Five Players, Five Tools: Yankees

The MVP of each "tool" from the New York Yankees

Contact. Power. Arm Strength. Fielding. Speed. The fundamental tools of baseball that scouts around the world use to evaluate players. Back before analytics revolutionized baseball forever in the modern era, scouts often had to rely on these “tools” in order to take the best of the best. Graded from a scale of 20-80, having 5 more points of speed than another person might take you 10 places higher than other prospects on the Top 100 list. Prominent players to employ all 5 skills in the MLB include Mike Trout, Barry Bonds (before the steroids), Vladimir Guerrero, Ken Griffey Jr., and Willie Mays. Although they are still used today, the importance of these skills has somewhat downsized now that analytics have placed higher importance on power, eye ability, versatility, and velocity. Now, players don’t need to employ all five skills in order to succeed in the major leagues. If a player excels at hitting, but cannot defend at all, the manager of the baseball might put the player to DH to make up for their lack of defense.

Despite the decreased importance of these skills, the five tools in baseball are still significant to baseball and the baseball community still talks about the five tools to measure prospects. So, I thought it would be cool that for each of the five tools, we find a player from each team that best demonstrates that skill. For example, from the Atlanta Braves (not necessarily true), Ronald Acuna Jr. would be the best player that shows “speed”.

Today, we are going to analyze the big bad Yankees, whose offense is one of the best offenses in the MLB with no glaring weak spots and highlighted by stars such as Aaron Judge, Gleyber Torres, and Giancarlo Stanton. For each of the sections, I’ll be going over the player that exhibits the best “tool” and why I think so. I will also go over my own definitions of each of the five tools and give out any honorable mentions where I see fit.

In addition, only one player for each section. I want to highlight the skill of other players in each of the teams and having one player for all the sections will really diversify the selection and make the article interesting. So we won’t have a Mike Trout sweep if I did the Angels.

Hitting For Contact: DJ LeMahieu

One of the most prolific and consistent hitters of the Yankees during the 2019 season, DJ LeMahieu stayed as one of three Yankee position players on the opening day Roster who did not get injured during the 2019 season. Leading the team with a WAR of 6.4 (courtesy of Fangraphs) and 2nd in the team with a wRC+ of 136, DJ LeMahieu was instrumental for the Yankee’s success during the 2019 season when so many of their star players got injured.

But what makes DJ LeMahieu the best “contact” hitter in the Yankees?

To answer that question, we have to first answer what contact is and how can we measure the player’s ability to get contact. For me, there are 2 big indicators that measure a player’s ability to hit the ball: how frequently the player has hit the ball and how hard the player has hit the ball. By measuring how frequently the player has hit the baseball, we can measure not only their hand-eye coordination but also their ability to hit all 9 zones of the baseball strike zone. After all, to get a hit in baseball, you first have to hit it with a bat. But, if a player only makes weak contact with the baseball, then he isn’t going to get a hit. That’s where measuring the exit velocity comes in. By measuring the exit velocity of each of the players, we can note how frequently they squared up the baseball and their chances of getting a hit. Only when we combine these two aspects will be able to measure a player’s ability for contact.

So, how do we measure each skill now that we have our definition?

For the player’s ability to hit the ball, we are mainly going to rely on two statistics: Swinging Strike% and Contact%, courtesy of Fangraphs.

Here are two graphs displaying the leaders of each statistic.

Analyzing both graphs, DJ LeMahieu has a healthy lead in both categories, cementing himself as the early leader in our analysis for the best contact hitter from the Yankees.

To put his contact% in perspective with the rest of the league, his Contact% (85.5%) is 14th in the entire league, putting him above Lindor, Trout, Semien, and Turner. DJ Lemahieu also has the 10th lowest SwStr% (6.6%), putting him above players such as Bellinger, Arenado, and Pederson.

