In mining the data I assumed that the Yankees would've gotten practically nothing out of shortstop in the years leading up to Jeter's ascendancy, but it turns out that's not entirely the case.
Here's an easy-on-the-eyes graph charting the wOBA the Yankees have received from the shortstop position since 1990, so you can stop squinting at text for once:
As I indicated previously, I was fully expecting sub-.300 wOBAs in every season pre-1996. While the Yankees did receive what has to have been one of the lowest shortstop wOBAs in franchise history in 1990, with Alvaro Espinoza (.242 wOBA) and Wayne Tolleson (.193) combining for a .235 wOBA, things slowly improved in 1991, as Espinoza (.283) and Randy Velarde (.304) brought the shortstop mark up to .284.
However, the Yankees' collective shortstops surprisingly posted the top fWAR in all of baseball in 1992, 6.1 (to go with a .323 wOBA), and the second-highest fWAR in the Majors in 1993, 7.8(!) (along with a .329 wOBA). Who, pray tell, contributed to these impressive marks, numbers that Derek Jeter only eclipsed four times in his 15-year career (in 1998, 1999, 2006 and 2009)? In 1992, Andy Stankiewicz was, believe it or not, worth 2.6 fWAR in just 451 plate appearances (.317 wOBA), which was more valuable than Derek Jeter's 2010 (2.5 fWAR in 739 plate appearances). Velarde also contributed 2.0 fWAR in 461 plate appearances (.328 wOBA), while Mike Gallego chipped in 1.4 fWAR in only 201 plate appearances (.323 wOBA). (Edited to add that Stanky and Gallego also played an undisclosed number of games at 2B that season, and so their numbers weren't compiled exclusively at shortstop. However, the cumulative wOBA figure is still accurate. For some reason Fangraphs doesn't filter out games played by position that far back, though I assumed it did, and that's my oversight. Thanks to Skip for the heads-up.)
In 1993, Gallego went crazy, posting the best season of his career by far in accumulating 4.7 fWAR over 465 plate appearances (and a .349 wOBA), while Velarde also went nuts, raking to a .362 wOBA over 253 PAs, good for 2.3 fWAR. (Again, Gallego also split time at 2B this season). Somehow Spike Owen was allowed 367 PAs that season in which he awfuled his way to a .274 wOBA, but still managed to contribute a positive fWAR (0.4).
The following season Gallego came back to earth, with a .307 wOBA in 357 PAs, while Velarde showed some pop (.341 wOBA in 310 PAs) but little else (1.0 fWAR). Additionally, Robert Eenhoorn and Kevin Elster "contributed" 0.1 fWAR (4 PAs) and -0.5 fWAR (22 PAs), respectively.
Entering the 1995 season the Yanks signed Tony Fernandez, coming off a .340 wOBA season in strike-shortened 1994 with the Reds, to be their everyday shortstop. However, Fernandez was a significant disappointment, posting a pathetic .296 wOBA and 0.7 fWAR in 438 plate appearances (a 21-year-old Derek Jeter got a 51-PA cup of coffee, also posting a .296 wOBA and -0.5 fWAR).
Fernandez famously missed all of 1996 with an injury, setting the stage for the Yankees' 22-year-old rookie phenom to step into the shortstop role full time, and Jeter rewarded the team with its best shortstop wOBA in years (possibly since Phil Rizzuto's .397 in 1950), a .353 mark (2.6 fWAR), good enough to win Rookie of the Year.
As you can see from the graph, Jeter has provided a minimum .340 wOBA at a position historically not known for its offense every season of his career save 2010, and rather incredibly kept it above .360 every season from 1998 through 2007. Not that any of this is new information, but it seemed worthwhile to show that, for as frustrating as it is that Derek appears to be on the downswing of his career, he was such a reliable component of the offense for so long, and it's easy to take his performance for granted in light of what the Yankees were getting out of the shortstop position in the late '80s (1989 SS wOBA: .289; 1988: .270; 1987: .273; 1986: .265) and early '90s.
