Story of a Season: Nick Swisher

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2011 featured some book ends for . He started off the year poorly, putting up a .293 wOBA/78 wRC+ in the first two months of the season. In September, he hit just .284/72, then had a poor showing in the playoffs. Between then, though, Swisher was on fire. From June-August, Swisher hit .305/.418/.556/.973. For comparison’s sake, in that same time frame, put up a .909 OPS and put up a .940 OPS. So for a good chunk of the season, Nick Swisher was the team’s best hitter.

June was easily Swisher’s best month as he put up a .460 wOBA (!!) and a 192 wRC+ (!!) in my birth month. In July, he dipped to “just” .389/144, but rebounded in August to hit to .404/152 marks.

In terms of platoon splits, Swisher had a “meh” year against righties as he put up a wOBA/wRC+ split of .335/107 against them. He more than made up for it against lefties, though, working them over to the tune of a .412/159 split.

Swish took advantage of the friendly confines of YS3, as his wOBA there (.368) was 19 points higher than it was on the road (.349).

Before going on to the playoffs, we should take note that Swisher led the team in OBP with his .374 mark.

Now, the playoffs. There’s no denying that Nick Swisher performed poorly in the playoffs again. Does this suck? Yeah, definitely. It would’ve been nice if Swisher (or or Mark Teixiera) got some hits in the middle of the lineup. Does this mean that Nick Swisher sucks or sucks in the playoffs and always will? No. While 147 playoff PA seems like a lot, since most players don’t get that many PAs in the playoffs, it’s really not. 147 PAs do not suddenly represent a meaningful sample size because they happened to take place in the playoffs. Why else are these plate appearances not indicative of Swisher’s true talent? First, they’re non-consecutive. Even if we just count his 2009-2011 playoff performances, we’re talking about a group of PAs that are about a year apart. Let’s look at it another way, too. These plate appearances stretch all the way back to 2006 and spread across three different organizations. If I have to tell you why that’s not representative of Nick Swisher’s ability, then I don’t know what else to say.

If you still don’t think the Yankees should pick up Swish’s option, I’ll point you here.