Okay this will be the last post made about Arod, I promise. For those of you who don't know Arod has elected to have surgery now and estimated to be back mid to late may assuming no setbacks (please god). First off, anyone that argues the Yankees are better without Arod because he is a distraction is an idiot. The guy slugged .573 with an OBP .392, and that was an off year for him. So what if he brings a little drama to the club house the dude can downright mash. It's not like he is getting into fights with the traveling secretary or anything (everyone looks better compared to Manny).
Anyway, let’s take a look at just how much Arod being out for a month will hurt the Yankees. To do this I'm going to use the VORP (Value over replacement level player) stat found on fan graphs. It basically measures how many wins a player is worth over a replacement level player which is essentially an average minor leaguer. Taking Arod's average VORP from the last three years it can be estimated that he will be worth about 7.4 wins. So assuming he is only out for 1/6 of the season it should only cost the Yankees about 1.3 wins.
Now here comes the tricky part, trying to factor in Cody Ransom. Everyone says he is a solid defender, but according to fan graphs he has never posted a UZR/150 (stat used to calculate how good a fielder someone is) in the positives. Keep in mind the small sample size though. Even harder to determine is just how good of a hitter he is. Last year when given the chance he did pretty good batting .302 with 4 HR's in only 43 at bats. Before last year though he was pretty mediocre, in 2004 he hit .250with 20 strike outs in only 68 at bats. Even though it’s a small sample size Cody Ransom looks to be about the equivalent of a replacement level player, maybe a little better.
Overall it doesn’t look as if the loss of Arod for 1/6th of the season should have that much of an effect on the Yankees this season. This could of course change if Arod comes back from injury slumping. Then again maybe we'll all be pleasantly surprised by Cody Ransom this coming season.
3 comments:
First of all, never apologize for posting about A-Rod. Think of all the material he gives us! Ransom will be fine in the short term. I guess.
You're right Jane, he does give us alot of material... a little too much if you ask me.
I also think i've apoligized for writing about A-rod, only because i know people are sick of reading about it, I know i am, haha.
haha I just feel everyone is getting a little tired of A-rod. It just really sucks that there hasn't been anything really positive to write about lately.
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