Yankees Now the AL East Favorite
The New York Yankees haven’t been to the playoffs since 2012. In itself that’s not all that noteworthy: a two-year playoff drought when the team won 84 and 85 games over the previous two years seems more like bad luck than fundamental organizational error. Over the last two seasons, however, more teams have made the playoffs than haven’t, and the Yankees are in the minority despite their $200 million payrolls. After first planning to cut salaries and then abandoning that plan following a disappointing 2013 season, the Yankees’ spending spree couldn’t quite push them to the playoffs last year. Surprisingly, though, it’s the same collection of injury-prone, aging players from last year who have led to the club’s success over the first two months of the 2015 season.
In 2014, newcomer Jacoby Ellsbury played well, but Brian McCann disappointed on offense, and Carlos Beltran never got things going. Injuries to Michael Pineda, CC Sabathia and Masahiro Tanaka — plus the complete absence of Alex Rodriguez, a compromised Mark Teixeira, and a disappointing farewell for Derek Jeter — meant a second straight season without the playoffs. Hiroki Kuroda played well, but he didn’t return for 2015. During the offseason, the Yankees did more tinkering than make wholesale changes. They brought in Didi Gregorius to play shortstop, retained trade-acquisition Chase Headley, and signed Andrew Miller to replace the departed David Robertson. The Yankees current record of 28-25 is only one game better than their expected winning percentage at the start of the season, but their playoff odds have increased immensely, as the following graph illustrates.
AL East, what happened to you?!
FULL PLAYOFF ODDS: http://t.co/NTONFScho1 pic.twitter.com/TUOSlzmZEx
— FanGraphs Baseball (@fangraphs) May 31, 2015
The graph below shows the difference for all teams since the start of the season.
Among the biggest positive differences, the Yankees are actually the most surprising based on record. Houston, Minnesota, Kansas City, and St. Louis are a combined 48 games over .500 and only the Cardinals were seen as favorites to make the playoffs when the season began. The Yankees don’t fit quite the same mold. With a one-in-three shot to make the playoffs before the season began, they had twice the odds of the AL Central teams, and unlike the other teams, the Yankees sit just three games over .500.
Perhaps the biggest boost to the Yankees’ playoff fortune is due to the struggles of the Red Sox. As the AL East graph above shows, the Red Sox were big favorites heading into the season, but have given the rest of the division a big start, going 23-29 to begin their 2015 campaign. However, the change is not solely due to the Red Sox’ reversal. Jeff Sullivan wrote a week ago about the biggest changes in projected winning percentage from the start of the season to the projected winning percentage over the rest of the season. At the time, the Yankees had taken the biggest leap forward. One week later, the Yankees are still in front.
For the projected winning percentage to change, either the player composition needs to change or the view of the player needs to have changed. For the Yankees offense, a little bit of both has occurred. Here are the projected wOBAs for all Yankees projected to take at least five percent of the team’s plate appearances. PRE denotes preseason; ROS, rest-of-season.
| Proj. % of NYY PA | PRE Proj wOBA | ROS Proj. wOBA | Change | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alex Rodriguez | 6.7% | .310 | .327 | .017 |
| Mark Teixeira | 7.9% | .327 | .342 | .015 |
| Jacoby Ellsbury | 9.5% | .332 | .333 | .001 |
| Brett Gardner | 10.1% | .325 | .326 | .001 |
| Brian McCann | 8.3% | .330 | .327 | -.003 |
| Chris Young | 7.5% | .312 | .308 | -.004 |
| Garrett Jones | 7.0% | .328 | .323 | -.005 |
| Chase Headley | 10.1% | .336 | .329 | -.007 |
| Stephen Drew | 7.9% | .289 | .281 | -.008 |
| Carlos Beltran | 7.4% | .329 | .321 | -.008 |
| Didi Gregorius | 7.3% | .296 | .288 | -.008 |
Mark Teixeira has played extremely well so far this year, what appears to be improved health more than compensating for his age. The other big difference is Alex Rodriguez, projection systems having perhaps had difficulty accounting both for his suspension year and advancing age. For the most part, the changes have been minimal for the rest of the team, although there are more positive than negative numbers. That is where the composition of the team comes in. Including the wOBA difference from above, the chart below shows the percentage change in plate appearances of the team total projected going forward.
