New York Yankees: Don’t worry about injuries, the B team is better?

New York Yankees, Miguel Andujar
Oct 2, 2018; Bronx, NY, USA; New York Yankees player Miguel Andujar during workouts one day before the 2018 American League Wild Card playoff baseball game at Yankee Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Danielle Parhizkaran/NorthJersey.com via USA TODAY Sports

Everyone in baseball knows that the New York Yankees have tremendous depth. Last year the Yankees had an unprecedented number of injuries; 38 to be exact, to 30 different players. So what did the Yankees do? They relied on the B team, players from the farm system and second-string players.  The result was 103 wins, second in all of baseball while suffering constant injuries to the everyday players.  If you recalled many times last year we were saying; we don’t need those injured coming back, these guys are doing great.

When measuring player performance, most look at a player’s batting average, which is deceiving, to see the measure of actual achievement, you need to look at OPS.  OPS is On-base plus slugging that is a sabermetric baseball statistic calculated as the sum of a player’s on-base percentage and slugging percentage. The ability of a player both to get on base and to hit for power, two critical offensive skills, are represented by the OPS percentage.

Looking at this young spring training season, what Yankee players have the best OPS?  The players with the best OPS are going to have the most significant impact on the team and its ability to win games.  You would expect DJ LeMahieu, Gleyber Torres, Gary Sanchez, and players like Luke Voit or Brett Gardner to have the best OPS percentage, after all, they are the regular Yankee players that are supposed to carry the team.  So far this spring training season, that is not the case.

These are the Yankees that have the top eight OPS percentages so far in the first full week of spring training.  Most of these players you might not have ever heard of, and none of them are part of what could be called the regular starting lineup.  Kellin Deglan 1.400 OPS, Clint Frazier 1.357, Chris Iannetta 1.292, Mike Ford 1.194, Hoy Jun Park 1.167, Armando Alvarez 1.000, Chris Gittens 1.000, and Brandon Wagner 1.000.  Reviewing those names, you don’t see a single regular Yankee player.  Does that mean that these players are better than the A-team?  Of course not!  But it does show you how good many of the players that may replace injured regular players are.

The Yankees certainly don’t want to test that theory.  But for Yankee fans, hopefully, the Yankees will not have to endure the injuries they did last year, but remember; it’s that Yankee depth that many times carried the team to those 103 wins last year, that will do it again, if necessary.

By the way, the two best regular player OPS’s belong to Miguel Andujar .970, and Brett Gardner .821.  The worst OPS’s have been earned by Giancarlo Stanton and Mike Tauchman, bot at .000.  However, to be fair, it should be mentioned that Stanton has only had one at-bat and two at-bats for Tauchman.

 

.