FANalytics Baseball Blog

I spent a lot of time talking about the Yankee options, but I did not spend a lot of time talking about exactly why those players would help the yankees…. I will try to use a few different metrics to give you a complete picture of how these players improve a team.

I will be using WARP a Baseball Prospectus measure of how many wins above a replacement player a player is worth, defined here.  I will also use Runs Created divided by 10 and Defensive Runs Prevented/10 as a more rudimentary calculation.  It is generally accepted in sabermetric circles that 10 runs equals about 1 win.

So lets start with Mark Teixeira replacing Jason Giambi.

Giambi had a WARP of 4.5 in 2008.
Teixeira had a WARP of 10 in 2008

So Mark Teixeira is worth about 5-6 wins more then Jason Giambi based on WARP.

Jason Giambi had 94 runs created this year which is 9.4 wins offensively.  However, according to John Dewan’s plus/minus system Jason Giambi was -18 plays compared to league average.  A simple, but slightly inaccurate way (though it works for our purposes here) is to divide the plays made above or below expected by 2 to convert it to runs prevented or in this case not prevented.  So Giambi allowed an extra 9 runs this season at first base, which is about 1 win he cost his team defensively compared to a league average defender.  So that puts Giambi at 8.5 wins. It is important to note that these wins are not above replacement but total wins.

Mark Teixeira had 134 runs created this year which is about 13.4 wins offensively.  Tex also was +24 players better then an average defender at 1st base this year which puts him at 12 runs prevented which is slightly better then 1 win gained defensively.  SO thats about 14.6 wins.  So the difference between Teix and Giambi based on this is about 6 wins, and that agrees with WARP.

So this technically means if you swtiched out Giambi with Tex for the 2008 season and they had identical numbers, you could expect the yankees to have about 6 more wins then they did with Giambi.  Thats HUGE.

Ok, I think most Yankee fans will say, you didnt have to show me all this math in order to convince me Teix is a better player then Giambi, but I do think its important to know exactly how much better a player makes the Yankees.

Now Right Fielder Bobby Abreu had a WARP of 5.2 in 2008
I am replacing him with Xavier Nady who had a WARP of 7.9 (6.0 for pitt 1.9 for NYY)… I am going to downgrade Nady to only his NYY numbers which would put him at about a 4.7 WARP.  So Nady is about half a win worse then Abreu based on WARP.

Abreu created 106 runs last year or abotu 10.6 wins offensivley.  Defensivley however he was -24 below average which is 12 runs extra allowed or about 1.2 wins lost, which drops him to 9.4 wins.

Nady (using only his yankee games and estimating 155 games played) would’ve created 90 runs or about 9 wins.  Nady was -4 plays below average in Right Field which is basically a non factor.  So that puts Nady at about .5 a win below Abreu, which in isolation is basically a non-change.

How much did Cano’s bad season cost the Yankees.  Lets compare the 2007 Cano to the 2008 Cano.

2007 Cano had a WARP of 9.5
2008 Cano had a WARP of 6.0

So taht is 3.5 wins.   Lets look at Runs Created and Defense.  2007 Cano had 100 RC which is 10 wins and he was +17 plays above average or about .85 of a win added which brings Cano to just under 11 wins

2008 Cano had 69 RC which is 6.9 wins and was -16 plays below average or costing his team about .8 wins. Which brings his total to about 6.1.  I have to admit BP’s warp for 2008 looks generous, but I think WARP accounts for the position a player plays.

So if you do nothing else to the Yankees, but bring in Mark Teixiera (+5.5 wins) to replace Jason Giambi and replace Abreu with Nady (-0.5) and you hope Cano goes back to 2007 version (+3.5 wins) your at 8.5 wins right there.

Now lets take a look at Yankee CFers last year.

Melky Cabrera had about 400 abs as the Yankee CFer, Damon had the 2nd most ABs as a CF, and then there was Gardner.  Since my plan is to have Damon as an every day LFer I will focus on Gardner and Cabrera.

Melky had a WARP of 1.7 and Gardner had a 0.8 WARP.  And Damon played 34 of his 143 games in CF, so in a rather inaccurate way I will just take 34/143 (23.8%) of his WARP and apply it to CF… which is about 1.5 WARP… So Yankee CFers were at a 4 WARP.  Mike Cameron is a guy I would like to sign as our CFer, he had a WARP of 5.1 in 120 games… if you prorate that to 155 games thats a WARP of 6.6 which is 2.6 wins above Yankee CFers last year.

Anyway you get where I am going here.  By the way CC Sabathia had a WARP last year of 10.9.. comapre that to ponson who had a 0.7 warp.

I could take a look at Posada vs. Yankee catchers last year… so let me line this up for you.

Position    2008 Player    WARP    2009 Player    Warp based on 3 year average with intuitive adjustments
C                Molina              2.7     Posada           8
C    Rodriguez/Posada        0.7     Molina           1.2
1B              Giambi             4.5     Teixeira          8.1
2B                Cano               6       Cano              7.8
3B                Arod              8.9      Arod               11
SS                Jeter               4.4      Jeter               4.4
LF        Damon/Matsui       5.4      Damon           5.4
CF         Melky/Gardner       4       Cameron        6.5
RF           Abreu                 5.2      Nady              4.7
DH       Matsui/Nady         3.8       Matsui           5.1

SP           Mussina             8.6       Sabathia         9.1
SP           Pettitte               5.7       Wang             7.2
SP           Wang                 2.9       Burnett            6
SP           Ponson               1         Pettitte           5.8
SP           Rasner                2         Joba                5
SP    Hughes/Kennedy/etc 2.2
Closer      MO                  10.3      MO                8.3
Setup    Farnsworth          1.6       Veras             2.9
MR        Ramirez               2.3       Ramirez        2.3
MR        Bruney                2.1        Bruney          2.1
MR        Veras                  2.9       Robertson      2
Lefty      Marte                 0.7       Coke              2
Joba       Joba                   4.4

Total                             92.3                            114.9

So as you can see, those moves along with some other assumptions (some good some bad) could result in a 22.6 game improvement.  Now clearly I dont expect hte yankees to win 111 games next year, but these moves would clearly put them right at the front of the AL east again.