| wOBA Change | PRE Proj% of Team PA | ROS Proj% of Team PA | Change in % (Points) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alex Rodriguez | 0.017 | 6.7% | 10.2% | 3.5% |
| Mark Teixeira | 0.015 | 7.9% | 9.4% | 1.6% |
| Jacoby Ellsbury | 0.001 | 9.5% | 9.9% | 0.3% |
| Brett Gardner | 0.001 | 10.1% | 9.8% | -0.3% |
| Brian McCann | -0.003 | 8.3% | 7.5% | -0.8% |
| Chris Young | -0.004 | 7.5% | 6.5% | -1.0% |
| Garrett Jones | -0.005 | 7.0% | 3.4% | -3.6% |
| Chase Headley | -0.007 | 10.1% | 10.1% | 0.0% |
| Stephen Drew | -0.008 | 7.9% | 7.9% | 0.0% |
| Carlos Beltran | -0.008 | 7.4% | 7.7% | 0.3% |
| Didi Gregorius | -0.008 | 7.3% | 8.4% | 1.1% |
The three biggest changes are taking away plate appearances from Garret Jones, whose projection has gone down, and increasing the plate appearances for Alex Rodriguez and Mark Teixeira, whose projections have improved. The Yankees’ fortunes have changed because Rodriguez and Teixeira have helped allay concerns about their fitness moving forward. While the team is still dependent on the health of those players, making the projections (like the team itself) somewhat fragile, if the team stays healthy, the offense will be better than we thought at the beginning of the season.
We can repeat the same exercise in a simpler format for the pitchers. Like with Teixeira and Rodriguez, Michael Pineda was not expected to do well this season after multiple injury-filled seasons. Pineda has been fantastic, though, having already surpassed his preseason projected WAR one-third of the way into the season. The graph below shows the preseason WAR projections (PRE) for major contributors, the rest-of-season WAR projection prorated (PRO) over a full season, the difference between the two, as well as that difference over the final two-thirds of the season.
| PRE WAR | PRO WAR | Difference | ROS Difference | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Andrew Miller | 1.4 | 2 | 0.6 | 0.4 |
| Dellin Betances | 1.6 | 2 | 0.4 | 0.3 |
| Masahiro Tanaka | 2.9 | 3.6 | 0.7 | 0.5 |
| Michael Pineda | 2.1 | 3.8 | 1.7 | 1.1 |
| Adam Warren | 1.7 | 1.7 | 0.0 | |
| CC Sabathia | 2.2 | 2.7 | 0.5 | 0.3 |
| Nathan Eovaldi | 1.3 | 1.7 | 0.4 | 0.3 |
The performance and health of the Yankees pitchers amounts to a three-win difference over the course of the rest of the season. Andrew Miller and Dellin Betances have both been fantastic thus far while the rest of the rotation after Pineda figures to be slightly better than projected. Masahiro Tanaka is a bit of a wild card for the Yankees as he pitched well for a brief time in April and is set to come off the disabled list today. If he can remain healthy and meet or exceed his projection, the Yankees rotation will be in very good shape. If he can’t do those things, though — and if Ivan Nova’s rehabilitation assignment fails to produce good results — the starting staff could endure some struggles.
For close to a decade, the Yankees have built their team around veteran stars. As those stars have aged and the reinforcements have been typically older and injury-prone as well, the Yankees have been unable to return to their days as a 90-win juggernaut. This season, the Yankees are still unlikely to win 90 games, but a combination of good health and good production from previously injured players has helped put a better team on the field than seemed otherwise likely. The Yankees, like most contending teams, will be dependent on the health of their players moving forward, but in the middling AL East, New York looks to be in the best position to capitalize on the Red Sox’ slow start to the season.
