What changed from 2009 to 2010?

As 2010 winds to a close I've been thinking about what would need to change in 2011 for the Yankees to win another title. The reflexive answer is to suggest better pitching. After all, the Yankees are in the market for starters, in case you hadn't heard. But is that true? The 2009 Yankees clearly were good enough to win the World Series, and the team did it with only three reliable starters. Heading into the playoffs the 2010 Yankees had about that many again in CC Sabathia, Andy Pettitte and Phil Hughes but the post season had a different outcome. This led me to ask the question: What changed in 2010? What did the team do better, and by how much, in 2009 that allowed it to win the World Series, and a bunch more games in the regular season? My hope is that the answer will shed some light on areas where the Yankees must improve next year, and also demonstrate that the team can be successful, even if it makes no further additions to its roster, advisable though they may be.

This analysis uses the core rosters from the 2009 and 2010 Yankees, according to Baseball Reference, and OPS+ and ERA+. I'm using Baseball Reference because it easily suggests who the core players from each team were, and provides team level aggregates for both OPS+ and ERA+ that are easy to find. Here's what the site says:

The big surprise is how weak the 2009 Yankee pitching was. The team overcame this in the postseason, but during the regular season the difference between the 2009 and 2010 vintages was almost negligible. While the 2010 team had clear weaknesses in the staff (Javier Vazquez, A.J. Burnett) the 2009 team was so understaffed that Baseball Reference only lists four starters for the team. As a result, the pitching on the 2009 team was only marginally better than the pitching on the 2010 team, less, in fact, than the difference between what the team got from CC Sabathia in 2009 versus 2010.

Despite having the best offense in baseball in 2010, the Yankee hitters couldn't muster the same potency they displayed in 2009. What is surprising, though, is how similar the offenses were as well. The team wide drop off from 114 to 109 is about the same as the difference in production between Hideki Matsui and Johnny Damon in 2009. Sure, there was a difference, but that difference wasn't tremendous.

There are two conclusions to be drawn from this. The first is that the 2010 team was very good. While the 2009 version was better on both sides of the ball, it wasn't that much better. Given that the Yankees stand to return the entire offense, provided either Andy Pettitte or A.J. Burnett steps up the way the team needs the 2011 squad doesn't require much tinkering to be competitive for at least the Wild Card, if not more.

The second conclusion is that playoff success really is a function of getting hot at the right time. The talent differential between the 2009 and 2010 seasons was so small that it was probably imperceptible. The difference in their regular season win totals had more to do with Andy Pettitte's injury and increased competition from the Rays than anything else. However, once October rolled around the 2009 Yankees had Alex Rodriguez, Derek Jeter, Jorge Posada, Hideki Matsui, and Johnny Damon all contributing big for most of the postseason, with some timely hitting from Mark Teixeira as well. The 2010 Yankees had Robinson Cano, Curtis Granderson and not much else. As a result, one team won the World Series and the other fell short of making it there.

All this means that the Yankees have many of the pieces they'll need for success in 2011 already. Surprisingly, the biggest x-factor for the 2011 Yankees is not the pitching, but the hitting. The 2009 Yankees were, as Larry has pointed out before, the best offensive club of their decade. If the 2011 Yankees see some key pieces return to career form then the Yankees figure to get improved performance without making a trade. If Andy Pettitte realizes that he still has quite a bit left in the tank then the team will be as strong as any other in the American League. My new year's resolution, therefore, is to worry less about the potential performance of the 2011 team, at least until the first week of April.

Mystery Graph #6

The following is the sixth in a series of mystery statistical graphs for your guessing pleasure. Use the comments section to guess the statistic and Yankee being charted below.

Mystery Graph #5

The following is the fifth in a series of mystery statistical graphs for your guessing pleasure. Use the comments section to guess the statistic and Yankee being charted below.

Penny-wise

While Brad Penny will probably never return to the level of pitching he reached as a Dodger in 2007 -- 3.03 ERA/3.63 FIP/4.33 xFIP; 4.3 fWAR -- the 32-year-old is an interesting free agent possibility after throwing 41 2/3 innings of 167 ERA+ ball in 2009 for the Giants and 55 2/3 innings of 122 ERA+ ball for the Cardinals this past season before being shut down with a shoulder strain.

I'd imagine the whole "missing 75% of the 2010 season" thing is why we haven't heard much about teams being interested in Penny this offseason (outside of the Tigers), but once again, for a team with a pitching need at the low end of the rotation, Penny could be a worthwhile gamble for the Yankees.

Here are a smattering of Penny's career pitching numbers:

Most Yankee fans' lasting memories of Penny are likely of the "being lit up" variety, and while it's true he looked pretty cooked by the time the Yankees battered him for eight earned runs on August 21, 2009, leading to his release by Boston, he wasn't an atrocious back-end starter for the Red Sox through his first 17 starts of the 2009 season (a stretch that includes six shutout innings against the Yankees at Fenway Park on June 11), posting a 4.71 ERA over 93.2 innings. Granted that's nothing to write home about, but to Penny's credit he wasn't really giving up oceans of runs during the first three-and-a-half-months of the season (only four starts with four-plus earned runs); his bigger problem was that he wasn't giving the team innings. Of course, this ended up being rather moot as he was awful in his final seven starts for Boston, throwing 38 innings of 7.82 ERA ball and ultimately finishing his Red Sox career with a 5.61 ERA/4.49 FIP in 131.2 innings.

Shortly after his release he signed with the Giants (the Yankees reportedly had interest despite the shellacking they administered that led to his departure from the AL East), and seemed to transform into a completely different pitcher, posting a 2.59 ERA over 41.2 innings the rest of the way.

What changed for Penny between his poor stint with the Red Sox and excellent stretch with the Giants? For starters, he cut his walk rate by nearly a full batter per nine and upped his GB% from 40.8% to a career-high 53.8% (and essentially maintained that improvement during his brief time with the Cardinals this past season, at 52.8%). But perhaps most significantly, he moved from a Red Sox team that saw its UZR fall from 55.5 (3rd-best in MLB) in 2008 to 5.6 in 2009, to a Giants team with the best UZR in the National League in 2009 (55.7). This partially explains why his BABIP fell from .336 with Boston to a miniscule (and unsustainable) .211 with San Francisco, and correspondingly, why his LOB% fell from an almost comically low 64.4% to an obscenely high 81.8%.

While the 2011 Yankees won't come close to the 2009 Giants' level of defensive efficiency, the 2010 Bombers posted not only their best team UZR (15.3) since the stat started being recorded in 2002, but also their first overall positive tally ever, so perhaps the team's improved defense would benefit the contact-friendly Penny some.

