Once again, it’s time for us to take the baseball equivalent of a blind taste test. So far this offseason one of these two players has generated a lot of mandatory contract talk out of Yankee fans, while the other player hasn’t. Both will be available as free-agents in the next two seasons. The general consensus is that one of these players is substantially better than the other, but the purpose for the blind comparison is that the numbers paint a different picture. Please see the table below.
Both of these players play similar positions and the ages listed above are the ages they’ll be on opening day this year. The rest of the data are the players’ career averages, except for UZR which is the career total. I’ve thrown in the wOBA from their best seasons as well.
Clearly, Player A, the player generating more contract buzz, is better than Player B, but it’s closer than one might think. Neither player hits for a particularly high average. Player A has a bit more power while Player B gets on base more. For their careers they’ve been comparably good hitters and both are better than average fielders. The largest difference may actually be what they’ve done in their best career seasons. Player A produced at what amounts to a top 10 clip in that season while Player B was more of a borderline All Star. All things considered, however, if you are anxious to give Player A a contract then you’d also have to consider Player B as well, right?
By now I expect that everyone recognizes that both of these guys are current Yankees. Player A is . Player B is . So far this pre-season the assumption has been that at season’s end the Yankees will probably let Swisher walk and they will exercise their options on Granderson and .
What the data above show is that this isn’t the dominant strategy one might think, particularly when you consider that the Yankees also have , who can slot in at center field if Granderson is the player who is let go in the near future. Furthermore, it probably is a no-brainer to keep Cano, but not for the reasons often cited. Cano’s career wOBA is .359, not materially different from Swisher’s. While it is true that over the last three season’s Cano’s wOBA has averaged closer to .375, so has Swisher’s. He posted wOBA’s of .375 and .377 his first two seasons as a Yankee before struggling at the beginning of 2011. The real reason the Yankees are smarter to keep Cano for the long term is that he’s a couple years younger than Granderson and Swisher and he plays a position where offense is at a greater premium. It is not because he projects to be that much greater a run producer over the next five years.
When all is said and done, I still predict that Swisher plays 2013 in a new uniform while Cano and Granderson wind up on the Yankees for several more years, but more due to convenience than superior talent. The team has options on Granderson and Cano for 2013. It doesn’t for Swisher. If the Yankees can only afford to keep two of these three guys moving forward then the player who will become more expensive first is the one who needs to go. Most analysis has acknowledged this fact. What most analysis has not focused on is just how good Swisher actually is. He’s just about as good offensively as Granderson and Cano have been and he’s better than Cano defensively. While cost is a sound reason to let him leave, playing on without him will be more difficult than most Yankee fans are acknowledging.
If you enjoyed this article, please consider sharing it!
I would like to keep all of the above. I would offer Swish a comp value for three years. If he takes it, dandy. Same with Grandy. Cano, I may be tempted to extend (tho I would prefer to extend now, so five finishes by thirty five).
And Cano is worth more defensively than Swish. Don’t rely on defensive stats, as they are currently constituted. Robbie’s good! Smooth as silk.
Excellent post! At the moment, I (hopefully)feel that 2011 showed us the “real” Granderson going forward. That is, with Kevin Long’s help, Grandy has fixed his approach to LH pitching. In effect, he’s a different hitter than he used to be. If that’s true, then Grandy’s going forward value is around 2011 wOBA of .394, which is, of course, much better than Swisher’s lifetime wOBA of .360.
I think we’ll learn a lot about Grandy in the 2012 season. If he repeats what he did last year, then I will more strongly believe that he should be evaluated at the level he performed at in 2011-12, rather than his lifetime average.
I don’t think anyone can rightfully expect Granderson to be 2011 from here on out, 2011 is likely a career year. He shouldn’t fall too far off of it, and I do think he’ll continue to hit lefties OK, but I doubt he’s a .390 wOBA and 40+ HR a hear guy.
Plus even if that is who he is now age will put that in a decline as well, with him already being 31, and his skill set, rapid decline due to age is a real concern.