Craig Edwards can be found on twitter @craigjedwards.
Note that on opening day, fangraphs’ own depth charts projected the yanks to earn the most WAR in the division this year.
So by one of fangraphs’ most used team metrics, the yanks were actually always the favorites.
Where do you see that?
gone now. don’t think they store records of daily depth charts, but on opening day i promise you the yanks had the top spot in the division.
This link has the Red Sox on top on opening day: http://www.fangraphs.com/coolstandings.aspx?type=2&lg=div&date=2015-04-05
yep.
i’m talking about the depth chart team war projections.
http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/2015-positional-power-rankings-wrap-up/
yup.
the numbers they used in the weeks they made those rankings were already out of date compared to the daily updated depth chart page.
Reviewing those lists, I would guess that the reason the red sox war in those rankings was higher than on the depth chart page on opening day is because the rankings still included Christian Vazquez’s (aggressive) war projection, while that had to be removed from the depth chart page. That was probably worth the half a win to bring them down under the yanks on opening day.
Yanks are super dependant on home runs. I bet they finish second to Orioles again and about 2 or 3 games behind Texas and Detroit for the wild card.
home runs suck!
Texas?
(!)
Orioles?
(!)
Yes, because, as everyone knows, relying on home runs means your pitching and defense are irrelevant.
Interesting that the Red Sox are still even 2nd in playoff % in the division
They’ll finish last, we’ll all start calling them 2016 World Series favorites and do it all over again
Interesting and complete nonsense. Toronto has a better run differential than all of them despite some injury problems – as that is a stronger indicator of future success I fail to see why Boston are twice as likely to make the playoffs.
The jays have been unlucky, the Red Sox just bad
It’s a case of over reliance on a model and thinking that the model is reality – rather than just a way of interpreting it. Red Sox underperforming relative to the model, Jays overperforming relative to the model. Therefore, things must return to what the model predicts (the ole regression to the mean) even though the mean is set via the model. A model is better than no model- but once again (trying to use the word as many times as possible) the model isn’t reality.
The Yanks are a good example that at the extremes the systems don’t perform well. Take a generic age regression factor and apply it to the Yanks and they suck every year. However they over perform. Apply run differential and see that they should have a worse record, but it doesn’t account well for wins being binary events not fluid run differentials. Teams behave differently on games they are likely to win than not. Use better relievers, different DH/Platoons. A loss by 20 runs is no different than a loss by one- but according to run differential they are very different.
Once again- over reliance on the model.
Rant complete. Thanks for listening. I am going to take my Prozac and Whiskey now.
I’m not sure it’s really over-reliance on the model that you have a problem with – you just seem to be arguing for a differently weighted model.
The Yankees are right around where you would expect them to be. This is really a story about the Red Sox having been overrated. Personally, I have a hard time seeing the Red Sox as anything other than a club that needs a lot of good luck to be successful. They basically needed none of the starting pitchers to under perform, and good performances out of Bogaerts, Betts, and whoever played catcher. They also needed the daft idea of sticking Hanley in LF to work out (Cherington seems to take literally the FanGraphs WAR positional adjustments). To me, this was a team with a lot of uncertainty.
Exactly. While talented the red sox were a jigsaw puzzle full of gambles to make things fit. Creating a glass cannon. Powerful and formidable but fragile. Also prijection system and people underestimated how vulnerable to decline guys like napoli and victorino were.
hard to argue otherwise. here’s what the red sox players have actually done thru 2014 and 2015, with names removed for clarity:
Starter wRC+
128
122
118
108
107
105
104
93
86
Bench
103
93
89
71
Extra: 95, 44, 42, 3
Starter FIP-
98
116
122
123
162
Extra: 71, 135, 141
Bullpen:
58
64
77
93
134
137
164
Extra: 45, 70, 93
And it’s one of the oldest rosters in mlb, with middling defensive talent.
It’s hard to see how that there is a good team. The projections have to be weighing stuff from 2+ seasons ago pretty heavily to still see them that way.
