The New York Yankees recently benched Bernie Williams, their starting center fielder for almost the past 15 years. He is a five-time All-Star. He has won four Gold Gloves and a batting title. He is on the Yankees' all-time lists for most games, most hits, most home runs, and so on. At the time of his benching, Bernie was batting .247 with just one home run. He has a reputation for slow starts to the season. Bernie is 36 years year old (turning 37 in September).

For the past two or three years, he has poorer than normal stats and this has been attributed to various injuries he has suffered. A question to consider is whether the decline is due to the injuries or are both the decline and the injuries due to old age (for a baseball player). Take a look at the graph. This shows Bernie's OPS for every year he has been in the major leagues. OPS is on-base percentage plus slugging percentage. The number of runs scored by a team over a season has a higher correlation to OPS than team batting average so it is a good metric for evaluation. A star player will generally be around or above .900 in OPS.

You will notice that the decline started in the late 90's. This looks like a gradual deterioration of skills that was masked by injuries in the past three years. Another perspective is that the injures are chronic conditions and are what led to the decline, but the end result is the same. It is unlikely that we will see the Bernie Williams from the championship Yankees teams of the late 90's again.

Most likely, the Yankees will become tired of Tony Womack's defense in left field and the growing pains that a rookie like Robinson Cano will suffer through and return Bernie Williams to a more full-time role. The Yankees picking up the option on his contract for next year is not likely though so this may be the last year of Bernie in pinstripes with the interlocking NY.

Bernie does have his next career lined up which is a lot better than most professional athletes. Take a look.