The LoHud Yankees Blog

Apparently Chien-Ming Wang is expecting a major league contract, and he’s willing to wait for it.

Wang’s agent, Alan Nero, told Ken Rosenthal: “We’re anticipating a major-league offer with a substantial guarantee and substantial upside… We’re so confident with what is going to happen, if we don’t do it until May, we’re OK. Whoever shows the initiative to take a little bit of risk is going to win.”

Floating the idea of a May signing might be a power play by Nero, or it might be indication that Nero doesn’t expect major league offers at this point. Teams are still reviewing medical records, so Wang might not sign for a while. Whether it takes until May, I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

A lot of other Yankees related news and notes floating out there today.

• Add Oakland to the list of possible Johnny Damon destinations, but the A’s apparently have Ben Sheets higher on their list of priorities.

• Our old friend Austin Jackson will go into spring training as a favorite for the Tigers lead-off spot. By comparison, the Yankees had Jackson open last season batting sixth because they didn’t want to put too much pressure on him… in Triple-A.

• Speaking of Detroit, has anyone out there read a negative Curtis Granderson story? He certainly sounds like a good guy in this one. And this one.

• Apparently Kei Igawa is looking to stay in America long term, no matter what happens at the end of his current contract.

• The Rangers have designated Joe Inglett for assignment. He’s a career .293 hitter in the big leagues, where he’s played every position except pitcher, catcher and first base. Not a bad utility candidate if the Yankees were to put in a claim.

Boston Red Sox
2009: Wild card, 95-67
Key additions: RHP John Lackey, SS Marco Scutaro, CF Mike Cameron, 3B Adrian Beltre, RF Jeremy Hermida, INF Bill Hall
Key losses: LF Jason Bay, RHP Takashi Saito, 1B Casey Kotchman, SS Alex Gonzalez, INF Nick Green, OF Rocco Baldelli (still a free agent)
• Like it or not, the Red Sox seem to have gotten better this winter. They haven’t individually replaced Bay’s production in the middle of the lineup, but a full season from Victor Martinez might help make up for that loss. Lackey should be a significant upgrade in the rotation, Scutaro should be a significant upgrade over Green/Gonzalez/Lugo at short and Hermida is a perfectly good replacement for Baldelli off the bench. It’s been written several times that the Red Sox have significantly improved defensively. The list of additions doesn’t include lefty Brian Shouse or swing man Boof Bonser, who add some depth to the pitching staff.

Youth on the way: The Red Sox top prospects – Ryan Westmoreland and Casey Kelly — are still in the lower levels, but outfielders Josh Reddick and Ryan Kalish are close to big league ready. They should be waiting in Triple-A if Boston needs one or both of them. Same with young starters Junichi Tazawa and Michael Bowden, each of whom has some big league time. 1B Lars Anderson remains an interesting young player despite an awful 2009 season in Double-A.
Experience on the slide: David Ortiz finished with 28 home runs last season, but he was awful early in the season. Mike Lowell seems to be falling apart, Jason Varitek has lost his everyday job and Cameron is entering his late 30s. Hideki Okajima remains a solid reliever, but he seems to have gotten a little bit worse year-by-year. Tim Wakefield is well into his 40s, but he also made his first all-star team last year. 
Possible upgrades: Aside from unloading Lowell, there’s no obvious need for the Red Sox at this point. Their 40-man is full and all of their key roster spots are set. A bounce-back year from Ortiz would help, so would some continued development from Clay Buchholz.
• Age and injuries might be an issue with the Red Sox, but they’re no longer counting on Lowell or Varitek, and J.D. Drew made well over 500 plate appearances in three of the past four years. Boston also has six legitimate starters, which eases some concern about the health of the rotation.  