But, as mentioned previously in our definition for contact, the ability to hit for contact includes “squaring up” the baseball, which signifies hitting the ball hard. For this aspect of contact, we will be relying on SwSp%, 95MPH+ %, and Brls/PA%. SwSp% and Brls/PA% will give us a measure of how frequently the player makes “good” contact with the baseball, which includes hitting the barrel of the bat instead of the more narrow part of the bat. 95 mPH% from Statcast will give us a good gauge on how hard the players hit the ball because a harder hit ball likely equates to a more probable hit.

Here are the charts below for the mentioned statistics above.

Leading in all categories except Brls/PA% (in which he only lags behind Gary Sanchez), Aaron Judge’s ability to hit the ball hard expresses his prowess with the bat and his increased ability to hit the baseball well when he does make contact. Indeed, his BABIP (.364) is 6th in the MLB out of players with at least 400 PA during the season, corroborating his success as a great contact hitter as well.

Now that we have our two winners from each of the categories I mentioned above in our definition of a contact hitter, we can now put them off in a face-off to measure the best contact hitter for the Yankees. For measuring the abilities of a contact hitter, I will be multiplying their Contact% and their 95MPH+% in order to measure their overall contact ability. I know that each of the statistics mentioned above has a different weight on the ability of a player to hit the baseball, but for the sake of simplicity of the article, we will be weighing all of them as the same. By multiplying all of them together, we get a total overall score on their contact skill, which includes good hand-eye coordination, and the ability to square up the baseball to hit the ball as a result.

DJ LeMahieu: (0.8550) * (0.4720) = .40356

Aaron Judge: (0.6510) * (.5710) = .371721

Looking at the results of the above calculations, we have DJ LeMahieu as the best “contact” hitter from the New York Yankees. The combination of his high contact power and his ability to hit the ball outplays the immense barrel contact that Aaron Judge has when he hits the ball. If Aaron Judge can make his K% the league average, he would probably be almost as good as Mike Trout in terms of hitting or even better since he hits the ball so hard. Although known for his high strikeouts and huge strike frame, Aaron Judge’s ability for contact with the baseball is much more impressive than we think it is, so we as baseball fans should give due respect to Aaron Judge’s ability to hit the baseball as good as his power.

Speed: Tyler Wade

This section will be short and sweet. For this tool, we only have to measure one statistic of baseball since it only measures speed: Sprint Speed courtesy of Statcast.

Although not as pronounced as the other tables mentioned above, Tyler Wade does take as the fastest player in the Yankee squad, making him a great utility player when there are some tight situations in baseball that require any advantage needed.

An important thing to note about sprint speed is that it is not the major indicator of how good a player is on base running. Base Running not only includes speed, but also a player’s ability to know where the ball is and whether it will be caught or not. If a player knows that a ball is going to drop down for a base hit, he is more likely to get an early head start in order to advance the bases as opposed to someone else. In addition, in close calls where the fielder receives the baseball as players are near the bag, some players need to be able to avoid the fielder by sliding or other creative maneuvers. So when evaluating base running, it is better to use a metric that measures a player’s ability to move such as BsR from Fangraphs.

Hitting For Power: Aaron Judge

Is this really a surprise? Okay, maybe Stanton is up for contention with Aaron Judge for the best power in the New York Yankees, but he didn’t play enough games for us to make an accurate evaluation for him, so then that just leaves Aaron Judge as our candidate for the Yankee with the best power.

But what supports the claim that Aaron Judge is the best hitter for Power? First, we should define what power is.

In my opinion, Power shares a lot of similar characteristics with hitting the ball hard, except the angle at which the baseball is hit and the elevation that the ball reaches. This means more HRs and Line Drives, which are more likely to drive in runs and allow the hitter to reach for extra-base hits. A player could be hitting the ball hard, but his approach to the plate might be more towards passing it through defenders, so he might hit a ground ball at a specific side in order to get a base hit. However, a power hitter might be more leaning towards hitting towards the fences, so their launch angle would be higher as a result and hit more home runs.

Now that we have our definition of a power hitter, we can use some of the statistics available to us in order to measure the player’s ability to hit for power. These include Barrels/PA%, HR/FB%, LD%, and Average Exit Velocity. Barrels/PA% and HR/FB% are significantly helpful for measuring power since they take into effect the distance that baseballs travel and the launch angle that hitters need in order to hit towards the outfield and over the fences.

