Yankees Move Jeter to Leadoff

Derek Jeter last year slugged just .408, his lowest mark since 1997. Part of that had to do with dealing with a bruised hand for a few weeks in midsummer (he refused to sit out) but part of it is simply diminishing power.

So while Yankees manager Joe Girardi today painted the move of Jeter from the No. 2 spot to leadoff as more about Johnny Damon, the suspicion here is it's actually a concession that Jeter is a singles hitter more suited to scoring runs than driving in runners.

Statistically speaking, there doesn't seem to be a good reason to drop Damon. He's faster than Jeter (who stole 11 bases in 2008, 18 fewer than Damon) and gets on base more often (.375 to .363).

But according to Baseball Prospectus, Jeter came up 188 times last year with a runner on first and drove in that runner five times -- the 11th worst percentage in the AL.

Damon hit second twice last year (Gardner led off in those games, both in the final week) and has hit leadoff in 819 of his 832 starts over the past six seasons. The last time he spent more time out of the No. 1 spot than in it was 1999, when he hit third 76 times for the Royals, who had some dude named Carlos Beltran leading off.

Girardi said the reason for the switch is because the team likes how Damon has looked batting second in spring training games. As long as the Yankees like what they see over the final week of spring training games, the team will bring this lineup into the regular season.

The new look at the top of the batting order also is an indication that the Yankees will use Brett Gardner as their everyday centerfielder. Gardner figures to be the ninth hitter, and if Damon was batting leadoff opponents would likely bring a lefthanded specialist to face both hitters. Putting Jeter first splits the two lefthanded hitters.

Jeter batted leadoff nine times last year (the Yankees went 7-2) -- and before that had not done so since 2005, the year before Damon arrived. In fact, the two years Jeter has hit mostly leadoff were 1997 and 2005. Two years he didn't win a World Series ring.