Picking up on that last sentiment for a second, I was surprised to find that Penny, despite possessing a heater that has averaged 93.4mph throughout his career -- which would make it one of the top ten fastest in baseball from 2007 to 2010 had he had enough innings to qualify -- has posted such relatively low K/9 rates. His high-water mark was 7.20 with the Marlins before being traded to the Dodgers in 2004, and his career rate is 6.27. Without having access to career horizontal and vertical break numbers and not having watched Penny pitch all that much, one might assume his fastball doesn't have much movement, but after comparing two random games from CC Sabathia and Josh Johnson -- two of the league's elite fastball-throwers -- along with that August 21, 2009, game for Penny, it looks like Penny's fastball might have too much movement, finishing almost two inches higher on average (11.25) than Sabathia's (9.36) and Johnson's (9.35); and about an inch-and-a-half further away from the zone horizontally (-4.47 compared to the righty Johnson's -3.12).

So what could a team signing Penny realistically expect? Penny is a career 4.11 ERA/3.98 FIP/4.19 xFIP pitcher, which is basically a slightly-worse version of A.J. Burnett (3.99/3.93/3.80).

Bill James doesn't even have a projection for Penny, but CAIRO sees a 4.14 ERA/4.16 FIP over 120 innings from Penny, good for 1.2 WAR. As a point of reference, Ivan Nova's CAIRO projection is for 83 innings worth 0.3 WAR, while Sergio Mitre's is for 72 innings of 0.2 WAR ball. I could live with a one-year deal for Penny at around $5 million, assuming he's healthy.

If we assume that Penny's true talent level is closer to the form he showed in the National League, and that his arm can successfully bounce back from his strained lat, he could be the best of the scrapheap options currently available to the Yankees as they look to fill in the back end of the starting rotation.

Jeff Francis: fourth (or fifth) starter?

Given the Yankees' need for starting pitching, Jeff Francis' name has unsurprisingly recently come up in connection to the team, so let's take a look at whether the lifelong NL West pitcher makes any sense for the Bombers.

After a breakout 4.1 fWAR season in 2007 with the Rockies in which he posted a 4.22 ERA/4.19 FIP/4.26 xFIP (on the surface these don't appear to be overly impressive numbers, but adjusted for park and league it was a 114 ERA+ season) line over 215.1 innings, worth a whopping $16.9 million. Unfortunately, Francis, a classic slow-pitch lefthander (the kind that inexplicably routinely stymies the Yankees), has been a below-average pitcher in the two seasons he's pitched since, recording a 94 ERA+ in 143.2 innings in 2008 and a 93 ERA+ last season in 104.1 innings. He missed all of 2009 due to shoulder surgery. Those aren't terrible numbers, but they're not exactly supremely confidence-inspiring, and it's not all that surprising that teams haven't been terribly eager to snap him up.

Still, there could be some utility in bringing a career league average (ERA+ 100) lefthander to the Bronx as a fourth or fifth starter. Even if Francis repeated his 2010, he'd still be more serviceable than what the Yankees got out of A.J. Burnett (81 ERA+) and Javier Vazquez (80 ERA+) last season.

Here's a chart of some of Francis' key numbers since becoming a full-time starter in 2005:

Francis won't strike many batters out (career K/9 of 6.10), but he does get his share of groundballs (a career-high 47% GB% last season) and also slashed his walk rate from 3.07 BB/9 in 2008 to 1.98 last season. Fewer walks combined with a declining HR/9 (1.32 to 0.95) helped Francis to the lowest FIP of his career in 2010, at 3.88. Despite an ugly ERA (5.00), he was still worth 1.9 fWAR last season, better than both Burnett and Vazquez combined.

The ever-optimistic Bill James projection has Francis at a 4.45 ERA and 4.25 FIP, though those numbers are only across 87 innings. James sees a slight uptick in K/9 (up from 2010's 5.78 to 6.10), but a serious regression in BB/9 (back up to 2.79). CAIRO's actually surprisingly bullish on Francis as well, projecting 136 innings of 4.63 ERA/4.19 FIP ball, and a 47.5% GB% (which would be a career-high), for a season worth 2.0 WAR. As a point of comparison, bWAR had Francis at 0.5 last season.

After years of watching the Yankees continually miserably flail away at soft-tossing lefthanded junkballers, I wouldn't mind seeing the team give opponents a dose of their own medicine. Francis won't blow anyone away (average fastball speed for his career is 87mph), but he did have the fourth-best changeup in the National League in 2007.

This offseason's approximate valuation of $5 million per win would suggest that Francis could hypothetically merit a $10 million contract based on the WAR projection, but no one's going to come even close to handing that dollar amount out to a pitcher who missed all of 2009 and pitched a somewhat effective yet still underwhelming season in 2010. If Francis can be had on a one-year, $5 million deal I see no reason for the Yankees not to roll the dice and try to at least get close to league average innings out of one of their holes in the back end of the rotation. At the very least Francis is still a better option than Sergio Mitre, although we can also say the same thing about pretty much every pitcher in professional baseball.

The calm after the storm

Between a snow-blanketed New York City and a holiday week in which many are off from work, there hasn't been a ton of worthwhile Yankee-related news (a reunion with Johnny Damon? Adding Manny Ramirez? Come on), and I'd expect things to remain quiet for a bit. While all of Yankeeland continues to wait with bated breath for Andy Pettitte's decision, which apparently will make or break the Yankees' 2011 season in many peoples' eyes, I also expect that Brian Cashman isn't quite done making improvements to the team, and I wouldn't be surprised if January yielded a surprise or two.

Of course, judging by the massive contingent of fans who apparently are quite disenfranchised with Cashman, I'm not sure anything will be enough to satisfy the anti-pragmatists. After witnessing the back-and-forth that developed on my post defending Cashman last week I came away pretty shocked with the volume of folks still clamoring for Cashman's head -- I'm used to MLBTR-linked posts drawing the ire of fans of other teams, but it was a bit depressing to see a comment section filled with bickering Yankee supporters.

I would certainly never suggest that everyone needs to be on the same page with regards to how they relate to and enjoy the team, but I do hope some of that negative energy ends up being utilized in a positive way. It's bad enough Yankee fans have to deal with the entire world of sports hating us; petty infighting only solidifies that reputation among other fanbases and makes us look that much worse.

Will A.J. bounce back in 2011?

