Archive for Kevin Youkilis

While the deal is not quite official, the San Diego Padres and the Boston Red Sox have agreed in principle to a swap that would send 1B Adrian Gonzalez to Beantown in exchange for RHP Casey Kelly, 1B Anthony Rizzo, OF Reymond Fuentes and a PTBNL. Gonzalez, 28, will make just $6.2 million this upcoming season and is eligible for free agency after the 2011 campaign. Boston has a window that lasts until 2 p.m. Eastern Time Sunday to hammer out a contract extension with Gonzalez. The lefty slugger, who underwent right shoulder surgery in late October, must also pass a physical (CSNNE’s Sean McAdam Tweets that Gonzalez has already checked out medically).

While trading an elite talent like Gonzalez is painful for Padres fans, the club did get three Top 10 prospects back in the deal. For now, though, let’s focus on how the trade affects Gonzalez’s value.

A disciplined hitter with plus power, Gonzalez has managed to post sublime offensive stats despite taking cuts in a home ball park that’s death to all things lumber. Over the last three years, Gonzalez has batted .285/.387/.523, walking in 13.8% of his plate appearances and posting a .238 Isolated Power.

To give you an idea of how much of an impediment PETCO Park has been to Gonzalez, let’s use one of Baseball-Reference’s many stat head goodies. B-R has a feature that allows us to adjust a hitter’s offensive production for run environment (runs/game), league (AL or NL), and park. Here are Gonzalez’s triple-slash numbers from 2008-2010. The first column has his actual AVG/OBP/SLG stats over those seasons. The second shows his stats in a neutral offensive environment in the NL. And the third shows what his slash line might have looked like had he been playing for Boston.

B-R shows Fenway Park boosting overall offensive production by six percent. StatCorner has park factors by batter handedness, and the site has lefties getting a four percent bump. Homers aren’t easy to come by, but doubles are. By comparison, PETCO has a 91 Park Factor on Baseball-Reference (depressing offense by nine percent), and StatCorner shows the venue harming left-handed hitters 10 percent more than a neutral park.

It should be noted that Gonzalez isn’t your typical lefty power hitter: he crushes pitches to all fields. Courtesy of Greg Rybarczyk’s Hit Tracker Online, here’s a spray chart showing where Gonzalez went deep in 2010:

This past year, he hit 13 home runs to left field (41.9%), six to center (19.4%) and 12 to right field (38.7%). Over the course of his major league career, Gonzalez has hit 36.3% of his dingers to left, 23.2% to center and 40.5% to the pull field.

Clearly, Gonzalez is an upper-echelon hitter. Getting out of PETCO’s clutches will only boost his fantasy value, which was already lofty to begin with. Over the past three years, Gonzalez has been part of an elite class of big league batters. His wOBA, adjusted for league and park factors, was 46% better than average (146 wRC+). Only Albert Pujols, Joey Votto, Kevin Youkilis, Miguel Cabrera, Matt Holliday, and Joe Mauer have better marks over that time frame, and Hanley Ramirez is tied with Gonzalez.

Should the trade become official, Gonzalez becomes an even more coveted fantasy option. Also, with Gonzalez taking over at first base, Kevin Youkilis will shift across the diamond and get a bump in value by regaining third base eligibility.

Gonzalez has been an offensive beast despite being shackled by PETCO. Now, we get to see what he’s capable of while swinging in a much more liberating Fenway Park.

Over the offseason we’ll take a look at each position on the diamond and see how the past season affected the positional rankings and where there might be some potential bounceback value picks going into next year’s drafts. (See shortstops, catchers, and second basemen.)

Rankings are the height of subjectivity, of course. Drafts are the expression of the subjective opinions of the different draftees, though, so lets see what we can learn by putting these players in their (subjective, fantasy-oriented) place. Oh, another note: these rankings are for 5×5 rotisserie fantasy baseball. Eligibility was determined by where the player had the most at-bats last year.

It’s probable that Albert Pujols is a tier of his own. He is a true stud in every category when compared to his peers. But without the 15 or so steals, he might belong right along side the other two metronomes in Mark Teixeira and Miguel Cabrera, two young studs at the position who are virtual locks for a plus batting average 35+ home runs, and gobs of runs and RBI. There’s not much to say here other than, since this is a deep position, it’s worth considering comparable middle infielders over these guys – just look how long and balanced this list is.

