When Tex Hits'em, He Crushes'em

Last week, I wrote about Mark Teixeira's perceived struggles, and I concluded that he was just the recipient of some bad luck. I think it's safe to say that Tex's fortunes are due for a turnaround. That conclusion is buttressed by some information I looked up at the indispensable HitTracker website.

HitTracker records the distance, speed, and trajectories of every home-run hit in the major leagues, including all of those hit by Teixeira. HitTracker classifies home-runs into three groups: "No Doubt", "Plenty", and "Just Enough." No Doubt and Plenty home-runs are fairly self-explanatory, and Just Enough homers "cleared the fence by less than 10 vertical feet, or that it landed less than one fence height past the fence." Click here for a full explanation of HitTracker's classifications.

According to HitTracker, of Teixeira's 9 home-runs that have been classified (not including last night's wall-scraper), 4 have been No Doubts, which is tied for fourth amongst AL hitters. The remainder of Tex's home-runs have been classified as Plenties. Furthermore, Tex's 434 ft. bomb that was hit on May 30th ranks as the fifth-longest homer hit by Yankee hitters in 2010, and Tex has 3 of the 10 longest homers. Here's a chart of all of Tex's homers:

Mark Teixeira's ISO is still at a lower-than-usual .173. I expect that number to continue to trend upward, however. As evidenced above, Tex is still hitting balls a long way. It is only a matter of time before Tex starts to take advantage of the short porch in left field from the left side of the plate. Yankee fans just need to be reminded that patience is, indeed, a virtue.