The smarter pay going forward is likely Swisher, he should be a cheaper contract, and he should decline less than Granderson over the same time period.
Giving Granderson a contract through age 36 or 37 would be dumb in my opinion. You just can’t expect him to hit this way through the contract, and at some point he is going to have to move to LF, so his value takes another hit there.
Good stuff MJR, but I’ve yet to hear anyone cite a realistic replacement for Swish, FA or trade. Ethier will likely cost more annually and in years, plus he doesn’t hit lefties. Nobody down on the farm who can take over in 2013.
If not Nick, who?
Give Zoilo Almonte a chance. I would rather go with young guy who is cheap than a vet like Swisher who become very overated.
I don’t think Almonte is realistic. He played 46 games in AA last year.
Overrated? Perhaps. We do tend to love the guy.
But the above post should go a long way toward dissuading people that his production on the field is all that overrated.
I think Swisher is underrated. People only bring up the playoffs when trying to dismiss the guy, or try and act like OBP isn’t more important than BA. When those arguments just don’t hold water. He hasn’t done great in the playoffs thus far, but that is one of the most overrated argument someone can bring up in my opinion. Trying to group together a bunch of small samples like that, which still ends up being a small sample, to dismiss a guys career accomplishments is just silly. The funny thing is Cano has been far from productive in the playoffs in his career. In fact he’s a career sub .800 OPS in the playoffs (.258 /.307 /.491), with most of that being power driven.
I’ve been on the Chris Young bandwagon for a while. You’d have to trade for him from Arizona, but he’s still young, athletic, has both speed and power, and can play any of the 3 outfield positions in above average fashion. He’d slide in perfectly at RF for 2013 and if you let Granderson go in 2014 he can move to LF while Gardner takes over in CF.
I can’t stand post like this. Its just another opportunity for someone who is obviously a Swisher lover to overate him. There is no reason to try comparing Swisher to Grander or Cano. Those are star/elite players and Swisher is not and will never be. Plus, people are starting to overate Swisher defensively. He is nothing to write home about. I won’t shed a tear when he is gone after this year. Maybe then we can find a rightfield who can at least get a hit against good pitching or be competitive in the postseason.
So because he provided stats (actual, solid statistics) that disagree with your initial opinion of Swisher, he is obviously a Swisher lover? You can’t just ignore facts when they don’t agree with you and expect other people to smile and nod.
Stats are about half of the story. Sign the player that demonstrates the ability to hit good pitching in the clutch.
And wouldn’t production in “the clutch” (high-leverage situations) be measured by, you know, a statistic?
No way! It’s all magic, voodoo, and personal bias. I’m ashamed of you rider, you know those are the only 3 rational ways to judge players.
I am humbled and will flog myself 25 times as punishment.
Good Lord.
Swisher is a better defensive player than Cano? Hmmmm, you lose credibility on that statement. When Swisher has to move his feet to catch a fly it is always an adventure. You obviously are a stats guy and perhaps should actually watch the games. This was a normal, biased article that has become the norm. The interesting part of seeing the stats without the names is that you do get a better way to judge performance without emotions influencing you.
Truth is that second base is harder to find a comparable replacement for Cano than RF is. Maybe Swish can salvage mangement interest with a very good season and post-season.
This. This is where a ton of Cano’s upside comes from. He’s a great player at a premium position not known for great players.
The whole blog is “stats guys”, all the writers and a ton of the commenters. I don’t know why anyone who doesn’t have a love and appreciation for advanced metrics and stats would come to TYA. The whole blog is based on statistical analysis.
Absolutely. Looking at it totally from stats and dismissing the eye test is just as bad as dismissing the stats and going completely with the eye test.
Oh, wait. I don’t think I helped your case any. Sorry.
You, I like. The whole point of advanced metrics, or any stat really, is to use them to further our understanding of what we are watching. You can’t go by stats without watching games, but you’d be a fool to go simply by the games and not look deeper into it for answers.
