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Big news broke on Wednesday night as it was reported that the Yankees are acquiring Andrew Benintendi from the Royals for a package of prospects.
The speedy outfielder has been awesome for his fantasy managers this year, and this move has the potential to make a big impact on his production moving forward, so we must dive in!
We will review Benintendi's 2022 season and then pontificate about what the move to New York may do for him.
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A Career Year?
In 93 games this year, Benintendi has hit .320/.387/.398 with three homers, four steals, 40 runs, and 39 RBI. The homer and steal counts are a bit uninspiring, but the rest of the package has earned him a career-best wRC+:
The high batting average is backed up by a great 80.2% contact rate and a 13.3% strikeout rate, and he's even added on to the OBP with a 10% walk rate which is two points above the league average. He's been getting on base an absolute ton and setting the table for the Royals. There's no reason to think this won't continue with his new team, so let's see what the new environment might do for the rest of his stat line.
Lineup Upgrade
One thing that I like to do to see which lineups are best for fantasy purposes is to calculate rates of total bases per run scored. So we sum up the total bases for each team and divide that number by how many runs they've scored. This gives us a "scoring efficiency" mark. There will be some noise in here, since left-on-base rates are pretty random and that factors in pretty heavily here, but it does speak a bit to a lineup's ability to score runs.
The Cincinnati Reds lead the league in this mark with 425 runs scored on 1,544 total bases this year, scoring one run every 3.63 total bases. The worst team is the Detroit Tigers at 4.26. Those two teams happen to play in the most and least favorable home ballparks as well, so there is some signal here. Here is where the Yankees and Royals line up.
| Team | R | TB | TB /R | Lg Rank |
| NYY | 525 | 1,911 | 3.64 | 2nd |
| KCR | 379 | 1,569 | 4.14 | 26th |
Simply put, if you get on first base – you have a much higher chance of scoring if you're on the Yankees as compared to the Royals this season. Benintendi gets on first base a whole lot, so it's perfectly reasonable to suspect that he'll score runs at a higher rate with his new team.
The one thing that could cancel this out is if he ends up in the bottom-third of the Yankees lineup, which is quite possible. Right now, the Yankees have Giancarlo Stanton on the IL, which could give Benintendi a chance to hit in the top-three of the order, but I think it's pretty likely that he eventually (or right away) ends up as a #7-#9 hitter for them. That would result in fewer plate appearances, which would wipe away most if not all of the gains in scoring efficiency that we just mentioned. If the Yankees elect to hit Benintendi in the #1 or #2 spot of the lineup (entirely possible), that's amazing news for his runs and steals projections.
Park Upgrade
Here are the park factors for left-handed batters in each park (from Baseball Savant).
| Park | Runs | Hits | Homers |
| NYY | -4% | -4% | +13% |
| KCR | +4% | +3% | -22% |
So you can see that both parks are right around league average in terms of giving up hits and runs to lefties, but the homers difference is massive. Yankees Stadium is one of the best parks in the league for left-handed hitters in terms of boosting their home run marks. Now, Benintendi isn't a power hitter, so it may not help him as much as the players – and it might even take away some doubles from him as there is less room to roam in right-field in New York, but it's pretty fair to say that he could see a few more homers in his new home stadium.
Let's take a look at the Savant Illustrator and map all of Benintendi's batted balls from this year onto Yankees Stadium:
So we see here that Benintendi would have five additional homers this year if he had played all of his games in Yankees Stadium and put out the same spray chart. This is far from an exact science, but it's interesting to see how favorable Yankees stadium might be for his homer counts.
Playing Time Consideration
There's one last thing to consider, and that's the actual playing time. I don't imagine the Yankees acquired Bentinendi to not play him a ton through the rest of the year, but it must be said that the Yankees are loaded and that could cost Benintendi some starts moving forward. This won't be an issue at least until Stanton returns, but when he does come back, here's what the Yankees have in terms of outfielders:
- Aaron Judge
- Giancarlo Stanton
- Andrew Benintendi
- Matt Carpenter
- Aaron Hicks
- Joey Gallo
The optimal lineup is pretty clear here with an outfield of Judge/Stanton/Benintendi and then Carpenter at DH, but the Yankees are likely to clinch the division pretty early on and that might have them wanting to give Benintendi some rest while they give Joey Gallo some of the plate appearances that they paid him for.
Conclusion
I think the concerns about where he'll hit in the lineup and the possibilities of him not being quite a full-time player cancel out a good amount of the gains that the Yankees lineup and the home ballpark, but all-in-all, I deem this has a positive for his fantasy value. The biggest problem in his game right now is the lack of homers, and I think he'll hit more of those given the drastic shift if home run park factors we're getting here.
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