Recently I've been playing around with Baseball-Reference's similarity scores, a tool designed to compare baseball players to other players with similar careers. I used the stat to try to forecast the next couple of seasons for some key Yankees. Somehow, amazingly, I forgot the single most important key Yankee: A.J. Burnett.

As much as it pains me to write it (full disclosure: I'm a Burnett fan, although I can't explain why), A.J. remains the single most important Yankee in any given season or postseason. Until the Yankees get a rotation of five reliable starters, with Burnett serving as the sixth man, his status as the least-predictable member of the rotation makes him critical to the team's success. The 2009 Yankees won the World Series with only three pitchers. If Andy Pettitte retires but Burnett has a solid season then the 2011 Yankees will have only three pitchers, an excellent offense, and serious title chances. If Pettitte retires but Burnett continues his decline, then the Bombers have only two pitchers, and problems to fill. A.J. is the X-factor precisely because the team can't count on him. I have no idea why I didn't use the similarity score to forecast his 2011 earlier. Fortunately, I'm doing it now.

For those who don't know, Baseball-Reference provides three similarity scores for a given player: 1) Players who have had similar career totals. 2) Players who have had similar career totals, not for their entire careers, but up to the current age of the active player (33, in A.J.'s case). 3) Players who had similar careers through any given age (A.J.'s age 24 season, or his age 29 season). The second stat is the primary driver of this analysis. A score of 1000 is a perfect match. Higher is better. Anything over 950 is a close match.

Along with Jayson Werth, Mark Teixeira and Cliff Lee -- all players I analyzed earlier -- Baseball Reference doesn't consider Burnett to be all that unique. All 10 of the players he is most similar to, through the age of 33, have scores of 930 or higher. Pete Harnisch rates as the most similar through age 33, with a score of 967, one of the highest I've ever seen. Ken Hill, Steve Stone, Randy Wolf and Chan Ho Park round out the top five. Each has a similarity score of at least 940.

Let's hope that Baseball-Reference is wrong, and that A.J. is not similar to Harnisch. Their numbers certainly look similar, right down to being unpredictable season-to-season, but Harnisch was D-O-N-E in his age 34 season. He posted an ERA+ of 73 and never pitched again.

Ken Hill's career had almost the same trajectory. He posted an ERA+ of 102 in his age 33 season. In his age 34 season, however, his numbers fell off a cliff. He managed only 81.2 innings of 71 ERA+ pitching. He saw the major leagues in his age 35 season, a whopping 7.1 innings with the Tampa Bay Devil Rays in 2001, which counts as the big leagues by technicality more than anything else.

A trend is emerging with the players who were similar to A.J. Steve Stone is next on the list. I've never actually heard of this guy, but a glance at his numbers suggest that he was a slightly below average, often injured pitcher, who posted some excellent seasons in an otherwise unremarkable career. He was also toast after his age 33 season. That year he pitched only 62.2 innings of 79 ERA+ baseball. He never pitched in the majors again.

A.J.'s contemporary Randy Wolf is next. Wolf and A.J. are shockingly similar. They're the same age. They both have a spotty track record of injuries. They both regressed considerably in 2010 -- their age 33 seasons.

Mr. Diarrhea himself, Chan Ho Park, is next. Given his awful stint in pinstripes last season, its easy to forget that once upon a time Park had a few good seasons as an MLB starter (albeit in the NL West). What did he have in common with Burnett? Both had ERA+'s between 80 and 85 in their age 33 seasons. Park is a few years older than A.J., and has yet to toss 100 innings since his age 33 season.

For those who are curious, Todd Stottlemyre is next on the list. He was pretty good his age 34 season -- when he pitched. He managed only 101.1 innings that year before succumbing to injury. He never pitched close to that many innings again.

The Yankees need A.J. Burnett to be successful. If Andy Pettitte comes back, a potent Burnett gives the team four legitimate starters. If Pettitte does not come back then a potent Burnett gives them the minimum three starters the team will require to compete for a Championship. Unfortunately, the numbers do not suggest Burnett has it in him. The annals of baseball are littered with injury-prone, erratic starters. There is an abundance of pitchers whose careers look similar to Burnett's through age 33. Not a one of them was effective in his age 34 season. It is entirely possible that Burnett will bounce back to being a respectable big league starter in 2011, but he'll be defying history if that happens.

Mystery Graph #4

The following is the fourth in a series of mystery statistical graphs for your guessing pleasure. Use the comments section to guess the statistic and Yankee being charted below.

Yankees vs. Red Sox in team batting average, on-base percentage and slugging percentage since 2001

Yanks are of course the blue lines; Red Sox are red. There isn't anything we didn't already know here; just thought it'd be fun to take a look at how the rivals have stacked up graphically over the last 10 seasons. That 2003 Boston team slugged .491, which is outrageous, and I'd have to imagine one of the highest marks in history -- as a point of comparison, the 1927 Yankees slugged "only" .488.

Though it's not delineated on this chart, as I've happily noted several times on this blog the 2009 Yankees' team wOBA of .366 was the best mark of these 20 teams (bettering the '03 Sox by a scant .002), not to mention the highest number of any MLB team during the last decade.

Mystery Graph #3

The following is the third in a series of mystery statistical graphs for your guessing pleasure. Use the comments section to guess the statistic and Yankee being charted below.

Happy holidays (and links), Yankeeist readers

As always, we'll still be posting every day even during one of the slower baseball weeks of the year, but we just wanted to take a moment to wish all of our readers happy holidays.

In case you're stuck at your family's place and bored out of your mind; if you've swung by via MLBTR; or if you're a regular who may have missed some of our excellent recent content, please be sure to check out the following comprehensive statistical analyses from earlier this week on Joba Chamberlain, Phil Hughes and Mariano Rivera; take a stroll down Bad Yankee Position Player Lane with Tony Womack, Enrique Wilson, Bubba Crosby, Andy Phillips and others; and join in on the 30-plus comment discussion taking place in our post encouraging Yankee fans to take a few deep breaths and relax:

What happened to Joba Chamberlain, starting pitcher? [December 22, 2010]
Phil Hughes' OPS against in each count versus the league average [December 22, 2010]
Top (or really, bottom) 10 least valuable Yankees of the last 10 seasons [December 21, 2o10]
A deeper look at Mo's declining K/9 in 2010 [December 21, 2010]
Be afraid. Be very afraid [December 20, 2010]

Mystery Graph #2

The following is the second in a series of mystery statistical graphs for your guessing pleasure. Use the comments section to guess the statistic and Yankee being charted below.

