The Official 2022 Yankees Fun Index
It’s been a fun year in the Bronx! But just how fun has it been? (AP)
(Note: All stats in this article were calculated before last night’s Yankees-Astros game - I’d imagine that Aaron Hicks would rise a few spots in this ranking if they were updated)
I’d like to start this article with a simple premise: The 2022 Yankees are good. It’s hard to argue that the first two months of the season could have gone any better for the runaway AL East leaders, who currently hold an 12.5 game lead on the Blue Jays and a eight game lead on the best record in baseball. All other teams in baseball have at least 25 losses; the Yankees only have 18. The craziest part is many of those 18 games were winnable as well. Buoyed by a generational pitching staff and a much improved offense, the Yankees are finding ways to win almost every game this year and they’re doing it after preseason projections pegged them to, at best, be competing for second place in their division. By all statistics, the Yankees have been a Very Good Baseball Team.
The next portion of my article adds on a second premise, one equally as uncontroversial as the first: The 2022 Yankees are fun. For those of us who suffered through the roller coaster season that was 2021, this year’s Yankees are a breath of fresh air and opposite last year’s team in almost every way. The 2021 Yankees were stressful and frustrating; the 2022 Yankees are free of stress and gratifying. Every night, there is a new hero who steps up to win a game, via one of their league leading nine walk off hits, via a dominant start or a key inning thrown out of the bullpen or via a great defensive play in the field. The Yankees can win the 1-0 game and the 15-10 game, which is what makes them so different than previous Yankees teams. Furthermore, there are a lot of guys on this team who are fun to watch and support. From role players becoming superstars and from superstars becoming, well, super-superstars, every player on this team has taken the spotlight in their own way.
But just how fun has this team been? And who is responsible for being the most “fun” Yankee? Ladies and gentlemen, that is what we have come here to find out. I present to you the Official 2022 Yankees Fun Index.
To determine this scientific and not at all arbitrary scale, we will evaluate players in the following categories. They will receive points for each category and at the end receive a total “Fun” quotient, which will be used to determine their ranking. Players will be evaluated on the following four categories.
WAR (Fangraphs and Baseball Reference WAR averaged together)
Win Probability Added (WPA)
Projected WAR-Regular WAR
Bonus Fun Points
Let’s go through each of the categories, examine how this adds to the Fun Index, see the individual leaders in each category, and then finally unveil our 2022 Yankees Fun Index.
1. WAR
For those who aren’t familiar with WAR, it stands for Wins Above Replacement, which functions as a composite metric to identify the best players based on all around performance. WAR takes into account both offense and defense for hitters and all aspects of pitching for pitchers. There are two sites that provide their own versions of WAR: Fangraphs and Baseball Reference. Although these two versions of WAR are largely similar, they have key differences that can change the ways players are evaluated. From a 2015 Beyond the Box Score primer on the WAR differences:
“Most glaringly, FanGraphs uses FIP as the basis of its pitching evaluation, while Baseball-Reference relies on a context-neutralized version of Runs Allowed. fWAR favors Ultimate Zone Rating as its defensive backing from 2002-present, while rWAR uses Total Zone for fielding. Baseball-Reference also maintains a linear-weights-based system to measure base running, and FanGraphs uses Ultimate Base Running and Weighted Stolen Bases (wSB) for the same.”
To account for these differences in player valuation, I’ve averaged each Yankee’s Fangraphs and Baseball Reference WAR into one composite figure, which I then used to rank them. Here is our top 10 Composite WAR list.
Aaron Judge
Jose Trevino
Nestor Cortes
Jameson Taillon
DJ LeMahieu
Gleyber Torres
Gerrit Cole
Clay Holmes
Michael King
Anthony Rizzo
Unsurprisingly, this list is topped by Judge, who is vying not just for the best hitter on the Yankees but the best player in the league. The second place WAR leader might be more shocking, as Jose Trevino has emerged as not just a role player, but a legitimate offensive star and a defensive wizard. He is followed offensively by Gleyber and DJ, which gives you a great look at why the Yankees are so much better this year than last year. The top 5 batters are rounded out by the Anthony Rizzo resurgence. This ranking factors in offense and defense, so while Giancarlo Stanton might be a better hitter than some of these players, his defense keeps him out of the top 10.
On the pitching side, Nasty Nestor has been the breakout player of the 2022 Yankees and tops the list, followed by Jameson Taillon. Gerrit Cole comes in a seventh on this list, although he has potentially been the best pitcher in the rotation aside from his start in Minnesota since mid April. Clay Holmes and Michael King complete the pitching side of the list. Their emergence has carried the Yankees bullpen as many of the main pieces have been lost to injury. Without Holmes and King, this unit would be much less impressive.
2. WPA
The second component of the Fun Rankings is WPA, which is short for Win Probability Added. From the Fangraphs explainer on WPA,
WPA captures the change in Win Expectancy from one plate appearance to the next and credits or debits the player based on how much their action increased their team’s odds of winning.
