Archive for Johnny Damon

The 2011 Rays opened the season with their designated hitter position filled by a Hall of Very Good platoon: Johnny Damon and Manny Ramirez. I don’t need to remind you how many people around here and elsewhere thought the combined pickup was a great idea, and one reason that they came to the Rays so cheap — just $7.25 million combined, just $2 million of which went to Manny — was that their mutual agent Scott Boras negotiated a package deal. Once Manny retired, Johnny Damon picked up nearly all of the slack, winding up with 150 games played — his 16th straight season with at least 140 games played.

But after hearing that the Rays weren’t bringing him back, Damon is right where Manny is: at the back of the breadline. Manny is currently unemployed because he has announced his desire to unretire, as Matt Klaassen wrote Monday. One reason Manny says for his desire to return is that, as he told ESPN, he wants to be a role model:

I want to show people that Manny can change, that he can do the right thing.

Manny will still have to serve a 50-game suspension, and his one-for-17 performance in 2011 won’t inspire much confidence either, so he may have a difficult time convincing another team to take a chance on him. (Much like Barry Bonds in 2008.)
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Following in the footsteps of Brandon Allen and Brandon Belt, it is time to free another minor league first baseman with outstanding numbers. Although he does not have the prospect pedigree of Belt – or even Allen for that matter- Russ Canzler has quietly been one of the most productive minor-league hitters over the past two seasons without a big league at-bat to his credit. In fact, Canzler, who is younger than Allen, has hit .280/.350/.470 in over 2,400 minor-league plate appearances spanning eight seasons.

Last season, Canzler really broke out at the Double-A level as a member of the Chicago Cubs organization. In 2010, he bashed Southern League pitching to the tune of .287/.372/.556 with 53 extra-base hits in slightly more than 400 plate appearances. He left the Cubs as a free agent this offseason and found a job with the Tampa Bay Rays.

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Much of the focus this past week was devoted to Derek Jeter, who homered off of David Price on Saturday to become just the 28th player in major league history to record 3,000 hits. The attention was well deserved, as this was a monumental feat worthy of celebration. When the on-field festivities subsided, however, I couldn’t help but hearken to an earlier article about milestones that buck the Hall of Fame tradition.

No, this has nothing to do with Jeter, who was a first ballot Hall of Famer even if he ended his career at 2,999 like Stan Ross, but rather a current member of the Rays who was in attendance this weekend: Johnny Damon.

Damon has 92 hits this season and is projected to finish with 155, putting him right in line with his totals over the last several seasons. Finishing with 155 hits would also push his career tally to 2,726. Assuming he falls somewhere in the vicinity of that projection, wouldn’t it seem like the 37-year old Damon is a virtual lock for 3,000 hits? He would have to decide to stick around for at least another two seasons, and find an American League team in need of a designated hitter and occasional left fielder, but neither of those caveats seems far-fetched.

Damon has averaged around 150 hits/yr since 2007. With 2,726 entering next season, he would only need to average 137 hits for two seasons, or 91 hits for three seasons. Sure, injuries could derail his pursuit, but I find it difficult to argue that he couldn’t average 90-100 hits from 2012-14, hanging up his cleats as the 30th member of the 3,000 hits club (Alex Rodriguez will get there sooner).

If he gets to that plateau, either his induction into the Hall of Fame becomes automatic, or the milestone itself is cheapened. Given that he would be the 30th person ever to achieve what is considered to be a holy grail of baseball accomplishments, the former scenario seems much more likely than the latter. Yet, Damon has never felt like a Hall of Fame player. He has barely even felt like a superstar. How is it possible that someone with a high probability of getting 3,000+ hits in his career, who won’t have played 25+ seasons like, say, Nolan Ryan or Jamie Moyer, has had such a relatively forgettable career?

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Paul Konerko is sitting at 381 home runs. The 35-year-old has averaged 32 homers per season in his last six, and he looks to be on pace for 30 to 35 more this year. Erring on the conservative side, let’s say he finishes with 30 dingers — 14 more than his current total. He would finish the 2011 season with 395 career home runs. He has two years remaining on his contract, and as long as he continues to hit like this, he should have no problem DH’ing for another few seasons after that.

Is it far-fetched to think that Konerko couldn’t average at least 21 homers from 2012 to 2016? Because with that average, he’d reach the 500-home-run milestone.

Along with achieving 3,000 hits, or winning 300 games as a pitcher, getting to 500 home runs — insert generic PED disclaimer here — tends to trigger automatic election to the Baseball Hall of Fame. But as Chris Cwik covered earlier this week, Konerko is obviously not a Hall-of-Fame player. Even if he joins the 500-home-run club, he’s unlikely to garner much HoF support, which is interesting because it would mean the milestone isn’t what it used to be.