The third tier has three players that could, in the right year, outperform guys in the second tier. Prince Fielder, Ryan Howard, and Adrian Gonzalez have all had years with power production that has eclipsed that of the two players above them. But they also have their issues. Fielder alternates medium-power years with high-power years, Howard won’t ever put in a plus batting average with his high strikeout rates, and Gonzalez would be more exciting if only he could get his batting average out of the ‘neutral’ territory and into ‘plus’ like the guys in tier two. Maybe, when he walks fewer times with his next team as Dave Cameron seems to have predicted, his BABIP will also regress to his career levels and his batting average will rise, though it’s hard to predict anything more than a .280 number there.

The middle tier provides some real opportunity for value. Each and every member of this tier could easily hit .300 with 30 home runs and good run production next year. Justin Morneau, Lance Berkman and Kendry Morales have all done it before, and Kevin Youkilis has gotten about as close as you can get. Joey Votto seems poised to join their ranks with a full year of strong play. It’s also a well balanced tier – the aging sluggers on their way down sit in front of Youkilis, who seems to have found his niche with a good batting average and modest power for a first baseman. Votto and Morales sit behind him until they prove they can consistently provide more power.

The next tier is called the ‘Dan Uggla‘ tier. These guys will give you power, but in rotisserie baseball you’ll also need to work hard to over come Adam Dunn and Carlos Pena’s poor batting averages. In head-to-head competition, their value increases because of the option of punting batting average, but in rotisserie you really need to try and compete in every category and their big minus signs are a dark cloud over the rest of their positive contributions.

The last tier could produce some tier-jumpers if the stars align. Should Derrek Lee continue to hit 45% of his balls in the air, he may jut hit another 30 home runs, which would put him in tier four. Billy Butler is still hitting too many worm-burners (47.7% groundballs career), but if can get a little lift into those balls, he’s shown that he’s a strong producer in batting average. At 30 years old, it seems that Adam LaRoche is a strong bet to continue producing at the same mediocre level going forward. He’ll probably drop off the list when a young guy steps forward next year and joins the crowd, but with the strikeout rates that Chris Davis (34.7% career) and Russell Branyan (38.9% career) sport, it’s hard to rely on them to even keep their jobs all year in 2010.

Hopefully you were able to pick up Roy Oswalt and Tim Stauffer last week. But even if you stood pat there are still plenty of acquisition targets and trade bait guys out there for you. So, here are five guys to pick up and five guys to move.

Obtain

Kevin Youkilis – His AVG has taken a big hit since coming off the DL, falling 89 points. But nobody seriously expected him to challenge for .400, either. He is riding a modest six-game hitting streak and more importantly, is showing good power. In his last 16 games, Youkilis has a .281-5-14-13-0 fantasy line. He seems like a good bet to match last year’s power numbers, which many people doubted Youkilis could do again in 2009.

Oliver Perez – I can hear the groans already. Perez is terrible, he has no control and he is just as likely to get shelled as he is to pitch a good game. But in his first two games since being back, Perez has delivered exactly what a fantasy owner should expect from him – a W, good strikeout numbers (8 in 11 IP) and a high but acceptable ERA (4.09). I would recommend not actually watching him pitch, but in his 14 or so remaining starts if Perez delivers 6 W, a 4.00 ERA and his current 7.71 K/9, I think that would be nice production for the back of a team’s rotation from a guy likely available on the waiver wire.

Garret Anderson – Stat heads hate him because he does not walk and posts poor OBP numbers. But fantasy players like his AVG and respectable numbers in other categories. In mid-June, Anderson was hitting just .254 but since then his bat has been heating up. Over his last 30 games, Anderson is batting .336 with 17 RBIs in 107 ABs. He is no longer an everyday player, but Anderson still has the ability to hit for a high AVG and not kill you in the power categories.

Mat Latos – This week’s Padres pitcher recovering from an injury is Latos. He was ranked as one of the top HS pitchers in the 2006 draft but fell due to signability concerns. The Padres took him on the 11th round and he ended up at Broward CC. After a good JuCo season, San Diego gave him a seven-figure signing bonus before the ’07 draft. Latos missed most of the 2008 season with a strained intercostals muscle. But he was very impressive this season in the minors, going 8-1 with 1.37 ERA with 73 strikeouts in 72.1 innings combined between Single-A and Double-A, with the majority of his work occurring in the Texas League. Latos has already made one start for the Padres, where he showed a fastball that averaged 94.9 mph. He is on a strict pitch count for right now, which may limit his W potential, but he is a talented pitcher who may be under the radar of many fantasy owners.

