Seven years ago, the Yankees made a thoroughly regrettable trade, dealing Marcus Thames to the Texas Rangers for Ruben Sierra. Now they’ve brought him back on a Minor-League deal.
It wasn’t at all surprising that Thames was dealt. Though he made a very memorable Major League debut, hitting a two-run homer off of Randy Johnson in his very first at-bat, there was little reason for the organization to have faith in him. He was a 30th-round pick (1996), which means he was just a name picked late in the draft, projected to be no more than organizational filler. After a terrific pro debut (.341/.389/.564 in 61 games in Rookie Ball and Low-A), he subsided to a level of production that just wasn’t going to cut it for a corner outfielder. He hit .284/.328/.409 in 1998, .237/.326/.404 in 1999, .241/.313/.407 in 1999.
His big breakthrough came in 2002 when he was repeating Double-A. Thames muscled up and hit .321/.410/.598 with 43 doubles and 31 home runs in 520 at-bats. He was 24, old for the level, and players who take a second swipe at Double-A often have a big year the second time around without it changing their prospects at all. This seemed to be the case with Thames, for he collapsed completely when he went up to Triple-A in 2002, hitting only .207/.297/.378. Nonetheless, he was called up when Juan Rivera had an unfortunate encounter with a groundskeeper’s cart. He stuck around for about a week. Thames failed to make the Yankees out of spring training in 2003. He was hitting .278/.332/.407 with just two home runs in 194 at-bats when the Yankees dealt him away.
Thames did little to impress the Rangers and became a Minor-League free agent at the end of 2003 and signed with the Tigers, where he’s been ever since. It took awhile for his one skill to be recognized and for him to establish himself: he doesn’t play defense, he doesn’t run, he doesn’t hit for average, he doesn’t walk. He just hits home runs. He’s a career .234/.291/.474 hitter against regularpaws with a home run every 15.2 at-bats, .256/.329/.516 with a homer every 15.5 at-bats against portsiders.
The Yankees would seem, then to have picked up a perfect platoon partner for Brett Gardner. There is, however, a catch. The 33-year-old completely forgot how to hit in the second half last season, batting just .233/.316/.368 after the break and failing to hit a home run in his last 84 plate appearances. Needless to say, a Thames who can’t slug is not going to be of much use. There were some exculpatory factors, such as erratic playing time -- it’s possible that Thames just got rusty as Carlos Guillen and Aubrey Huff kept him on the bench. Still, you can see where there’s still a chance for a Jamie Hoffmann to make the roster, because if Thames looks slow with the bat, he doesn’t have enough other skills to inspire confidence.
Parenthetically, Ruben Sierra hit .249/.295/.429 with 27 home runs in 651 at-bats in his second tour with the Yankees. In one of Joe Torre’s lower moments as Yankees manager, he cast ol’ Rube as the everyday designated hitter in September 2005. Sierra rewarded him by hitting .138. Joe surely did love his veterans. It wasn’t so much what they did but when they were born.
ONE SUPER BOWL NOTE It worked out, but when the Saints came out of halftime with an onside kick, I jumped out of my chair, pointed at Sean Payton, and shouted, “It’s Coffee Joe! It’s Coffee Joe at the Super Bowl!” As Joe Girardi and now Payton have demonstrated, sometimes over-coaching can work out for you, but man, you try that ten more times, it’s going to backfire on you most every time out.
Of course, the best part of this Super Bowl was the best part of every Super Bowl: it is now baseball season. We are just days (and at least one more snowstorm) away from pitchers and catchers. That should be good news for everyone except Johnny Damon.
The breaks on Derek Jeter have been shown to be fully functional in independent testing and no recall is planned. However, authorities said they would need another week before they could clear Nick Johnson for use.