With that idea, let’s discuss other players who might buck the milestone trend. These players would have achieved grand milestones almost under the radar, and would be considered longshots for the hall of fame despite their accomplishments.

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They got it right. Hideki Matsui was unequivocally the right choice for World Series MVP. His raw numbers were incredible. In 15 plate appearances, the Phillies only managed to get Matsui out 5 times. His 8 hits, 2 doubles, and 2 HRs add up to a .761 wOBA.

Of course, context neutral numbers don’t tell the whole story. in the clinching game 6, Matsui’s grand night tallied a .339 WPA, effectively single-handedly winning the game for New York. Matsui also led Yankee hitters in game 2, where Matsui’s go-ahead home run led to a .223 WPA and a 3-1 Yankee victory. Overall, Matsui totalled .639 WPA, good for the best in the series.

As such, he was a no-brainer. The more interesting discussion, in my mind, stems from discussions from Wednesday afternoon, prior to game 6, regarding Chase Utley‘s validity as an MVP candidate. As everybody knows, Utley had an impressive series, tying Reggie Jackson’s record with 5 home runs in a World Series. Thanks to an 0-3 dud in game 6, Utley’s line fell to 6-21 with 3 walks, but all 6 of hits went for extra bases, resulting in a .555 wOBA.

Again, we need to give these numbers context. Utley’s two home run games in games 1 and 5 combined for a .455 WPA and his game 4 (2-4, 2B) was worth another .131. Unfortunately for Utley and the Phillies, that accounts for all of his hits in this World Series. His hitless games in games 2, 3, and 6 (all won by the Yankees) combined for a -.377 WPA, essentially cancelling out games 1 and 4.

Utley’s power performance was impressive. Still, we can’t forget about the bad games. Although Alex Rodriguez and Johnny Damon didn’t have any games, in terms of raw hitting, that compared to Utley. A-Rod, however, put up .269 WPA in game 4 with his game winning double, and Johnny Damon put up .250 in the same game with an RBI single, a hit in the 9th inning, and the legendary double steal that led to the game winning run. Both A-Rod (.330 WPA) and Damon (.421 WPA) had better overall series than Utley, by this measure.

For the Phillies, the best candidate is Cliff Lee. No Phillies hitter consistently put up solid games. Lee more than singlehandedly won game 1 with his memorable complete game (.519 WPA), and pitched well enough in game 5 to lead Philadelphia to their only other series win (.085 WPA). That leaves Lee with .604 WPA for the series, nearly as much as Matsui.

Mariano Rivera, fittingly, finished the game for the Yankees. He did pitch well this series, as he didn’t allow a run, but he only saw one high leverage situation (game 2, +.166 WPA). His contribution was important (total of +.259 WPA), but pales in comparison to Matsui’s and Lee’s, and is still less than Rodriguez and Damon.

The fans got this one right. Hideki Matsui had the game of his MLB career tonight, and he completely deserves this honor.

At 35 years young, Johnny Damon is hitting for more power than he ever has before. While Damon has always been a player with a little pop, his game has long been about hitting for average and making things happen with his legs. His career isolated power is .151, this season he’s up to a robust .237. I think it’s safe to say that there is at least one Yankee that really enjoys his new digs.

It should come as no great surprise that 17 of Damon’s 24 homers have come at the New Yankee Stadium, which in it’s inaugural season has proven to be quite the hitter’s park. With the help of the ever-resourceful site HitTracker, we can further examine Damon’s ‘power spike’.

Talk about a dead pull hitter. The average true distance of a major league homer is 399 feet and the calculated speed of the ball as it left the bat is 103.6 MPH. Damon’s average distance is 380 feet per homer and his speed off the bat is 101.7 MPH. Does that mean a lot of cheapies for Damon? Hit Tracker actually helps us classify homers further, putting all big flies in four self-explanatory different bins: “Just Enoughs”, “Plentys”, “No Doubts” and “Luckys”.

Using those classifications, Damon has had one lucky homer at the New Yankee Stadium, four homers that had just enough on them to leave the yard, eight homers that were out by plenty and four no-doubters. The average distance on the no-doubter and ‘plenty’ homers was 378 feet; not tape measure shots by any stretch, but they had plenty enough on them to give some Yankee fan sitting in some overpriced right field seats a souvenir.

The Yankees currently have nine players with double-digit homeruns, and it’s conceivable that they could have eight players with 20 homers or more this season, making them the first team do ever accomplish such a feat. While the Yankee lineup very, very good, when you look up down the lineup, it doesn’t quite strike you as Murderer’s Row. We’ve talked about the “Coors Effect” in years gone by. I don’t think the New Yankee Stadium is quite that extreme, but it’ll be interesting to see if the park continues to play this way over the next few seasons.