Drury was the team’s starting third baseman going forward. Indeed he was until he got hurt and replaced by Miguel Andujar. Now, the latter is absolutely raking and replacing him would be foolish at best and malpractice at worse. And now with Gleyber Torres in the fold at second base, that route is seemingly closed for Drury as well. Drury’s timing couldn’t have been worse when getting hurt, but somehow is just as bad as he’s coming back.

In missing the beginning portion of the year, it was easy for the lineup to get used to not having him around. After putting up 11 on the Angels last night, the Yankees are in the middle of an offensive tear. Sure, that could change by the time Drury gets back, but just about everyone–save for Neil Walker–has earned his spot in the lineup. Right now, there isn’t a way to get Drury back into the starting lineup, unless someone gets hurt. The caveat, of course, is that these things do work themselves out; for proof of that, look no further than the Yankees’ outfield depth that dried up in about five minutes. Outfield, however, may be Drury’s best shot at playing time.

Given Andujar and Torres at third and second and Tyler Austin (and eventually Greg Bird) at first (where Drury has played only one game, by the way), going out may be the only way for him to get in the lineup. Using him as an outfield platoon bat against left handed pitching–playing when Brett Gardner sits–will put him into the lineup with some form of regularity and let the Yankees DH Giancarlo Stanton instead of playing him in left or give Aaron Judge a DH day while Stanton plays right. Even this comes with a concern, though, as Drury hasn’t played outfield since 2016 and, per DRS (-8 as an OF per 1,200 innings), isn’t particularly good out there.

The only remaining road is for Drury to just join Walker, Ronald Torreyes, and Austin Romine on the bench. This would give the Yankees a four man bench and add an element of power to it. Even if he’s not great in the outfield, he offers that versatility more than the others do. And, eventually, Andujar and Torres will need a day or two off and Drury can step in and be just fine.

This isn’t what we expected when Drury was acquired and I’m sure it wasn’t what the Yankees expected either. But for Drury, timing just wasn’t on his side this April. Hopefully he can ride one of these avenues to find success in 2018.

Middle Infield Musings

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(Presswire)

Happy Sunday, RAB readers. A few middle infield thoughts–past, present, and future–for your reading pleasure.

What Comes Up

It’s time. The Yankees will reportedly call up Gleyber Torres for today’s game, starting his Major League hopefully ending his Minor League one. I know I can’t speak for all of you, but I haven’t been this excited for a call up since Jesus Montero’s back in 2011.  When Aaron Judge and Gary Sanchez got called up, I was excited, no doubt, but they were called up at more ‘conventional’ times, given the calendar and the Yankees’ place in the standings. And like Montero, Torres is a top-10, top-5 prospect in all of baseball. No matter the circumstances, seeing that caliber or prospect come up is exciting. Torres is incredibly talented and has lit things up at AAA this year, despite coming off of an injury. Is it likely that he starts off his time Sanchez style? Probably not. But all he has to do, hype aside, is be better than the guy he’s replacing in the person of…

What Goes Down

…Tyler Wade. Presumably, Wade will be demoted today to get regular playing time in Scranton. The other day–while lamenting that Torres was not yet called up–I did some digging into Wade’s gamelogs and found that he hasn’t been on base since April 5 against the Orioles. That is a really long time! Before the Neil Walker signing, I think most of us wanted Wade to be the everyday second baseman and while that worked itself out, his performance hasn’t. Aside from the regular playing time, hopefully the trip back down will give Wade some confidence for him to build on. Given his low hard contact rate and low line drive rate so far–17.9% and 13.6% respectively, with a groundball rate over 60%–Wade will need to work on squaring up the ball and hitting it with authority. It’s doubtful we’ve seen the last of Tyler Wade in the majors this year.

The Form of Shortstop Present

Let’s hear it for Didi Gregorius, huh? This isn’t exactly a rare sentiment now, but how awesome is this guy? He came to the Yankees fairly raw and unpolished, and now he’s essentially the embodiment of what’s great about baseball. Didi’s turned hard work into results and is on top of the world right now. Is it going to continue this good? Probably not, but he’s still likely to improve off of last year, which was an improvement from the year before, which was…And this is all without mentioning his personality. It’s hard to think of Didi and picturing him doing anything but smiling. Given Didi’s attitude, he’s a dude who should be front and center of as much player-centric marketing as possible.

