How the Teixeira Injury Affects the Yankees
As the Yankees pulled up lame in Game 4 of the ALCS, so did their first baseman. The Yankees had blown a bases loaded, one out opportunity in the fourth, but then threatened again in the fifth. Mark Teixeira came to the plate with runners on first and second with none out, but as he has done so frequently this postseason he hit the ball weakly on the ground. As he raced down the line to beat out the double play, it appeared as though he attempted a slide into first. Replay showed that he grabbed his hamstring and collapsed. When Joe Girardi and trainer Steve Donahue helped Teixeira off the field, it was clear that he would not play another game in the 2010 postseason.
While Nick Swisher grabbed his first baseman’s glove and finished the game, Lance Berkman will man the position the rest of the way. This changes the Yankees’ lineup dynamic. Previously they were using Berkman as the DH against right-handed pitchers and Marcus Thames against lefties. With Teixeira out both Berkman and Thames are pressed into full-time duty. That’s not a situation the Yankees can be happy about.
The Yankees signed Thames to provide some pop off the bench against left-handed pitching. Because of an early-season injury to Nick Johnson he got more of an opportunity, and he ran with it. His .365 wOBA was his highest since 2006, and he actually fared better against righties than against lefties. That success has not carried over to the postseason, though, as Thames has gone just 4 for 20 with a homer and two walks.
Berkman came over in a deadline trade with Houston knowing that he’d be relegated to part-time DH duties. While he is a switch hitter in name, he has produced poor numbers against left-handed pitching in the past two years. After a .305 wOBA in 148 PA in 2009 he had a mere .236 wOBA in 92 PA against LHP this season. The Yankees have really gone out of their way to avoid having him face lefties this season, routinely substituting Thames even if they know the opposing manager will bring in a right-handed pitcher from the pen.
Unless Girardi decides that Austin Kearns is ready to stop striking out every other at-bat, it appears as though both Thames and Berkman will play every day. They will likely switch lineup spots depending on the opposing pitcher’s handedness. Against a lefty yesterday Thames hit fifth and Berkman sixth. But against a righty we could see Swisher fifth, Berkman sixth, Jorge Posada seventh, and Thames eighth. Having a .340 career wOBA player in the eighth hole illustrates the depth of the Yankees lineup, even without their No. 3 hitter.
Teixeira’s complete lack of production makes his loss easier to handle. He had an up and down season that ended up being his worst since his rookie campaign. Things did get better during the summer months, as Teixeira produced a .488 wOBA in July and a .411 wOBA in August, but he dipped back down in September and produced a .312 wOBA. It appeared as though he had put that behind him for the postseason, as he went 2 for 5, including a go-ahead two-run homer, in Game 1. For the Twins series he went 4 for 13 with a double and a homer, but once the team go to Texas Teixeira fell back into his April habits. In his four ALCS games he got on base just three times, all via the walk.
In this sense, removing him from the lineup can be a positive for the Yankees. The offense hasn’t exactly been stagnant this series, as they’ve put 47 runners on base in the five games. But every time they get men into scoring position they run into either bad luck or a slumping hitter. Of the 50 at-bats they’ve had with runners in scoring position they’ve managed a hit just eight times — and one of those didn’t score a run. Given Teixeira’s talent we can assume that his futility wouldn’t have lasted forever. But there didn’t appear to be any signs that he was going to turn it around in this series.
The real question facing the Yankees is of whether Berkman can hit left-handed pitching. His two-year downturn against them has come in a small sample, so there’s not much we can tell from the data alone. His ability to transition back into an every day player will play a large part in determining how far the Yankees make it. Even if he produces a day like yesterday, in which he went 0 for 2 with a walk and a sac fly, he can help the team even if he’s not picking up big hits from the right side. If he can’t, then it means Swisher at first and Kearns in the outfield. But then again, if he can’t then it’s not likely the Yankees will make it far enough to make that substitution.
Losing Mark Teixeira will hurt any team, but there is no team more prepared for his absence than the Yankees. They endured his slumps this season, and they’re well positioned to deal with his injury in the postseason. Having both Berkman and Thames in the lineup every day might not seem like an ideal scenario, but it’s a better solution than most teams have available. If Berkman gets hot, it might even mean a positive for the Yankees offense.
Joe also writes about the Yankees at River Ave. Blues.
I’ve gotta say I disagree with you, Joe. It’s not how Tex has done in the small sample size so far, but how he would have done going forward if healthy, and how Thames/Berkman (whoever wouldn’t have played otherwise) will do instead. You can’t project Tex to have continued to do poorly based on his last week’s worth of play.
Also, you’re ignoring the humongous defensive loss. Berkman is a poor defender and Thames is a butcher.
Berkman is not a poor defender. His UZR/150 this season was 6.5, and his career UZR/150 is 3.1. The Fielding Bible’s DRS roughly agrees with this assessment.
He has always been a good defensive first baseman.
Yet Tex hadn’t been healthy for over a month now, with multiple injuries, including a broken toe and problems with his thumb.
You can’t predict anything over a small sample.
The Yankees lineup *may* have one game without Teix, and they may have 3 without him.
We cannot predict with a high level of accuracy how Teix would have done in those 1, 2, or 3 games.
I agree that it does not hurt as much since he has been doing nothing at the plate, and when you lose “nothing” it’s not noticeable. However, most of us know that’s not how it works. Still, it’s something to consider.
