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1. Anonymous Observer Posted: October 18, 2011 at 01:29 PM (#3967055)Being a statue on defense.
As other people have been pointing out in Young threads, similar in the sense that Jeter, accounting for home park, is quite a bit better. Also, Jeter is a great baserunner, and Young is not. Both are poor shortstops; Jeter has managed to remain a poor shortstop his whole career, while Young has finally reached his appropriate defensive position at DH.
Meanwhile, though their per-season and rate stats are within face-value range of each other's, Jeter is 37 years old and has just over 3,000 hits. Young turns 35 tomorrow and has just over 2,000 hits. I don't think you need a very sophisticated spreadsheet to determine which one has had way more career value.
Just doing my part to kill a meme, but this one seems to be developing hydra-headed dimensions.
That is a pretty big difference. Would you say that Young was "pretty similar" to a guy with a .317 OBP?
Vut forever Young.
I'd be curious to know the details behind both moves. I'm sure the Jeter/A-Rod one has been dissected to death and I've just not read about it. But was the difference willingness on the part of the player or willingness on the part of the team?
For instance, if the Rangers just flat out told Young, "hey, you're not our SS anymore", I'm not sure if that's a moral point in Young's favour. I don't really know how the Jeter thing went down either. Did the Yankees ask him to move and he refused? Or is the complaint that Jeter didn't offer to move off in favour of the clearly better defender?
Basically the late start kills his chance at 3000 hits
He's not Jeter as others have noted, he's Ray Durham or he's Damon without the early start.
Traditionally he's the type of guy HOF voters LOVED*- middle infielder with multiple 200 hit seasons? .300+ career batting average???
*unless your name is Arky Vaughn for some reason that eludes me
The funny thing is that despite being 5 years older than Ian Kinsler, spending half his career at SS, and being a significantly more durable player, he's only ahead of Kinsler by 2 career WAR. I suppose that's yet another way Young is like Jeter... he gets far more favorable media attention than his teammates who happen to be superior players.
FWIW, Young has reminded me of Jeter in the past. Yes, Jeter has been better, sometimes significantly so, and produced more in several respects - but they strike me as of the same mold. YMMV...
Also, Jeter is a great baserunner, and Young is not. Both are poor shortstops; Jeter has managed to remain a poor shortstop his whole career, while Young has finally reached his appropriate defensive position at DH.
To be fair to Young, he got meaningful playing time at 3B, 1B, and 2B this season. He played fewer than half his games at DH.
Given Jeter's durability and A-Rod's lack thereof, perhaps asking A-Rod to play the less phsyically demanding defensive position has turned out good for the Yankees in terms of keeping A-Rod healthier longer. I have no doubt that A-Rod was the better defensive shortstop, but he's missed a decent number of games each of the past 4 seasons, while Jeter has really only missed time this past year (during the A-Rod years). Of course, you couldn't know how they'd have different injury rates going forward, but I do wonder if playing A-Rod at third has kept him healthier than he'd have been at short.
Second, Young is something of an anti-Cruz. He is not prone to slumps or hot-streaks. His offensive production has pretty much bankable month-to-month. Does this predictability give greater value than the same statistical production bunched into streaks and slumps?
He's not the kind of guy who will get a lot of love around here. He doesn't walk, has only middling power, lacks range etc. but I wonder whether we don't underrate him a bit when we laugh at the legions that overrate him. Maybe he resembles Jeter in this as well.
I'm open to arguments on the contrary, but my guess is "none." It's simply not hard to find someone who can play multiple infield positions poorly, and in fact it's pretty easy to find someone who can play multiple infield positions well. Every team has a utility infielder and most of them are much better defensively than Young.
Young's value is entirely in his bat.
Relatively short career, may have been perceived as avoiding WWII service, and glut of other candidates.
But if Beltre (for example) gets hurt and has to miss two months, having Young allows them to add a DH bat (granted for the Rangers that's Torrealba or Murphy) instead of adding a utility infielder bat.
But that gain is lost by Young's poor defense, where the utility infielder would have likely been a better defender.
Young at 3rd, Torrealba at DH
Good defender at 3rd, Young at DH --> Wash.
Well, that wasn't really the question that was asked.
It's like looking in a mirror!
Young's situational value would be somewhat less if he were far and away the best DH option (as might certainly be the case on a weaker AL team). In that case playing him at 2B or 3B just weakens your defense, and you don't have anybody very plausible to DH that day.
I think the meme is Michael Young:Rangers::Derek Jeter:Yankees, which is dead-on. Nobody is claiming that Young is as good a player as Jeter because that's crazy.
This has probably been calculated, but isn't the best move usually to get as many good bats in the lineup as possible, with the reasoning that 90%-ish of plays will be routine? I just finished reading Alan Schwarz's "Numbers Game", and that's the hypothesis of early-80s sabermetrician Eric Walker.
I'm sure it's dependent on run environment, and whether the guy is a truly wretched defender or just run-of-the-mill bad.
Except that Young sort of is a no-glove DH - he's by far the worst option defensively at all 4 infield positions for the Rangers, and it's possible that he would be on a lot of teams. It just happens that he sometimes plays defensively anyway.
But how good at third base are average utility infielders? Andres Blanco rarely played there this year because the Rangers had Young, but he was below average defensively if you add up all his time in the infield.
That's the thing. It's assuming all utility infielders are equally good fielders at all positions, which is hard to believe. In contrast, Young's bat (when he hits like he did this year) will play at any position. So Young does ensure that you've always got a good bat/lousy glove wherever he's employed, rather than a lousy bat/lousy glove in some situations. That seems somewhat valuable.
Similarly, if you have a glove who's equally adept all over the diamond, he will have greater value than the typical utility guy.
So you're saying that he possibly extended his career by being a wonderful teammate and moving to a new position? That Michael Young is such a great guy.
a) that child would be Michael Young
b) it would be the longest BBTF thread ever!
perhaps asking A-Rod to play the less phsyically demanding defensive position has turned out good for the Yankees in terms of keeping A-Rod healthier longer.
It's not clear to me that SS is more physically demanding in the durability sense. 3B tend to age like crap while you can find lots of long-career SS (especially if you include the bunch who carry on as utility IF). SS requires more physical skill and I can't see a reason why 3B would be more injurious (all the diving?) but that's the way it seems to work out.
Anyway, if I was worried about a player's long-term durability, 3B is one of the last places I would move him (2B and obviously C being even worse).
It's hard to say. There are some long-career 3B who could have played SS for quite a while: I can see Schmidt, Nettles, or Gaetti having had a long career at SS. Others seem too slow or big to have played SS successfully (Brooks Robinson, Eddie Mathews). And one thinks of a lot more third basemen who simply didn't have very long careers: their legs or bats got slow. Hank Blalock is four years younger than Michael Young.
Young's value is entirely in his bat.
But the ability to get that bat on the field at 3 different positions has a lot of value.
It means when you rest your regulars, or one goes on the 15-day DL, you get a major league bat at the position, rather than your typical 600 OPS backup IF.
Young played as a 2.5 WAR player this season despite his -9 fielding (in only 90 games in the field). There are almost no BUI who can provide that value with the glove.
There aren't a lot of guys who made the switch in their prime. Fregosi but not until after he was hurt and he quickly shifted to be more of a 1B. Stephens did (at 30) but it didn't stem his decline. Travis Jackson was kinda the Jim Fregosi of his day.
Don't forget, Young was originally a secondbaseman, and moved to short after the A Rod - Soriano trade.
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