It’s no secret that the New York Yankees are struggling really badly right now and you could even say they haven’t been the same team since the 2019 ALCS. And one of the causes for the disappearance of the offense is the lack of offense in the outfield. Yes Aaron Judge is in right but he’s the one providing anything positive to this team, Hicks is completely useless right now with his injury, Clint is batting an outstanding .182 BA while playing with not a good glove this year. The Andujar project hasn’t worked out well so far and has cost us a game already, and Gardner is being one of the most useless players in the league as usual. So how can the Yankees fix this problem? Well a lot of people have brought up the idea of trading for an Outfielder like Joey Gallo, Ketel Marte, Starling Marte, and plenty more but the one guy that stands out of that pack for me in my opinion is the slugging Jesse Winker.
What’s so intriguing
Jesse Winker has been one of the best players in the league this season, batting .350 with 17 HR, 37 RBI, .412 OBP, 1.077 OPS, 177 OPS+, and slugging .665. Those stats would all be ranked 1st on the NEW YORK YANKEES. Yeah this kid is a unit, let me amaze you with more stats…188 wRC+, .371 BABIP, 26 wRAA, yet again those would all lead the team. So here you have a kid who’s a lefty bat in Yankee Stadium who has ELITE bat on ball ability and doesn’t strike out to the degree that Giancarlo Stanton does. Winker hits the ball HARD, Winker ranks in the top 4 percentile in the league in Hard Hit% at 58% which means he hits the ball over 95 MPH 58% of the time which is insane. And what happens when you hit the ball hard in the MLB…it leads to a lot of hits that shouldn’t be. And besides Stanton and Judge nobody else hits the ball consistently hard. I’m gonna be explaining a stat here to you, wOBA and xwOBA. wOBA is an offensive metric that helps calculate a player’s real offensive value without using flawed stats like BA, OBP, and Slugging. It comes up with a combination of both but gives a better result and a better understanding of how good a player is at the plate. Winker’s wOBA is .458 which in comparison to Mike Trout is about even. But Winker’s xwOBA is .410 which means his expected wOBA is that number, so this all concludes that Winker is playing above expectations and his xwOBA is higher then 96% of the league wOBA. Jesse is on pace for a 50+ HR season with an above average BA so there’s a good chance he comes away with some MVP votes but will it be on the New York Yankees?
TheDyspatch 