With this stat, we can measure which players have contributed most to their team’s chance of winning with either timely hits or outs recorded in important situations. This stat is very context dependent, so the players listed might not be the best players or the most clutch players, but just the ones who have had opportunities to perform in high leverage situations and have done so.
Clay Holmes
Aaron Judge
Nestor Cortes
Jose Trevino
Michael King
Luis Severino
Clarke Schmidt
Anthony Rizzo
Jameson Taillon
Gerrit Cole
As you can see, there is a big carryover from the top WAR list to the top WPA list. One interesting name on there is Clarke Schmidt, who isn’t having the most stellar season but has pitched in and got out of a few crucial jams in extra innings for the Yankees. Clay Holmes tops this list because of his exemplary bullpen work, but Judge and Cortes also record high marks here.
3. On Pace WAR-Projected WAR
Another aspect of what makes a player fun is their ability to overperform the expectations set for them. The thrill of watching a mediocre player overperform and become good and a good player become great is one that is unmatched, especially when that wasn’t expected before the season. The best teams, such as this year’s Yankees team, always have players who overperform their projections and contribute in unexpected ways. How do we measure who those players are on the 2022 Yankees? To do that, we subtracted the ZIPS preseason projected WAR from Fangraphs’ On Pace WAR leaderboard, which projects a full season of WAR for players based on current playing time and WAR totals. Let’s look at our list.
Aaron Judge
Jose Trevino
Jameson Taillon
Michael King
Nestor Cortes
Clay Holmes
DJ LeMahieu
Matt Carpenter
Anthony Rizzo
Jordan Montgomery
Judge being atop this list shows just how good of a season he is having. He was projected to be a 4.5 win player and is now on pace to double that. Incredible stuff from #99. The rest of the list is populated by players who were not expected to contribute much at all and have had a lot of success, even in limited time (Cortes/Trevino/Carpenter) and players who were coming off of down years and have bounced back to play closer to their career averages (LeMahieu/Rizzo). If you want to find a group of players that is most responsible for the 2022 Yankees performing above expectations, look no further than this group. The other incredible aspect of the 2022 Yankees is that only five players on the active roster are projected to underperform their preseason WAR projections (excluding injured players). The Yankees are playing at or above expectations up and down the roster.
Bonus Fun Points
Finally, I awarded some discretionary fun points to players that have been exceptionally enjoyable to watch this year. These points were given more for the aesthetic aspect of each player’s game rather than the substance. As these were completely up to me, I made them worth less in the final formula (half as much as the other categories). Players were awarded points for sheer dominance, having a good storyline to their season (looking at you, Manny Banuelos), or just having an aesthetically pleasing aspect to their game (Donaldson’s bat flips). You could say that these players just have “that dawg in them”.
3 Fun Points - Aaron Judge, Nestor Cortes, Gerrit Cole, Giancarlo Stanton, Jose Trevino
2 Fun Points - Clay Holmes, Gleyber Torres, Luis Severino, Matt Carpenter
1 Fun Point - Jameson Taillon, Anthony Rizzo, Michael King, Josh Donaldson, Manny Banuelos
To calculate the final Fun Index, I averaged each player’s ranking in each category while factoring in the bonus points as well. I also removed players who were injured, in the minors or had been traded. After much deliberation, I present to you the 2022 Yankees Fun Index.
The 2022 Yankees Fun Index
Aaron Judge
Jose Trevino
Nestor Cortes
Clay Holmes
Jameson Taillon
Michael King
DJ LeMahieu
Gerrit Cole
Anthony Rizzo
Gleyber Torres
Luis Severino
Jordan Montgomery
Matt Carpenter
Giancarlo Stanton
Clarke Schmidt
Wandy Peralta
Ron Marinaccio
Isiah Kiner-Falefa
Marwin Gonzalez
Lucas Luetge
Josh Donaldson
Manny Banuelos
Aaron Hicks
Kyle Higashioka
Joey Gallo
Miguel Castro
Scrutinize as you wish, but the logic of these rankings cannot be argued. This is the definitive list of our favorite players this year, for their quality of play, clutchness, unexpected performance, or all around entertaining style. Some assorted thoughts below before we wrap this exercise up.
Aaron Judge is the GOAT
The Cortes/Trevino/Holmes trio might be the most surprising group of role players turned All Stars in MLB history.
The bottom four are no surprise to anyone who has watched any baseball this year
Justice for Stanton! He only ranks 14th but should be higher
DJ being above Severino might show some drawbacks in this formula
Same with IKF being above Donaldson
Now that we’ve established our Fun Rankings formula, we will do a late season check in to see how these rankings have changed. Below, I’ve embedded the spreadsheet I used to calculate these rankings so you can see how your favorite player fares. The rankings may be debated endlessly but one truth cannot be denied - these 2022 Yankees, no matter who is batting or pitching, are an incredibly fun team.
