Someone finally found a stat that proves Yankees' Alex Verdugo has been unlucky

While Aaron Boone's attempt to cite Alex Verdugo's bad luck to justify the left fielder remaining in a starting role fell flat over the weekend, it turns out there may have been a small amount of validity to the blended garble.

Boone claimed on Sunday that Verdugo's contact quality is in line with his career norms; that is false. His xwOBACON, a hilarious-sounding stat that represents contact quality, was at a career low point entering Sunday's action. While his advanced batted ball metrics do indicate he could have better days around the corner (eg, an expected slugging percentage of .390 vs. his current real-world slugging percentage of .360), even a reversion to the norm wouldn't represent a fantastic season. It certainly wouldn't give the Yankees a higher probability of success than the best version of Jasson Dominguez would.

That being said, it seems the Yankees would rather hope for a tidal wave of positive regression rather than rock the boat. That would presumably involve the fielders playing opposite Verdugo all collectively deciding to stop fielding so darn well with him at the plate -- which, yes, is a real thing that's happening.

Verdugo cracks the current top-10 list of players who've faced the best defense; he's eighth in MLB in OAA against, indicating that defenses, collectively, play some of their strongest ball with him at the dish. No. 1 in this category? Anthony Volpe. We've been robbed!

Yankees' Anthony Volpe, Alex Verdugo among MLB's Top 10 in being robbed by great defense

The most important takeaway here? Javier Báez of the Tigers should maybe file a criminal complaint. He does not deserve this.

Beyond Báez, though, it does feel refreshing to finally find one of those legendary metrics we've heard tales from Boone about that indicate Verdugo might be getting ripped off, repeatedly, by forces outside his control. Now, if we could just find 100 additional metrics indicating that he's guaranteed to produce something above-average down the stretch -- we'd even take "average"! -- that'd be dynamite.