Hi everyone, thanks for taking the time to read and comment on the post. I just want to add a couple of things.
First, Swisher is slightly underrated while Cano is somewhat overrated. For example, Cano has only managed an OBP higher than Swisher’s career mark of .360 twice in his career. Swisher has eclipsed his .360 career average four times in his career. Cano’s career high in homers is 29, which he’s managed once. Swisher’s career high in homers is 35 and he’s hit 29 two other times. Both players have pretty much identical career wOBAs (.359 for Cano versus .357 for Swisher). The comparison is close.
The differences are that Cano is younger, hits for a higher average and has more room to grow as a player. Cano doesn’t seem to be realizing his full potential, where as Swisher seems to be exceeding his.
On the subject of defense, Baseball Reference rates both players as pretty much neutral, while Fangraphs loathes Cano’s defense and is fond of Swisher’s. If we trust these metrics, and I more or less do, then it stands to reason that Swisher is the better defender. What my eyes show me from the 160 or so games I watch a year, including the playoffs, is that Cano is graceful, but lacks range, while Swisher is clunky out there, but hustles for everything he can. Neither player is a liability on defense but people once again seem eager to underrate Swisher and overrate Cano.
I would say that both are about average to slightly above average at the position they play, which seems to be backed up by most of the metrics. Defensive metrics are still very up in the air, but looking at the numbers with what I see that seems to be a fair judgment. I’m not sure I would say Swisher is a better defensive right fielder than Cano is a defensive second baseman, but I don’t have any real problem with someone saying it either. It’s not like either one deserves a gold glove.
I think what gets a lot of people with Cano is his arm. He may not have the best range in the game but he clearly has the strongest arm at second base. People see that, and the ridiculous plays he makes with it, and automatically crowns him a spectacular defensive player. But a lot of times it’s the guy not getting web gems who is the better defensive player.
Cano’s pure talent shines through so much that it blinds people to what he actually is doing with it. We all look at him and see a guy who should be hitting .320+ every year, pushing .370+ OBPs, and hitting 29-35 HRs yearly. But he really hasn’t proven himself to be a player at quite that level yet. If he doesn’t learn to be more patient he will likely never get to that point. Even if he doesn’t though he’s the best or second best 2nd baseman in baseball.
It’s a pretty big flaw to gloss over the positional value difference between Granderson, Cano and Swisher. I think most of us would acknowledge that Swisher has been a strong offensive contributor but Granderson and Cano are much more valuable than Swisher because of how much harder it would be to replace their offense at those positions. There’s a reason why Granderson had nearly 2X as much WAR as Swisher did last year.
And that reason was Granderson’s .394 wOBA versus Swisher’s .357 wOBA, down for him.
I didn’t gloss over the positional differences. The Yankees have a solid internal candidate in Center in Brett Gardner and I openly mentioned in the post that playing second is part of why the Yankees should and will keep Cano.
I fully expect the Yankees keep Cano for sure, and Granderson if he has another solid season. My point is only to demonstrate that Swisher is better and more difficult to replace than most analysts acknowledge.
I know you mentioned that the positional value of 2nd baseman was a reason for keeping Cano, but the whole set up of the post comparing the offensive stats of Granderson and Swisher with no mention of the positions they play glosses over the importance of the positional difference.
You could make a good argument for keeping Swisher rather than Granderson based on likely cost, age, projected declines as T.O. Chris does. That said, Granderson is much harder to replace than Swisher is and has a lot more value today. Gardner is also a free agent one year after Granderson so we should probably stop thinking of him as Granderson’s long term replacement. Hopefully, it’ll be Mason Williams or Slade Heathcott but who knows at this point.
Granderson is CF and Swisher is RF. If they are both roughly equal on D to their peers, that means that Granderson is about 1 win better. That is, if you put Granderson in RF, he would be expected to post 10 UZR more than in CF. So, based on stats, Granderson has about 1.5 WAR/season advantage.