Offhand I would expect the Jays to look pretty similar – pretty good hitting, pretty crap rotation.
well see that’s the thing, people talk about the red sox offense as a top offense, but they don’t compare to what the jays have done the last 2 seasons:
14-15 Jays
Starter wRC+
154
138
137
137
132
116
112
97
92
Bench
96
94
92
85
Extra: 80, 79, 78, 75
and the pitching looks better too:
Starter FIP- (Stroman’S 85 not included)
95
96
105
118
128
Extra: 84, 101, 144
Bullpen
28
66
68
69
90
94
100
Extra: 44, 68
Meanwhile, over in Toronto, they continue to try and set some sort of MLB record for worst Pythagorean comparison, or most 1 run losses, or some other similar thing.
MLBs 5th best run differential (2nd in AL!)
MLBs 25th best record
If the AL East standings used BaseRuns expected W-L, the Jays would be a half-game behind the Yankees and Rays for 1st place.
And the Jays would also be a half-game out of the second wild card spot. The first wild-card spot would go to….wait for it…the A’s.
http://www.fangraphs.com/depthcharts.aspx?position=BaseRuns
I believe the record they’re going for is most consecutive seasons without playoffs
I don’t really get the statement about it being surprising that the same group of players has led to their “success” this year. The Yankees haven’t been more successful this year, just their competition has been even worse than they’ve been. Their current winning % is pretty much identical to where it’s been the past 2 years.
Fascinating, really.
NYY: 2015 .537w%, 2014 .519w%, 2013 .526w%, 2012 .586w%
BOS: 2015 .444w%, 2014 .438w%, 2013 .599w%, 2012 .426w%
Yet fangraphs is shocked by the 2015 numbers. They can’t explain them.
Even though the Yanks had what IMO was a better offseason, too:
NYY:
IN: Rodriguez, Headley, Miller, Young, Gregorius (Pineda/Sabathia)
OUT: Kuroda, Jeter, Robertson, Suzuki
BOS:
IN: Porcello, Miley, Masterson, Kelly, Ogando, Ramirez, Sandoval, Hanigan
OUT: Lester, Lackey, Peavy, DeLaRosa, Miller, Badenhop, Cespedes, Gomes, Pierzynski, Middlebrooks
I’m not sure you understand the aging curve if you expected the Yankees to perform this way. If you extrapolate their BaseRuns record over 162 games, you get a 89.5 win team. Not quite elite but definitely about 6-8 wins better than they projected before the season, and 5.5 wins more than they had last year.
Expecting Pineda and Teixiera to be healthy, Ellsbury and Gardner’s young man skills to age well, and Rodriguez and Teixiera not to be old would have been a mistake. And yet here we are, and all those things have happened because YCPB.
And I say that as a Yankee fan. Even just extrapolating our real record you get 87 wins. This season so far has definitely been exceeding expectations on the whole, even if some individual players are underperforming (Headley, Didi, Drew, Ellsbury’s health)
The Red Sox are every bit as old as the Yanks.
DH Rodriguez 39 — RP Uehara 40
OF Beltran 38 —– DH Ortiz 39
RP Capuano 36 —– RP Breslow 34
1B Teixeira 35 —- C Hanigan 34
UT Jones 34 ——- RF Victorino 34
SP Sabathia 34 —- 1B Napoli 33
2B Drew 32 ——– OF Nava 32
C McCann 31 ——- 2B Pedroia 31
LF Gardner 31 —– LF Ramirez 31
3B Headley 31 —– RP Mujica 31
RF Young 31 ——- RP Ogando 31
CF Ellsbury 31 —- SP Buchholz 30
RP Miller 30 —— SP Masterson 30
RP Carpenter 29 — RP Varvaro 30
RP Rogers 29 —— RP Wright 30
RP Warren 29 —— UT Craig 30
SP Nova 28 ——– SP Miley 28
RP Betances 27 —- RP Tazawa 29
SP Tanaka 26 —— 3B Sandoval 28
SP Pineda 26 —— SP Kelly 27
SS Gregorius 25 — IF Holt 27
SP Eovaldi 25 —– SP Porcello 26
IF Pirela 25 —— C Vazquez 24
C Murphy 24 ——- CF Betts 22
RP Shreve 24 —— SS Bogaerts 22
Your point? The Red Sox hitters were ageing from a much higher level of production overall, and none of their players older than 30 (except maybe Pedroia a little bit) are speed-and-defense types like Gardner and Jacoby.