The Ghost of Shortstop Past

Let me preface this with a statement that has become, in my corner of Yankee Twitter, at least, a bit of a Hot Take: Derek Jeter was a great player and the Yankees were lucky to have had him for 20 years. Considering his position, he was a near-elite hitter with elite longevity and consistency. His tenure in New York was nothing but successful for many reasons. His tenure in Miami is going, well, not great (,Bob). The latest example of that is an interview with Bryant Gumbel in which Jeter seems to get pretty defensive about his handling of the Marlins’ situation, as well as dancing around the idea of taking, rebuilding, etc. I’ll almost grant Jeter a pass for how cringy this exchange with Gumbel was. It says much more about how he was treated by the New York media than it does about Jeter himself. They–who always pride themselves on being tough on players for….its own sake, apparently–let Jeter get away with non-answers and relative evasions for 20 years, so he got used to non-answers and relative evasions. He hasn’t yet adjusted to a press that will give him pushback. Maybe he gets better at it, maybe he doesn’t. Regardless, this is a bad look for Jeter, as has been the case for much of his tenure as the public face of the organization’s new ownership group. At best, he’s been a deer in headlights. At worst, he’s been Phil Jackson Lite, only he hasn’t had time to ruin things beyond repair yet.

Walker ‘Grounded’ to Start 2018

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Walker. (Presswire)

A little over a month ago, the Yankees scooped up the somehow-still-a-free-agent-infielder Neil Walker. Taking advantage of the galactically warped free-agent market, he cost just $4 million, a steal in any year for almost any player, let alone one who could offer the team the flexibility to play both infield corners on top of his natural position of second base. Unfortunately, that flexibility was necessarily tested when Greg Bird went down with an injury, forcing Walker to first. Since then, Walker has flown under the radar. With the high-profile struggles of both Gary Sanchez and Giancarlo Stanton in the lineup, it’s easy to miss that Walker enters Sunday hitting just .188/.264/.208 with a .215 wOBA and 30 wRC+.

Let’s give Walker credit for two things before we examine what’s gone wrong. He’s walking at a rate above his career average, 9.4% this year to 8.7% overall. He’s also striking out less at 13.2%, compared to 17.4% for his career. Were it to continue all year, it’d be his lowest K% in a season by over two percentage points. Does that combination make up for the fact that his SLG is lower than his OBP? Well, no, but silver linings and all that. Another silver lining? Walker has, per FanGraphs, a career high hard contact rate at 39%. Of course, there are caveats–I wouldn’t be writing this if there weren’t.

The first caveat is that this career high in hard contact also comes with a career high in soft contact, 29.3%. His previous high there was 19.3 in 2011 and his career rate is 15.5. The other caveat is in the end result of that hard contact. For his career, Walker has had a solid line drive rate at 22% even. This has been coupled with a groundball rate of 39.6%. This year, those things are completely out of whack. Walker’s line drive rate so far has been a dismal 9.8% and his groundball rate has been 51.2%, meaning all that hard contact is essentially ending in a bunch of worm-burners.

Those numbers–pretty much all of the 2018 ones–are so extreme that they’re bound to progress to the middle at some point. What’s the solution, though, to getting his production back up where it belongs? Perhaps some mechanical tweet to get more air under the ball is in order, but I’m no hitting coach, so I’ll leave that to Marcus Thames.

Walker is definitely not this bad of a hitter and will no doubt give back to the Yankees. Fortunately, the Yankees will not be relying on Walker to provide a ton of offense. Even as a starter, he’s in a support role near the bottom of the lineup and his ability to play all over the infield gives him value beyond his time at the plate. And, given his contract status, there’s almost nothing Walker could (or couldn’t?) do from here on out to make his signing not worth it.

Sanchez’s Slow Start

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Gary. (Presswire)

Sure things are never less sure than they are in baseball. Coming into 2018, the Yankees’ offense and bullpen were supposed to carry them and the rotation was supposed to be, at the least, a question mark. Thus far, the bullpen has had some high-profile hiccups and the rotation has been damn good. The offense–while mostly fine–hasn’t quite broken out the way we expected. Part of the reason for that is Gary Sanchez’s slow start at the plate.

Sanchez will start today with a line of .063/.091/.188. His wOBA is .124, good for a comically low wRC+ of -34. With all the “it’s super early” caveats applying, that is one ugly line. If we’re looking for a silver lining, both of his two hits are for extra bases–one homer and one double. A quick glance at things hints that two things may be at play here: discipline and contact–or a lack of both.

