New York Yankees fans are entering the 2013 baseball season with a great deal of pessimism. I have been a Yankees fan since I was a kid in the 1970s, and it has been many years since Yankees fans are going into a season with so many question marks about the team. A great deal of the pessimism stems from the Yankees’ starting lineup, which is very old by baseball standards.
This is the projected lineup the New York Yankees will likely put on the field for the first game of the season at home at Yankee Stadium on April 1, 2013, vs. the Boston Red Sox. Leaving out the catching position, which is still uncertain, the other eight projected starters in the New York Yankees lineup have an average age of 33.6 years.
That is an old lineup.
New York Yankees’ projected starting lineup for the 2013 season
- Mark Teixeira – 1B
Mark Teixeira will be 33 years old on April 11, 2013. Teixeira is entering the fifth year of his monster contract with the Yankees that runs through the 2016 season and pays him $22.5 million for each of the remaining years on the contract.
Mark Teixeira is clearly slipping as a hitter. He posted the lowest OPS of his career in 2012. As a Yankees fan, I’m tired of Teixeira’s constant slow starts to each season. I’m not optimistic he will get off to a fast start, or have a great year at the plate.
- Robinson Cano – 2B
I’m a lot more optimistic about 30-year-old Robinson Cano entering the 2013 season. Cano will be a free agent after this season, and history has taught me that players who are playing for contracts tend to play their best baseball.
- Derek Jeter – SS
Coming off the broken ankle he suffered against the Detroit Tigers in the first game of the ALCS last year, Derek Jeter is expected to be able to start for the Yankees on opening day. Jeter had a great year in 2012, leading the American League in hits, but he is a question mark entering the 2013 campaign.
Will Jeter be fully recovered from the ankle injury? Will he be able to replicate his great 2012 season again as he turns 39 years of age? Two big question marks nobody has the answer to right now.
If Derek Jeter gets just 132 hits this season, he will pass five Baseball Hall of Fame players — Eddie Collins, Paul Molitor, Carl Yastrzemski, Honus Wagner, and Cap Anson — and move into sixth place on the all-time hits list. If Jeter can get 211 hits in 2013, he will pass Tris Speaker and move into 5th place on the all-time hits list.
- Kevin Youkilis – 3B
The Yankees signed 33-year-old Kevin Youkilis to a one-year, $12 million contract to play third base in 2013 — at least until Alex Rodriquez comes back from hip surgery, if he does come back.
Youkilis only hit .235 combined last season playing for the Boston Red Sox and the Chicago White Sox. Optimistically, though, Youkilis scored 72 runs in 438 at-bats, for a run average of .164. The average American League player had a run average of .130 in 2012, so Youkilis was well above average as a run scorer.
- Ichiro Suzuki – RF
After acquiring him in a trade last year, the Yankees gave 39-year-old Ichiro Suzuki a two-year, $13 million contract this winter. In my opinion, that was a bad idea. Ichiro was a great player for a number of years, but has not been a great player for three or four years now.
Last season, Ichiro scored just 77 runs in 629 at-bats playing for the Yankees and Seattle Mariners. That’s a run average of just .122, well below the league average of .130. Scoring runs is how you win games, and Ichiro is not going to help the Yankees score runs in 2013.
Ichiro Suzuki enters this season needing 394 hits to reach 3,000 for his career. I don’t think he will ever reach 3,000 hits, but considering he didn’t start playing in the major leagues until he was 27 years old, he has had a remarkable career.
- Curtis Granderson – CF
Though he only batted .232 in 2012, 31-year-old Curtis Granderson scored 102 runs in 596 at-bats. His run average of .171 was well above the league average of .130, so Granderson should help the Yankees score runs in 2013.
If you want to win games in baseball, have more players on your team that score runs at high rates than your opponents. I know he strikes out a lot, but Curtis Granderson scores a lot of runs, and that’s what the Yankees need to win games.
- Brett Gardner – LF
After missing most of 2012 with an elbow injury, 29-year-old Brett Gardner is back and supposedly healthy. That’s great news for the Yankees, as Brett Gardner is an excellent outfielder and a great run scorer. Gardner has scored runs at a .185 rate so far in his career, well above the rate of an average American League player.
- Catcher – ???
The New York Yankees are entering the 2013 season with huge question marks at the catching position. The three players in camp competing to be the starting catcher are Francisco Cervelli, Chris Stewart, and rookie Austin Romine.
None of three are good hitters. Romine has hit .197 in AAA, while Chris Stewart has a career average of .217 in the majors. Cervelli has hit .271 so far in his career, but he has recently been linked to the Biogenesis clinic in Miami that was known for supplying performance enhancing drugs.
I believe most Yankees fans are thinking the same thing I am about the catching position: The Yankees need to make a trade for a catcher before the season starts.
- Travis Hafner – DH
The Yankees signed 35-year-old Travis Hafner to a one-year, $2 million contract to be the DH for the 2013 season. At least against right-handed pitching. Manager Joe Girardi has said that he will use regular players like Derek Jeter as the DH against lefties to give them days off from playing in the field.
If Alex Rodriguez ever comes back this season, he and Keven Youkilis can also be used at DH against lefties.
- Bench
Unlike in the recent past, the Yankees do not have a deep bench this year. In the infield, Eduardo Nunez can hit a little, but he is a terrible fielder, while Jason Nix can field, but has a .214 career batting average.
In the outfield, the Yankees are very thin on the bench, with just veteran Juan Rivera as the only player on the depth charts anybody would know. The Yankees do have a great outfield prospect in Tyler Austin.
Austin has scored 121 runs in 593 at-bats in the minor leagues, for a run average of .204. Any player with a run average over .200 in the minors is a great major-league prospect. Mike Trout had a run average of .214 in the minor leagues, before being named Rookie of the Year in the American League in 2012.
I think 21-year-old Tyler Austin could play in the majors for the Yankees in 2013, but the Yankees almost always drag their heels with prospects. With an average age of 33.6 years for their starters (excluding catcher), the Yankees are an old team that could really use a young prospect getting some playing time in 2013.
Joe Dorish is a lifelong New York Yankees fan who has been to many games at Yankee Stadium. Joe’s cousin used to be the trainer for the Kansas City Royals and would get Joe and his family tickets to Yankee Stadium whenever the Royals were in town dating back to the great rivalry days of the 1970s. Sitting with friends and family of Kansas City Royals players at Yankee Stadium was a great learning experience for Joe, and helped shape his love of the game.