So yeah, just looking at the raw ages doesn’t tell the story. Projecting the Yankees for any more than 82-84 wins required a lot of unlikely things to happen.
I don’t understand why you would have thought that it was written in stone that old, injured Teix and A-Rod would just return to health and Gardner and Jacoby would just buck the ageing trends and get better at 31 years old. And that on the other side Ortiz, Hanley, Betts, Panda, and Napoli would not just decline but crater to replacement level and that their pitching would sink right through mediocre to all-time awful levels.
2 things:
1. I think you may be taking aging curves too literally. It is not a surprise when a 31yr old bounces back from a down year. 31 is not old.
2. I think you might be looking at it a bit one sided. The Yanks have had plenty of underperformers to balance out the overperformers.
Using the preseason depth chart projections (unfortunately has to be wOBA instead of wRC+):
A.Rodriguez .310 — .378 (+.068)
M.Teixeira .327 — .390 (+.063)
J.Ellsbury .332 — .355 (+.023)
B.Gardner .325 —- .338 (+.013)
B.McCann .330 —– .330 (.000)
C.Headley .336 —- .309 (-.027)
D.Gregorius .296 — .268 (-.028)
C.Beltran .329 —- .291 (-.038)
S.Drew .289 ——- .239 (-.050)
G.Jones .328 —— .323 (-.005)
C.Young .312 —— .303 (-.009)
J.Pirela .297 —– .220 (-.077)
J.Murphy .291 —– .247 (-.044)
G.Petit .274 —— .229 (-.045)
M.Tanaka 3.40 —– 2.76 (-0.64)
M.Pineda 3.74 —– 3.33 (-0.41)
A.Warren 3.81 —– 3.75 (-0.06)
N.Eovaldi 4.37 —- 4.40 (+0.03)
C.Sabathia 4.15 — 5.45 (+1.30)
C.Capuano 4.36 —- 6.23 (+1.87)
D.Betances 2.63 — 0.00 (-2.63)
C.Shreve 3.78 —– 2.38 (-1.40)
A.Miller 2.59 —– 1.08 (-1.51)
C.Whitley 4.43 —- 4.19 (-0.24)
C.Martin 3.78 —– 3.55 (-0.23)
E.Rogers 4.44 —– 4.94 (+0.50)
J.Wilson 3.95 —– 4.58 (+0.63)
D.Carpenter 3.58 — 4.82 (+1.24)
It’s hardly been a teamwide overachievement. Some old guys have done well, some have crashed. Some young guys have done well, some have crashed.
Aging curves only mean so much. The Yanks are only a year older than they were last year – performing similarly as last year shouldn’t be a surprise.
I didn’t say it was a teamwide overachievement; I said on aggregate the team was overachieving despite some poor performances, mostly because Ellsbury, Gardner, A-Rod, Teix, and Pineda were doing so well. Your numbers clearly show that I was accurate.
I assure you that I’m not taking ageing curves too literally when I say that it’s generally unlikely that speed-and-defense players get better at age-31. OP was basically saying that since the Yankees won 84 last year they should win at least 84 this year, which is demonstrably false.
That Gardner and Ellsbury exceeded their projections is not a huge surprise because those projections already took age into account, and we know that they aren’t going to be precise at the individual player level.
As for the Sox being the suck this year, as Yankees fans we should probably recognize that team as being a close approximation of the mid-2000s Yankees teams that were always pretty successful. It wouldn’t have been reasonable to project that any of those teams would basically collapse into roster-wide replacement level performance (seriously, their whole position player roster has 3.2 WAR, which is almost exactly 1 WAR/150 per player, and their pitching has been worse than that.).