Mystery Graph #1

The following is the first in a series of mystery statistical graphs for your guessing pleasure. Use the comments section to guess the statistic and Yankee being charted below.

What happened to Joba Chamberlain, starting pitcher?

Per Marc Carig on Twitter yesterday, Brian Cashman was once again asked whether Joba Chamberlain would be given another chance to win a spot in the rotation. Cashman's answer? "It's [Chamberlain's starting pitching repertoire] just not the same stuff."

While Cashman has continued to assert the team's stance that Joba will not be given the chance to start, it's hard not to wonder whether the organization reassess the situation if spring training arrives, Andy Pettitte decides to retire, and the Yankees are faced with two glaring rotation holes heading into a season for the first time in a long time.

I fully understand the idea that the organization obviously knows quite a bit more about their own player than the fanbase does, and I know we all watched Joba struggle through his sophomore starting campaign in 2009, but doesn't it seem incredibly premature to be pulling the plug on the idea of Joba-the-starter, especially in the Yankees' time of need? Can the organization really have determined that Chamberlain can't hold up to the rigors of a full season of starting pitching based on a season and a half of evidence?

I guess I'm having trouble reconciling the idea that the Yankees announced they were holding a so-called contest last spring for the fifth rotation spot -- despite it later being revealed that they had already anointed Phil Hughes the winner prior to the spring schedule even starting -- and that Joba "failing" has subsequently rendered any possibility of him returning to the rotation moot. I don't understand why Joba -- who turned in a solid 2010 peripheral-wise as a reliever though wasn't entirely trustworthy in various key moments -- can't be given another shot as a starter, especially since he (a) is still young and only going to be entering his age 25 season in 2011; (b) hasn't exactly reverted to the lockdown 8th-inning reliever proponents of Joba-to-the-pen salivate over; and (c) if the Yankees continue to solely view him as a reliever, why was his inclusion a dealbreaker in the rumored Dan Haren deal back in July?

Many point to the shoulder injury he suffered in Texas in August 2008 as the critical turning point in Joba's career, and it appears that that event affected Chamberlain's numbers in pretty much every key category the following season, although nowhere more notably than the missing speed on his fastball.

The chart below details Joba's starting numbers from 2008 and 2009 (he threw one inning of relief in 2009, and I'm not going to bother throwing that out here). The first row contains his starting numbers in 2008, while the second row of 2008 numbers contains both his starting and relieving numbers, as starting splits for that data aren't available.

It's a pretty sad picture when laid out like this. Joba experienced decline from 2008 in nearly every category shown above, except for innings pitched, BABIP (oddly enough), FB%, percentage of curveballs thrown, average curveball velocity and curveball runs above average.

Big picture-wise, the 2.5-mile-per-hour decline in this fastball from 2008 to 2009, along with the accompanying fall from being worth 8.6 runs above average to -20.2 runs above average appears to be what really killed Joba the Starter.

Of course, the vast majority of Major League starting pitchers do not have a fastball that averages 95mph, and a 92.5mph average fastball should still be plenty fast to be able to maintain success as a starter provided it's complimented with an appropriate off-speed arsenal. Unfortunately Joba's slider and change-up were also less effective in 2009, leading to the overall stat-line decline.

Via Fangraphs, here are Joba's plate discipline against percentages from the last three seasons. I've included 2010, even though he pitched out of the 'pen, to provide additional context.

Along with the decrease in velocity, Joba clearly wasn't spotting his pitches as well in 2009. In 2009, hitters swung at less pitches out of the zone but made more contact with the pitches they did swing at, and overall made contact 80% of the time, compared to 2008's 73.5%. Joba also started less batters off with a strike, leading to more favorable hitters counts, and saw nearly a 3.5-point drop in swinging strike percentage. Can we also blame the deterioration of control on the infamous shoulder injury?

Additionally, Joe Lefkowitz has exhaustively comprehensive charts of all of Joba's pitches by season, and if you follow that link you can filter by 2008 and 2009. If you scroll all the way down to the bottom of the page after performing a search you'll come across four strike zone boxes (fastball vs. RHB and LHB, and offspeed vs. RHB and LHB) divided into nine quadrants, each color-coded in shades of red (depending on how strong the batter performed) and blue (depending on how strong the pitcher performed).

Joba's fastball against right-handed batters went from three solid blue quadrants, 4 medium-red quadrants and two solid-red quadrants in 2008 to two light-blue quadrants, one intermediate, two light red and four solid-red quadrants. Basically, Joba went from relative mastery of 7 out of 9 strike zone quadrants against RHB in 2008 to 2 out of 9 in 2009, with the most jarring increase coming up and in against righthanders -- Joba went from holding RHBs to a .111 BA on 24 fastballs to that corner to a .455 BA on 37 fastballs to that corner in 2009. Righthanders also hit Joba far better up and away, improving from a .333 BA over 27 fastballs to .636 over 45 fastballs.

Though it's not shown in the above chart, interestingly, Joba's fastball numbers against lefthanders actually improved from 2008 to 2009 (5 solid red quadrants to two), as did his offspeed repertoire (six solid red quadrants to four). Does Joba have a reverse platoon split?

In 2008, Joba held lefties to a 2.72 FIP/3.31 xFIP and righties to a 2.59 FIP/3.05 xFIP. However, in 2009 his numbers against lefties ballooned to 5.22 FIP/5.01 xFIP and righties tagged him for a 4.38 FIP/4.06 xFIP. That 4.38 FIP against righties in 2009 would have been the sixth-worst mark by an AL righthanded starting pitcher that season had Joba had enough innings to qualify. The only righthanders who fared worse FIP-wise against same-side batters that season were Edwin Jackson, teammate A.J. Burnett, Scott Baker, Carl Pavano and Jeremy Guthrie.

So in addition to Joba's decrease in velocity from 2008 to 2009, his control apparently disappeared, and he had far more difficulty retiring righthanded batters than one would expect from a previously dominating righthanded starting pitcher. However, Joba seemed to get his righthanded batter problem under control in relief in 2010, pitching to a 2.90 FIP/3.64 xFIP against righties in 39.2 innings.

Clearly the Yankees saw something in Joba's velocity and location problems in 2009 that led the team to believe he'd never be able to handle starting duty ever again. Unfortunately I just can't buy the idea that one year of struggles as a 23-year-old in the Yankee rotation -- in the toughest division in baseball -- in which he still put up a barely below-average 97 ERA+ means that he's not cut out to be a starting pitcher. I don't know if it's a mental thing -- perhaps the Yankees feel his personality is better-suited to higher-energy relief appearances, where he can regularly unload that 95mph fastball that occasionally approaches 100mph -- or physical, and that the team is convinced his body simply can't hold up to the rigors of throwing 180 innings, but either way I'd like to know why.

