Who Is Nick Green?

This Year's Surprise Yankee?



Every year there seems to be a surprise Yankee. Last year it was Shawn Chacon and Aaron Small. This year, I think it's a chap called Nick Green. I noticed he started his fourth game yesterday and so I went to Yahoo to look at hs stats and this is what I saw:

2006 TB .077/ .200/ .077 OPS: .277
2006 NYY .300 /.352 /.460 OPS:.812

He sure stunk it up in Tampa earlier this year, but it was only 17 ABs. On the other hand, his short career in NY is already 28 ABs and he's hitting like a very good hitter. If he can sustain this form for the rest of the year it would be AMAZING - the small sample-size caveat still stands. After all, as a wise man said, "Anybody can hit Anything in 60ABs". To be more sober, in a combined 45ABs, he is a .202/.282./.292 OPS .575 player this year, but he may turn out to be something. He's surely more interesting than Bubba Crosby right now.

My old man noticed him last week and asked, "who the hell is Nick Green?"
"Oh, just some guy they picked up off the scrap heap," I replied.
Yet he did okay in the series in Boston. Even yesterday was pretty good too. I guess if you go 3-for-5 you get noticed and the NYT had this story.

Filling in at second, short and third, Green has provided the infield insurance the Yankees had expected from Félix Escalona, at least until Escalona showed up to spring training this season out of shape and played his way down to Class AA Trenton.

General Manager Brian Cashman asked the Yankees’ major league scouting director, Bill Emslie, to find a replacement to play at Class AAA Columbus. That turned out to be Green, whom Tampa Bay sent to the minors after his 3-for-39 (.077) start. The Yankees acquired Green on May 25 for cash considerations. This is his second stint with the Yankees, filling the utility role of Miguel Cairo, who has a strain of his left hamstring.

“I didn’t expect this, the injuries we’ve had,” Green said in the visitors’ clubhouse at Safeco Field before Thursday’s game with the Mariners. “That’s why I’m here. I’m just happy to get one more start.”

A 32nd round pick by the Braves in 1998 — a hometown choice, since he attended high school in Duluth, Ga. — Green advanced through the Atlanta system and was called up in May 2004 after hitting .377 for Class AAA Richmond. Marcus Giles sustained a broken collarbone shortly after Green’s arrival, which is why Green was in the lineup at second base against the Brewers’ Sheets on May 16 (he went 1 for 2 in his second major league game and was the only position player Sheets did not strike out), and against the Diamondbacks’ Johnson two days later (he went 0 for 3).

He batted .273 in 95 games for the Braves and appeared twice in the division series as a pinch-runner against the Astros. But at the end of the next spring, Atlanta traded him to Tampa Bay for pitcher Jorge Sosa. Green hit .239 for the Devil Rays in 2005 with five homers, one against the Yankees. That homer, a three-run shot that beat Carl Pavano, 5-3, on June 22, is the only thing Torre remembered about him as a Devil Ray.

As a Yankee, it did not take long for Green to do something memorable — a two-run homer against the Mets on July 2 in his first official at-bat and second plate appearance. Green, who had been called up June 27 and spent several days working on his swing with the hitting coach Don Mattingly, had been 0 for 25.

“That homer against the Mets was a monster shot,” Torre said. “It just took him a couple of days of taking batting practice, and talking with Donnie, to let the ball get a little closer to him.

“Defensively, he hasn’t done anything wrong. He’s a lot better than I anticipated, as far as range and arm strength.”

Green will probably be back on the bench Friday in Anaheim, Calif., if Rodriguez is well enough to start, which he understands.

“I’ve been around this game long enough to know I’m around to play good defense, put together quality at-bats and fill in when they need me,” said Green, whose fraternal twin brother Kevin also played briefly in the Atlanta system. “It’s pretty self-explanatory.”

Still, it's kind of cool to have a good bench player who can hit a bit for a change.
I'd take .300 /.352 /.460 from a bench player any day.