José Caballero cares about many parts of his game.
Lighting up the underlying metrics is not exactly one of them.
Caballero’s all-around strong performance in recent weeks was enough to change the organization’s plans and unseat Anthony Volpe (once he was healthy) for the starting shortstop job, at least for now.
And yet, that offensive surge has not lined up with the under-the-hood metrics the Yankees often look at — average exit velocity, hard-hit rate, chase rate and expected numbers — when trying to predict results over the course of a long season.
“I’m trying to win a battle, man,” Caballero said Tuesday at Yankee Stadium. “It doesn’t matter how I win it, I want to win the battle. Every at-bat for me is a battle. … I’m just trying to be on base, make some damage and help my team.”
Caballero has certainly fulfilled that goal.
Entering Tuesday’s series opener against the Rangers, he was batting .316 with an .896 OPS, four home runs and eight steals over his past 22 games — after starting the year batting .150 with a .384 OPS, no homers and five steals over his first 12 games.
While Caballero’s defensive and baserunning metrics are strong, his underlying offensive numbers — which the Yankees often use to paint a picture that a struggling hitter has been better than his surface numbers would suggest — are not as rosy.
His average exit velocity of 83.7 mph was in the third percentile among major leaguers; his 29.3 percent hard-hit rate was in the 11th percentile; his 33.2 percent chase rate was in the 28th percentile; his xwOBA (expected weighted on-base average) of .266 was in the seventh percentile.
All of it suggests there could be some regression to come. But is it possible to outperform that?
“Maybe,” manager Aaron Boone said. “Look, I think he’s a player. He’s a gamer. You like him up there when the chips are on the table. He’s a hustler, in a good way. He likes the action. He likes, ‘Give me the ball.’
“Honestly, he’s one of the most confident guys on the field, and that’s a powerful thing to have. In this game of failure, you better have some confidence walking out there every day. He walks out there with a lot of confidence.”
That, of course, is part of Caballero’s game. He takes pride in being a pest at the plate and on the bases, the kind of player you love to have on your team but hate to play against.
For the first few weeks of the season, as he got the chance to start every day at shortstop with Volpe’s return looming, Caballero felt like he was missing that edge.
Then right around the series against his former team, the Rays, at Tropicana Field from April 10-12 — during which GM Brian Cashman revealed that it had “always been the plan” for Volpe to regain his starting job once he was healthy — Caballero rediscovered that edge. He insists that it was not because he was facing the Rays, or because he had been trying to do too much to prove anything to the Yankees.
“Whenever you get caught up in the everyday at-bats and missing a lot of them, you get caught in your head and thinking about the struggle you are in,” he said.
“I reached 40 at-bats [during that Rays series]. So it’s kind of like an even number. So after that day, I went, ‘You know what? Whatever happened before these 40 at-bats, I don’t really care.’ I’m just going to move forward and think about from now on. That was kind of the mentality.
“I just feel more free, more clear, more calm. It’s really helpful.”
And it helped him retain his starting job, at least for the time being.
Caballero said the team did not have a conversation with him Sunday about keeping the job and Volpe going to Triple-A, but that he just kept his head down and kept playing.
“I’m just really happy to have the opportunity to go out there and play baseball,” said Caballero, who for the first time in his big league career is staying at one position for an extended, everyday stretch, which he said has helped his defense.
“I’m trying to be present, trying to be in the moment and take advantage of the opportunity.”
