Banking for dummies

By foxsports
Published

Warning: I'm arguing for the sake of arguing. I still love you, CJ Nitkowski.

The New York Yankees€™ acquisition of Chase Headley was well-advised and prudent. He'€™ll be substantially better in the second half.

True, his current slash line of .229/.296/.355 isn't pretty, as CJ pointed out in his Baseball Joe.

Headley's BABIP is at career low of .285; his career mark is .331. That number alone isn'€™t enough to chalk up his unattractive first half to bad luck. Let'€™s dive beneath the surface. His line drive percentage is higher than it has ever been, and he's hitting substantially fewer groundballs. His spray charts suggest that he's pulling fly balls and line drives with regularity, and we know what happens to such batted balls in Yankee Stadium. Now I'm comfortable saying he's experienced some degree of misfortune.

On to the other side of the ball.

It's Headley's defensive metrics that make his floor high. Despite the lack of offensive production, his fWAR sits neatly at 1.6, making him (at his perceived worst) reasonably valuable for the prorated portion of $10.5M the Yanks are on the hook for.

Additionally and by all accounts, he'€™s wrestled with a back issue for some time and is finally feeling freer after recent injections. From my personal experience, back pain of any kind leads to a slower bat and decreased power.

Here's Injury Expert Will Carroll'€™s tweet from moments ago:

Will Carroll €@injuryexpert  2m

"Headley's back should be helped by the injections. Loosen up, lack of pain can go a long way in getting his swing back to where it was"

Here'€™s the juicy part. The Yanks don't need help in 2014 alone. This is an audition to see how he responds to New York without making a long term commitment. Not everyone is built for the media circus; they will find out if Chase is. Headley can discover how his palate digs a big apple. Assuming he kills it and Jeter approves, he can get an account routing number ready for next season and beyond.

I feel like there is some low hanging banking related wordplay here, Chase. Good luck.