Wish I could say the same thing about myself … I’m on some new medication and it has been a struggle to stay awake. I recall a Robin Williams routine from 25 years ago or so when he played a small child who says, “I like to give mommy’s medication to the goldfish and watch them swim sideways.” That’s what I feel like: a goldfish swimming sideways. Perhaps that should be a Goldman swimming sideways. That reminds me of the story of how the movie producer Samuel Goldwyn got his last name. His actual name was Samuel Goldfish (Americanized from Schmuel Gelbfisz), but around World War I he merged his movie operation with that of a couple of brothers named Selwyn. The name of the new studio would be a combination of each of their last names, the first half of Goldfish and the last half of Selwyn. There was really no other way to do it, as had they used the first half of Selwyn and the last half of Goldfish—you can see that there wouldn’t be positive connotations. Goldfish then changed his own last name to match that of his company. AS GOES ORLANDO HUDSON, SO GO THE TWINS The AL Centeral took an interesting turn yesterday as the Twins inked Orlando Hudson to play second base. This might be the most obvious move since the Yankees bought Babe Ruth, and as such it is totally unexpected—for years, the Twins have been happy to go into battle with a replacement-level player or two in the lineup. Second base has been an almost continual problem since they dealt Chuck Knoblauch to the Yankees. You can point to the odd good moment from Todd Walker and Luis Castillo, but if you took all the good parts of Alexi Casilla and Luis Rivas and stitched them together you still wouldn’t be able to make one good ballplayer.
This frequent Yankees postseason rival has now remade their middle infield, having added J.J. Hardy from the Brewers earlier in the offseason, and word is that they may get Joe Mauer signed to a contract extension sometime soon. They also added Jim Thome to their bench, which doesn’t seem like an important move given that he’s currently blocked, but it gives them some needed depth if Delmon Young gets off to a bad start. They can finally bench this failed prospect, put Jason Kubel in an outfield corner, and give Thome regular work at designated hitter.
The Twins still have no third baseman, a problem given that their 2009 hot corner men hit .247/.313/.385 last year. It’s possible that prospect Danny Valencia could take the job in spring training, but it’s also possible he could post a .290 on-base percentage in regular play. Still, if he can hit .265 and slug .420, the Twins will be ahead of where they were last year. Kudos to them for shaking off their habitual lethargy as they head into a new ballpark.
Speaking of Target Field, it’s a bit odd that the Yankees won’t get their first look at the new stadium until May 25. As one of baseball’s biggest road draws, the Bombers often get first crack at these virgin edifices. Instead, the Cardinals will play a couple of exhibitions there and the Red Sox will be the opponent for the first official home game. This may be a blessing given the late spring in Minnesota. April night games could be pretty close to freezing, while day games will struggle to reach 60 degrees Fahrenheit on average. Sometime during the first month we’re going to hear about some pitcher who shredded his shoulder because he couldn’t get loosened up in the chill. Thanks to the schedule-makers, it will more likely be Daisuke Matsuzaka than Phil Hughes. The Red Sox drew the short straw, along with the Royals and Indians.
Wednesday, February 3, 2010, 01:51 PM EST
[General]
I’M NOT LIKE EVERYBODY ELSE Steven Goldman would like to say that he has not seen “Avatar” and doesn’t feel all that bad about it. At first I was bummed out because I can no longer perceive 3-D and felt like I must be missing something special, but the more I hear about the film the less special it seems. As such, I will muddle on, Avatar-free but happy.
TO THE MATS WITH READER MAIL After the Robinson Cano post, I got an interesting email from reader JP:
Regarding Cano, the numbers speak for themselves, and confirm what we all have seen watching him. You seem to conclude -- and I can't disagree -- that, with the statistics being what they are over a significant sample size (unlike, say, A-Rod's tiny postseason history pre-2009), clutch hitting is a skill that Cano does not have. Hence your argument that he be slotted in the batting order to acknowledge this fundamental weakness -- a weakness that you by definition are implying is somewhat likely to show up in Cano's performance going forward.
But that implies, of course, that clutch hitting is a skill that one can possess (or in Robbie's case, NOT possess) -- a notion that I've generally seen disputed (with extreme prejudice!) on BP and elsewhere. So -- at long last -- my question: how can we declare Cano (or anyone else) a bad clutch hitter -- someone who lacks the skill of clutch hitting -- while still disputing that the skill of clutch hitting does not exist? Doesn't one side have to give?
