A Taste of Their Own as Angels Walk Off on Yanks

Generalizations never achieve much, but in this occasion, one generalization can explain a lot.

The Yankees lost game three of the 2009 ALCS because Joe Girardi managed a road game as if he were still home.

You can call it over-managing if you'd like--and indeed, it probably was--but managing the game the way Girardi does at home is not nearly as much of an issue as it is on the road, especially in extra innings.

1) At home, one run by your team in extras and the game is over. You don't have to worry about scoring, and then pitching again in the bottom of the inning as you do on the road.

2) On the road, one run from the other team and the game is over. Your offense doesn't get another shot.


So here's the breakdown.

1) The Yankees' biggest issue in this game--and, it's looking like their biggest issue this series--is a lack of hitting with runners on base. Every Yankee run today was via a solo home run, and while the Yankees have had decent enough pitching to win when they score four runs much of the time, much is not all. The Yankees had golden opportunities to add to their lead, and they did not. Andy Pettitte made one bad pitch, and well, boom. A 3-1 cushion is not a big cushion, at all.

2) I don't have an issue with leaving Pettitte in to face Guerrerro although I admit that, since I did not have a computer handy, I don't know what his pitch count was at the time. My issue is with the pitch Pettitte threw: there was no reason, in that situation, to give Guerrerro anything to hit. Guerrerro swings at, well, everything. Sabathia and Burnett can blow it by the former Expo; Pettitte cannot.

3) Chamberlain looked awful. Girardi was quick with his hook, but, alas, not quick enough. Someone--and I can't remember where I read this, so apologies to whomever I should be citing--said that this postseason, Joba's fastball has been there but his slider has not, which may explain why he's been hooked quickly.

The great thing about going to games with well-informed fans is that you get excellent analysis as well, and I thus agree with the commenter known as TSJC: Joba tends to overthrow, as though he is too amped and trying to do too much. It's been an issue with him as long as he's been with the Yankees.

4) I did not agree with Girardi's decision to leave Hughes in to start a third inning. Hughes hasn't pitched more than two since what, June? May? And against the heart of the Angels' order, as well, it just didn't make sense to me. Girardi thus made the right call to bring in Rivera, and, well, Mo is simply not mortal.

First and third, no one out, and Rivera got out of the jam. At the time, the Stadium exploded and we thought it was perhaps destiny that we'd win.

5) The biggest issue I had with Girardi's overmanaging was bringing in Aceves to face Kendrick. Robertson had already had two outs, had little history vs Kendrick (if any at all) and is a strike out pitcher. Aceves, on the other hand, has a propensity for giving up fly balls, and as we all saw, the ball certainly carried today. At home, if the other team hits a home run, you still get a chance to get the run back the next day, but on the road, you do not.

As it were, Kendrick singled and Mathis drove him in with a long fly off the wall, but it is my belief that Robertson could have gotten the third out.

6) TSJC had an issue with Girardi replacing Damon with Hairston, not that he did it but when he did it. With the bases loaded and less than two outs, anything hit to left field is likely going to score the winning run, anyway. It makes little sense.

7) If Gardner is inserted into the game to pinch run, he has to run. He has to go on the first pitch--where there's pretty much no chance of a pitch out. Gardner's not in there to hit home runs, and the only reason to remove Matsui's bat is because you are going for the win right then, and need the RISP. If Gardner steals successfully, Posada's home run is a game winning, and not game tying (fallacy of the predetermined and all).

8) GOOD: Jeter's third pitch home run, holy crap what is A-Rod smoking and where can I get some, that Melky-Jeter-Teixeira play in the 8th to nab Abreu (where the heck was Canó on that? We were trying to figure it out!) Mariano is not mortal, and Teixeira is (again) worth it for his defense alone.


Okay. I think I touched on most of the important things. You can argue whether or not Sabathia should have pinch hit for Rivera instead of Cervelli, but there is no way Rivera was going to go out and pitch a second inning.

If Andy Pettitte pitches to Guerrerro a little differently, the Yankees are probably looking at clinching the American League pennant tomorrow and Girardi's overmanaging is a non-issue.

