Selecting the best fit

In baseball, like everything, some sense of balance is needed for success. Just as you need the right balance of motivation and intelligence to succeed in school, or the balance of acumen and people skills to succeed in business, you need the right balance of, well, just about everything in baseball. No where does this strike more true (well, maybe I’m exaggerating a bit) than it does in lineup construction. A team cannot sway too heavily right handed or too left handed for reasons. Though, to be fair, it may behoove a team to use a heavily right handed lineup (say, the Red Sox) or heavily left handed (say, the Yankees) because it fits their park. And, if we’re granting liberties of sorts here, it probably does make more sense to have a LHH heavy lineup since the majority of pitchers are right handed. For the sake of this post, we’re actually going to forgo balance and talk about one lineup: the Yankee lineup against RHP, so the one that will skew LHH.

We’ll focus on this because the last full time position the Yankees have open, a lefty hitting DH, is still ostensibly open. They signed to a minor league deal, an excellent move, and that definitely puts him in the lead. Why? Because he generally crushes righties and is a good fit for the Yankees. The strikeouts hurt, but he also walks a lot and hits for a ton of power when he does make contact. As a no-risk, medium reward signing, it makes a ton of sense. There are others rumored to be up for that job as well.

The list includes former Yankees and Hideki Matusi, as well as their former World Series nemesis/the vaguely Wharf looking . On the surface, appears up for this role, but I’m going to exclude him for two big reasons (one a knock, one a compliment). This is (essentially) a full time position and if there’s one thing Eric Chavez can’t be counted on to do at this point, it’s stay healthy long enough to be a full time player. And the other thing that’s slightly more positive, is that unlike the previously mentioned players, he adds defensive value. He makes a lot more sense as a second backup infielder than he does as a regular designated hitter.

Yesterday at IITMS, William Tasker took a look at the costs and the past results of Damon, Matsui, Ibanez, and Branyan. Let’s take a look at what they might do for 2012, using RLYW.net’s CAIRO projections. What’s nice about CAIRO is that it also projects split wOBAs, and all four guys project pretty favorably against LHP. Ibanez tops the group at .349, followed closely by Branyan at .348. Damon pulls in third at .337 with Matsui as the trailer at .333. For the record, Chavez projects to wOBA .306 against righties in 2012. Based on that, and potential cost/willingness to take a lighter deal, I’d like the Yankees to (and I can’t believe I’m saying this again), offer Raul Ibanez the same deal they gave to Russell Branyan and let those two fight it out in Spring Training for the last spot. Both are well suited for what the Yankees need and would be easy to let go if they don’t work out.