You’ve taken quite a big jump here, one that isn’t supported by the case. Just because Robinson Cano can’t do something does not necessarily prove that someone else can do it. I’m not sure which classic logical fallacy is being invoked here, but I know one when I see it. The problem is that you haven’t framed the issue correctly. It’s not that we’re saying that Cano is a poor clutch hitter, but rather that he lacks the ability to hit up to his skill level with runners on.
The arguments about consistent clutch hitting come down to this: for us to say that a player has a skill, it must be something that he can do over and over again. This is easily seen with home runs. If we didn’t insist that a player do something repeatedly, we could make mistakes like this: “Power hitters hit home runs. Brett Gardner just hit a home run. Therefore, Brett Gardner is a power hitter.” We know that this isn’t true; before we call a guy a power hitter we have to see him do it over and over again, perhaps 30 times a season. Similarly, though we have all seen players hit in the clutch, it does not necessarily follow that clutch hitting exists as a skill. Yet somehow, because anecdotal evidence is so powerful to the human mind, we don’t hold clutch hitting to the same standard. It’s a bit like a conversation we’ve all had with friends:
“I went to Bob’s House of Beef on Sunday and had a terrible meal there. The waiter dumped the soup in my lap and the meat was undercooked.”
“Darn it, I had heard it was good, but now that you say that I’m going to cancel my reservation.”
Just because the first speaker had a bad experience at Bob’s doesn’t mean that all meals at Bob’s are bad—perhaps the staff was having an off night—but we’re usually willing to take that one example and run with it. The same is true of clutch hitting. Because in almost every game SOME player gets a clutch hit we tend to assume that we’re seeing an actual skill at work that is distinct from the hitter’s general ability to hit at a major-league level.
In general, good hitters hit well in most situations, and when a Derek Jeter drives in a run in the bottom of the ninth, you’re seeing his overall ability to hit at work, not his special clutchiness. Jeter is actually a great example of this: with two outs and runners in scoring position he’s a career .313/.417/.446 hitter, which is not too different from his overall career rates of .317/.388/.459. Within that average, there’s a lot of room for luck or short-term variation. In 1997, Jeter hit .194 with two outs and runners in scoring position. In 1999, he hit .394 in those situations.
If clutch hitting existed as a skill and Jeter possessed it, we’d expect him to be closer to 1999 every year, but that hasn’t been the case. Some years he’s been very good, in others quite ordinary. Last year he hit .259. That’s admittedly a narrow definition of clutch hitting ability, but if we expand it to career “late and close” situations we see that Jeter has hit .295, worse than his career .317. How about in the postseason? Well, Jeter has had many great October series, not to mention a few good November games as well. Still, the overall record shakes out to .313/.383/.479 in over 600 plate appearances. In the end, what is repeatable for Jeter is his ability to hit a little more than three times in every 10 trips to the plate. Sometimes that means a hit in the clutch, sometimes it doesn’t.
I’d prefer not to drag the question of clutch hitting into the Cano discussion. I see his case as more of an example of psychological factors undermining a player’s innate ability to hit. Cano is even more impatient than usual when he hits with runners in scoring position, and he’s normally mighty impatient—he ranked 147th out of 154 qualified major leaguers in pitches per plate appearance last season, with 3.4. That breaks down to 3.5 pitches with the bases empty, 3.3 with runners in scoring position, a small but significant difference. Forgive me for taking the presumptuous step of trying to read Cano’s mind, but it seems as if he’s pushing himself to hit with runners on and swinging at anything. It’s possible the Yankees would be better served if they just gave him the take sign now and again, not so often that it became a pattern, but just every once in awhile when he bats with runners on: Dude, don’t swing at the first pitch. You’re not going to do anything with it anyway.
Cano’s inability to focus with runners on, if that’s what it is, is seemingly curable. If any hitter is in need of some relaxation videos or some of those albums of whale song and falling rain, it’s him. Until such time as he gets them, he remains a very talented hitter and valuable player who has an unfortunate weakness. If he resolves it, he can join the ranks of players who hit in the clutch but aren’t necessarily clutch hitters.
Here’s an argument I never expected to be making: as the Yankees consider recasting their batting order to reflect their new acquisitions this offseason, the chronically impatient Robinson Cano should be batting higher in the order, perhaps as high as the second spot. It’s not an argument that I make with much enthusiasm, and as we proceed you will see that there are other moves that would be more optimal, but with Cano we have the problem of trying to put an oddly shaped set of skills to good use.