With regards to the rumor that Eduardo Nunez would be the shortstop apparent should the impossible happen and the Yankees and Jeter can't come to turns, the picture for the 2011 Yankees becomes a bit grayer. The gulf between Jeter and Nunez is pretty vast, but it may not be quite as large as one might initially think, and as much as I can't picture Jeter wearing the uniform of another team, I don't think the Yankees would necessarily be dead in the water in the event that Nunez took over as starting shortstop.
For one thing, the overly optimistic Bill James projections (though Bill of course doesn't see it that way) somehow have Nunez posting a .330 wOBA in 2011, though that projection is only over an 88-game span (233 plate appearances). SG's CAIRO system has Nunez at a much more realistic-sounding baseline projection of .286 (0.6 WAR) over 528 plate appearances. James has Jeter bouncing back to a .344 wOBA in 2011 and SG also sees a similar bounceback, at a baseline of .342 (2.5 WAR).
However, things begin to get interesting when you mix and match with CAIRO's projection percentiles. If Jeter were to falter and only hit his 35% percentile projection, he'd be back around his disappointing 2010, with a .323 wOBA (and only 1.4 WAR). And if Nunez were to overperform to his 65% percentile projection, he'd still be a pretty big zero with the bat at a .305 wOBA, though not being Jeter on defense would hypothetically enable Nunez to accumulate 1.5 WAR.
This is all an overly complicated way of saying that it's not impossible that Eduardo Nunez could outperform Derek Jeter in 2011, although the odds are very much against it. For as much as the Yankees absolutely should not overpay for Jeter, and while they could probably get by with Nunez at short (especially if Jeter were to slump again), they're definitely a better team with Derek in 2011.
The graph is interesting in that it seems as if 2009 was an anomaly. You can basically draw a straight line from 2006 right to 2010 if you wanted to. According to that, if you draw the straight line, Jeter should have had a .330 or so in 2009 and not a .390. In continuing that straight line from 2006 through to 2011, you wouldn't get a projected .341 or so as shown here, but actually something more around a .305.
ReplyDeleteThat's an astute observation, anon. The graph definitely makes Derek's 2009 look like a statistical outlier. Funny how presenting data differently can help you pick something up that might not have been immediately apparent.
ReplyDeleteIt'll be interesting to see if any of the as-yet-be-released projection systems (ZiPS, Marcel, PECOTA, Oliver) forecast Derek around .305.-.310 next year as opposed to James' and CAIRO's more optimistic low-.340s outlooks.
for 1992 and 1993, the total WAR values listed for Yankee SS were for 1,113 and 1,095 PA respectively. So saying they had WAR values higher than all of Jeter's seasons (except for 4) is stretching the truth a little. I am sure if Jeter could have had 1,100 PA's each season, the 7.8 WAR value by the 1993 Yankee "SS" would have been eclipsed every season (except for 2010 probably).
ReplyDeleteI am not exactly sure what the purpose of this post is. I can't imagine anyone would think the Yanks would have been better off with the Stanky/Gallego/Velarde/Owen combo from 1996 to 2010.
I remember Stanky and was upset when the Yanks dealt him away. He had one of those magical summers but started to tail off. Velarde was actually a solid major leaguer for a long time and the Yanks kept him as a utility guy even after they picked up Fernandez as everyday SS. Gallego was a glove guy who had a good year with the bat. Honestly, I would consider 1992 performance by Stanky and 1993 performance by Gallego MUCH bigger anomalies than Jeter's 2009.
That's a great point, and frankly I'm a little annoyed that Fangraphs hasn't filtered the PAs out by what position they were accumulated at.
ReplyDeleteClearly the WAR totals by position are inflated, given that Gallego and Stankiewicz played both 2B and SS. So yes, their combined WARs at shortstop in 1992 and 1993 are probably not better than what Jeet has accomplished in the majority of his seasons.
As far as the purpose of this post, it was to have fun on a slow offseason day and to also show how lucky the Yankees have been to have Derek providing significantly above-average production at SS for the past 15 years. Given all the hand-wringing regarding his deal, as I mentioned in the very first paragraph I thought it'd be fair to at least give Jeter his due.
it is impressive how good they did it between 1998 and 1999 and I hope that we can go back to that kind of performance.
ReplyDelete