The Yankees' offense has been lackluster to put it kindly. New York ranks in the bottom third of the league in terms of team ISO, BABIP (second-worst to the Los Angeles Dodgers), wOBA, wRC+ and Off. Yeah, it's been a bit of a teeth gnasher for the Yankee fanbase so far.
Yet the Bronx Bombers are just a few games under .500 and are are still hanging around in the American League Wild Card hunt. And Beltran has been the lord and savior of this stale offense.
What is most impressive about Beltran's 2016 season is the fact that he is stuffing the stat sheet at such an advanced age. Certainly the talk of the town has centered around David Ortiz's immaculate swan song at 40 years of age, and there has been a fair amount of chatter surrounding the 37-year-old Victor Martinez being an AL Comeback Player of the Year candidate. However, with the numbers he is posting this season, a 39-year-old Beltran has unquestionably established himself as one of the top "senior citizen" sluggers of the game.
It is seasons like the one Beltran is currently enjoying that got me thinking the other great offensive seasons by hitters in their twilight years and how Beltran's first-half performance stacks up with those past seasons. The first one that came to my mind was a former Pinestriper, Raúl Ibañez, who had one of the more incredible power campaigns for the Philadelphia Phillies in 2009 at such a late age (37-years-old).
I took a look at Ibañez's power metrics as well as some of his standard and advanced offensive statistics from that season. I then compared them to Beltran's stats this season and wouldn't you believe it:
Look at how similar their season outcomes are!! Okay, the counting stats, with the exception of the long ball, have some larger discrepancy. But look at the rate stats and how close they are to each other, particularly both of their ISO's and ground ball and home run to fly ball ratios. Beltran is exhibiting nearly identical power skills so far this year as Ibañez did during the 2009 season.
Both of these thumpers had similar storylines heading into these incredulous seasons. After smacking a career-best 33 home runs with an ISO of .227 for the Seattle Mariners in 2006, Ibañez's saw his ISO dip to the high .180's in 2007 and 2008. Now that he was in his late 30's, everyone figured Ibañez had officially hit the decline phase of his career when he signed with the Phillies. Instead he had a career year in Philadelphia with 34 dingers and a .280 ISO.
For Beltran, the thread was not only about him getting older, but also his body was breaking down fast. In 2014, Beltran's first year with the Yankees, he had bone spurs and loose bodies surgically removed from his right elbow, which contributed to a 30-point drop in his ISO from 2013. In 2015, he made some strides and put those 30 points back onto his ISO, but Beltran was still pestered by the injury bug. This season, healthy at last, Beltran is taking a page out of Ibañez's book by defying Father Time while also doing his best Benjamin Button impersonation by harking back to his best offensive seasons with the New York Mets.
Probably the most significant difference that can be drawn between these two hitters and these two seasons is that Ibañez bats lefty while Beltran is a switch hitter ... or so we would think. We would assume Beltran would have the advantage in platoon splits, but in fact both players have very similar platoon splits. Both batters have higher batting averages against lefties than righties. Just take a look at their advanced platoon splits stats:
And here is Beltran advanced platoon splits stats:
Of course, Beltran's sample size is much smaller, so there is a possibility for these rates to regress. But in the mean time, look at how ridiculously close these splits are!! Aside from their BABIP's, these platoon splits are almost spitting images of each other.
Now, we must keep in mind that Ibañez did the majority of his assault in the first half of the 2009 season and then cooled of considerably in the second half. When diving deeper into Beltran's batted ball profile this season, we do see a few signs that point towards regression in the ISO and BABIP departments. One, Beltran is running a high infield fly ball rate of 12.8 (Ibañez only had a 4.3% IFFB% in 2009). Two, he is hitting more ground balls this season and hitting a high rate of fly balls, and these types of batted balls go for less hits than line drives. Speaking of line drives, only 17.8% of Beltran's batted balls go for line drives this season, which is down from last season's LD% of 21.6%. Three, he is hitting the baseball hard at an above average rate of 35%, but not at an extremely high rate. Beltran is hitting the ball with medium contact for the most part this season, which will make it more difficult for all of those fly balls he is hitting to travel farther distances.
One positive is that Beltran is hitting well against the shift this season (.342 AVG, .336 BABIP) because he does such a great job spraying the baseball to all fields. Nonetheless, besides all of the data presented above, the fact that Beltran is indeed 39-years-old will more than likely be the reason for any sort of diminishment in his stats. As long as the Yankees plan on holding onto their slugger at the trade deadline, they will be relying heavily on Beltran to be the catalyst of their frail offense. An increased workload plus old age will make it quite challenging to keep producing these numbers. For now though, Beltran's output so far this season is very reminiscent to one of the best offensive resurgent seasons in recent MLB history for a player in their late 30's. And the Yankees should take advantage of it while it lasts.
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