The World's Worst Sports Blog

Teixeira and Cano: Picking up slack? August 5, 2010

Michael Kaye, the YES broadcaster for the Yankees, often pointed out between July 22 and August 4 that the Yankees were turning up their offense to make up for Alex Rodriguez‘s lack of home run production. That seems like it might be subject to significant confirmation bias – seeing a few guys hit home runs when you wouldn’t expect them to might lead you to believe that the team in general has increased its production. So, did the Yankees produce more home runs during A-Rod’s drought?

During the first 93 games of the season, the Yankees hit 109 home runs in 3660 plate appearances for rates of 1.17 home runs per game and .0298 home runs per plate appearance. From July 23 to August 3, they hit 17 home runs in 451 plate appearances over 12 games for rates of 1.42 home runs per game and .0377 home runs per plate appearances. Obviously those numbers are quite a bit higher than expected, but can it be due simply to chance?

Assume for the moment that the first 93 games represent the team’s true production capabilities. Then, using the binomial distribution, the likelihood of hitting at least 17 home runs in 451 plate appearances is

The cumulative probability is about .868, meaning the probability of hitting 17 or fewer home runs is .868 and the probability of hitting more than that is about .132. The probability of hitting 16 or fewer is .805, which means out of 100 strings of 451 plate appearances about 81 of them should end with 16 or fewer plate appearances. This is a perfectly reasonable number and not inherently indicative of a special performance by A-Rod’s teammates.

Kaye frequently cited Mark Teixeira and Robinson Cano as upping their games. Teixeira hit 18 home runs over the first 93 games and made 423 plate appearances for rates of .194 home runs per game and .0426 home runs per plate appearance. From July 23 to August 3, he had 5 home runs in 12 games and 54 plate appearances for rates of .417 per game and .0926. That rate of home runs per plate appearance is about 8% likely, meaning that either Teixeira did up his game considerably or he was exceptionally lucky.

Cano played 92 games up to July 21, hitting 18 home runs in 400 plate appearances for rates of .196 home runs per game and .045 per plate appearance. During A-Rod’s drought, he hit 3 home runs in 50 plate appearances over 12 games for rates of .25 and .06. That per-plate-appearance rate is about 39% likely, which means we don’t have enough evidence to reject the idea that Cano’s performance (though better than usual) is just a random fluctuation.

It will be interesting to see if Teixeira slows down as a home-run hitter now that Rodriguez’s drought is over.