Before we get to Cano’s specific qualities, let’s acknowledge a couple of key factors about the Yankees’ batting order. First, many studies suggest that the difference between the optimal batting order and the least-optimal batting order is quite small. That said, there is a difference, and even if it’s as little as one win a season, you never know when you might need that one win. Second, the Yankees have several patient hitters who could excel in the leadoff spot, many of them with extensive experience in the role. Third, remember that the traditional batting order roles (speedy guy up top, bat handler second, and so forth) are so much bunkum and the order is more properly viewed as a way for the manager to distribute playing time in a more nuanced way than simple starts -- over the course of the season, the leadoff hitter bats more often than the number two hitter, the number two hitter bats more often than the number three hitter, and so on. If your team has Willy Taveras and Albert Pujols and the manager bats Taveras first and Pujols fourth, he’s really saying that he thinks it would be best for the team if Taveras hits more often than Pujols.
Speed in the leadoff spot is particularly overrated. Speed doesn’t help a leadoff hitter reach base. While it is a fine thing to have a patient leadoff hitter with speed, it is far better to have a slow but patient batter in the leadoff spot than a speedy impatient hitter. Some of the best leadoff hitters haven’t been stolen base threats; Wade Boggs went to the Hall of Fame as a leadoff man who averaged two steals (and two caught stealing) a year. Indeed, Nick Johnson would be a fine choice to lead off, his base-clogging potentialities notwithstanding. Given the lack of power he showed last year, he’s best role may be getting on base for the team’s power hitters rather than trying to drive others home.
That same description applies to Cano, albeit for different reasons. A career .306/.339/.480 hitter, Cano freezes up with runners on base. This was clearly demonstrated last season, when he batted only .255/.288/.415 with men on and .207/.242/.332 with runners in scoring position. Conversely, leading off an inning he hit an incredible .441/.459/.797. Batting with the bases empty, he hit .376/.407/.609. While Cano hasn’t been this extreme every year, he has been fairly consistent in this regard. He’s a career .256/.291/.398 hitter with runners in scoring position, .280/.312/.425 with men on, and .331/363/.528 with the bases empty.
This doesn’t mean that Cano isn’t a good hitter, but that he simply has limitations. To get the most out of Cano, a manager might keep him out of RBI spots. Now, when you have one of the best offenses in baseball, your whole batting order is an RBI spot. That’s why the second spot in the order is a place he might prosper. Even if the Yankees get another .400 OBP from their leadoff man, Cano would be batting with the bases empty 60 percent of the time, do his best hitting, and be on base for Mark Teixeira, A-Rod, et al. The downside is that you might get a few extra Cano double-play specials when the leadoff man does reach base.
One other advantage to moving Cano up in the order is that it would get him away from Nick Swisher, who also struggles to hit with runners on. The two spent a good part of last season batting back to back, which meant a lot of dead rallies as the Yankees could count on consecutive outs when a runner got on. Add in that the runner in question was quite often Jorge Posada, who couldn’t navigate the bases with alacrity if you strapped an outboard motor on him, and you had a dysfunctional situation in the aft section of the lineup. Cano batted second back in 2005 and did not hit well, but the mature Cano has rarely been listed there.
By this same reasoning, the club might do even better to boost Swisher up to the second spot. He got 20 starts there last season without distinguishing himself. Cano’s singles and doubles would be replaced by Swisher’s walks and home runs, while the double-play risk would be greatly reduced due to strikeouts. Swisher’s career .395 OBP against southpaws would be particularly handy when a left-hander starts, as the Yankees will want to drop Curtis Granderson in the order or rest him entirely.
In the end, neither Cano nor Swisher is likely to get lifted up the batting ladder as some combination of Jeter, Johnson, and Granderson should occupy the first two spots the majority of the time. When you have the chance to place two .400 OBPs at the top of the lineup for Teixeira and A-Rod, you do it every time, then laugh all the way to the postseason as last year’s solo shots become this year’s three-run homers. Still, Mr. Girardi can always vary things up and will probably have to at times. Cano’s aversion to RBIs would be a good thing to keep in mind when he does.
