I'll Show You Overpaid...

I'm going to single Joel Sherman out here, but he is just stating a general sentiment that I've heard in several other places the most unequivocally (emphasis mine):

But, at this moment, Peavy has a foot injury and Rios is one of the most overpaid players in the majors. The risk is huge -- and fascinating.

"At this moment"? Alex Rios is making $5.9M in salary in 2009, which pro-rated for 112 games equates to $4.3M, and has already been worth $4.9 to the Blue Jays. He's actually slightly overpaid. And in general, saying a player who makes $6M is "one of the most overpaid players in the majors" is like ripping someone for driving a Jeep for getting bad gas mileage. Is it great? No, but let's look at the supercharged H1 Hummer parked directly next door.

Even if you are talking about Rios' value going forward, you could do a lot worse than paying a guy capable of playing a strong center field with a career OPS of .786 who steals about 20 bases per year an average of $11.75M over the next 5 seasons. For instance you could be giving $18M to Vernon Wells who can't play center and is putting up a .717 OPS to Rios' .744 this year, under the exact same circumstances.

It's not Rios' fault that the Blue Jays left him in right field because Wells and his reprehensible contract were blocking him in center, where he could have created the most value. Wells, by the way has been worth negative $3.6M to the Blue Jays this year according to FanGraphs, while making $18M.

Using this methodology, I've compiled a short, non-comprehensive list of MLB position players who, like Wells and unlike Rios actually are overpaid:

[values are extrapolated to a full season to match annual salaries,

all #'s via Cot's MLB Contracts and FanGraphs are in millions]

The guys with negative value get screwed by the extrapolation, because it multiplies their negative value, but you get the idea. Vernon Wells is the most overpaid position player in the MLB and it's only close because Jose Guillen (who actually apologized for sucking so badly) is even worse. Apparently the stank of his contract is rubbing off on the man to his left on defense.

This isn't to say that the Blue Jays handled Rios' contract well, even if he is currently appropriately valued. As Keith Law points out, they made a mistake with Alex Rios, whether it was overpaying for him initally or giving him away for free yesterday.

Out Of Left Field

(AP/ESPN)

Thus says our muse:

"You're being a little critical. What do you want me to tell you? You want me to tell you I took a bad route to the ball on the second one? OK, I took a bad route. I don't know what to tell you ... I'm not an outfielder. I'm an infielder." (source)

Yes Youk, you did take a bad route. But hey, at least it wasn't an E7 like the first one.

Kevin Youkilis' UZR/150 for LF in 2009: -81.7

Kevin Youkilis' UZR/150 for LF for his career: -21.9

Saturday might be the last time we see the Youkstah in the OF.

Risky Robby

Leading off the bottom of the 5th inning last night, Robinson Cano slashed at the first pitch he saw from Vin Mazzaro, sending it bending down the left field line and into the corner. It hit off the wall, just inside of the line and as the ball bounced directly to Matt Holliday and the cameras panned back to Cano, he was just rounding first, and I knew he was dead to rights at second.

It was part of that innate feel you develop as a fan. If you know who's at the plate, you've got a pretty good sense of how long the ball needs to rattle around before an outfielder gets his hands on it for your guy to get to second or third. You know when a balls rolls up to the wall and Jeter is running, he's thinking about a triple (and so are you). With that clean carom, it would have been a tight play even for Brett Gardner.

Replays showed that Cano paused for a second to see if the ball was fair or foul off the bat (understandable), and started down the first kind of slowly, which would have been fine if he was going to settle for a single. But inexplicably, as he was nearing first base, he broke into a full sprint, only to be gunned down at second about literally two full strides at the least. In the second picture on the right, it looks as if first base coach Mick Kelleher yelling at him to stop. That's probably because Holliday had already released the ball and Cano could have turned back.

As you can see, he was at barely in the fame when the ball arrived to Mark Ellis at 2nd base, and was out by 3 full strides.

This is an isolated incident, and it might seem like I'm dwelling on a baserunning mistake for way too long, but I think lends some insight into his lack of discipline at the plate and in turn his inability to hit with runners in scoring position.

His baserunning mistakes (he's 16 for 34 in SB in his career) say more about his level of risk aversion than his speed on the basepaths. The same can be said for someone with a lack of discipline at the plate. They are willing to swing at pitches that are harder to hit, thus increasing the likelihood of failure.

Cano has the 13th highest swing percentage in the Majors with 51.7%, but makes contact 91.2% of the time, which is 7th highest, where the leaders in that category (Luis Castillo, Marco Scutaro) have some of the lowest swing percentages in the game. Think about how good you have to be at putting the bat on the ball to rank so highly in both of those categories. He makes contact with 79.5% of the pitches he swings at out of the zone.

My contention is that his lack of plate discipline is what is eating away at his production with runners in scoring position and men on base in general. He's at .205 w/RISP this year as opposed to .356 without. For his career, he has a .743 OPS men on base as opposed to .895 with the bags unoccupied, and the former includes 14 intentional walks.

My half-baked theory goes like this: Pitchers are more reluctant to give a batter a pitch to hit with men on base, especially early in the count, but Cano goes up swinging like he always does, and puts the bat on the ball, but makes poorer contact as a result. His BABIP bears this out, as it is .297 with men on as opposed to .338 with the bases empty. We usually cite BABIP as a statistic to explain away fluky performances, but this is over his entire career, 2765 plate appearances. There are no more flukes at that sample size.