Here’s a thing I didn’t realize until I started looking at Sanchez’s numbers while writing this: he hasn’t walked this year. Not so fun fact! He wasn’t exactly Barry Bonds last year, drawing 40 walks, but his 7.6% BB rate was at least within shouting distance of the league average 8.5%. The only reason his OBP is higher than his BA is because he was hit by one pitch and he hasn’t hit a sac fly yet. What’s behind this? Our first thought might be that he’s swinging at too many pitches out of the zone, but that’s not necessarily the case. His O-Swing% is 37.2, up just under a percentage point from last year. That’s not a huge gap. Additionally, his Z-Swing% has stayed steady at 63.2, identical to last year’s. This needs another caveat since it’s early, but his strikeout rate is down, too, to 15.2%, which is good! But, with two strikes, Gary is doing chasing on pitches that are definitely hard to hit, doing himself no favors. The biggest issue from this area, though, is that he’s making contact on too many bad pitches.

While he’s not necessarily swinging at an inordinate amount of pitches out of the zone, he’s making way too much contact on those pitches: 78.6%, up from 60.9% in 2017. Where does that show up? In his general contact profile. Look at that IFFB%: 28.6%! That certainly matches the eye test, which tells me he’s hit a few too many pop ups this year. Grounders are slightly up, as are fly balls, but line drives are way down. He’s too good a hitter for his LD% to stay at 3.7 (!) all year or even much longer, but it helps explain things. Overall, his soft contact percentage is up too high, his hard contact percentage is down too low, so he’s not hitting the ball with any authority.

This isn’t going to last because it just isn’t. Some of the numbers are just sample size noise and Sanchez is too good of a hitter. But it’s still a part of why the Yankees’ offense hasn’t seemed to get rolling like it should. With Greg Bird and Aaron Hicks out, this has definitely looked more pronounced, and may continue to with Brandon Drury hitting the DL. Hopefully Sanchez can begin to break out of it to help mitigate those absences.

Severino, Tanaka Slide to Success Against Jays

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(Getty)

2018’s opening series against the Blue Jays has been nothing short of eventful. Giancarlo Stanton belted two homers in his Yankee debut. Aaron Hicks sustained an injury and was put on the DL. Two games later, his replacement–Billy McKinney–is heading there, too. Aaron Judge played center field. Adam Warren got hit with a comebacker. Dellin Betances had a hiccupy game. Potentially lost in all of that are the performances of two of the three Yankee starters in the series thus far, Luis Severino and Masahiro Tanaka.

Combined, the two allowed just one run in 11.2 innings on just four hits, three walks (all from Severino), while collecting 15 strikeouts. Both pitchers looked dominant for the majority of their starts and Tanaka ended his outing after retiring 13 straight batters. We could probably quibble with the relatively quick hooks Aaron Boone had with them, but this early in the year, I’m okay with it. Aside from results, Sevy and Masa had something else in common: how they attacked a mostly right-handed Blue Jay lineup.

In 2017, Luis Severino became a true three-pitch pitcher as he mixed in his changeup with more frequency and had great success with it. Throughout his career, Masahiro Tanaka has used multiple pitches as out pitches, but has generally leaned on his splitter. Both a changeup and a splitter, though, are not necessarily as effective against same-handed batters, so both pitchers relied on something more traditional in a R/R matchup: the slider.

Between the two of them, Severino (34) and Tanaka (31), threw 65 sliders to the Jays’ righties. Those sliders induced 37 swings from the hitters, who whiffed 16 times out of the 37. Only three of the sliders to righties were put into play–all from Tanaka–and none of them led to a hit.

Severino did a great job locating his slider down and away to righties, as well as down and in. Tanaka did as well, though he focused mainly on the ‘low and away’ part of the equation. If there were a textbook about pitching, these two performances would be in the ‘how to use sliders against righties’ chapter. Both executed nearly flawlessly against same-handed batters and the results show it.

Going forward, I’d expect both pitchers to use this strategy over and over again when they face heavily right handed lineups like Toronto’s. They’ll need to be wary, though, of still keeping their other out pitches sharp for when they face lefty-heavy or more balanced lineups. Given the talent level of these two, that shouldn’t be much of a problem.

