Sweeny Says: Looking At The Yankees' Lineup

Sweeny Murti
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Here are the Yankee lineups from the last two nights:

The Yankees have resisted using Gardner, their on-base percentage leader last year, as their everyday leadoff hitter. But they are toying with the idea for certain, and used this alternative look to their batting order last night.

"Just a little different look just to see what it looks like," Joe Girardi said.

So as Girardi tinkers, what exactly is he looking for?

"You look at the consistency of your lineup, you look at how easy it is to bring up situational guys to face your guys. You look at how hitters work together, if it changes a guy's approach or not."

"With Gardy leading off," Girardi added, "he gets on base a lot, takes a lot of pitches as well. We'll see how it works out. I mean, Jete and Gardy hit together all the time—all but the first time through the lineup, so for them it shouldn't really be any different. But Swish has done a great job in the two-hole, and we're not sure we want to upset that. So its just some different things to look at and (spring training) is the time to do it."

It appears as if Gardner has finally proven to the Yankees he can be an everyday player. Now he will have the chance to show that he's worth the extra at-bats he'll get at the top of the order rather than the bottom. "He puts pressure on the pitcher, and a lot of times pressure leads to mistakes," Girardi said. "And you get to the guys in the middle of the order and those mistakes become bigger mistakes. That's what we want our hitters to be able to do."

There are a lot of managers that would love to have Girardi's problem right now. He has a lot of talented hitters, and no matter which way he stacks them, he still has Teixeira, A-Rod, and Cano in the middle of his Murderer's Row (that, by the way, is not something Girardi has thought of shifting). But Girardi knows what the ultimate objective is: "We have a lot of guys in our lineup that can hit in different spots, and just trying to put it together where it creates the most runs is what we're trying to do."
Its important to remember that the Yankees led the majors in runs scored last year with 859. Only two other teams (Boston and Tampa Bay) cracked 800. And this was in a year when their leadoff hitter (Jeter) had a career-low OBP and their cleanup hitter (A-Rod) had a near-career-low SLG percentage.

There is a theory using advanced metrics that tells you the actual batting order has very little affect on the total run production. Marc Carig of the Star-Ledger wrote about it here a few days ago. As pointed out in the article, any potential benefit of run production (which in this case is minimal) has to be countered with the very real psychological effects of damaging egos, shuffling around players who are mentally attached to their lineup spots. The mental damage to a player might keep him from producing what is mathematically projected.

"I think guys get used to hitting in one spot," Girardi said. "But I think you change that pretty quickly. I think what guys want to know, though, is every day when they come in that their name's in the lineup, more than anything, in the same area."

However he decides to write down the names, Joe Girardi is going to put out a lineup that will score plenty of runs, tops in the league or close to it. That is unless several of these guys get old and unproductive all at once. If that happens, there will be bigger problems than what order they come up.

Sweeny Murti
Yankees@wfan.com
www.twitter.com/YankeesWFAN

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