I don’t see how I’m being one sided at all here.
I didn’t even remark on the fact that Yankees were a 77 win team by Pythag last year (I don’t have the BaseRuns standings handy), so that needed to be the starting point for any pre-season projections. Adding in regression from age, but adding a healthier Teix, A-Rod, McCann, and Pineda, and a full season of Headley and Miller but subtracting Robertson and Kuroda gets you to the 82-84 wins I think was reasonable for a pre-season projection.
That’s not to say that 86-90 wins, or even 90+ is impossible, but a projection system to spit out those numbers as a mean projection before the season would have been lunacy.
I still believe that the Yanks will get hit by the injury bug this season, but so far their improved defense, bullpen and unexpectedly good production from old foagies Texeira and Rodriguez has been important.
Obviously we’re in Fangraphs world where the last place team last season’s poor play this year is considered a surprise, and last year’s first place team’s poor play this year is shrugged at, but I would think that injuries to several Orioles key players (Schoop, Hardy, Wieters) might be a factor. That and the poor play of Pearce and Tillman.
Tanaka looking phenomenal today. Results have been great, but the stuff looks spectacular. A healthy Tanaka makes the Yankees much better than they were yesterday.
The only reason they’re the “favorites” is because of the ludicrous amount of injuries to the Rays. A healthy Tampa Bay team is the best team in the AL East this season.
Replace the R with a J and I agree with this
100% Correct, on paper the Rays are a last place team, and the Jays should be at least a wild card team this season.
Don’t think it’s been all that much more than the rest of the division really.
Not including all the fringy pen arms or the AAAA borderline bench hitters…..
TB: 1. SP A.Cobb (9wks) 2. C J.Jaso (9wks) 3. SP M.Moore (9wks) 4. SP D.Smyly (7wks) 5. RP J.McGee (6wks) 6. LF D.Jennings (6wks) 7. 1B J.Loney (4wks)
TOR: 1. SP M.Stroman (9wks) 2. LF M.Saunders (8wks) 3. SS J.Reyes (5wks) 4. 2B D.Travis (3wks) 5. C D.Navarro (6wks) 6. IF M.Izturis (9wks) (7. J.Bautista (No DL, but forced to DH for 4wks)
BAL: 1. C M.Wieters (9wks) 2. 2B J.Schoop (8wks) 3. SS J.Hardy (5wks) 4. K.Gausman (4wks) 5. 2B R.Flaherty (5wks) 6. SS E.Cabrera (2wks)
NY: 1. SP M.Tanaka (6wks) 2. SP I.Nova (9wks) 3. SP C.Capuano (7weeks) 4. CF J.Ellsbury (3wks) 5. SP C.Whitley (3wks)
BOS: 1. C C.Vazquez (9wks) 2. C R.Hanigan (5wks) 3. RF S.Victorino (5wks) 4. UT D.Nava (1wks)
Shorter version: “Wow, were our preseason projections wrong.”
No, the projections were exactly right. It is just that the games have been wrong.
“For the most part, the changes have been minimal for the rest of the team, although there are more positive than negative numbers.”
I don’t understand. The accompanying chart of wOBA change lists 4 positive numbers and 7 negative numbers, and the sum, weighted or otherwise, is negative.
I was about to post a comment about Joe Kelly, but now I can’t remember if I’m real everdiso or fake everdiso. Oh the humanity!
You’re the real one.
missed you guys.
Hey, where are the white women at?
assuming injuries don’t cripple their older hitters, sure they’re number one right now.
People are mis-reading the article. Yanks have played about as expected per pre-season projections. What has changed is their likelihood of making the playoffs mostly due to poor performances from the Sox, some bad luck/bad performances from the Jays and assorted injuries to the Rays (Cobb, Smyly). Frankly, I’m surprised the Rays are doing so well with those two out and the performance they’ve gotten from Asdrubel.