Girardi got it wrong in right (field)

Steve,
I don't get why you're so down on Ralph Nader (That's my nick-name for Nady). Its not like Swisher is Roberto Clemente in right. Xavier had many clutch hits for us last year. And even if he doesn't have huge productive numbers in the past, he brings a lot to the table. Michael Kay said that he reminds him of a player on the late 90's Yankees. Look at Scott Brosius. He was garbage with the A's. He came to the Yankees, older then Nady is now, and became a World Series MVP and a key part to the championships. I think you're wrong about this guy. Swisher is a sold player, but Nady is a professional and a winner in my eyes. Don't say Girardi is wrong. That's just your opinion. This could turn out to be the best decision of the year. I suppose you think Jeter is done at Short stop? Haha sorry to bring up a dead issue... thanks steve

Bard will be back soon. The Red Sox have such great depth in their pitching staff all the way down to the minors. It really will be a great season!

Julia
http://werbiefitz.mlblogs.com/

Sorry, don't like Swisher. He's just Giambi again but younger, and anyway with Giambi at least we don't need to worry about the dreaded bounce back yr. Nady did very well for us. I looked up their career stats. They're pretty close, and Nady did better last yr. It would be an insult to Nady not to go with him. He did everything he was supposed to do right last yr.Swish didn't. I like Nady.
Agree on Gardner, though. Forget Melky.

Based on Girardi 's pholosophy:If you don't do well ,you are not going to have a job next year.
I think that the message he wants to send to the players.

I agree Melky is not the answer, Gardner might be, but I don't think he ever gonna hit .400 in his career, so manager just can't
give the job easily to a young player ,especially when he 's got a .220 record the previous year. At least the manager has to pretend there is a serious competition . And also I remember Gardner has a very very good spring training in 2008.So did Melky.....

Steve, you sound like the little boy who didn't get his way so he took his ball and went home! Relax, as Yogi once said 90% of the game is half mental. I'm thinking Girardi has a better pulse on his team than the rest of us do. It could be that Nady is the better move right now, and the key is right now. It's a long season and if you hear both of these guys talk about it they know that there will be plenty of at bats for both of them. Again depth is the key, I think both will be major contributors when it's all over.

Our choices are Nady in right, and the switch hitting, good eye and power guy coming off the bench or Swisher in right, and a limited Nady coming off the bench. Perhaps Swisher's attributes are what land him on the bench / DH / 1st / RF / LF / CF rotation. Honestly, I think that kind of flexibility and bench could negate the 2 wins you speak of.

Between Nady and Swisher its pretty obvious who looks more like a platoon player(nady) and who has is going to have a higher upside(swisher). I dont understand the rationale of this move unless Girardi is hoping to spur Swisher to prove him wrong. Its not like Nady is creaming Swisher in spring like Gardner is over Melky. Heck Swish has better numbers in spring. Last season, Swish crashed and I believe one reason was that he wasnt given a starting spot and played out of position. Now Joe G is going to use him on the bench and hope to get a dif result? Sheez....and the reasoning for giving Nady the nod is because he has done something in NY but Swish hasn't? I don't like to second guess the skipper but this I believe he blew this one.

It is disturbing that so many people prefer Nady when the facts are so obviously pointing in Swisher's favor.

Also, I can't stand this garbage about how Nady is more like a mid-90's Yankee hitter, like Brosius, etc. First of all, those Yankee teams from the 90's had some awesome hitters (Bernie/Jeter were MVP-caliber, and O'Neill wasn't too far behind). This idea that the Yankees won in the 90's by the sheer grittiness and scrappiness of mediocre hitters couldn't be further from the truth. They had some impressive hitters in that lineup. Also, the defensive abilities of those hitters was a huge amount better than the defense of the Yankee position players over the last 5+ years. Saving runs is important as well.

Swisher is not "just a younger Giambi". First of all, being compared to Giambi as an offensive player is a compliment, not an insult. But unlike Giambi, Swisher's defense is actually a positive factor. Swisher's defensive play in right field is better than Nady. Swish's bat will most likely be better than Nady since Swisher actually has plate discipline and therefore will probably be better at getting on base than Nady. Swisher is a better baserunner than Nady. Swisher is younger than Nady. There is no reasonable argument for picking Nady over Swisher.

And to conclude the ranting portion about the mid-90's Yankees, let's not forget about the pitching.

Here are the Team ERA+ numbers of some recent Yankee teams:

1996: 108
1997: 117
1998: 116
1999: 114
2000: 101
2004: 96
2005: 93
2006: 102
2007: 99
2008: 104

The pitching of the late 90's Yankee teams was far superior to the mediocre to below-average group of starters that the Yankees have been putting on the field for the last half decade. This is the main difference between these Yankee teams and those Yankee teams from the late 90's. The pitching and defense combo was superior back then. And with the exception of 2008, the Yankee hitters have generally been more productive than their mid-90's counterparts, yet guys like Giambi and ARod get bashed for not playing "the right way". It's not their fault that Brian Cashman could only come up with Pavanos and Wrights and Ponsons and Ericksons and Chacons and the skeletal remains of Randy Johnson in the last 5 years.

Part of the reason why you remember all of those supposed clutch hits from the late 90's Yankees is because the pitching staff kept the games very tight. The Yankee offensive production in many of those postseason series was pretty bad. Brosius and Tino were especially poor postseason hitters. I am not making this up:

Tino career postseason: .233/.321/.351
Brosius career postseason: .245/.278/.418

(ARod career postseason: .279/.361/.483)

Yes, they were much inferior postseason hitters to the man who supposedly has no idea how to hit in October, A-Rod.

