DJ LeMahieu signed by yankees

I’ve had that same thought. Shane Spencer was our first baseman until we signed Teixeira. Bubba Crosby was our centerfielder. This time though I think this is the plan, unless Machado wants to play in NY enough to leave money on the table, which almost no players ever do.

I made a post about this (a lengthy one) a few weeks ago. Here is a short version. Based on B-R's similarity scores for players through age 25, Manny's list features the following players that you would do well to have handed out a long term deal to after the age 25 season:

Beltre, Santo, Ripken, Jr, Griffey Jr.

There are also some players that you could have regretted that same deal:

Andruw Jone, Ruben Sierra, Ryan Zimmerman, Eric Chavez, Cesar Cedeno

Bryce Harper is also on the list, so the jury is out on him, right?

All of the above were healthy and productive players at 25 and looked like they'd surely wind up with great careers into their middle thirties. So the answer is...no one knows which guy is going to turn an ankle, or have his shoulder go out on him, or have his reflexes slow, or not make adjustments. One thing we can sort of imagine is that a player with super energy and determination would achieve all that his body will allow. Perhaps a guy who is "not Joe Hustle" is willing to use his God-given abilities but if faced with adversity will curl up in a little ball and never reimpose himself on the game. Maybe he has more drive than that, but he's not revealing that to us on the outside.

The list for Harper is more impressive. Odd that Bryce in on Manny's list, but Manny is not on Bryce's list. Bryce's similarity success stories would be:

Griffey, Jr., Frank Robinson, Miggy Cabrera, Eddie Matthews

His cautionary likenesses are:

Andruw Jones, Ruben Sierra, Tony Conigliaro, Jose Canseco

And there are a couple of current players:

Justin Upton and Mike Trout...


A couple of repeat names, and again at 25 you would have wanted to lock them all down. In some cases, you'd have been disappointed in what you got, in others, a HOF talent. With Conigliaro, we'll never know what he could have been, but again, we don't know which players are going to get HBP...

It's a crap shoot. If you're into shooting craps, then go for it. If you want to be responsible, then you keep the investment short and sweet. When the talent quits oozing out, you move on...

I got into this battle with some folks elsewhere a little bit last night. I think that its safe to expect that many of these Coors players will be much closer to their road numbers once they go somewhere else but it doesnt mean it will be an exact mirror. Saw many on Twitter trying to down play that and say "everyone is better at home" (not always true and also not nearly as drastic as Coors home/road splits on average) or "Coors thin air doesnt lead to higher batting averages just more power" (which is absurd and not true). This may be less applicable to the really special players like Walker, Helton, Holliday but on average I suspect it would be true. I want to take a closer look at a few guys who signed elsewhere too. 

I think that people are drawing some possibly incorrect conclusions from his Coors vs. away split.

One problem that I saw in the past 24 hours is numerous people citing the following statistic:  DJ was a .264/.311/.362 hitter away from Coors in his career- and then using this statistic to conclude he was a terrible hitter outside Colorado.  In fact, the statistic itself is VERY misleading.

When you go back and look at each season from 2012 to 2018, we see that DJ was actually a good hitter (putting up numbers above his career averages) on the road EXCEPT in 2013 and 2018.  In fact, he put up his career worst numbers on the road in 2018 (.229/.277/.422).  Thus, of the 7 seasons in his career, only 2 of his road seasons were really bad.  The others were good (see 2012 and 2014) to VERY good (2015-2017).

Does that mean he is a weak hitter?  No.  Some of 2018 can be written off as he had an oblique injury that cost him all of May and most of July.  2013 was also a long time ago- and his second full season.  Did pitchers make adjustments that he struggled with that season?  Was it just on off year?  We don't know.  However, I take away that in the five seasons between 2014 and 2018, he only had one season that his numbers were below his career averages during those years.

I think that IF Dj is healthy, we can expect an improvement to the type of hitter he was between 2014 and 2017 from his road numbers.  Something else to consider is whether a better lineup in NY than he usually had in Colorado might help.  We don't know that answer either.

I don't think he will have much power- but that probably doesn't matter in this lineup.  However, the numbers generally show that he carries a good OBP.  He also tends to hit better in the 2nd spot in the lineup- so he might be better served there in the Yankee lineup- where his role would be more of a get on base guy.

Sometimes we have to be careful drawing conclusions from larger sample sizes without placing them in context.

Im not sure thats quite right, Uehara. If you are throwing out his low outlier season you almost have to throw out his outlier in the other direction too (2016 when he won a batting title and never even came close to matching in any other year). When you do that, dump 2016 and 2014 (when he had his worst numbers on the road) you are still basically left with a guy who only got on base at a .310 clip with no power whatsoever away from Coors for 1000 PAs.

DJL has also basically spent his career surrounded by Nolan Arenado, Carlos Gonzalez, Charlie Blackmon, and Trevor Story so I dont think lineup protection was the problem.

The no power is a red herring- he isn't there for power.  He is there to get on base.  I also disagree with throwing away his best season.  When we look at his past 5 seasons, the outliers are 2018 and 2016.  However, since 2014, 2015 and 2017 are also consistently above his career averages, it stands to reason that 2018 is the season to be thrown out for injury reasons as well as being the sole "bad" season.  

The larger point is that too many are trying to selectively use numbers to try and minimize his performance.  However, his performance was generally good over the past 5 seasons.  When you break down 2018 by month, he had an excellent April, only to get hurt and miss almost all of May, returned to just ok performance in June, got hurt and missed most of July- had an ok August before having a good September.

Therefore, we appear to have identified the reason for the extremely subpar 2018- and instead of trying to minimize the rest of the successful seasons, we should be examining what should be expected from a healthy player who has recovered from a lat injury.

Personally, I think if I were Cashman, I would have just spent what it took to sign Machado.  However, they went another way- and I think we should be examining why they went that way and what it appears their analytics are indicating rather than trying to find ways to denigrate his performance.

I didn’t mean it quite that way. I meant more that the beneficial hitting environment at Coors is so beneficial that it may make it harder for Rockies hitters when they leave because what works for them on Monday at home doesn’t work for them on the road on Wednesday. So if they go to another team for sure they won’t likely reproduce the inflated Coors numbers but their road performance with their new team might be less skewed when playing in a park that’s less prone to extremes. That’s what I was hypothesizing. When they signed Didi I thought Cashman’s team’a analytics about his LD% and “hard hit outs” metrics predicting more success in NY than he had in AZ seemed like nonsense but it turns out it wasn’t. So just speculating that perhaps they see something similar in him given how he hits to the oposite field and anticipate offense that isn’t what he did at Coors but also isn’t what he did on the road as a Rockie. Maybe it’s just wishful thinking.