It's easy to imagine how good Cano could be if he was just more selective at the plate, but as Bill James has pointed out, it's not easy for a hitter to change his approach:

I think it is easier to learn plate discipline than it is to learn speed or to develop a strong throwing arm—but not much easier. A player who lacks plate discipline at age 18 will usually lack plate discipline at age 30. But not always; some players can adapt well to the challenge of learning to lay off certain pitches.

Robinson Cano is an excellent player as he is. Don't get me wrong. He's probably my favorite Yankees' position player and I love watching him take a ball 6 inches off the plate into the home bullpen as much as the next guy. But he will never be a scary, middle of the order type presence unless he can be more selective and make pitchers throw him balls in the strike zone with runners on base.

First Half Projections - Offense

[The day game yesterday pushed these projections back a bit, but we wanted to take a look at the numbers at the half season mark. Data does not include yesterday's game.

We've done three things here: first we've taken statistics from the first half of the season and done a simple extrapolation for a full season. Below that, we've taken ZIPS (Updated) projections from the awesome FanGraphs right now, and on the bottom, for comparison's sake, we've included what the ZIPS were at the one-third mark of the season. ZIPS, specifically the half season update, are going to be the most reliable, as they take into account what each player has already done this year as well as historical performance to project what the end of season numbers will look like.

Here are the 10 most prominent Yankee hitters. For the extrapolation part, adjustments were made to both Jorge Posada and Alex Rodriguez to account for the time both lost to injury.

You can click on the tables for a larger view]

Since returning from the DL in late May, Posada's hasn't hit quite as well as he had before getting injured. Still, his numbers are great for a catcher, great for a thirty-seven year old, and arguably historic for a thirty-seven year old catcher. For all the gnashing of teeth over his contract and his abilities behind the plate, Jorge Posada is still as valuable as any catcher this side of Joe Mauer. ZIPS predicts his AVG and OBP will hold at their current levels, but expects the SLG to drop off a bit. It'll be interesting to see if the veteran catcher can maintain his current levels of production as the season wears on him.

Despite his recent power outage and RBI drought, Teix is on pace to drive in well over 100 runs and score around 100 as well. ZIPS has picked up on his recent struggles and all of three of his slash stats, HR and RBI projections have declined since the third mark, but his doubles and walks are up.

All three of Cano's predictors are very similar. His ZIPS have hardly changed, while his extrapolations aren't too far away in any category. His career slash stats are .302/.335/.470, which align almost perfectly as well. He might be streaky in the short term, but over time Cano is freakishly consistent.

This has been an interesting season for Alex Rodriguez. Batting slumps have left him with an extremely low AVG by his standards. ZIPS still sees him bouncing back, but his slumps between games 54 and 81 have caused ZIPS to drop their end of season number by 13 points. What's really interesting though is A-Rod's OBP. Despite the low AVG, his current OBP is the fifth highest of his career, and 22 points above his career mark. His walk rate is 5% greater than his previous career high, and his K rate is his career best by 1.7%. His low AVG has taken a toll on his SLG, as both the extrapolation and ZIPS have him well below his career mark of .577. Yet his HR% of 6.2% is a tick above his career average of 6.1%, meaning that his HRs as a percentage of his total hits are way up. As a result his Isolated Power of .279 is slightly above his career mark of .272. His counting stats for both ZIPS and the extrapolation may be a bit high if the Yanks keeping resting him as they say they will.

Like Cano, Jeter's current batting line (.316/.390./.460) is a mirror image of his career line (.316/.387/.458). He already has 6 more stolen bases than he did all of last year, with three fewer caught stealing. Sitting at 99 hits, he's got a good chance for 200 and even though he's hitting leadoff this year, both ZIPS projections have him exceeding his RBI total from last year (69).

ZIPS doesn't buy Brett Gardner's recent improvements at the plate. This is one spot where I'm going to side with the extrapolations over the projections. I think Gardner's recent offensive successes are indicative of his finally figuring out the league. He was a solid on-base guy throughout his minor league career, and it looks like he's learning how to get on in the majors as well. As his OBP improves, so too should his stolen bases.

The Melk Man had a terrible June, hitting only .225/.312/.375 and hasn't yet recovered in July (3H and 1BB in 16PA). His BABIP dropped significantly, from .356 in May to .242 in June, which begins to account for his struggles. With him and Gardner both moving towards the mean, they should be seeing closer to equal playing time this month.

Johnny Damon's career slugging percentage sits is .438, but this year it's .530. ZIPS makes an attempt to reconcile those two, without taking into consideration that the New Yankee Stadium has helped Damon as much as anyone this year. Twelve of his sixteen homers have come in the Bronx and every single one has gone to right field. Last year, 10 of his 17 jacks came on the road.

After a torrid April, Swish had a terrible May and an average June. Average those out and he's pretty close to his career line of .243/.355/.454. All three lines project 28 HRs. His 162 game average? 28. But 11 of his 14 have come on the road, so perhaps he is due to take advantage of the short porch.

Due to interleague play, Matsui's extrapolation on his counting stats are a little bit low. Those aren't great numbers for a DH, but if he can notch 25 homers and slug over .500 that's pretty respectable. It promises to be Matsui's final year in Pinstripes, so hopefully he can end on a good note.