Inside Jorge’s June turnaround (with bits on Swish and Grandy, too!)

By Matt Imbrogno On June 24, 2011 · 4 Comments · In Player Analysis

June has been kind to . At the end of April, he had a .267 wOBA. In May, he hit to the tune of a .293 wOBA. Thus far in June, Jorge’s ripped the ball. His wOBA has been at .415 with a wRC+ at 163. What’s been behind that?

For one, Jorge has lowered his strikeout rate from 27.8% in April and 25.0% in May to 19.6% in June. Ironically enough, his walk rate is the lowest its been at 7.8%. His IsoP isn’t anything stellar at .152, but he’s BABIBing .459 thanks to a 23.7% line drive rate, which is great to see since Posada had been hitting the ball pretty weakly (11.5 and 16.7% line drive rates the first two months of the season).

Is Jorge going to be this good for the rest of the year? Well, no. But, as you well know, he’s not going to be as bad as he was in April or May for the rest of season. At the very least, it seems that Posada has (for now) staved off the idea that the Yankees need to trade for a DH bat.

As for other turn arounders, ‘s had a bit of an odd month when it comes to the batted ball profile. His line drive percentage has been low at 14.5, yet his BABIP is the highest its been for any month at .280 (.257 in April, .254 in May). And though Swish is hitting fly balls (45.5%) at essentially the same rate as May (45.9%), he’s doing a much better job of driving those fly balls with a whopping 20.0% HR/FB%. He’s upped his GB% to 40.0, so perhaps that’s leading to the BABIP shift–those grounders are sneaking through and those fly balls are going over the fences. Those are things that are going to give big improvements to your numbers.

I was going to add something about because confirmation bias tells me he’s been struggling this month, but he’s been only human with a .342 wOBA in the month (113 wRC+). That only seems like a disappointment considering what he’d been doing to the baseball before.

With starting to struggle a bit, it’s nice to see Jorge and Swisher picking it up a bit. If they can hit at their career norms for the rest of the year, the Yankee offense will be in even better shape than it is now.

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4 Responses to Inside Jorge’s June turnaround (with bits on Swish and Grandy, too!)

  1. YankeesJunkie says:
    June 24, 2011 at 11:47 am

    Another note is that Tex is due for a boost in average. He has a 17.6 LD% and only a .220 BABIP. If he gets that up to .260 he is having a monster year.

    [Reply]

  2. Phil C says:
    June 24, 2011 at 12:01 pm

    I wonder how the shift that is frequently used Tex affects his BABIP? It has been on a steady decline since 2007. Might also be from pulling the ball more frequently, especially since joining NYY.

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    YankeesJunkie Reply:
    June 24th, 2011 at 12:18 pm

    This sounded like a pretty good hypothesis so I checked it on fangraphs split. His numbers when he pulls the ball has consistently been around wRC+ of 220 (awesome!), however, his OBP on pull has gone from around .400 in 2009-2010 to .330 in 2011. Also his LD/GB/FB splits have been near average for his career with the Yankees. I am thinking some good regression is coming Tex’s way when he pulls the ball.

    [Reply]

  3. smurfy says:
    June 24, 2011 at 5:02 pm

    Especially if everyone else can carry such good loads, I say Russell is there to catch and handle those pitchers so well as he has. Don’t even look at his hitting stats!

    [Reply]

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