The New York Yankees Will Score More Runs in 2009
By evaluating the Yankees offense statistically it’s clear they will score more runs in 2009.
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During the 2008 baseball season the NY Yankees scored 789 runs in 5,572 at bats. That works out to a run average of .142. So for every official at bat the Yankees scored a run 14.2% of the time on average. That is slightly above the American League run average for 2008 which was .139 but the Yankees offense had a very disappointing year. Given the changes the Yankees have made so far this off season combined with a few other factors I think it’s easy to say that, barring injuries, the Yankees will score 10% to 20% more runs in 2009. I’ll show you what I mean statistically.
If we break down the Yankees offense player by player using each player’s run average it’s clear the Yankees will score more runs this year. In this list I’ve replaced Jason Giambi with Mark Teixeira, Bobby Abreau with Nick Swisher and Melky Cabrera with Brett Gardner. Gardner’s Career number is what he’s done in the minor leagues in total. (.205 is an excellent number as very few minor leaguers can score runs at that rate.) Melky Cabrera has a career run average of just .128 and for 2008 it was just .101. Even a bad Brett Gardner is a big upgrade over Melky Cabrera.
Career 2008 2009 (estimate)
Damon .175 .171 .170
Jeter .183 .148 .155
A-Rod .204 .204 .204
Teixeira .167 .178 .175
Matsui .164 .128 .145
Posada .153 .107 .140
Swisher .167 .173 .170
Cano .137 .117 .130
Gardner .205 .142 .170
The estimates are fair representations of what can be reasonably expected in 2009 from these players. Some will do better than projected and some worse but none of the projections are far from the players norms and in many cases well under the norms to account for uncertainty.
A key to the Yankees scoring runs this year is to recognize that Xavier Nady is not a good offensive ballplayer and to limit his playing time to a possible platoon role filling in selectively for Swisher, Damon and Matsui against left handed pitching. Nady’s career run average is just .128 which is well below an average major league player.
If we take the projected run averages of the Yankee starting players and average the number out we get .162. If we knock off .005 from that number to account for lesser players filling in at times we arrive at .157. If the Yankees have 5,572 official at bats again in 2009 they should score roughly 875 runs. That’s 86 more runs than they scored in 2008 or 11% more. And if players like Jeter, Matsui, Posada and Cano simply match their career run averages the Yankees will score even more runs.
Barring injuries, the NY Yankees will score more runs in the 2009 baseball season and will likely score at least 10% more runs than they did in the 2008 season.