Better than the Yankees: Not by much, but I’d take the Red Sox’ rotation ahead of the Yankees’ rotation. It might get me crushed to say this on a Yankees blog, but I really think Jon Lester is one of the best pitchers in baseball, and Lackey was a strong addition. I think the bottom of the Yankees’ rotation is better, but I give the Red Sox the edge at the top. Boston probably has an edge defensively, but I think it’s a small one.
Worse than the Yankees: By quite a bit, I’d take the Yankees’ offense over the Red Sox’ offense. Boston has more question marks, and I’m not sure the Sox have anyone who comes especially close to Mark Teixeira or Alex Rodriguez.
Yankee connections: Something about a rivalry. I don’t know the specifics, I’m new here. Oh, and Lowell was originally drafted by the Yankees (four hits in 18 at-bats with New York in 1998).
• Even after the Mariners strong offseason, the top two teams in the American League remain the Yankees and Red Sox. Boston brought in a lot of significant pieces this winter and they seem to be better than last year, but on the whole, I’ll stick with the world champs as the team to beat.

Prediction: Another wild card berth into the playoffs, where those top three starters could make things difficult.

As of 3:40, Frankie Piliere is chatting about his Top 100 Prospects list. Check that out if you can. More on the list itself in a moment, but first some Yankees related rumors coming from Piliere…

Rumblings of the Yankees talking trades
Two interesting tweets from Piliere last night. One suggested the Yankees are “exploring (the) trade market” for an outfielder, and the other mentioned Nelson Cruz as a possible target, but said there was “no word if talks even got off the ground.”

Given the wealth of outfielders on the free agent market, most of the recent Yankees chatter has centered on the team signing one last bench player. When Brian Cashman has talked about his plans for the rest of winter, he’s talked about spending money when he’s ready to spend it, and he’s talked about adding a small piece instead of a big piece. Those things suggest free agency, but the trade market could be in play if there’s a match to be made.

That said, Cruz seems to be a tough target. The Rangers could trade him and use David Murphy as an everyday outfielder, but Cruz is coming off a 33-homer season and he’s not even eligible for arbitration yet. It would take some very real talent to get him, and it’s a bit difficult to see the two sides matching up. It would require Cashman to thoroughly pick apart the minor league system — except for Jesus Montero — in one winter, and that doesn’t seem to fit his recent actions.

Top 100 prospects list
This afternoon, Piliere released his Top 100 prospects list, with Montero ranking fifth behind Stephen Strasburg and the outfield trio of Michael Stanton, Desmond Jennings and Jason Heyward. ”(Montero) has a potential 40-homer bat with the offensive upside of Miguel Cabrera,” Piliere wrote.

Manny Banuelos ranked 41st — “upside of a No. 2 starter” – with Austin Romine ranked 45th — “nearly as interesting a prospect (as Montero) — and Zach McAllister ranked 76th. Former Yankees center fielder Austin Jackson ranked 25th.

I talked to Piliere a few times throughout the ranking process, and I know he had Jeremy Bleich in the Top 100 before Aroldis Chapman signed.

“Bleich’s stuff was better this year,” Piliere wrote in an email. “The velocity was up, which of course is excellent. Command doesn’t just go away, but I think there was an adjustment period to his increased velocity. I just think we’re going to see the whole thing come together this year.”

Before thinking about 4,000 hits — or 4,256 hits — how about this for a hits comparison?

After 15 seasons, bulk of the previous season played at age 35:
Derek Jeter: 2,138 games, 2,747 hits, .317/.388/.459
Paul Molitor: 1,856 games, 2,281 hits, .303/.367/.444
162 game average: 208 hits for Jeter, 199 for Molitor

I like the Molitor comparison because Molitor is the only player in the top 10 of career hits who played in the 1990s. He retired after the 1998 season, when he was 42 years old, having spent much of his early years as an infielder before moving to designated hitter in 1991 (when he was entering his mid-30s). His numbers after 15 seasons took a bit of a hit because of the 1981 players strike, and his overall totals took another hit because of the 1994 strike.

For now, Molitor’s hit total seems to be a good benchmark for Jeter.

In his 16th season, Molitor led the American League in hits with 211. He led the league again, three years later, with 225. In his final season, Molitor hit .288. It was his only healthy season, other than his rookie year, when Molitor’s OPS+ was below 100. Sure, he’d moved to designated hitter earlier in his career, but he was never an embarrassment at the plate. He walked more than he struck out that final season.