Miguel Montero – For most of the first three months of the season, Montero was a huge disappointment. But he has a .413/.439/.683 slash line over his last 16 games. After teasing fantasy owners with glimpses of talent the past two seasons at the major league level, Montero apparently is putting it together here in July.

Exchange

Todd Helton – After last year’s injury-riddled campaign, Helton has bounced back with an impressive .324 AVG. In his last 22 games, Helton is batting .346 but it is the “emptiest” .346 you are likely ever to see. He has just 1 HR, 10 RBIs and 8 R in that span and 0 SB. Helton’s .359 BABIP is not out of line with marks he has put up in his past but it would surprise virtually nobody if that mark fell some and at this point, AVG is the only category that Helton is a plus player anymore.

A.J. Burnett – The strikeouts are down while the walks and HR allowed are up from 2008. Yet his ERA is 26 points lower than a season ago. Burnett’s FIP checks in at 90 points higher than his ERA. A slightly lower than normal .283 BABIP helps but the big thing right now is a career-best 79.5 percent strand rate. Burnett is 4-1 with a 1.82 ERA in his last six games, but that includes 14 shutout innings against the Mets, a team he will not see again this season.

Alfonso Soriano – A .279 BABIP gives hope for a second-half rebound for Soriano, but as R.J. Anderson pointed out earlier in the month, pitchers have altered their approach to Soriano and his season-long slump shows no signs of letting up anytime soon. Pitchers are throwing fewer fastballs to Soriano and his numbers have declined across the board. Outside of RBIs, Updated ZiPS has him failing to reach the fantasy numbers he put up in 2007, when he played in 135 games. Soriano is on target for 155 games this year.

Brad Penny – The good news is that he pitches for a team that scores 5.16 runs per game and his FIP is 81 points lower than his ERA. The bad news is that his spot in the rotation is hardly guaranteed. He has been a decent option in deep mixed leagues or AL-only ones, but time appears to be running out. His first start after the All-Star break (5 IP, 6 ER) was not encouraging.

Jonny Gomes – A .304/.395/.549 slash line looks great for a player bound to see more playing time with the injury to Jay Bruce. But Gomes has a .397 BABIP and he is unlikely to maintain his 18.2 HR/FB ratio going forward. Also, the Cincinnati fan base turned on Adam Dunn for his propensity to strike out often. How will they treat a full-time Gomes who has a 32.4 percent K rate this season, which would look right in line with Dunn’s Reds career?

Stock Up

Andruw Jones, Rangers

Remember the state of Jones’ career one year ago? He was coming off an incredulously bad beginning with the Dodgers (.159/.282/.250 last April), on his way to an apocalyptic .234 wOBA and -17.9 Batting Runs in just 238 PA. It was a startlingly abrupt fall for a guy who had posted 3.6 Wins Above Replacement in a “down” 2007 season. Essentially given a settlement package by the Dodgers to leave LA and never, ever return, Jones has crushed the ball thus far with the Rangers. The corpulent out-maker of ’08 is nowhere to be found, as the 32 year-old has a .507 wOBA (.333/.500/.718) in 52 plate appearances. With Jones channeling his inner Barry Bonds, David Murphy getting in touch with his inner Juan Pierre (.260 wOBA) and Josh Hamilton hitting the DL (finding his inner Milton Bradley?), Andruw should definitely be on your radar.

Dexter Fowler, Rockies

A lanky 6-4 center fielder endowed with a full complement of tools, Fowler is off to an excellent start with Colorado. Aside from his five SB bonanza versus Padres righty Chris Young, Fowler has a .363 wOBA in 82 PA after jumping straight from Double-A. He’s working the count well (10 BB%, 19.7 Outside-Swing%), has shown some pop (.153 Isolated Power) and he’s 9-for-10 in the steals department (a welcome change for a guy whose raw speed had produced a pernicious 66.4% SB success rate over the past three minor league seasons). The 23 year-old switch-hitter has earned an everyday gig with the Rockies, and his broad skill-set makes him well worth acquiring.

