What's up with Tex?

Mark Teixeira's performance up to this point into the 2010 season has been a source of a great deal of agitation and discomfort for Yankee fans. Teixeira's lack of offense has been cushioned somewhat by the tremendous lines put up by Robinson Cano (.363/.402/.611; .432 wOBA) and Nick Swisher (.305/.394/.532; .405 wOBA), but it is hardly needed to be said that the Yankees would prefer to have Teixeira's bat running on all cylinders. It remains to be seen whether Tex's sub-par play is simply a slump (or a consequence of sample size issues) or an indication of a change in talent. I believe it is the former and not the latter, but we should dig deeper nonetheless to determine this.

Looking at Teixeira's peripheral statistics may tell us something. After perusing his walk rates and strikeout rates, it can be observed that they are similar to his career averages (2010: 13.0% BB rate, 20.2% K rate; career: 11.4% BB rate, 20.1% K rate). Shifting over to the BABiP column of Tex's statistics, a possible reason for Tex's struggles may be illuminated: bad luck. This year, Tex has posted a BABiP of .229. In his major league career, Teixeira has never posted a BABiP below .288, and has a career BABiP of .304. Some balls just are not falling in for Tex, but that does not completely explain away Tex's low ISO (.152), which also falls well below his career average (.249).

Is the low ISO purely a function of Tex's bad luck on balls in play, or is there something else going on? Tex's batted-ball data should be scrutinized if the answer is going to be found. In 2010, Tex's line-drive %, ground-ball %, fly-ball %, and infield fly-ball % are all within 2% of his career norms. A precipitous drop, however, can be observed in Teixeira's rate of home runs per fly-ball (HR/FB). His 2010 HR/FB % is 11.0%, well under his career average of 18.5%.

It is probable that Teixeira has simply run afoul of the baseball gods, and isn't getting any breaks on balls in play. In addition, there isn't any indication that he's hitting the ball any differently than he used to; he's hitting the same amount of line-drives that he has hit for his entire career. It appears that some of his fly-balls just have not had enough distance to fly over the fences. I anticipate this to change, and so does the ZIPS projection system. Going forward for the rest of the year, ZIPS sees Tex posting an ISO of .208. That may be a little pessimistic, but I feel it captures the idea that the 30-year old switch-hitting slugger is due for a bounce-back.