Bill James’ career projection — which Fred linked to in the comments of today’s Pinch Hitters post — estimates that Jeter will finish with 3,440 career hits (sixth most all time). That’s assuming an additional three and half seasons. The James’ calculation gives Jeter a 5 percent chance of reaching 4,000.

Lucas did a great job this morning examining the possibility of Jeter breaking the all-time hits record – and it’s remarkable that such a discussion is even possible — but there are so many steps and so many questions between here and there. Would Jeter stay healthy enough to play? Would he remain productive enough to get regular at-bats? Would he have any desire to stay in the game into his mid-40s?

Jeter seems to be getting better instead of worse, but the all-time hits record is a long way away, and he can comfortably put himself among the greatest hitters of all time without actually breaking the record.

Next up in the Pinch Hitters series is Lucas Vanderwarker, who crunched some numbers to write about Derek Jeter’s chances of breaking Pete Rose’s all-time hits record.

Lucas grew up in upstate New York, and his grandfather played “some sort of minor league ball for the Yankees” back in the 1930s. ”Being a Yankees fan was never really much of a question,” Lucas wrote. When his family moved to Vermont, Lucas grew up with surrounded primarily by childhood friends who were cheering for the Red Sox.

Now working as a youth pastor near Indiana, PA — which happens to be where one of my closest friends went to college — Lucas has found himself occasionally pulling for the lovable losers of Western Pennsylvania. “I’m first and foremost a Yankees fan,” Lucas wrote. “But I don’t know if it’s my pity or my love for an underdog that has made me a Pirates fan as well. Plus, it’s always nice to get into a major league game for dirt cheap.”

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A friend of mine, one who’s not a Yankees fan, recently said to me, “Derek Jeter has nothing left to prove. He’s done everything.” My thoughts immediately turned to one milestone that belongs in Cooperstown: The all-time hits record. I’m not here to debate whether Pete Rose deserves to be in the HOF. I am here to answer the question, “Does Jeter have any chance of catching Pete Rose?”

I think we all agree that Derek Jeter is already a first ballot Hall of Famer. There’s really nothing more he has to do to achieve baseball immortality. Jeter has more money that he could ever spend. He already has five World Series rings. He’s won Gold Glove and Silver Slugger awards. He’s passed Lou Gehrig for the Yankees’ hits record. The question is, how hungry will Jeter be by the time he is 43? He is a special player who seems to love baseball more than anything, and if he has a chance to accomplish something truly historic, such as getting 4,000 hits, Jeter might have plenty of desire to get it done. Furthermore, if the Yankees are competitive, there is a chance that Jeter will be even more motivated to play, in the hopes of grabbing yet another World Series trophy.

Through 14 full seasons, Jeter stands at 2,747 career hits. He has played in 2,123 career games (not counting the 15 games he played in 1995) for an average of 152 games per season.

Through Rose’s first 14 seasons, he played in 61 more games than Jeter and accumulated only 15 more hits. For the sake of argument, we can pretty much say that Jeter is about in the same position that Rose was at this point of his career.

Rose went on to play 10 more years. He played in 1,378 games in those seasons, slapping 1,494 base knocks to give him a total of 4,256. Simple math tells us that Rose averaged slightly more than 149 hits per season on the back end of his career. Rose played until the age of 45, and his production didn’t begin to drop off significantly until the last four years of his career. The six seasons prior to that, he failed to have more than 170 hits only once (in 1981 when MLB experienced a work stoppage due to a player strike).

Let’s assume Jeter plays 10 more seasons to give him the same amount as Rose. Let’s go a step further and assume two of those seasons will be plagued with injury (let’s be honest, he is getting older). In eight healthy seasons, Jeter would need to average 157 hits to reach 4,000. Should he be healthy every season, he would only need 125 per season.

This leads us to the final number to discuss — 4,256. Again, let’s assume Jeter has eight healthy seasons left. He would need to average 189 hits per season. Should he remain healthy for 10 more years, he would only need 151 per year. With a current average of 196 hits per season, it is statistically possible.

