Giambi Spits at Outside Pitches

Last year the Yankees struggled in the first half of the season and fought their way back into playoff contention. This year, it is no secret they are underachieving, prompting many analysts to question whether this will be the season in which the Yanks miss the postseason. In an attempt to determine what is going wrong with the team I turned to their team page and became fascinated with the numbers of Jason Giambi.

Believe it or not, Giambi is one of just three Yankees hitters with a WPA of at least 0.15; his 0.17 comes in behind just Hideki Matsui and Bobby Abreu. Additionally, he has a WPA/LI of 0.73, much higher than his WPA.

What will turn many fans off is his lowly .236 batting average. When put into perspective with the rest of his slash line—.236/.384/.516—it becomes clear that the batting average truly does not do his production justice. He has just 29 hits but 8 are doubles and 9 are home runs. Those 9 HR lead the Yankees and his 24 RBIs ranks second to Abreu.

Giambi has increased his BB% from a year ago and decreased his K% from 26 to 15. His LD/GB/FB rates were virtually identical in both 2006 and 2007, coming in at 16.4/30.2/53.4; this year he has BIP rates of 19.4/28.7/51.9. He is hitting more line drives and yet has just a .208 BABIP. We have talked here a lot about expected BABIP and how it works for hitters, so we would expect Giambi to be closer to the .314 range with this percentage of line drives. Now, this isn’t to say he will sustain 19.4% LD all season but that frequency should roughly correlate to the aforementioned BABIP.

Looking at Giambi’s numbers from 2002-2007, the only year in which his BABIP and xBABIP differed significantly was 2003; generally speaking, his BABIPs have been close to what his percentage of line drives would suggest.

What really interested me about Giambi is his shift in swing and contact percentages. He currently leads the league with the lowest percentage of swings at pitches outside the zone. Giambi has swung at just 9.9% of outside pitches, making contact on 51.7% of those swings. Last year he swung at 18.2% of the pitches outside the zone, likely contributing to his higher K%.

He has swung at 67.9% of pitches in the zone, making contact on 88.5% of them; the 88.5% puts him right in the 50th percentile. Overall, these swing and contact shifts have resulted in Giambi making contact four percent more often than a year ago. Giambi might not be the player he was five years ago, steroids or not, but his numbers seemingly absolve him from blame for the Yankees early struggles.