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Luke Voit is expected to be back in the Yankees lineup Friday, with one of the team's most reliable bats over the last twelve months. The emergence of Voit is an analytical victory; The Yankees have bet that his speed of exit and his predisposition to strike in the right field would serve him well at Yankee Stadium. Voit was blocked by a line of hitter in St. Louis. The bet paid off for the Yankees.
Meanwhile, in the absence of Voit, there was another quiet emergence at first base. Mike Ford finally shows the stick that has led to such a performance at Triple-A Scranton, a 131 wRC +, over the past two years. We will not be talking about home runs or the batting average, but we're going to talk about stats on Statcast, and we'll come back to that in a moment.
The third piece of this first triumvirate is our old friend Greg Bird, a final injury to plantar fasciitis, an injury that prevented him from being listed at all Yankees games in 2019. This is his fourth season in the Major leagues, but he only managed to be on the field for 186 games.
The emergence of Mike Ford endangers the career of the Yankee Birds, because the Yankees do not have enough bench parts with their super-eternal pool for players with potential, but no defensive versatility or speed. As the Yankees play with Bird year after year, it's quite plausible that they do not try it and move forward with Voit and Ford as their first base player.
The data would also support this conclusion. We are obviously dealing with small samples in Ford's data, so we will isolate the elements that stabilize the fastest: the profile of the struck ball and the discipline of the plate. Slower or isolated power can fluctuate in small samples, but the basic statistics of the process tend to show true talent much more quickly. The exit speed, for example, stabilizes about 60 hit balls and Ford at 83 after Seattle's win on Tuesday.
Ford's average exit speed is 92.1 mph, higher than Bird's (89 mph) career mark and virtually identical to Bird's (93 mph) mark in his short run of success. In 2015. The maximum output speed, which I like to use as an indicator of a ceiling hitter, sees both players hitting their maximum at 110.2 mph.
Ford's plate discipline also makes Bird dizzy, with his K-BB 2019 6.9% better than his 16.4% career, a mark two percentage points down from 2015. The building blocks of good hitters, and the things you should look at when you only have 120 appearances, all mean that Ford is at least an improvement over Bird's ground, with perhaps an equivalent cap.
So where does that leave Bird? He becomes a clear candidate without a bid, but he also has three years of option in the minor leagues. The Yankees could therefore keep him in Scranton until they know what to do with him. Neither he nor Ford offers much in terms of defense or rout, so the Yankees certainly can not get hold of both teams, even with the expansion to 26 men next year.
Whatever the Yankees do with Bird, it's clear his time with New York is coming to an end. He was the first of the wave Baby Bomber, as the best bat of the system, was introduced by Brian Cashman. We had a glimpse of what it might be like when he came to cover Mark Teixeira four years ago, but the fact that his performance can be easily reproduced – and even exceeded – by a player like Mike Ford shows to what point Bird has failed.
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