Despite all of the statistics, this argument unfortunately boils down to nothing more than speculation. I’ve learned over the past 14 seasons never to doubt or second guess Derek Jeter. When you do, he’s right there to prove you wrong. When people began to doubt his ability to be an above average defensive shortstop, he worked that much harder to stay sharp and get better. This has nothing to do with, “Is Jeter a better player than Rose?” Pete Rose, while he may have serious character flaws, was one incredible hitter. However, I believe that if Derek Jeter has the desire to continue playing baseball at the age of 43 — the age he would be after eight more seasons – and if the New York Yankees continue to put a championship caliber team on the field, and if he stays healthy, then Derek Jeter will join the 4,000 hit club and eventually surpass Pete “Charlie Hustle” Rose for the most hits ever by a Major League player.

Tampa Bay Rays
2009: Third place, 84-78
Key additions: RHP Rafael Soriano, C Kelly Shoppach
Key losses: 2B Akinori Iwamura, RF Gabe Gross, RHP Chad Bradford, RHP Troy Percival, C Gregg Zaun
• It’s actually a stretch to consider Bradford and Percival key losses after they combined to pitch 21.2 innings last season. Iwamura became expendable after Ben Zobrist’s breakout 2009 season. The Rays traded Iwamura for Jesse Chavez, then used Chavez to land Soriano, who could be a vital piece of the bullpen.

Youth on the way: Isn’t there always youth on the way to Tampa? Right now, the big name is Desmond Jennings, one of the top outfield prospects in baseball. He has speed, some power and he hit well over .300 in both Double-A and Triple-A last season. The Rays also have Jeremy Hellickson and Wade Davis ready to step into a rotation that’s already very young. Jake McGee is another starter full of potential, but he’s working his way back from Tommy John.
Experience on the slide: The obvious name here is Pat Burrell, who hit just .221 with 14 homers and 119 strikeouts last season in his first year as the Rays designated hitter. Otherwise, most of the Rays are in their 20s, with he exception of Carlos Pena — who had 100 RBI last season — and a few members of the bullpen, who are in their early 30s.
Possible upgrades: There aren’t a lot of Tampa Bay rumors out there. A bounce-back year out of Andy Sonnanstine would help, as would some improvement from David Price after his solid but not quite overwhelming rookie year. Right now Gabe Kapler is listed as their starting right fielder, so there’s soome room to improve there, and the free agent market includes multiple options.
• Last year’s Burrell signing seems to have been an awful decision, but the rest of the young lineup is pretty good. Jennings seems like the real deal — he’s a personal favorite, for obvious reasons — and the Rays have a lot of good young pitching, both on the big league staff and knocking on the door from the minors.

Better than the Yankees: If Jennings gets to Tampa this season, the Rays will have an outfield of over-the-top toolsy players in Jennings, Carl Crawford and B.J. Upton (of course, it might not last long if Crawford hits the free agent market). Evan Longoria might be one of the best young players in baseball, but the Yankees have a pretty good third basemen too. Tampa clearly has more speed than the Yankees.
Worse than the Yankees: There’s a lot to like about the youth in the Rays rotation, but it certainly doesn’t seem as strong as the Yankees’ right now. That pretty much goes for the whole pitching staff.
Yankee connections: C Dioner Navarro came up through the Yankees system, and Carlos Pena was once in the organization before he established himself. Crawford has been linked to the Yankees in speculation of 2010 offseason moves.
• Tampa Bay is young and there is very real talent in the organization. That youth could play up and make the Rays contenders, or that youth could go through ups and downs that once again leave Tampa Bay in the middle of the pack.

Prediction: Third place, but a team that could make things interesting. The Rays don’t really have a true ace, and the bulk of the rotation is too young to be counted on as sure-things. Can’t discount them, but they’re not as polished as the Yankees and Red Sox.

Alex Rodriguez joked about his relationship with the press, Omar Minaya laughed through several jokes at his expense and Mariano Rivera was predictably gracious in accepting a pair of honors at last night’s annual awards dinner hosted by the New York chapter of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America.

The night largely belonged to the Yankees, which might have been because of the World Series trophy perched behind the guests of honor. Brian Cashman, Joe Girardi and Bernie Williams were on hand to introduce some of the night’s honorees, which included Rivera, Alex Rodriguez and Derek Jeter (who checked in via a pre-recorded video).

