If he was just below average in his vision and plate discipline he would have a ~.720 OPS. Unfortunately he’s worse than anyone I’ve ever seen at drawing walks. His slug is solid, it’s not like he’s a waste of time out there, but he’s gets way more playing time than he should.
I agree he is not without good qualities. He does hit for a solid average, for 2023, can run some, and has great energy. There are 2 problems 1) He is not plus at anything, but minus at a couple of things. 2) Both McCormick and Meyers are better than him across the board but 2/3 of the time one is sitting the bench while he plays.
I feel this about many players. When most of the time, they don't produce and the guy I think will produce plays better, my frustration with Dusty grows. While I acknowledge there are lots of things I don't know that the Astros do, it is pretty easy to see some things the Astros did that just didn't work out.
Here is the current Astros position players fWAR (regardless of team) over the last 3 years prorated to 600 PAs (~ a full season). Jose Altuve 5.5 Yordan Alvarez 5.4 Kyle Tucker 4.4 Alex Bregman 4.1 Jeremy Pena 3.7 Chas McCormick 3.6 Jake Meyers 3.2 Jose Abreu 2.0 Corey Julks 1.2 Mauricio Dubon 0.8 Martin Maldonado 0.1 Yainer Diaz -1.5 (this is really distorted based on time away from catcher and small sample) Cesar Salazar -8.0
According to FanGraphs, the Astros have the 3rd easiest remaining schedule and the Rangers have the 2nd hardest. Their prediction modules still expect the Astros to overtake them and win the AL West, and secure a 1st rd bye. Teams will improve so the Astros need to also but 1/3 of the way through the season all is good.
Rangers have a multitude of guys having career years. They are set up for quite the drop off in the second half imo...
Even with a big drop, they are still probably a 90-win team at the end of the year. The Astros are very fortunate that Yordan is having his best season in clutch situations with the injuries they have had.
They’re fortunate that great players are playing great in the most important situations? Interesting take… (And yes, the probably don’t have a WS trophy last year if Yordan didn’t do well in clutch situations).
The disaster in 2022 really drags down Meyers numbers. 2021 and 2023 combined, he projects for an extremely impressive 4.3 fWAR per 600.
Yordan is no doubt clutch, but he has a 1.720 OPS in high leverage situations this season, that's a joke number even for him.
Magnified by managers choosing to use a lefty reliever... even if said lefty reliever isn't their best bullpen arm... but he uses him because he's a lefty. His career high leverage numbers are in line with some HOF guys.
When we played Milwaukee last week, I was ready to fully mock Craig Counsell for doing just that, but he actually put his best reliever in to face Yordan instead of their mediocre lefty. I wonder if teams are finally gonna start doing that or continue slavishly bringing in their lefty. At some point you would think the nerds would realize the trend and that the "platoon advantage" means jack s**t when facing Yordan.
Yordan is great. He should be assumed to play great regardless of the situation. I'm not talking about Yordan being great in the clutch for the average player. I'm talking about Yordan being great in the clutch versus Yordan. He's having a ****ing OPS of 2 in the clutch this year.
There's some special role out there where a diehard fan of a team could probably design a game-plan against his beloved team better than most opposing teams could. It would be like playing the don't pass-line in craps... where you can't really celebrate your wins... but you could do quite well and profit.
And the Rangers are on pace for one of the greatest run differentials of all-time. Who will blink first?
Here's the thing. They have a lefty in their bullpen that will probably give about the same results as their setup man versus Yordan. Do they go an entire series down a reliever or do they throw in the lefty? Also, Yordan vs lefties in high leverage per FanGraphs is 1.6 OPS or wRC+ of 325 versus 2.3 or 493, repectively versus RHPs. In other words, Yordan is absolutely crushing RHPs significantly better in the clutch than LHPs. Though Yordan versus LHPs in the clutch is still insanely great even for Yordan standards.
I don't think either are sustainable, but the Rangers lead in the division would be about 8 right now assuming the same run differentials, but each team had the same amount of clutch play.