Kevin Youkilis, Red Sox

When Youkilis slugged .569 and thumped 29 homers in 2008, most figured that his power numbers would regress more toward his career averages in 2009. After all, his career-high SLG% prior to that was .453, in 2007. So far, the 30 year-old has done his best to quash those thoughts: with 6 dingers and a .744 slugging percentage, Youkilis has produced a .528 wOBA that leads all major league hitters. After four straight seasons of decreasing walks and increasing Outside-Swing percentages (chronicled in more detail here), Youk is drawing free passes at a career-high 15.7% clip.

Adam Jones, Orioles

Jones was covered here a few weeks ago, but his significant progress with the lumber deserves further mention. Jones was among the most free swingers in the game during the 2008 season (his 36.2 Outside-Swing% was leaps and bounds above the 25.4% MLB average, and ranked 9th-highest among all hitters), but he’s curtailed that Francoeur-esque approach in 2009. His O-Swing% is down to a more reasonable 26.5%, and his walk rate his climbed to 8.8% from a paltry 4.6% in ’08. As a result, the 23 year-old has put himself in the hole with less frequency this season: his First-Pitch Strike% has fallen from 66% in 2008 to 59.1% in 2009 (57.6% MLB average). No, he won’t come anywhere close to hitting .355, but Jones’ more enlightened plate approach is a welcome sight.

Yovani Gallardo, Brewers

Gallardo has been every bit the ace he was billed as, with a slick 3.78 K/BB ratio and a 3.37 FIP. He’s benefitting from a .220 BABIP, but with 8.83 K’s per nine, 2.34 BB/9 and a greater number of grounders (47.7 GB%, compared to a 38.7% career average), Gallardo has the skills to remain among the very best in the NL.

Stock Down

David Ortiz, Red Sox

During the off-season, I wondered if the days of “Big Papi” were now a relic of the past, to be replaced by the much-less-catchy “Medium Papi” era. Right about now, Boston would love to have even a mildly productive Papi: the 33 year-old has a sordid .271 wOBA in 114 PA. Ortiz has been uncharacteristically impatient at the dish: his 28.2 Outside-Swing% is well above last year’s 20.6% mark and his 18.3% career average. He’s also making more contact on those outside pitches (59.4 Outside-Contact%, 53.4% in 2008), likely meaning he’s been making more weak contact on “pitcher’s pitches” off the plate. Combine the hacking with an ISO that looks like a misprint (.094) and a tendency to get jammed (his Infield/FB% is 18.6%, compared to an 8.3% career average), and you have a fellow who has produced -6.8 batting runs on the season.

Daniel Cabrera, Nationals

The Nats brought in Cabrera from the O’s this past offseason, hoping to find even remnants of the 6-7, hard-throwing groundball pitcher who looked highly promising during the middle part of the aughts. Unfortunately, Cabrera’s skills have eroded even further this season. His K rate (just 4.75 in ’08, after sitting in the 7-9 range earlier in his career) has dropped to a microscopic 3.33 per nine innings, and he’s issuing an absurd number of free passes (6.29 BB/9). Cabrera sat at 96.2 MPH with his heater in 2005, yet he’s barely cracking 90 this season (90.5 MPH, down over 2 MPH from last season).

Perhaps in recognition of his diminished fastball, Cabrera is mixing in more breaking pitches: his league-high fastball usage in 2008 (82.5%) has been ratcheted down to 67.9%, with more sliders and changeups instead. Unfortunately, he has next to no control of those secondary offerings, either: just 41.8% of his pitches have crossed home plate (48.9% MLB average). The result of all this ugliness is a 5.72 FIP. Cabrera won’t turn 28 until the end of the month, yet it seems as though he’s completely lost the ability to pitch at the major league level within a span of four seasons.

Joe Saunders, Angels

How long can Saunders keep this act up? He posted a 3.41 ERA last season, but a low whiff rate (4.68 K/9) and good fortune on balls in play (.267 BABIP) indicated that regression would find him: his FIP was a less-impressive 4.36. In 2009, Saunders has posted an identical 3.41 ERA in 31.2 frames, yet his FIP has trailed further south (4.87), while his strikeout total (2.56 K/9) would make Kirk Rueter blush. Again benefitting from a low BABIP (.252), Saunders is a great sell-high candidate.