When Rodriguez was given the chapter’s Babe Ruth Award as the postseason MVP, Rodriguez got to the microphone and said, “What’s next, the Good Guy Award?”

Other memorable moments from last night…

• Williams presented the “Willie, Mickey and the Duke Award” for players forever linked in our baseball memories. The award went to the Core Four of Rivera, Jeter, Jorge Posada and Andy Pettitte. Rivera accepted, but it was Williams who spoke at length about his relationship with his four former teammates. Williams laughed about the methodical way Rivera used to make a ham and cheese sandwich, and he stole the show when he told the audience about watching music videos in the Yankees clubhouse, constantly asking Jeter, “Do you know that girl?”

“Sometimes he said he did!” Williams said.

• Rivera also accepted the American League Relief Man award, which he shared with Joe Nathan. And it was Nathan who presented Rivera with the honor. “I try my hardest to follow in this guy’s footsteps,” Nathan said. “He doesn’t make it easy.”

• Jeter was given the Joe DiMaggio ”Toast of the Town” Award, which pretty much speaks for itself. In his video acceptance, Jeter said he was sorry he couldn’t be there, if only because it meant to much to win an award named after DiMaggio.

• From Rivera’s acceptance speech on behalf of the Core Four: “I think that God put us on this team for a reason, and I thank God for that.”

• Joe Mauer was recognized as the American League MVP and as the Sid Mercer-Dick Young Player of the Year. You might remember that Mauer got all but one first-place vote for MVP. “I guess I had a bad weekend out in Seattle,” he said.

• Albert Pujols (NL MVP), Tim Lincecum (NL Cy Young), Chris Coghlan (NL ROY), Zach Greinke (AL Cy Young) and Andrew Bailey (AL ROY) were also in attendance to accept their awards. Lincecum, who is in the middle of contract discussions, thanked his agent. “He’s obviously doing a lot of work for me right now,” he said.

•Mike Scioscia accepted American League Manager of the Year, and used his acceptance speech to give a moving tribute to Nick Adenhart. “He was the kid that any one of us would want for a son,” Scioscia said.

• Great line from a very gracious Don Zimmer, who won the William J. Slocum-Jack Lang Award for long and meritorious service. “When you hit .258 lifetime, you aren’t asked to give too many speeches,” Zimmer said.

A few days ago, we had a guest post about advanced statistics taking away the human side of baseball. Today, we had a guest post about an advanced statistic used to evaluate a postseason decision that was largely based on the human side of baseball (the relationship between a pitcher and his catcher). I’m sure numbers were in play when Joe Girardi chose to start Jose Molina with A.J. Burnett, but that was ultimately a gut decision by the manager.

What I loved about David’s post this morning was that he didn’t try to answer whether Girardi made the right decision, he only looked at just how much of an offensive risk Girardi was taking.

In a follow-up post on his own blog, David added two bits of criticism about his own work: 1. He didn’t allow for the playoffs, in which expected run totals are lower, and thus Posada’s offense might have been more important. 2. The difference in expected wins for Posada and Molina were not based on games in which they specifically caused the win.

To me, that’s a key point, and it’s actually part of what I liked about David’s post. The reality is that a single, pre-selected player is unlikely to make the difference between a win and a loss. David’s numbers suggest that roughly 70 percent of games would end the exact same way, whether Posada or Molina was in the lineup. Occasionally Molina’s offense would actually be an improvement (you have to allow for the fact that Molina could go 4-for-4 on a night Posada would strikeout four times).

Fact is, the Yankees won three out of five Burnett starts in the postseason. He pitched especially well in the three wins, pitched terribly in one of the losses and had a bit of a Jekyll-and-Hyde game in Los Angeles. If Molina had any impact in that brilliant Game 2 of the World Series, then I’d say the decision was well worth it (although, as a general rule, I agree with the go-with-your-best-players theory).

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If you’re interested in more of David’s work, here’s a study he did on payroll efficiency.

This morning’s addition to the Pinch Hitters series comes from David Roher, who used his understanding of numbers and statistics to analyze the postseason decision to occasionally start Jose Molina ahead of Jorge Posada.

