When the Yankees signed Mark Teixeira about a year and a half ago one of the first things we were told about him was that he is a very slow starter, and then he showed it by putting up a .738 OPS last April. Then we saw him rebound by putting up a 1.138 OPS in May, and we never looked back.
So this season when Teixeira only managed a .559 OPS in the first month nobody was really concerned. Why should we be, most of us thought, he’ll rebound in May. That’s partially true, he did improve his OPS by almost .300 points to .840 for the month.
The problem is that his April 2010 was definitely worse than his April 2009 and his rebound in May was not nearly as impressive. To top that off, he’s slumping again during the first five days in June (he’s 3-for-20, good for a .150 AVG and .427 OPS this month).
At a certain point a slow start becomes a bad year, and maybe we haven’t gotten to that point just yet, but we are inching uncomfortably close to it.
For those fans who start to sweat when Teixeira comes to the plate, there are reasons to expect that he’ll turn it around soon. All of his peripheral numbers are at or close to his career averages, even with five strikeouts yesterday, and this is a good sign that his approach hasn’t changed.
He just seems to be running into an extraordinary amount of bad luck lately.
The first things to look at are his BABIP and his LD percent (batting average on balls in play and line drive percentage for those unfamiliar with those stats). His BABIP is .235 right now, down from his career average of .304. This shows us that he’s getting incredibly unlucky as even poor hitters usually average around .300 BABIP. At some point there should be a correction here and his average will go way up along with it.
His LD percent is also at 20.1 percent right now compared to his career average of 20.4 percent. This means that he is hitting the ball with the same authority as he has his entire career. He’s just not finding spots.
There are also his walk and strikeout rates to consider. Teixeira has a BB percent of 12.9 and a K percent of 20.5 this season. Those numbers are almost identical to his career averages of 11.4 and 20.5, if anything he’s actually walking slightly more than he has in his career. This shows that he hasn’t changed his approach at the plate or expanded his strike zone.
Finally, another good thing to look at is his home run to fly ball rate, or HR/FB. This number is at 11.3 percent right now meaning that 11.3 percent of his fly balls turn into home runs. This number is down from his career mark of 18.5 percent. This statistic relies heavily on luck so the fact that his fly balls are leaving the ballparks at a less frequent rate this year shows that he is getting incredibly unlucky.
The point of this post is to show that fans should not give up on Teixeira.
He’s taking the same approach at the plate and not making it easier for pitchers to get him out by expanding his strike zone. His BABIP and HR/FB ratio show that up to this point he is getting incredibly unlucky. Five strikeout games sound bad, but his K percent is still the same as it’s ever been.
Be patient, he’ll come around.
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