What changed since Joba was told to show up to camp as a starter last offseason and was treated as a potential rotation candidate? I know he didn't pitch all that well out of camp last season, but it was spring training. And furthermore, what's the harm of giving him another shot to see if he can start this spring? No better time to see what the team has on its hands than during games that don't count. Phil Hughes spent most of 2009 in relief and was able to successfully transition into the rotation in 2010. Why can't Joba be afforded the same opportunity in 2011?

It's hard to rectify the idea that a pitcher that has put up the following numbers:

And who came up through the Yankee system as a starting pitcher after wowing the team as a starting pitcher in a college could so easily be discarded into the relief bin. If the other rotation options are Ivan Nova and/or Sergio Mitre, how can the Yankees tell the fanbase with a straight face that Joba won't even be considered? Brian Cashman is telling me that Nova's and Mitre's starting "stuff" is better than Joba's? Mitre (career 83 ERA+; essentially replacement-level) hasn't experienced any period of sustained success as a starting pitcher; and while Nova has promise, he hasn't done anything of significance at the Major League level either. Joba has.

Unless Joba has some sort of permanent physical ailment that literally prevents him from throwing a starters' workload of innings, one year of somewhat less-than-ideal starting pitching shouldn't permanently close the book on a starting career many of us dreamed could one day blossom into something very special.

Phil Hughes' OPS against in each count versus the league average

Arguably the biggest knock against Phil Hughes in 2010 -- aside from giving up 8,000 home runs to the Toronto Blue Jays -- was Hughes' difficulty in putting hitters away with two strikes as the season wore on. I thought it might be instructive to look at how Phil fared with regards to OPS-against depending on the count, and compare his numbers against the league average to see where we might be able to expect improvement.

Of course, it's important to remember that the AL average sample draws from every pitcher in the league, not just starters. If the data were broken out by starters and relievers I imagine the findings would be a bit more favorable to Hughes, given that relievers typically accumulate better stats due to the whole less-batters-faced thing.

Hughes' OPS-against numbers in the various two-strike counts were slightly better than I'd expected, though his cumulative two-strike OPS-against was .568, compared to a league average of .531. Not great, although not atrocious. By comparison, his rotationmate CC Sabathia's two-strike OPS against was .396. Cliff Lee? .407. Jon Lester? .428? As we've harped on time and again, clearly Phil has some work to do in this area.

Of course, Phil's problem wasn't a lack of strikes -- he threw the 12th-most 0-2 strikes in the AL. But too many of those 0-2 strikes were too good, as Hughes' 34% Foul Ball Percentage led the league by a decent margin (four tied with 31%).

Getting back to the chart, Hughes only bested the league average in OPS-against in four of the 12 listed batting states -- First Pitch, 2-0, 3-1 and 2-2. The league outperformed Hughes in 1-0, 3-0 (Hughes' mark here was infinity -- hence the lack of a data point on the bar graph -- as all nine batters he faced that got to 3-0 counts eventually ended up walking), 1-1, 2-1, 0-2, 1-2 and Full Counts. They were dead even on 0-1 counts (.799 OPSa).

The largest discrepancy between Hughes and the average AL pitcher was on 1-2 counts, a .603 OPSa against .409, which means the league outperformed Hughes by nearly 200 points of OPS in these instances. This further underscores Hughes' tendency to live too close to the strike zone with two strikes, and it's particularly concerning that he got hit this hard compared to the league in the second-best pitchers' count. The second-biggest discrepancy was on 2-1 counts, with the league registering an OPSa 185 points better than Hughes' 1.027 mark, which was also his worst number of the 12 batting states by more than 50 points of OPS (the second-worst? 1-1 counts, with a .964 OPSa).

It's encouraging that Hughes still had a fine season in spite of these two-strike concerns, and if he's going to continue to improve -- and as a 24-year-old there's still plenty of room for him to get even better -- he'll almost certainly take greater care in not leaving hittable pitches in the zone with two strikes.

Top (or really, bottom) 10 least valuable Yankees of the last 10 seasons

Back in the "Save Phil Hughes" days I once ran a post in which I tried to determine "The crappiest 25-man Yankee roster of all time," which is always a fun way to kill some time on a slow Hot Stove day. The roster I ended up with -- while entertaining -- doesn't appear to be based on anything other than my memory of how bad the respective players were, so I wanted to see statistically who the least valuable Yankees of the last 10 seasons actually were. Thankfully Fangraphs allows us to do so rather easily. There's no minimum PA needed to rank on this list; I'm simply looking at the players who accumulated the worst fWAR during their Yankee tenure.

And the dishonor goes to:

	wOBA	fWAR
Tony Womack	.261	-2.3
Enrique Wilson	.257	-2.1
Bubba Crosby	.259	-1.0
Andy Phillips	.292	-1.0
Gerald Williams	.192	-0.9
Craig Wilson	.265	-0.8
Todd Greene	.231	-0.8
Matt Lawton	.249	-0.7
Wil Nieves	.161	-0.7
Alberto Gonzalez	.179	-0.7

Heh. Quite the motley crew of castoffs. We all knew Womack was pretty awful, but it's nice to see statistical evidence that he was probably the worst position-player signing in Brian Cashman's history.

A deeper look at Mo's declining K/9 in 2010

While we're all of course extremely happy to have Mariano Rivera back in pinstripes for another two years, there was one aspect of his 2010 stat line -- which overall, as always, was excellent -- that uncharacteristically raised a few eyebrows: his K/9 of 6.75, which was the third-lowest of his career. For a guy with a career 8.23 mark, and who fanned 9.77 men per nine innings in 2009, it seems somewhat curious that he would strike out significantly less hitters than Yankee fans have been accustomed to. Granted, not even Mo is immune to the effects of aging, but considering he's still performing at an elite level, I wanted to see if a deeper exploration of some of the numbers might guide us as to why Mariano punched fewer batters out in 2010.

Here's a chart of a handful of Mo's plate discipline percentages against since 2002, the first year we have data for:

The first thing that struck me was the spike in O-Swing%, up from 36.5% in 2009 to a career-high (well, at least since 2002) 40.1% in 2010. Mo's career number is 32.7%, although he's been above that figure every season since 2006. Still, that's a pretty significant increase in hitters swinging at non-strikes from Mo. Correspondingly, hitters also made more contact on those pitches, with a 75.7% O-Contact%, up from 2009's 73.3% (for additional context, Mo's career rate is 63.8%).

