McPherson creams righties but has undergone invasive back surgery.

While the Yankees are ostensibly happy with Cody Ransom filling in for A-rod the month-plus the all-star is out, Mike Axisa at River Avenue Blues caught an interesting prospective add on the waiver wire: Dallas McPherson, a former prospect in the Angels’ system, who made his way over to the Marlins last year but was just released by the team.

McPherson has battled injury problems all his career and can’t hit lefties, but Axisa thinks  the Yankees could platoon him with Ransom, who destroys left-handed pitching, and then use Ransom to spell the rest of the infield when McPhereson starts.

Of course, the idea does have its holes, as Axisa admits: McPherson is drawing interest from other clubs who are more likely to give him a full-time role, and McPherson likely wouldn’t stay in the Majors with the Yanks once A-rod returns. But it’s still interesting to watch a team have to cope with losing its best player at a relatively shallow position.

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Joe Blancato a-rod, dallas mcpherson, mike axisa, river ave blues, yankees

Jason Giambi's mustache provided a much-needed drag reduction as he ran the base paths in 2008.

Benjamin Kabak at River Avenue Blues got a bee in his bonnet over Joel Sherman’s comment about Jason Giambi’s base running. Sherman claimed Giambi was “station-to-station” and “offered no threat on the bases,” which is more or less true, but the guy was second-highest on the Yankees last year in terms of OPS. So this caused Kabak to wonder, how much of a detriment can a guy be when he hits 32 home runs and gets on base better than the vast majority of players?

While he doesn’t provide a definitive answer, Kabak does some math and figures out that Giambi’s one of the least efficient base runners in baseball, at least in terms of runs scored per times he reached base.

With an OBP of .373 in 565 plate appearances, he reached base 211 times last year. He scored just 68 runs for a conversion rate of just 32.2 percent. As Sherman notes, when we omit Giambi’s home runs, he scored 36 runs in 179 times on base. That means that in just 20 percent of his non-home run times on base, Jason Giambi scored a run.

Compare that 20 percent with a league-average 31.5 percent. Now, who knows exactly what that means? Giambi’s ability to score once he reaches base has as much to do with the people hitting behind him as it does his ability to go first to third.

Of the people hitting behind him, he was getting a fair amount of help last year. Throughout the year, Giambi could count on some combination of Hideki Matsui, Robinson Cano and Xavier Nady hitting behind him, all guys who get on base quite a bit and posted slugging percentages of .424, .468 and .474, respectively, last year. So it’s safe to say he had a good amount of extra-base hits behind him in the lineup.

Without a larger sample size, though, it’s pretty much impossible to determine just how much Giambi’s scoring efficiency affected the Yankees last year, but Kabak’s numbers still make for a good jumping-off point.

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Joe Blancato benjamin kabak, hideki matsui, jason giambi, river ave blues, robinson cano, xavier nady, yankees