Sometimes, a team just can’t fill a position for more than a few years. For the White Sox and Mets, that position famously was third base. The former team had little of lasting value at the hot corner between Willie Kamm and Robin Ventura, a span of decades. The Mets couldn’t keep a player on third from 1962 until Howard Johnson emerged as a regular in 1987, although Wayne Garrett was a better hitter than he was given credit for being at the time. For the Yankees, that position is left field. Regardless of the ultimate allocation of playing time for the position in 2010, with Johnny Damon moving on, the team will be continuing a tradition that has lasted over 30 years. Now, this isn’t an excuse for violin-playing, because unlike the White Sox and Mets -- who had to live with replacement-level players at third base for years at a time -- the Yankees have generally had very productive left fielders. They just haven’t kept them around for very long.
If you look at the list of Yankees all-time leaders by games played at each position, left field has the third-lowest total not counting designated hitter:
The left and right field totals are affected by Babe Ruth’s reluctance to play the sun field. Although we commonly think of the Babe as a right fielder, in most years he split time between left and right depending on game conditions. Thus, he played the third-most games in right in team history and the second-most in left without being the majority starter there more than a couple of years in a row.
The last Yankees left fielder to put in more than three straight seasons while playing the majority of games in left field was White. He started every year from 1968 through 1973, spent about a third of 1974 at designated hitter and then returned to the outfield and held left for another three seasons. There was also a lot of turnover in the years before White, with Gene Woodling being the previous long-term holder of the position from 1949 to 1954, albeit in a platoon role.
That’s pretty much it. Because Babe Ruth was a left-right fielder, Bob Meusel was a left-right fielder. George Selkirk and Charlie Keller put in years in the other corner. Casey Stengel used a mélange of players after Woodling was traded to the Orioles. Rickey Henderson spent two years there, two years in center field. Dave Winfield spent a few years in left before taking his place in right. The Joe Torre Yankees had a new left fielder every year until Hideki Matsui came along, and his injuries stopped him at three consecutive seasons. Damon moved to left belatedly. Now Brett Gardner/Randy Winn/et al will turn over the position once again.
There is no good or bad here unless you’re looking for historical symmetries, like greatest outfields. The Yankees had one of the best outfields in history, if not the greatest, when Charlie Keller was the left fielder, Joe DiMaggio the center fielder and Tommy Henrich the right fielder, but because of injuries, World War II and some personnel decisions the Yankees made, that outfield lasted all of two minutes. Rickey Henderson and Dave Winfield were two thirds of a great outfield, but they never had that third part (although 1988, with Claudell Washington starting in center, was pretty good; unfortunately, Washington’s platoon partners, Gary Ward, Jay Buhner and Roberto Kelly, did nothing). Bernie Williams and Paul O’Neill were two thirds of a great outfield, and sometimes the left fielders played well -- if Tim Raines had been able to stay healthy and be more of a regular, we wouldn’t be having this conversation -- but for the most part, the Yankees slummed it, burning off Chuck Knoblauch’s contract or surrendering to Chad Curtis.
As for third base, Alex Rodriguez trails Nettles by 641 games, or about four seasons of playing every day. It will probably take until A-Rod is about 38 for him to claim the top spot, but he’ll probably get there before the Yankees move him off of third for the remaining 75 years of his contract. Then, following this season’s Randy Winn precedent, they will sign Geoff Blum, 41, to take over at the hot corner.
I kid, and perhaps unfairly. Winn doesn’t fit the Yankees’ platoon needs, but should be a solid fourth outfielder, assuming he doesn’t play too much and his numbers against southpaws rebound (and they should). Regardless of how he does, we’ll see if the 2010 outfield mix yields up a starter or 2011 will see yet another new left fielder’s career inaugurated in the Bronx.
Seven years ago, the Yankees made a thoroughly regrettable trade, dealing Marcus Thames to the Texas Rangers for Ruben Sierra. Now they’ve brought him back on a Minor-League deal. 
Send Message
Add Friend
Block User
Invite to Group
Report User 
