Game 82: Mississippi Half Step

Today is the first day of the second half of the season. The Yankees, despite weathering a seemingly never-ending storm of injuries of varying severity and playing fairly mediocre baseball over the past three weeks or so, still find themselves on top of the standings and on pace for 100 wins.

It's easy to forget because of how dominant last year's team was from the All-Star Break on, but when the midpoint of the '09 season rolled around, the team was only 48-33, two games behind the pace set by the 2010 Yanks. Of course, the '09 squad won an incredible 55 games in the second half and rolled through the playoffs, but it's worth noting that this year's team had put itself in pretty good position despite all that has gone wrong for them so far.

Big injuries to Nick Johnson, Curtis Granderson and Jorge Posada (and countless other bumps and bruises distributed throughout the rest of the roster) have kept the team from being at full strength since early May. Robinson Cano has been a man possessed over these first 81 games, but he's had to pick of the slack left by Mark Teixeira, Alex Rodriguez and Derek Jeter, three of the teams biggest stars who have been producing below their career statlines. Brett Gardner and Nick Swisher have helped fill in some of those gaps as well, but the third starting outfielder, Granderson, has been below league average as a hitter in the 57 games he's appeared in.

Without Alfredo Aceves there to pitch crucial bridge innings since May 8th, the bullpen has been the Yanks' biggest weakness. Joba Chamberlain, David Robertson and Chan Ho Park, the three relievers the Yankees have depended on in late inning, high leverage situations, all have ERA's over 5 and are allowing from 1.46 (Park) to 1.9 (Robertson) baserunners per inning. Luckily for the Bombers, their starting rotation has taken a lot of pressure off of them.

Andy Pettitte, Phil Hughes and CC Sabathia have all collected 10 wins and are pitching admirably and aside from some sustained rough patches, A.J. Burnett and Javy Vazquez have been okay as well.

Vazquez goes tonight in Oakland against Ben Sheets, who the Yankees might have been in the market for, had they not pulled off the deal for Javy. Sheets is in an eight game streak during which he has either gone six or seven innings and given up three or four runs and watched his ERA hover right around the 5.00 mark.

The main difference between the situation the Yankees were in last year and this year at the midway point of the season is that there is a very tight three team race atop the division. The Yanks were a game behind the Red Sox and Tampa was six games back and fading fast at this point, whereas this year, all three teams are within two games of each other.

Like Nick Swisher said, coming into the season, if the Yanks knew they would have the best record in baseball at this point, they would have signed up for it immediately. The Yanks have no reason to be ashamed of the half season that they've left behind and there are reasons to hope that the one upcoming could be a little better.

If all you've got to live for, is what you left behind,
Get yourself a powder charge, and seal that silver mine.
Lost my boots in transit baby, a pile of smokin' leather,
I nailed a retread to my feet and prayed for better weather.

Halfstep, Mississippi uptown, toodeloo,
Hello baby, I'm gone, goodbye,
Half a cup of rock and rye,
Farewell to you old southern skies,
I'm on my way, on my way.

[Song Notes: Naturally, with the Yankees visiting the Bay area, we turn to their native sons, The Grateful Dead. This has long been one of my favorite Dead tunes and was one of the first songs I managed to sing and play at the same time - while I was on Semester at Sea. This two part video is from a show they played on April 26th, 1977 at the Capitol Theater in Passaic, NJ, right in the Yanks' backyard.]

-Lineups-

Yankees: X-Rays were negative but Jorge Posada is day to day after the foul tip that deflected awkwardly off of his glove hand. As a result, Nick Swisher takes his place in the six hole, Derek Jeter slides into the two slot for the first time this year and Brett Garnder makes his third appearance at leadoff.

Brett Gardner LF
Derek Jeter SS
Mark Teixeira 1B
Alex Rodriguez 3B
Robinson Cano 2B
Nick Swisher DH
Curtis Granderson CF
Francisco Cervelli C
Colin Curtis RF

Athletics:

Coco Crisp CF
Daric Barton 1B
Ryan Sweeney RF
Kurt Suzuki C
Jack Cust DH
Kevin Kouzmanoff 3B
Gabe Gross LF
Mark Ellis 2B
Cliff Pennington SS

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.