David lives in Westchester and is a history major in the middle of his sophomore year at Harvard. He’s a coxswain on varsity lightweight crew and the co-President of the Harvard Sports Analysis Collective, a club on campus. HSAC revamped its blog late last year and provides content for the Huffington Post. A fan of the Bombers since age 6, David wrote that he spends much of his time in Boston getting yelled at from passing cars on account of his Yankees sweatshirt.

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Jorge or José? If you followed the Yanks through last October, that question was probably on your mind. In playoff games that A.J. Burnett started, Joe Girardi sacrificed Posada’s offense for Molina’s defense, particularly his ability to coax a “Good A.J.” performance out of the Jekyll-and-Hyde pitcher.

Part of what made the decision so controversial was that while we had no clue whether Burnett’s better splits with Molina were the real deal, we had a precise knowledge of the offensive impact… right?

Not so much. As I was analyzing the decision on the offensive side, I realized that none of the statistical tools available gave me an adequate answer. This study was the best anyone could do: give a runs-per-plate-appearance estimate. So I decided to create a new stat, Result-Change Probability, which I’m debuting on LoHud today. I don’t want to find whether the risk was worth taking – just precisely how big a risk it was.

When deciding which player should start over an entire season, I ask how many more games the team will win with one player over the other. In a statistical sense, this is usually one number – something like Wins above Replacement. But in reality, it’s two numbers, and two questions: how many games would the team win with Player A that it would have lost with player B? And how many games would the team lose with A that it would have won with B?

My idea is to apply that thinking to a single game, and to the Posada/Molina question in this case. We have to change the questions a bit: what is the probability that Molina’s offensive contribution would lose a Posada win, and vice versa? We still wouldn’t know about Molina’s effect on Burnett, but we’d have a much better idea of what it would take to overcome the offensive loss.

There are a lot of different ways to answer the question, just like there are many different ways to compute the number of wins a player is worth. The calculations for some of these methods are pretty intensive, and I’ll be developing them at our blog over the next few months.

To answer it here, I assumed that we were talking about one or two plate appearances per game, as Molina would be pinch hit for after that point. I created three models based on 2009 totals:

• The Yankees’ winning percentage based on the number of runs they score.
• The Yankees’ chance of scoring a certain number of runs in a game with only Posada, based on work by Baseball Prospectus and Baseball Musings.
• The Yankees’ chance of scoring a certain number of runs in a game with Molina starting.

As a comparison, here are the last two together:

After a couple (hundred million) simulations, here are the probabilities we’re interested in:

Yankees win with either: 52.02%
Yankees win with Posada’s offense, lose with Molina’s: 15.94%
Yankees win with Molina’s offense, lose with Posada’s: 14.19%
Yankees lose with either: 17.85%

That third figure is really bizarre, isn’t it? Molina is indisputably much, much worse on offense, yet his presence on that side of the ball alone sees an extra win roughly one out of seven times. It’s just a product of random chance – sometimes the inferior team wins. To get the final product, Result-Change Probability, subtract the third number from the second: Posada’s offensive presence increases win probability by 1.75%.

Contrast that small number with the potential effect of the starting pitcher (plus Molina’s conventional defensive skills), and Girardi’s decision might make more sense. Even if he thought that Molina had only a tiny effect on Burnett, it may have very well been worth benching Posada.

Greetings from Indianapolis. I had to connect through Detroit to get here today and there was a slew of Jets fans on my flight, including several wearing Yankees hats/shirts/sweatshirts. The AFC Championship game is, obviously, tomorrow at 3 p.m. and – judging by the comments on here and in my email inbox – there is a fair amount of crossover between Yankees and Jets fans.

What I didn’t know, however, was that the crossover also carries over to the Jets themselves. According to this piece, several Jets made a point of attending a number of games during the Yankees World Series run and have been talking about what they saw in the Bronx as inspiration.

One of my earliest sports memories is watching the Mets win the 1986 World Series and, a few months later, enjoying the Giants taking home the Super Bowl trophy, too. Could this be the year for the Yankees and the Jets? Certainly the group that led a “J-E-T-S” chant as we landed is hoping so, but how about you? How many of you pinstriped fans are now wearing the Gang Green too?