Travis Hafner, Indians

Wither Pronk? Hafner (coming off an ugly, injury-marred 2008 season) had been doing his best “Hulk Smash” impression in the early portion of the season, posting a .394 wOBA and a .270 ISO. Unfortunately, his surgically repaired shoulder again acted up, pushing him to the DL. On the positive side, Hafner’s absence should open the door for the recently recalled Matt LaPorta.

Oliver Perez, Mets

Perez’s scattershot control has come completely off the rails in 2009. Never known for painting the corners, Perez has issued 8.72 BB/9 this year, with a near-ten ERA and a 6.17 FIP. When he’s not walking the yard, Ollie has surrendered line drives at a 29% clip. Batters have understandably plastered the lumber to their shoulders, chasing Perez’s outside offerings just 13.2% of the time (the lowest rate among starters). The 27 year-old’s fastball is coming in at 89.2 MPH (down two ticks from last year). Is Perez hurt? And if not, isn’t that almost worse?

In 2008, Kevin Youkilis had a season completely out of line with what he did previously. Everyone focused on the home run power, as his 29 homers matched his combined total from 2007 and 2008. But Youkilis also enjoyed a career-best average last season, as he posted a .312 mark. His previous high was the .288 he posted in 2007.

Because of his big 2008, Youkilis was one of the more difficult players to project. The Bill James forecast was the most optimistic, and it had him with a .289 average and 23 home runs. The CHONE system had him with a .286 average and 18 home runs.

Of course, Youkilis is off to a great start here in 2009. One of the biggest grey areas in fantasy is determining when we can project that it is more than a hot start and more likely to be something to last the whole season.

I think we may have reached that point with Youkilis and his average.

I took all of the players in 2008 who qualified for the batting title and who batted plus or minus five points from the .286 average that CHONE predicted. I came up with a group of 26 players. Then I took all of the players from this group and counted how many hits they had through 75 at-bats last season.

Our 26 players ranged from 16 to 27 hits in their first 75 at-bats last season. It is not a perfect bell curve but the right side of it does display a standard downward-sloping tail as you can see by the crude chart below:

	x										
	x				x						
	x				x		x				
	x	x	x	x	x	x	x	x			
x	x	x	x	x	x	x	x	x	x	x	x
16	17	18	19	20	21	22	23	24	25	26	27

I came up with an average of 20.7 hits and a standard deviation of 3.1 for this group. So, two standard deviations gives us a high and low of 15 and 27 hits. So, for this definition of a .286 hitter, 95 percent of the time he should have between 15 and 27 hits in 75 ABs.

Youkilis ended play last night with 74 at-bats and 30 hits, meaning he falls outside of our 95 percent range. Our most likely conclusion is that he is a better hitter than the CHONE projection prior to the start of the season.

This is just a first step and I have no projection on what Youkilis will end up hitting in 2009. ZiPS projected Youkilis to bat .288 this season. Dan Szymborski just came out with an update to ZiPS based on 2009 stats. He now projects Youkilis to bat .298 for the rest of the season and finish with a .313 average.

Kevin Youkilis has made quite the ascension during his professional career. A mildly regarded prospect coming out of the University of Cincinnati, Youkilis saw 242 other players taken ahead of him before the Boston Red Sox came calling in the 8th round of the 2001 amateur draft. The former Bearcat quickly became known for possessing otherworldly plate discipline, posting a .512 OBP during his New York-Penn League debut in the summer of ’01. Despite that eye and the subsequent “Greek Good of Walks” nickname that came with it, Youkilis had his fair share of detractors: be it his conditioning, advanced age or lack of thump while playing a power position, many questioned his ability to become more than a complementary player at the major league level.

The career .300/.444/.441 minor league hitter split the 2004 and 2005 seasons between Boston and Pawtucket before finally getting the opportunity at everyday playing time in the big leagues in 2006, at the age of 27. The ever-judicious Youkilis drew walks at a 13.8% clip during the ’06 season, posting a .357 wOBA and a .279/.381/.429 line. Youk followed that up with a .373 wOBA in 2007, improving to the tune of .288/.390/.453 while posting a 12.7 BB%. By this point, the scouting reports on Youkilis looked pretty accurate: He would draw plenty of walks and contrbute to a quality offensive attack, but the chances of him ever anchoring a lineup seemed remote.