Mo also experienced a very small increase in overall Contact%, up 0.1 points to a career-high 83.0%. However, just two seasons ago it was 76.3%. Additionally, Mariano threw less pitches in the zone than he ever has before, with a 40.6% Zone% (down from 2009's 43.6%). And perhaps most tellingly, Mo threw a career-low 58.3% First-Pitch Strikes, which means he found himself working from behind more frequently than he ever had before. Though it's not depicted in the chart, hitters also jumped all over the offerings Mo did leave in the zone, swinging 67.4% of the time, up significantly from 61.3% in 2009.

As far as pitch selection goes, after throwing the Cutter a career-high 92.9% of the time in 2009 per Fangraphs, he used it slightly less in 2010 -- 84.9% -- and it also experienced a very slight (0.2 mph) decrease in velocity, but not by anything substantial, and it was still the best among AL relievers by far, at 16.6 runs above average. His fastball -- which he threw only 15.1% of the time (though apparently only 7.1% in 2009) -- actually had some extra zip on it, averaging 92.2 mph over 2009's 91.7 mph. However, his career fastball velocity is 93.3 mph, which confirms suspicions that Mo may have lost a tick or two off his heater.

Still, it's clear that diminished stuff is not the culprit with regards to Mo's declining K/9, but rather hitters taking a far more aggressive approach against Rivera than they ever have before and making contact with bad pitches at a higher rate than they ever have before. Mo also didn't do himself any favors by starting less hitters off with strikes than he ever has previously, which may have subsequently led to slightly less desirable pitch selection and perhaps to a lesser extent poorer pitch sequencing in some of those at-bats.

Ultimately I don't think there's anything in Mo's inflated plate discipline against percentages from 2010 that's cause for concern going forward, considering how far out of line they were with both his career rates and his numbers from one season prior, not to mention the fact that he still had another phenomenal year overall, but taken together they should at least partially explain why Mariano's K/9 fell by more than three strikeouts in 2010.

Be afraid. Be very afraid

To clarify, the title of this post is meant to be read as sarcastically as possible.

Let me be the first to advise certain Yankee fans to take a step back from the ledge. Everything's going to be alright. Between Boston trading for Adrian Gonzalez and signing Carl Crawford, the Yankees missing out on Cliff Lee and Brian Cashman not trading for Zack Greinke, the masses are beginning to get a bit restless. It certainly doesn't help when Joel Sherman authors panic-inducing columns like this, making it sound as though the Yankees -- who still won 95 games in 2010 and basically have the same team intact -- are all but doomed if they don't make a trade for a big-time starter to fill one of the two gaping holes in the rotation.

However, the ridiculous plaints of "Cashman needs to go!" have to stop, right now. The expectations of the fanbase have gotten out of control, and calling for the firing of the general manager because Lee was never going to come to the Yankees to begin with and there was never going to be a fair trade that enabled Greinke to come to the Bronx is borderline absurd. What was Cashman supposed to do? Add an eighth year and another $25 million to the Lee offer? Ship Jesus Montero, Manny Banuelos and Dellin Betances to Kansas City? Every GM in baseball knows the Yankees are desperate for pitching, and as a result, every GM is going to ask for a king's ransom in return for any star pitcher Cashman inquires about. There's a growing sentiment that the Yankees may be valuing their prospects a little too highly, but I'm certain Cashman would have no trouble parting with his top chips if the right trade presented itself.

The aforelinked Sherman piece includes the following passage:

"On a team with a $200 million payroll, Nova and Mitre probably should be the Nos. 6-7 starters; protection against injury, not main pieces.

And exacerbating the situation in the AL East is that though the Yankees have been unable to address their major need, the Red Sox have added Carl Crawford and Adrian Gonzalez, plus Bobby Jenks for bullpen depth.

'Right now, they are very far behind the Red Sox,' an NL official said. 'I thought the Red Sox were more talented than the Yankees last year, but won 89 games because they had so many injuries. I don’t think the Yankees are facing a doomsday scenario. In fact, I think they make the playoffs. But Yankees vs. Red Sox, I don’t think those teams are close right now.'"

I understand the idea that a team with an aging core and $200 million payroll is expected to compete every season, but has anyone stopped to think that perhaps the way the team is currently constructed isn't necessarily ideal? Unfortunately the team has been saddled with some lousy contracts, but just because the payroll is at a certain level it doesn't mean the team should be mortgaging the future to compete in the present.

Am I comfortable going into the 2011 season with a rotation of CC Sabathia-Phil Hughes-A.J. Burnett-Ivan Nova-Sergio Mitre? No, but if Andy Pettitte doesn't come back and that ends up being the case, you know the team will eventually look to improve any which way it can as the season endures. People are acting as if the Yankees have no pitching, but a front three of Sabathia/Hughes/Burnett should be plenty competitive as long as Burnett can get back on track. A back end of Nova and Mitre is obviously less-than-inspiring, but I wouldn't go in expecting an automatic loss every single time either of those pitchers toes the rubber. Maybe even Joba Chamberlain will get another crack at the rotation (and no, the dream will never die). And if Nova and/or Mitre is getting shellacked a month or so into the year, would it kill the Yankees to actually see what they might have in the farm system for once? Perhaps the Yankees take a gamble and bring up one of Andrew Brackman, Betances or Banuelos. And even if one of those pitchers get bombed, as a Yankee fan wouldn't you rather watch a prospect take his lumps than Sergio Mitre?

Additionally, just because the Red Sox went out and filled several glaring holes, it does not mean the Yankees need to respond in kind with their own flashy moves. The Yankee team as currently constructed should still be very competitive, and it seems everyone is forgetting that the Bombers have to face 12 other American League teams as well -- if all 162 games were against Boston then some level of nervousness would be warranted, but ultimately the Yankees need to worry about themselves and not what Theo Epstein is doing.

Sherman goes on to suggest the now-beyond-tired idea of the Yankees trying to acquire Felix Hernandez, but that's just not happening. Neither is Josh Johnson. Nor even Ricky Nolasco, another bandied-about name, now that he's agreed to a contract extension with the Marlins. Sherman ends his piece by more or less implying that the Yankees are in grave peril if they don't pull off a trade for a new member of the rotation, stating "At this moment, the Yankees are trying to project patience as they look for a way to thrive after unexpectedly falling off the Cliff," but this is just blatant fear-mongering at its worse.

