Slam Some Clam, X Man

Last night, the surging Yankees acquired Xavier Nady and Damaso Marte from the Pirates in exchange for four prospects (headlined by enigmatic Jose Tabata). Nady is the big name, thanks to a stellar first half performance that made him one of the better right-handed bats available this summer.

Looking at Nady from afar, we see a 29-year-old having a career year, thanks in large part to a .367 batting average on balls in play, and we see a guy who looks to be a classic fluke. However, there are some real underlying reasons why Nady’s numbers are up significantly so far this year, and they can’t be attributed to bloopers falling in.

Nady is making significantly more contact (16.8% K%, 19.7% career) and better contact (26.5% LD%, 20.9% career) so far this year. When you hit the ball hard and more often, a significant increase in batting average naturally follows. Whether Nady can sustain a 26.5% LD% is questionable, but let’s not confuse his early season performance with luck. He really has hit the tar out of the baseball this year.

Will it continue? Marcel doesn’t think so. Going back to Sal Baxamusa’s Quick-N-Dirty Marcel tool to get an updated projection for Nady for the rest of the year, we see that it thinks he’ll hit .285/.344/.469 to finish out the season. Compare that to the .273/.332/.451 mark it expected from him before the year started, and you see that Marcel has factored in a slight improvement, but overall, thinks Nady’s basically the same hitter he was before the year started.

That isn’t to say a guy who can hit .285/.344/.469 doesn’t have value, especially to a team like the Yankees where worrying about how much he’ll get in arbitration this winter isn’t a big concern. But despite the fact that Nady’s earned his .330 batting average so far this year, he’s simply not a true talent .300 hitter. I’m sure the Yankees know this, though, and they’re not expecting Nady to keep hitting like he is now.

The question is, though, will they be happy if he starts hitting like ’07 Nady again? Because Marcel thinks that’s pretty likely.