Then came Youkilis’ 2008 campaign. The Greek God of Walks suddenly appeared to acquire the strength of Zeus, pummeling the baseball and popping as many home runs in ’08 (29) as he had in the prior two seasons combined. After posting a tame .149 ISO in 2006 and a slightly better mark of .165 in 2007, the 29 year-old raised that figure to .257 in 2008. Youkils’ ISO tied newly-minted Ray Pat Burrell for the 12th-highest mark among all qualified batters, and Youk’s .402 wOBA also ranked 12th, sandwiched between Hanley Ramirez and David Wright. While the 6-1, 220 pounder is still fairly patient (with a 10.3 BB% in ’08), he has become increasingly aggressive over the course of his major league career:

2006: 15.1 O-Swing%, 55.7 Z-Swing%, 36.7 Swing%
2007: 17.4 O-Swing%, 58.6 Z-Swing%, 39.5 Swing%
2008: 22.3 O-Swing%, 59.9 Z-Swing%, 42.4 Swing%

Keep in mind that we’re speaking in relative terms here: the average O-Swing% has been around 25% over the past two seasons, so Youkilis still goes fishing outside of the strike zone less than most. But, Youkilis has gone from uber-patient to more willing to go after an offering that he likes, be it in or out of the zone. Whether this trend is related to his increase in power is debatable, but perhaps he’s more apt to attack a fat pitch or even a hittable pitch a little off the plate these days. Youk’s plate discipline numbers, lowered walk rate and power increase suggest that he has traded some free passes for some extra-base hits.

Following his monster ’08 campaign, Youkilis has apparently cashed in: the lukewarm prospect who signed for just $12,000 has reportedly inked a four-year, $40 million extension with an option for the 2013 season. Youkilis had two years of arbitration eligibility left, so the deal buys out those two seasons as well as two years of free agency. How does that deal stack up for the Sox?

Let’s assume that Youkilis keeps some, but not all of the offensive gains he made this past season. Marcel’s 2009 projection looks appropriate: a .287/.377/.477 line with a .370 wOBA. Adding up Youkilis’ offensive value (about +18 runs), defensive prowess (he’s been about a +6 run defender when you weigh his last three seasons) and then account for his positional adjustment and the replacement level baseline, Youkilis projects to be worth about 3.2 wins in 2009.

An arbitration-eligible player tends to earn about 40% of his fair market value during his first season of eligibility, 60% the second and 80% in his final year. Here’s how much Youkilis (in his second year of arbitration eligibility) projects to be worth using a $4.5 million/WAR rate, if we assume his performance stays pretty static. Let’s assume he stays as a 3.2 WAR performer during his age 30 and 31 seasons, and then declines 5% in each of 2011 (age 32) and 2012 (age 33).

2009 (60% of fair market value): $8.64M ($14.4M free agent value multiplied by .6)
2010 (80% of fair market value): $11.5M ($14.4M multiplied by .8)
2011 (FA; full value, 3 WAR): $13.5M
2012 (FA; full value, 2.9 WAR): $13.05M
Total: $46.7M

Even if we assume that Youkilis gives back some of his power, sticks at first base and declines somewhat during the last two years of the pact, this deal looks like a winner for the Red Sox.

The terms of the contract might actually be more favorable still: a couple of readers have pointed out that Youkilis is likely to shift across the diamond to third base to make room for Lars Anderson. Youk has been a very solid defender at third in slightly less than 1,100 innings. Even if one is pessimistic and feels that he’ll be just an average defender at the hot corner from 2010-2012, Youkilis will increase his value to Boston if he shifts up the defensive spectrum:

2009 (60% of fair market value, 3.2 WAR): $8.64M ($14.4M free agent value multiplied by .6)
2010: (80% of fair market value, at 3B, 4.05 WAR): $14.6M ($18.2M free agent value multiplied by .8)
2011: (FA; full value, at 3B, 3.8 WAR): $17.1M
2012: (FA; full value, at 3B, 3.65 WAR): $16.4M
Total: $56.75M

If Youkilis can play an average third base from 2010-2012, then this deal will give the Sox $16.75M in surplus value (production minus his salary of $40M) instead of $6.7M at first base.

Kevin Youkilis may be acclaimed for his ability to work the count, but he has gradually become more willing to take the bat off of his shoulder and has seen his power production increase each season of his big league career. Perhaps he won’t outslug Mark Teixeira again next season, but Youkilis has proven himself to be far more than just a spare part in the big leagues.