Weighing First Base Options

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Austin. (Presswire)

The end of the week was not a kind one from the Baseball Gods. The Dodgers’ Justin Turner has a broken wrist. Madison Bumgarner of the Giants was hit with a comebacker and has a broken left hand. Chris Sale got a similar scare on his leg, but is no worse for wear. Most importantly, though, from our pinstriped perspective, is that Greg Bird has right foot inflammation and will see a specialist on Monday. Insert upside down smiling emoji here. Hopefully the visit on Monday is just routine and Bird is cleared to begin the season with his teammates on Thursday. If not, let’s consider the options.

Assuming Bird hits the DL, the Yankees will go with a one-for-one roster spot swap. To the DL would go Bird and up to the big club would come Tyler Austin or Billy McKinney. Neil Walker, a switch hitter with way more Major League experience than any other potential player, would also likely be called upon to play first.

The most likely scenario I see is a first base platoon of Walker and Austin, with Walker playing there against right handed pitchers, allowing Tyler Wade to fill in at second. This helps keep the Yankees on the right side of the platoon matchup and maintains good defense at second with Wade. Should they roll with McKinney, who had a powerful spring training, he would play first against righties (lefty hitter) with Walker there against lefties and Ronald Torreyes at second.

The drop off from a Bird + Walker lineup to anything else is pretty big, regardless of the details of who’s playing where and when, but of those two options, I prefer the Walker/Austin pair, even if I like McKinney more than I like Austin at this point. The  potential difference between those two is smaller than the potential difference between Wade and Torreyes.

The timing of this is bad–when isn’t an injury poorly timed?–but the Yankees are well positioned to absorb this blow. Bird’s power and patience will be missed, but the Yankees also have plenty of that spread throughout the lineup. With any luck, this will all be academic and the results of Bird’s consultation will bear good news. If this does go south, it’ll be another letdown for Bird and for us. He’s never been a disappointment when healthy, but these injuries are beyond that.

Yankee Prop Bets

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(Presswire)

We’re almost there. Opening Day is close enough that we can almost taste it. We’d probably be able to do so much better if not for the ever-more-stale aftertaste of Spring Training lingering on our tongues. Almost every story that could be written or thought of has been written or thought of and I’m sure I speak for everyone when I say “Just start the damn season already, please!” In that anticipatory spirit, let’s try something a little fun to keep us on edge as we wait for Opening Day: prop bets.

Over/Under

If you don’t know how this works, I’m going to put out a number for a player or players and you have to predict whether the total will be over or under that total. Let’s start with the obvious:

Over/Under 120.5 home runs for Giancarlo Stanton, Aaron Judge, and Gary Sanchez. This one, for however fun it is to dream on, is a bit tough. It essentially breaks down to 50, 40, 30 for each player. For those home run totals, things have to go very right in terms of performance and health. But, given how each guy produced last year, it’s a very doable number. My heart says over; my head says just under–but still a lot of dingers!

Over/Under: 875.5 innings from the Yankees Opening Day rotation (Luis Severino; Masahiro Tanaka; Sonny Gray; CC Sabathia; Jordan Montgomery). This is another reasonable target, with a slightly decreasing innings total from player to player, based loosely on ZiPS projections. However, I’m going to go under here as such a total would require extreme health for all these guys. All of them will carry some sort of injury risk going in and that’ll keep them from this innings total. Obvious statement is obvious, but if they do meet or exceed this number, there’ll be little stopping the Yankees.

First in Line

Let’s (theoretically) bet on which player will be called up to the Majors first. If you told me earlier that Jacoby Ellsbury would be banged up this close to the start of the season, I’d’ve wagered on Clint Frazier for sure. However, given that he, too, is injured, I don’t think we’ll see him anytime soon in the Bronx, sadly. Clint, on the off chance you’re reading this, we’re all pulling for you to get better.

Knowing the Yankees, we’ll see the Scranton Shuttle started up rather quickly, so the smart money is on a pitcher. But, if the team opts to go north with just a three man bench, there will be plenty of pitchers available in the bullpen, partially negating the necessity for call ups and send downs.

I’m going to go out on a limb here, though, and say that the first call up is going to be none other than Kyle Higashioka. Call it random chance–it will be–but maybe Austin Romine gets dinged by a foul ball and needs to take some time off. Come on up, Higgy; hope it goes better for you than last time did.

The regular season is around the corner. It’s funny how time works when we’re waiting for baseball, isn’t it? This little stretch of time takes so long, but soon, it’ll be June and we’ll ask ourselves about where March, April, and May went. Soon, we won’t need to pass the time with frivolities like this. Until then, though, let’s keep speculating and dreaming about this team. It’s going to be a lot of fun.