I am by no means saying the Yankees should already forfeit the 2011 season, but I do think fans need to recalibrate their expectations on what could be a transition year. Obviously there's a concern that the core is only getting older, and I'm certainly as interested as anyone to see whether Alex Rodriguez and Derek Jeter can bounce back, or if they continue to deteriorate. Another bad season in 2011 for either player will make their 2012 outlooks rather grim, but that's the price you pay when you lock up former superstars until they're 40 years old. I can't think of any other team in baseball that operates this way, and the thinking has always been that the Yankees can afford to do things like this, but the next few seasons could be pretty damning depending on how A-Rod and Jeter perform. Of course, if they can re-approach their 2009 levels of production, then this conversation is moot.

And you know what? I for one wouldn't have a problem with a non-dominant Yankee team in 2011, as that'll help weed out many of the bandwagon fans who can't handle the idea that the Yankees don't have five aces in the rotation. What kind of fan are you if you're ready to panic at the first sign of duress? The whole point of following and supporting a baseball team is that you experience all of the ups and downs that come with it. Yankee fans really haven't had to deal with any downs since the early 1990s, which is basically the longest run of sustained success in baseball. Maybe it's time for the spoiled fanbase to take some lumps, and learn that not even Yankee money can buy everything, and that there are 29 other teams in baseball all competing for the same thing.

Those clamoring for Cashman's head need to take a step back and remember that the team just won a Championship one season ago. Sure, some of the moves he's made hasn't worked out, but name me a GM with a perfect track record. You can't run a baseball team if you're not willing to take the occasional risk, and Cashman's shown that when he feels the payoff is worth it, he'll make certain gambles. Blaming last season on not re-signing Hideki Matsui or Johnny Damon and trading away Austin Jackson and Ian Kennedy is revisionist history at its finest. The Yankees may not have even made the playoffs if Curtis Granderson doesn't rake to a .411 wOBA in September. Not only that, but the Yankees were a mere two wins from reaching the World Series and may have gotten there had they not fallen into a teamwide slump. Which goes to show you that even with a strong team that ran roughshod over the Twins in the first round, not even possessing a top-shelf offense can prevent a lineup from falling asleep.

Yankee fans need to be happy with what they have, namely a team that produced the best offense in baseball in 2010 despite down years from a third of its lineup; a pitching rotation headed by one of the five best pitchers on the planet, along with an exciting youngster who's only going to get better and a veteran who we've all seen dominate and who can't possibly be as bad as he was last season; and a strong bullpen anchored by the greatest closer that ever lived. Not to mention more money than anyone in baseball and the strongest farm system the franchise has had in years.

How quickly everyone forgets that the San Francisco Giants, who had the weakest offensive attack of all eight playoff teams, just won the World Series. A given team simply has to be good enough to get into the postseason, and once there, as we all know the hottest team typically wins out. If Cashman does nothing else significant before the beginning of the season, the Yankees will be fine. And I don't think he's quite done yet, even if the moves he ends up making are on the minor side.

The Yankees as presently constructed are still a playoff-caliber team, something that people seem to be losing sight of in the wake of the Lee saga. And if they don't make the playoffs, so be it. A down year or two will only make the next Championship that much sweeter.

What the Brewers are getting in Zack Greinke

Late Saturday night word broke that the Brewers and Royals had agreed to a deal that would send Zack Greinke to Milwaukee. The news was initially met with skepticism, as it hadn't yet been confirmed by a mainstream media source, but it turned out that Jim Breen of Bernie's Crew did indeed have the goods, leading the blogosphere to erupt in excitement that one of its own managed to break a major offseason story. Given Breen's affiliation with the Milwaukee-Wisconsin Journal Sentinel I'd imagine Breen has a tad more access to information than, say, your average blogger living in his mother's basement, but it's still a nice feather in his cap.

Greinke has of course been linked to the Yankees all offseason, as many expected the team to make a push for the young righthander if they missed out on Cliff Lee, but I personally never expected the Bombers to consummate a trade for the 2009 AL Cy Young Award winner. Regardless of whether you believe Greinke can handle New York or not, the Yankees haven't made a significant trade for a an ace-caliber pitcher in years, and I don't get the sense that Brian Cashman is willing to unload his best trade chips now for someone he could theoretically sign for just money and a draft pick in two years. And make no mistake, the Yankees will be in on the free agent Greinke, who will just be coming off his age 28 season after 2012.

Here's what the Brewers are getting in Zack Greinke. While I've included his 2006 and 2007 for graphical purposes, we can throw those years out with regards to analyzing his overall starting performance, as he only made three appearances in '06, and pitched primarily out of the bullpen in 2007.

Greinke was excellent through the 2008 season, but made the jump to elite status with his unreal 2009 campaign (2.16 ERA in 229.1 innings; 205 ERA+). For whatever reason he took a step back in 2010, posting a decidedly average (in fact, his ERA+ was 100) campaign, but there's no reason to expect the young man to not bounce back to the upper echelon of starting pitchers, especially as he'll finally play on a competitive team for the first time in his career and also get to face a pitcher three times a game or so.

I have to say, though Boston and Philadelphia have been showered in accolades for their offseason moves (and rightly so), I really love what the Milwaukees and Oaklands of the world have done to try to improve their teams.

The Brewers had the second-worst starters' ERA in the National League last season, despite receiving another sterling season from Yovani Gallardo (4.6 fWAR). The next two best fWARs in the rotation came from Chris Narveson, with 1.7 despite putting up a 4.99 ERA in 167.2 innings; and Randy Wolf, who contributed a measly 0.7 fWAR in 215.2 innings, which has to be up there with one of the lowest fWARs for a 200-plus-inning season ever. The Brewers now get to slot Greinke and his 2010 5.2 fWAR in the number-one slot, move Gallardo to second in the rotation, and throw Shaun Marcum (3.5 fWAR) third. That's a 6.3-fWAR upgrade in the first three rotation slots alone!

And as far as the A's go, I think they could surprise a lot of people next season -- despite having the best team ERA in the American League, the offense was wretched, and they've gone ahead and made several important moves to address that weakness. While I don't expect the Rangers to go anywhere, I don't know that they'll necessarily run away with the division in 2011, and the AL West looks like it could be wide open for the taking.

