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The Great Giambino

Okay, so I threw that last part in there just to get a rise out of Yankee fans. I'm of the belief that field managers are generally given too much of the credit when a team succeeds and too much of the blame when a team fails. I write this as David Cassidy unmercifully butchers God Bless America during game 3 of the World Series.

When Joe Torre announced that Jason Giambi will be playing first base in lieu of Nick Johnson for the games in Florida, I decided to do a little (read: very little) research as to whether or not this was a wise idea. In the process, I stumbled upon the following: Jason Giambi is a beast. You may be saying to yourself, "Of course he's a beast. That's why they're paying him roughly the GDP of Peru for his services over the next five seasons (plus the last two). Tell me something I don't know?" Okay. Take the first-baseman's glove away from Giambi and he becomes almost pedestrian at the plate. There may be some circumstances I'm not privy to (injury, protein deposit, etc.), but the following statistics are pretty staggering:

2000
1B 348/491/678 with 118/75 and 62 xbh (38) in 422ab
DH 259/396/506 with 18/20 and 11 xbh (5) in 85ab

2001
1B 346/482/652 with 117/74 and 75 xbh (32) in 462ab
DH 316/443/737 with 12/9 and 12 xbh (6) in 57ab

2002
1B 344/461/674 with 68/60 and 50 xbh (29) in 331ab
DH 271/397/489 with 41/52 and 26 xbh (12) in 229ab

2003
1B 277/441/592 with 78/79 and 42 xbh (25) in 292ab
DH 220/377/452 with 51/60 and 24 xbh (16) in 241ab

I included 2001 and 2002 stats for completeness, but the small sample size doesn't really lend itself well to cogent analysis. So, we'll focus on the past two seasons with the Yanks.

Okay, so his 886 OPS as a DH in 2002 is hardly pedestrian (it would have only trailed Bernabe Williams' 908). However, it was nigh 250 points lower than when he played 1B, with much of the dropoff attributed to his decreased SLG. In 2003, Giambi put up an 829 OPS, or a hot-streak better than Mo Vaughn's 805. Let's take a look at his RC/27 for his positional split this season:

I didn't have exact splits for GIDP, SF, SH, and IBB, so I took his totals in those categories and DIV'd them (to get whole numbers) based on the percentage of at-bats (53% for 1B, 47% for DH).

2003 Giambi as 1B: 10.46 RC/27
2003 Giambi as DH: 6.27 RC/27

For those who are unfamiliar with this particular metric, it attempts to predict the number of runs that a team full of Giambis would score in a nine-inning game, or 27 outs. As you can see, Giambi-1B would score a ludicrous number of runs, with Giambi-DH putting up merely ridiculous numbers. To put this in perspective, a team made up of nine Giambi-1Bs would score 1694 runs, while a team of Giambi-DHs would score 1015 runs. The American League record is 1067, set by the 1931 Yankees.

As for Nick Johnson, I am not going to go into the nitty-gritty, but his 2003 splits look like this:

1B 286/425/488 with 47/36 and 23 xbh (10) in 213ab
DH 284/422/450 with 23/21 and 10 xbh (4) in 109ab

Nick's splits are more symmetrical. The Yankees are fortunate to be playing in the American League, where they can take advantage of both of these great hitters. They were both in the Top-10 in the AL in EqA, with Johnson coming in 9th and the Giambino nestled in the 4-spot, behind A-Rod, Carlos Delgado, and M-Ram. If there were some way to play Nick Johnson at third base and sit Aaron Boone's carcass on the bench for the next three (now two) games, I would probably do it.

So, was playing Nick Johnson at 1B while DH'ing The Great Giambino a smart move? It doesn't look like it from where we're (I'm?) standing. Unless George Steinbrenner is filling out the lineup cards, this particular blunder is all on Clueless Joe. Of course, with the Yanks two wins from yet-another World Series title, the point may be moot. It's something to think about going into next season, however, because after the Yankees trade for Carlos Beltran and sign Vladimir Guerrero, Joe Torre will have some serious lineup-gridlock to diffuse. We all wish we had such problems.