I also agree that you lose something defensively with his absence, as most evident in last year’s playoffs.
The deeper, more talented, the team … the less affected they are with injuries. We all know that.
Given Teixeira’s talent we can assume that his futility wouldn’t have lasted forever. But there didn’t appear to be any signs that he was going to turn it around in this series.
There were no signs that he wasn’t going to turn it around either. Slumps and hot streaks don’t have predictive value going forward.
Buster Posey was 1 for 11 in the NLCS going into last nights game, and “there didn’t appear to be any signs that he was going to turn it around in this series.”
This is a defensive loss, but an offensive gain.
Tex was playing on a broken toe and is struggling with a bad thumb. His .000 BA was also in the 3-hole.
Now the 3-hole goes to Robinson Cano, then Yankees most dangerous hitter & MVP so far in the series. This could very well be addition by subtraction, both for this series and the long run (if Cano is moved to the 3-hole next year). Berkman & Thames taking up the bottom of the lineup is not the end of the world. The next two games are Colby Lewis (R) & if necessary Cliff Lee…and I don’t think handedness will make a big difference in that one.
Defensively it’s a bigger hit. Tex makes difficult plays on a routine bases and has fantastic instincts at his position. Berkman is only an adequate 1B at this point in his career & struggles dealing with errant throws from our weak right side of the infield. Still, he’s better than solid RF and occasional reliever Swisher, who lacks 1B reps and looked lost in Game 4. Thames is solely a DH, and his time in RF in G4 was cringe-inducing.
In a vacuum the Yankees probably lose around 1% on their expected win probability by having Teixiera out and Berkman replacing him. You can have two versions of this number if you believe one of these players has an extreme lefty/righty split, but the 1% is your average starting point.
For example if the Yankees had a 50% chance of winning a game with Berkman playing 1B, they would have a 51% chance of winning that same game with Teixeira at 1B.
X = (Difference in True Talent WAR / 150)
I used a 5/3/1 weighting on the last three years to estimate each players “true talent WAR”. Feel free to plug in your own. This is the simplified way for calculating the wowy – and only an exercise.
1 WAR difference: 0.0067
1.4 WAR difference: 0.0093 << what I used
2 WAR difference: 0.0133
3 WAR difference: 0.0200
4 WAR difference: 0.0267
This is just the Teixeira v Berkman at 1B part of the equation. You’d also need to look at the effect of having Thames at DH instead of Berkman. I will leave that part up to someone else. 🙂
vr, Xei
Good post but I have to quibble with one thing.
Discussing Thames you said, “That success has not carried over to the postseason, though, as Thames has gone just 4 for 20 with a homer and two walks. “. The implication was that Thames has had a poor postseason so far.
Projected out over a full season (702 PA) though, that would give him 32 HRs, 64 walks, and a .250 batting average. Compared to Teixeira’s 2010 stats (712 PA, 33 HRS, 93 walks, and a .256 batting average) the difference is small.
I’m not saying Thames has been great, but given the small sample size (22 PA) I don’t think one can fairly conclude that he’s underperforming.
Thanks.
Oops! I should of proof-read my previous comment. Thames is only batting .200 in the post-season, not .250 as I mis-calculated. My bad!
But it kind of re-inforces my point about small sample sizes. When a difference
of a single hit changes a batter’s average 50 points it is simply not practical to
draw any conclusions about how well he is performing. Especially when he is
facing a playoff calibre pitching staff.
The big thing that people are missing here is there are underlying structural concerns (ie injuries) that make the assumption that Tex wouldn’t improve this post-season pretty reasonable.
If one were interested, they could likely look up post-season stats and see just how often a 0-for-10+ AB player has responded with big games versus just keeping with the struggling trend.
Given the quality of pitching that batters face in the post-season, it could very well be that the majority of players that struggle early in a series continue to struggle throughout the series.
small sample size is one part of it, the other part is the fact that we have the information that teix is injured. sss may be the be all and end all in an idealized random sample scenario, but since we have this extra information on his health situation it is not unreasonable to assuem a lower than normal performance going forward, at least in the duration of the injury.
“worst since his rookie campaign” is disingenious at best. Yes, this is his second worst season but still much better than his (still above average) rookie year. Quick table of wOBA and wRC+
Rookie (’03) .345 106
This Year .367 130
Average .388 137
Next worst year (’04) .389 132
So it was closer to his average than his rookie year and by no measure bad. To try to pretend that he had anything remotely approaching a bad year is either trying to justify something that’s not true or just cherry picking stats to have an article to write. It would be just as acuurate to say that Pujols had the third worst year of his career and his worst year since 2002. And just as misleading
The Yankees actually might want to consider playing Kearns in the outfield and Swisher at first tonight. Given Phil Hughes’ flyball tendancies, you’d ideally want your rangiest outfielders out there, and that’s Gardner/Granderson/Kearns, left to right. Swisher’s really not bad in right field, but Kearns is much, much better. You might lose a little bit going from Berkman to Swisher at first, but it’s not going to be magnified the way the right field gain is. And while Thames is a better hitter than Kearns, even against righties, you can leverage his bat better against a lefty situational, offsetting some of the loss, and if Thames takes over for Kearns in right later in the game, it won’t be as harmful given the Yankees’ high-strikeout relief corps.