Here are the graphs for the statistics mentioned above.

Looking at all of the metrics mentioned above, Aaron Judge beats everyone in almost every category except for Barrels/PA% (in which he only trails behind Gary Sanchez). With really no major controversy, Aaron Judge takes the honor as the Yankee with the best power in the 2019 season since he leads in almost all of the statistics mentioned above that help us gauge a player’s power and potential at the plate.

I think what makes Aaron Judge such a formidable opponent is his ability to still have great control of his strike zone while keeping such a huge power output that many players aren’t able to match. His BB% (14.3%) ranks 14th in the league out of players with at least 400 PA and as mentioned previously, his BABIP is 6th in MLB out of players with at least 400 PA. Of course, there are obvious flaws in his ability with off-speed pitches and his high K%, but his incredible skill to produce high-quality contact with the baseball in terms of power still makes him a formidable foe.

Defense: Mike Tauchman

If Aaron Judge wasn’t the winner of our hitting for power tool, then Aaron Judge was supposed to be the winner for this section as well. However, as the rules for this article, we can only have one tool for every player, so then the runner-up to Aaron Judge is Mike Tacuhman, one of the reserves that the Yankees relied on heavily as most of their players were injured throughout the entire season. We know that Mike Tauchman was an elite reserve player, accumulating a 2.6 WAR in Fangraphs from playing only 87 games. Before he played for the New York Yankees, he was only a prospect with the Colorado Rockies, notable for his dismal .222/.344/.296 in 32 games while with the Rockies. However, he turned a new leaf for himself with the Yankees, putting up a .277/.361/.504 while posting a 128 wRC+.

But we aren’t going to laud his offense all day.

Today, we are going to delve more into the defense of Mike Tauchman, whose defensive skills might make him an even better utility player than what many people put him as.

For defensive metrics, we are mainly going to use UZR and OAA as they are the more accurate metrics used today to measure a player’s defensive abilities. DRS is a useful metric to use, but DRS is more favored towards the number of games that each player plays, so using UZR and OAA are better as a result of a more even playing field.

Here are the graphs to the mentioned statistics above

As seen with the graphs above us, Mike Tauchman has a case to be the best defender for the New York Yankees as seen with his team-leading 9 OAA and the second-highest UZR/150 with 19.1. Although Judge is slightly better in my opinion with the two metrics used above, Tauchman is not much worse than Aaron Judge and still invaluable to the team in terms of his defensive skills.

When looking back at the 2019 Yankee team, although some players were more prominent in their offensive production such as Clint Fraizer and Gio Uresha, Mike Tauchman should be noted for his offensive and defensive prowess.

Arm Strength: Gary Sanchez

Finally, the winner by default, Gary Sanchez takes the winner of Arm Strength out of all the players (since Statcast doesn’t measure the exit velocity of players except for catchers).

Although Gary Sanchez wins Arm Strength by default, his arm strength is actually not that bad and is notable among all MLB catchers.

For example, Gary Sanchez’s Arm velocity when throwing to 2nd base is 87.7 MPH, which is 4th in the entire MLB league, trailing only behind Alfaro and Realmuto. His pop time (1.95 sec) is also very noteworthy too, which is tied for 9th in the entire league.

Despite the criticism that Gary Sanchez has over his defensive capabilities, one aspect of Sanchez that remains a boon for him is his throwing ability and pop-time which is one of the fastest in MLB. Of course, there are problems with his blocking and his framing, but if he can learn to compromise both skills while maintaining a high offensive consistency, he can end up being one of the best catchers that the Yankees have ever had.

Conclusion

With that, this concludes our players that show the best skills of the Yankee team. We could have made this article extremely short and straight-forward by looking at average and HRs, but I wanted to look at each of the player’s abilities through the lens of more analytical statistics, so we went more in-depth for each of the baseball articles. I hope you enjoyed this extremely thorough article about the New York Yankees and hope to see more of the same content for other teams.

Created and Published 04/03/20.