Of course you remember Brosius's and Tino's memorable World Series homers. But think about how many chances they had. Tino batted over 400 times in the postseason. He hit 9 homers with 38 RBIs. That is not impressive. What kind of a clutch hitter only has 38 RBI's after 400 times to the plate?? 400 times to the plate is very roughly equal to 2/3 of a regular season's worth of at-bats. You would be killing this guy if he only had 9 HRs and 38 RBIs heading into August of a regular season. Brosius had 217 plate appearances in the postseason. He hit 8 HRs. This isn't too far out of line with his career HR rates. For his career he hit one HR every 31 times to the plate. In the postseason he hit one HR every 27 times to the plate. So no, Scott Brosius didn't have some aura about him that allowed him to go about bashing homers at will in the postseason.

So Tino and Brosius didn't hit these memorable world series homeruns because they were super amazing clutch postseason hitters. Tino's power vanished in the postseason, and Brosius in fact had nearly the same HR rate in the postseason as he had for his entire regular season career. The Yankee pitchers generally did a good job of keeping the opposing offense down, and so when Tino and Scott finally broke through with a homerun (which was bound to happen at some point since they combined for over 600 postseason plate appearances) it increased the chances that it happened in a meaningful situation. And so many people remember it as some amazing act of god. But really all it means is that the scores of the two teams were very close that day (thanks to the pitching).

But then look at the 2007 ALDS, Game 4. ARod hit a homerun in the 7th inning, and Abreu hit a homerun in the 9th inning. Boy, these sound like the type of gritty, scrappy late game clutch HR's that guys like Brosius and Tino (and apparently Nady??) would have come through with as well. But many people probably have no recollection of these 2 homeruns because the Yankee pitching was terrible in this game. The Yankees were down by 4 runs prior to those 2 solo homeruns, and they ended up losing the game by 2 runs and were eliminated from the playoffs.

The point is, if the current Yankee teams had the pitching of the late 90's Yankee teams, then it is more likely that people would recall homeruns like Abreu's or ARod's, which were tagged as meaningless by many people even though they were largely no different from the homeruns hit by Tino and Brosius in the late 90's postseasons. The difference was that the Yankee pitchers of the late 90's were good enough to make the context of Tino and Brosius's homeruns memorable and more meaingful to the typical fan, when in reality, Abreu and ARod also hit very important homeruns as well. But unfortunately for them, Wang and Moose gave up 6 runs that day.

And in case I lost the main point in this long diversion: Nick Swisher should be the starting player over Xavier Nady because he produces more runs with his bat, he saves more runs with his glove, he produces more runs on the bases, and he is more likely to improve from his current talent level. In other words, he is a better baseball player than Xavier Nady in every facet of the game.

senatorbobdole-Your point on the 90's team is correct. But Nady should start. Why? People make comments like, "Nady's older, and therefore probably won't hit his career high again, and Swisher's younger so he won't hit his career low. But the fact of the matter is this: Who would you rather have, a hitter coming off his best yr. or his worst yr.? Nady did nothing to lose himself a job he basically had already won. And anyway, since when was Nady a bad defender? Remember, Swisher was a good first baseman, not outfielder. There's no gurantee his defense would be any better than Nady's.

Well, if both Nady and Swisher play exactly at the same level they did last year, then yes you are correct, Nady is the better guy to play over Swisher. But Nady had a career-best year, and Swisher had a career-worst year. The past performance of these two players is very convincing that each player had a fluky year with the bat. I put much more stock in the last 3 years worth of data than the last one year's worth of data. The last 3 years worth of data says that Swisher is the superior offensive player.

As for outfield defense, there are ways to measure this. Ultimate Zone Rating is one of the methods gaining popularity. By this metric, Xavier Nady has cost his teams about 3 runs in RF over his last 1500 defensive innings out there compared to the average RF player. Swisher has saved his teams about 11.5 runs in RF over his last 1500 defensive innings out there. An everyday player will probably get 1200 or so defensive innings out there. So over the course of a full season, Swisher will conservatively save at least 10 more runs than Nady, and probably more than that. I will understand if you are skeptical of this defensive metric since you don't know anything about it, but from what I have read about it in recent months, it seems very valid and conving to me that Swisher is the better RF defensive player.

Look, Nady is in his prime. He is a hard nosed player that gives it everything he has on the field. He makes the most of what limited talent he has. Swisher is younger, faster, more versatile and entering his prime. The last time the Yankees had a power hitting RF was Gary Sheffield. He was the first in a long time. I would go with Swisher and move Nady if possible. Gardner is clearly the choice in CF. He is a more complete player and brings more tools with his speed. He can single handed manufacture a run as he did against Boston. Melky is a good player that may just need a change of scenery.

No, Nady should start. I don't want Swisher starting on the Yanks. He will strike out more often than Nady. I would definitely take Nady over Swisher, he is coming off the better year.
shortporch http://shortporch.mlblogs.com/

How about trading Nady for Randy Winn? The Yanks could use another credible option in Center (I'm assuming Winn can still resemble a league-average defender out there which would be fine with Damon and Swisher on either side) who can also play right. The Giants have expressed interest in Nady before and could certainly use another credible option at first. Gardner is not the answer and neither is Melky. Either one can 4th OF until they bring up Jackson for the 2nd half.