Nick Swisher and Right Field Candidates' Marcels Projections

Every single media account has indicated Nick Swisher's Yankee career is over. He perhaps will be the first victim of  Hal Steinbrenner's goal to come in first place - on Newsweek's list of the greediest people ever.

This is too bad - if the Yankees were focused on winning, the only way they would be considering not signing Swisher is if they were going to sign Josh Hamilton!

If you think that is an exaggeration, consider the following table. This lists projected 2013 stats for various outfielders; the projections were calculated using the Marcels algorithm. Most of the outfielders listed are free agents; these are the guys marked with asterisks. A few have been mentioned in trade speculation, and Bautista, Markakis, and Joyce are listed to show who's in right for AL East competitors:

Hitter	Age	PA	AB	H	HR	BB	SB	CS	BA	OBP	SLG	wOBA	RCs
Bautista, Jose	32	465	387	102	31	70	7	2	.264	.381	.558	.391	82
Hamilton, Josh*	32	572	514	152	32	46	8	2	.296	.354	.554	.374	101
Upton, Justin	25	581	511	146	21	56	17	7	.286	.362	.479	.358	87
Gordon, Alex	29	629	559	159	17	62	11	6	.284	.358	.460	.351	91
Swisher, Nick*	32	576	500	133	23	66	3	2	.266	.353	.466	.351	82
Choo, Shin-Soo	30	579	506	140	16	61	18	6	.277	.364	.441	.350	80
Cabrera, Melky*	28	521	478	145	12	35	12	5	.303	.349	.462	.343	78
Joyce, Matt	28	483	421	109	18	52	8	2	.259	.344	.458	.341	66
Markakis, Nick	29	507	454	130	12	45	6	2	.286	.353	.434	.338	69
Victorino, Shane*	32	592	531	138	15	48	27	4	.260	.327	.426	.330	76
Hunter, Tori*	37	557	504	138	18	44	7	5	.274	.336	.433	.330	72
Upton, B.J.*	28	580	518	127	22	53	30	7	.245	.315	.438	.328	74
Reddick, Josh	26	564	513	131	22	44	8	2	.255	.314	.456	.326	74
Jones, Andruw*	36	357	313	70	17	38	4	1	.224	.314	.431	.323	42
Ross, Cody*	32	510	460	118	17	41	5	2	.257	.320	.433	.322	63
Pagan, Angel*	31	583	532	146	9	43	28	6	.274	.328	.410	.321	74
Hairston, Scott*	33	414	381	93	17	28	7	2	.244	.300	.444	.320	50
Young, Delmon*	27	554	517	143	17	26	3	2	.277	.314	.433	.319	69
Dickerson, Chris	31	214	192	48	6	16	8	1	.250	.311	.396	.309	24
Ibanez, Raul*	41	470	429	104	16	36	3	1	.242	.302	.417	.306	54
Suzuki, Ichiro*	39	604	567	155	7	30	28	6	.273	.311	.365	.293	67
Rivera, Juan*	34	422	385	95	11	29	3	3	.247	.301	.384	.293	44

In looking at this list, unless the Yankees are planning to sign Hamilton, there is no other free agent worth signing as a regular right-fielder, now that Melky Cabrera is off the board. (Some of these guys - Raul, Ichiro, Hairston - are worth signing for DH/depth.)

If Alex Gordon could be sanely obtained in a trade, as speculated upon in an interesting post on An A-Blog for A-Rod, he would perhaps make sense in terms of making the team a bit younger; however, the Yankees likely would have to give up so much for Gordon that I doubt the team overall would be improved. And even then, you'd be replacing a switch-hitter with a lefty hitter, exacerbating the Yankees' relative weakness against southpaws.

There may be other, less obvious, options for right field that would improve the team. But after surveying the field, signing Swisher seems a no-brainer.


Note: Runs Created (RCs) were calculated using the Stolen Base method.