Projecting key Yankees in 2011

We recently compared the Yankees and Red Sox position players as they stack up right now. Unsurprisingly, the Sox came out ahead. Barring the unexpected, the 2011 Red Sox's position players will be somewhat better than the 2011 Yankees' position players. What's lost in this analysis, though, are the poor seasons so many Yankees had last year. Yes, the Red Sox are a better team if the Yankees get 2010 production from Alex Rodriguez, Mark Teixeira and Derek Jeter. However, the Sox are not a better team if the Yankees get 2009 production from those three players.

The Yankees will compete in the AL East right now, and, despite the Red Sox's improvements, have the 2nd-best odds of winning the 2011 World Series on Sportsbook.com. It is entirely possible that they will do even better if some of their key players bounce back from their 2010 seasons. How likely is this?

Baseball-Reference's similarity scores will drive this analysis. Any active player has three scores: a score for players who have put up similar career numbers, a score for players who have put up similar career numbers through the active player's current age season, and individual scores for players who put up similar numbers in each individual season of the active player's career, at that age. For example, Derek Jeter is compared to players whose career totals are similar to his right now, players who were similar through age 36, and players who had similar seasons when they were also 36.

The first score isn't very helpful because it compares players whose careers are finished to those who are still playing. I'm loath to compare Mark Teixeira to someone who only hit 300 career bombs. But the latter two scores can help to understand how a given player may perform in the coming year. This analysis will shed light on the chances many key Yankees bounce back in 2011 using players who had similar seasons at the same age, and players who had similar career numbers at the same point in their careers as the Yankees in question.

One final note on the similarity score: 1000 is a near-perfect match, but a score of 900 doesn't mean the players are 90% similar. The scores are point-driven. The units of measurement are not proportional to percentages.

Derek Jeter | A theme that I've noticed with similarity scores is that Hall of Fame-caliber players, such as the Captain, are unique. They don't compare well to anyone. Jeter compares most closely to Roberto Alomar. Craig Biggio is a distant 2nd. His career to date, however, scores an 869 when compared to Alomar and a 791 to Biggio. We ran a similar exercise for Carl Crawford, Jayson Werth and Cliff Lee earlier, and each compared to players with similarity scores of 920 or above. As any Yankee fan could have told you for the better part of a decade now: They just don't make 'em like the Captain.

If we are going to infer how Jeter will fare over the next few seasons soon-to-be Hall of Famer Alomar is the best player to use. Jeter has compared most closely to him every year since his age 32 season. That's bad. Alomar never played baseball again after his age 36 season, when he posted an OPS+ of 81.

Although he really rates as a different kind of player, Craig Biggio is the better of the two comparisons, in terms of who had more left in the tank after age 36. Biggio played until he was 41, and wasn't half bad along the way. He posted OPS+'s of 96, 104, 104 and 88 from ages 37 to 40. I'd take that productivity from Jeter in a heartbeat. The first three seasons would be an improvement on his 2010.

There is already one major difference between age 36 Derek Jeter and age 36 Roberto Alomar: Jeter got a new contract; Alomar did not. Similarity scores are backward-looking. Alomar's numbers through age 36 are similar to Jeter's, but that doesn't mean they will be moving forward. Alomar became a below-average hitter after his age 33 season and steadily faded away. Derek has been at least average every season of his career until 2010. In the end, the best argument to make in support of Jeter having a bounceback year in 2011 is that his career to date has been so unique. Why rule anything out now? That said, there are few precedents of players like him sustaining quality production much past age 37, which is why his contract negotiations were so contentious.

Mark Teixeira | Unlike Jeter, Tex compares well to many players. To a man, those players aged well. Tex's career has been most similar to date to Carlos Delgado's. This has been true since his age 28 season. This is also a good thing. In his age 31 through 36 seasons, or Tex's remaining years on the Yankees, Delgado put up OPS+'s of 161, 129, 160, 131, 102 and 127. I would take similar production from Tex inside of a New York minute.

Tex also compares favorably to Jeff Bagwell, Fred McGriff, Paul Konerko and Jim Thome, each with scores of 907 or higher. Bags and Thome aged like fine wine, while Konerko and the Crime Dog rated anywhere from average to excellent through age 36. Three of the five players Tex is most similar to were positive bruisers until they were 36 or 37 and the other two had at least one 150 OPS+ season left. Don't be surprised in Tex has an OPS+ around 140 again next year.

Alex Rodriguez | Just like Jeter, no one really compares well to A-Rod. Fortunately for us the ten players who rate as similar to him are all inner circle Hall of Famers. Hank Aaron is tops on the list, but his score is only 769. We can only hope that A-Rod is as good over the next four seasons as The Hammer was from ages 36 to 39. Hank posted OPS+'s of 148, 194, 147 and 177. For the record, Aaron was, you know, really good, and Alex has NEVER had an OPS+ as high as either 194 or 177. Still, when it comes to similar players you can do a lot worse.

The bad news is that the next three players most similar to A-Rod are Mel Ott, Jimmie Foxx, and Frank Robinson. Ott's last season was his age 36 season. Foxx was pretty much done with baseball after he turned 33 (although World War II had something to do with that). Robinson, thankfully, aged more like Aaron.

A-Rod is in a similar boat to Derek Jeter. His career has been so successful, so unlikely to occur, that he doesn't really compare to any other player. His incredible track record of success, more than anything else, is why it is smarter to be on a come back next season than anything else. Comparing favorably to Hank Aaron doesn't hurt either.

Robinson Cano | This is out of curiosity, and not because Robbie needs to bounce back. He's in his prime. Is 2010 his new normal?

Baseball-Reference says that Cano is most similar to Carlos Baerga through his age 27 season. God I hope not. Baerga was already in decline when he turned 27. He also never had a season as strong as Cano's 2010. Robbie's scores are confused a bit due to his awful 2008, when he had an OPS+ of 86.

The next player is none other than Hall-of-Fame Yankee Tony Lazzeri. I'm always hesitant to make comparisons between players who played 70 years apart, but Lazzeri continued to be an excellent offensive second basemen until he retired at age 35. Hall of Fame Red Sox Bobby Doerr is next. The same caveat applies about comapring players from different eras, but of the three his offensive production looks most similar to Cano's, right down to his breakout season at age 26. Although he was out of baseball after his age 33 season, he was a beast every year in the pro's.

More than anything else this suggests that Robbie's erratic past few seasons are confusing the model. He'll either be a Hall of Famer, or out of baseball. Had Cano not bounced back from his 2008 disaster, it was entirely possible that the Yankees would also be searching for a second baseman right now. Fortunately, he had a monster season in 2010. While he doesn't project to be that good again (who would?), it isn't bad when two of the three players you compare best to are in the Hall of Fame.