Series Preview: Sox at Yankees

Sanity prevails, Juan Pierre has been removed from the lead-off spot. The bad news is Carlos Quentin will miss at least another game.  In my simulation I altogether removed him from the lineup and replaced him with Mark Kotsay, although at this point trying to guess what lineup Ozzie will trot out there next is an exercise in futility. Beckham and Teahen both sound like options to lead off according to Guillen, Teahen at this point makes the most sense with the patient approach he’s taken as of late.

I don’t think I have to tell you that the Yankees are an incredibly good team. There’s really not a weak spot in their lineup, other than Brett Gardner, and what Gardner doesn’t do on offense he makes up for on defense. I wish we had Nick Swisher back. Sigh. I wish we had Ryan Sweeney back. Sigh again. Here’s the Yankees Galaxy of Goodness:

Name
wOBA
DEF/150
RC/Game


Jeter
0.357
-1
0.672


Johnson
0.376
0
0.728


Teixeira
0.371
1
0.695


A-Rod
0.394
-2
0.766


Cano
0.364
-1
0.640


Posada
0.355
-4
0.594


Granderson
0.354
0
0.574


Swisher
0.354
-3
0.557


Gardner
0.319
10
0.426

Nick Johnson and Mark Teixeira have not hit for beans yet this season, but they’ve been struck by the bad-luck BABIP fairy. For the pitching, we run into our old friend Javier Vazquez, who already misses the National League.

Starter	Starter ERA	IP/GS	Bullpen ERA
Garcia	5.15	5	3.8
Danks	4.12	6	3.8
Buehrle	4.32	6	3.8
Starter	Starter ERA	IP/GS	Bullpen ERA
Pettitte	4.09	6	4.2
Vazquez	3.54	6.3	4.2
Hughes	4.03	5.3	4.2

Using Rest of Season ZiPS, and running the sim 10,000 times, I present to you the ugly results.

A-Rod lights up a cuban and celebrates another Yankees series win. Or at least the simulation projects he will.

Edit: I guess Quentin is going to DH, so here’s the sim after the lineup re-jiggering.

Swept! 25.7%
1 44.9%
2 24.8%
Sweep! 4.7%