The 2009 season was great for obvious reasons. The Yankees finished the season with a league leading 103 wins, the AL East crown, and a World Series trophy. The way the Yankees got to those achievements was quite interesting. Of course the big signings in the offseason played a major role but I wanted to take a look at a player that was an afterthought once the Yankees landed AJ Burnett, CC Sabathia, and Mark Teixeira.
Swish comes to the Big Apple
Just a few weeks after the end of the 2008 World Series, the Yankees swung a trade for former top prospect coming off a down season. Nick Swisher spent only one season with the Chicago White Sox where he hit .219/.332/.410 while splitting time between first base and the outfield. That wasn’t exactly what General Manager Kenny Williams thought he was getting when he acquired Swisher from the Athletics in 2007-2008 offseason.
One man’s loss is another man’s profit though, and that is how Brian Cashman approached trade talks with Williams. Cashman saw Swisher’s slash line and understood that the numbers weren’t good but the underlying statistics showed that a bounce back season wasn’t that farfetched. He did hit 24 homeruns and still took the free pass with a walk rate of 14%.
Looking closely at his advanced metrics, his line drive percentage and extra base hit percentage were both down slightly but not completely out of line with his more productive seasons. Cashman decided to make the value bet, trading away utility man Wilson Betemit (and three minor league pitchers) to see if Nick Swisher could produce as a first baseman (this move was made prior to the Teixeira signing). That bet definitely paid out handsomely.
An April to remember
After signing Tex, Swisher was temporally moved to the bench but an early season elbow injury to opening day right fielder Xavier Nady would thrust Swish back into the everyday role. Since Swisher spent the majority of his career between first base and the outfield, becoming an everyday right fielder wasn’t a major adjustment. He would immediately make his acquisition worth it by stabilizing the Yankees lineup for the month of April. He finished the first month of the season with these stats:
| Mar/Apr | |||||||||
| G | AB | PA | H | 1B | 2B | 3B | HR | R | |
| 22 | 77 | 93 | 24 | 8 | 8 | 1 | 7 | 21 | |
| RBI | BB% | K% | wOBA | wRC+ | AVG | OBP | SLG | OPS | |
| 19 | 16.10% | 20.40% | 0.474 | 190 | 0.312 | 0.430 | 0.714 | 1.144 | |
The Yankees were without Alex Rodriguez for the all of April and the newly acquired Mark Teixeira barely reached the Mendoza Line while hitting just three homeruns. Swisher was able to keep the Yankees offense going during that time which allowed the preseason favorite Yankees to limp into May with 12-10 record. He reached base in all but one game he appeared in during the month of April while collecting multi-hits in 6 contests. He even pitched an inning of relief against the Tampa Bay Rays on April 13th, a game in which he also hit a homerun (becoming the first Yankee to do so since Lindy McDaniel in 1978).
It was a great way to start the season and help keep the Yankees afloat until the middle of the order hitters got healthy and found their respective strides.
Closing out the season strong
Swisher didn’t have a month like April the rest of the season but still put up some decent (and later great) numbers. He slumped pretty bad in May hitting only .150 but rebounded nicely in June with an .885 OPS before closing out the first half with a mediocre .777 OPS in July. Apparently, Swisher’s May was a weird outlier when compared to the rest of his season because in the second half he decided to go off.
August and September were something to remember for Swish. He posted an OBP of .378 during those two months and kept pace as the stable power threat at the bottom of the order. That power was definitely on display in September where he showed out with a .305 ISO that was second only to his fantastic month of April where he put up a .403 ISO. All told, he would finish the 2009 season with the following numbers:
| G | AB | AVG | OBP | SLG | OPS | ISO | PA | H |
| 150 | 498 | 0.249 | 0.371 | 0.498 | 0.869 | 0.249 | 607 | 124 |
| 2B | 3B | HR | R | RBI | BB% | K% | BB/K | wRC |
| 35 | 1 | 29 | 84 | 82 | 16.00% | 20.80% | 0.77 | 97 |
Swisher does what Swisher does
Looking at Swisher’s numbers, you can see that the advanced metrics remained, more or less, the same from previous seasons. He increased his walk rate by two percentage points while lowering his strikeout rate by two percentage points. That helped buoy his average from .219 back up to a more respectable .249 to go along with a superb .371 OBP. He barely missed slugging .500 on the back of 29 homeruns (2nd most in his career to that point) and he did all of that hitting mostly in the bottom third of the lineup.
This shows us core of the 2009 Yankees’ success. One through nine, the lineup was a meat grinder. You can take a look at most teams that have a number eight hitter with Swish’s stats and see that was a team that won a ton of games. I can distinctly remember the national broadcast announcers bringing this point up several times during some of the games towards the end of the season.
Even though his bat disappeared once the calendar flipped to October, the Swisher trade was a booming success. The Yankees got the age 28 through 31 seasons of an undervalued player on a team friendly contract for what amounted to a bench player and organizational fodder. Swisher would have three more above average seasons with the Yankees before departing to Cleveland after the 2012 season. In recent years, Swish has started to make routine appearances at Spring Training and messing around for a few days.
It was pretty obvious that he enjoyed his days in New York and it’s safe to say that we all enjoyed his stay as well.
