Serious Baseball: Johnny Damon

While it is debatable whether it was the biggest signing of the off-season thus far, there is no debating that projecting how the New York Yankees newest acquisition, Johnny Damon, will fair in his first season in Pinstripes will be extremely fun.

And that is what I am all about people, having fun. I am a writer of the people, by the people, and for the people. It is widely known that people like to have fun, and so I am here to do just that, in the name of the people, let’s have some fun.

(Please note witty sarcasm)

I’m sure everybody is aware that former Boston Red Sox center fielder Johnny Damon skipped Beantown in favor of the Big Apple and a 4-year, $52 million contract. While this signing will undoubtedly just add fuel to the raging fire that is the rivalry of Red Sox-Yankees, it is one that will also have a big impact on the way the American League East standings shape out this upcoming season.

Damon was signed by the Yankees to fill two roles: leadoff hitter, and center fielder. While Damon can very competently fill both these roles, let’s find out just how good he will be as an offensive player in 2006.

To start, here is a look at Damon’s season-by-season statistics, with IPD and ISOP included:

team	yr	AB	AVG	OBP	SLG	IPD	ISOP	OPS	HR	RBI	SB
KCA	95	188	0.282	0.324	0.441	0.042	0.159	0.765	3	23	7
KCA	96	517	0.271	0.313	0.368	0.042	0.097	0.681	6	50	25
KCA	97	472	0.275	0.338	0.386	0.063	0.111	0.724	8	48	16
KCA	98	642	0.277	0.339	0.439	0.062	0.162	0.778	18	66	26
KCA	99	583	0.307	0.379	0.477	0.072	0.170	0.856	14	77	36
KCA	00	655	0.327	0.382	0.495	0.055	0.168	0.877	16	88	46
OAK	01	644	0.256	0.324	0.363	0.068	0.107	0.687	9	49	27
BOS	02	623	0.286	0.356	0.443	0.070	0.157	0.799	14	63	31
BOS	03	608	0.273	0.345	0.405	0.072	0.132	0.750	12	67	30
BOS	04	621	0.304	0.380	0.477	0.076	0.173	0.857	20	94	19
BOS	05	624	0.316	0.366	0.439	0.050	0.123	0.805	10	75	18
		6177	0.290	0.353	0.431	0.063	0.141	0.784	130	700	281

Even though Damon had a great season last year, for some reason, he was very impatient at the plate compared to his normal self. This is very weird because as I’ve said in many articles past, a hitter’s patience is something that is fairly steady throughout his career. If it were ever to move dramatically in any one way, it would most likely get better, not worse like it was for Damon last season.

Since I know Damon didn’t just wake up one day and lose his plate discipline, I’m going to have to assume that he changed his hitting style in 2005; I don’t know why, but he must have. He must have decided to take fewer pitches, and not get as deep into pitch counts as he used to. Since he batted .316 in 2005, the conversion was an obvious success, and he probably won’t be switching back to the patient Johnny Damon from 2001-2004. (In all actuality, Damon had a worse season in terms of OPS, but I’m sure he’s not going to abandon a style that led him to a .316 AVG).

Normally at this point I would make a graph showing Damon’s recent trend in IPD, but it would just be useless here since Damon, in 2005, was clearly a different hitter than he was for most of his career before 2005. This makes predicting his IPD extremely difficult, and sort a shot in the dark, but I’m going to project a .055 IPD figure for him in 2006. This means he will continue to swing at more pitches, but with a tad more patience.

Now we will look at Damon’s ISOP to provide with some sort of measure of how much raw power he possesses, and how he has progressed in this category over the years. Here is his ISOP chart (Chart provided by FanGraphs.com). The Blue Line represents the MLB League average ISOP:



Well, Damon isn’t making this any easier on me with those random up-and-down fluctuations in his ISOP in every season since 2000. I don’t’ know whether to say he’s losing power with his age, or gaining it. Should I just follow the trend and predict him to have an up year, like he’s had every other year since 2000?

To try and make this projection I’m going to again take into consideration that Damon changed his hitting style last season. As we mentioned, he seems to have swung at more pitches in 2005, resulting in more base hits, most notably singles in favor of extra base hits. This can be seen by the rise in Damon’s AVG and drop in his SLG.

Again, like I said when projecting his IPD, I will have to assume that since this new style worked last season, that he’s not going to change it in 2005. In 2006, Damon’s ISOP will be .130.

Lastly I must project Damon’s AVG, the category he excelled most in during 2005. Damon’s new hitting style in 2005 clearly was meant to improve his efficiency in this category, and do so by hitting more singles. In 2005, 74.11% of Damon hits were singles. This was his highest percentage of Damon’s hits that resulted in singles since 1997.

It is now obvious what Damon was doing in 2005. He wasn’t waiting for his pitch to drive; he was swinging at the first pitch in the strike zone, and trying to poke it for a single. In 2005, this worked an awful lot; so much that his BABIP last season was .343, very high above the league average number in this category (.300), and the highest of his career.

Again, this happened because of the new hitting style. Will it work again in 2006? I’d bet it won’t simply because a players BABIP will usually regress to the mean over time. It’s been two straight season now where Damon’s BABIP was higher than the average (Chart provided by FanGraphs.com):



Because of the law of averages I am going to have to project a decline in this facet of his game, but not below the average since even before Damon changed his hitting style, he was always at least average in this category. In 2006 Damon’s BABIP will be .320, still very good. This decline will result in slightly lower numbers across the board for Damon in 2006.

So now that I’ve got Damon’s BABIP, IPD, and ISOP projected a complete batting line will be easy to compute. In 2006 Damon will have a season like so:

.302/.357/.432, 12 HR

Not too bad, huh? Looks like the Yankees got themselves a legitimate leadoff hitter for 2006 at least.

Thank you for reading. If you have any questions, comments, concerns, or suggestions, please do not hesitate to email me at frnkbndy@yahoo.com.