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New York Yankees: DJ LeMahieu is still MLB’s most undervalued star

By Lucas Friedman

NEW YORK, NEW YORK - SEPTEMBER 01: DJ LeMahieu #26 of the New York Yankees hits a home run to right field in the third inning against the Tampa Bay Rays at Yankee Stadium on September 01, 2020 in New York City. (Photo by Mike Stobe/Getty Images)
NEW YORK, NEW YORK - SEPTEMBER 01: DJ LeMahieu #26 of the New York Yankees hits a home run to right field in the third inning against the Tampa Bay Rays at Yankee Stadium on September 01, 2020 in New York City. (Photo by Mike Stobe/Getty Images) /
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(Photo by Jim McIsaac/Getty Images)
(Photo by Jim McIsaac/Getty Images) /

1. He doesn’t just make contact, he makes HARD contact

Don’t mistake DJ LeMahieu scrappy, slap-and-poke contact hitter. Because he’s not. In fact, he is one of the most complete, all around hitters the game has seen in a long time. In Colorado, he earned the reputation as a high-average, low power contact hitter. From the outside, he looked like a Coors Field product, and many doubted his production would withstand a move away from the Rockies.

A look into Statcast tells a different story. Over the past two season, LeMahieu is 15th in overall hard hit rate with 48.0% of balls in play. However, he leads the entire league in batting average over that period, resulting in 332 total hard hit balls in play. The only person ahead of him? 2020 AL MVP Jose Abreu.

If you want a larger sample size, since he became an everyday player in 2012, Lemahieu is third in total hard hit balls in play with 1163. He sits only behind Manny Machado and Mookie Betts, who both make $30 million plus per year on their new mega-contracts. Batting average can certainly be a misleading statistic, but those peripheral numbers do not lie.

Additionally, his power production has reached another level since coming to the Bronx. In seven seasons in Colorado, LeMahieu had 49 home runs and a .408 slugging percentage. In just two seasons with the New York Yankees, he has 36 home runs and a whopping .536 slugging percentage. How’s that for a scrappy contact hitter?

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