Such as it is, the Yankees will send CC Sabathia out on three days' rest, and a stop-loss here would be crucial.

We said going in that this series would be a dogfight, and with two extra inning games already in the books, it has thus far lived up to its billing.

"You Can't Predict Baseball"

A week ago, would you have believed me if I told you that on a trip to Seattle and Oakland, the Yankees would go 5-2, losing games started by Joba Chamberlain and AJ Burnett (to guys named Fister and, uh, Tomko) but winning games started by Chad Gaudin and Sergio Mitre?

Crazy, huh?

This is the beauty of baseball--more than perhaps any other sport, the unexpected can and does occur.

And, of course, this is exactly what happened.

The West Coast Swing has long been a dread of Yankee fans--and no eastern time zone fan enjoys that the Yankees will return yet again in late September--but this time the Yankees did quite all right out there.

Once again, the Yankees won their games in a variety of ways, blowouts and one-run games, and with the exception of Seattle's one clunker, the pitching kept pitching like it belonged on a playoff team.


That said, there are a couple of concerns:

Alfredo Aceves cannot possibly be healthy. I refuse to believe it. His number since his spot start in Minnesota have not been Ace-like.

Phil Hughes isn't pitching very often. I'm not sure why. I want to trust that the Yankees know what they are doing, but if the long term goal is for him to be a starter, it would be nice to have more than, say, 6.2 innings in the entire month of August.

Alex Rodriguez has kinda sorta stopped doing that home run thing. It's a good thing his average is on the rise, but I think we'd notice his relative power outage a bit more if it wasn't for the amazing seasons Jeter, Damon, Teixeira and Canó are having.

Jorge Posada looks like he could benefit from a week off at the plate. Of course, every time I say that he goes and rips an RBI double so what do I know...



These are all minor concerns; things to think about not necessarily as something wrong, but something to cause you to keep your eyes open.

At any rate, the Yankees are more than 30 games over .500. Life is good.

What should be done about Mitre?

The line on Mitre as a Yankee is pretty ugly: in five starts with the Yankees, he has an ERA over seven and, perhaps more importantly, a WHIP near two. Sure, he's not walking anyone, but when you have 38 hits in 23 innings, all you can say is "thank G-d he wasn't walking anyone".

The Yankees don't need someone to be a Hall of Fame Ace Stopper in their fifth spot.

They do need someone better than Mitre.

Now, to be fair, at this point of the season if your fifth starter is your only (significant) problem, your team is probably be in a good place. So don't get me wrong--the Yankees need someone better than Mitre in the fifth spot, but the team is still riding pretty high.

Anyway, back to the matter at hand.

At this point, Mitre is more or less giving the Yankees what Sidney Ponson gave them. While playoff fortunes rarely rest on the fifth starter, that's still no decent reason that the fifth starter shouldn't be a little more adequate than that.

There was speculation last night that Alfredo Aceves, who pitched four innings in relief, was being stretched out to start again.

I'm not so sure this is the case. The last time it happened, Aceves came out with a sore shoulder and the bullpen seemed to collapse in Anaheim (though the crap starting pitching the Yankees got could not have helped, either).

What seems more likely is that Girardi wanted to avoid using other relievers--especially since Joba Chamberlain is starting tonight and has had efficiency problems throughout the season.

Would Aceves be a better option than Mitre?

At this point, if Aceves was healthy (and it's a very, very big if), the answer is probably yes.

Unlike last time, the Yankees now have Chad Gaudin in the bullpen--and although Gaudin is (probably) not as good of a pitcher as Aceves, he, a starter with the Padres, could certainly fill the long relief role and thus no one has to worry about the bullpen collapsing because the short relievers are being overused.

That said, I don't see the Yankees going that route.

Aceves has been so valuable out of the bullpen, and the Yankees have struggled enough (relative speaking here) without him there that I don't think the Yankees touch him.


On the other hand, they could give a start to Chad Gaudin. Gaudin had not-very-inspiring numbers at San Diego--the most notable pitcher's park in the league--so that doesn't imply a ton of confidence, but at this point the devil the Yankees don't know might be better than the one they do.


Whatever the Yankees do, there's one thing they shouldn't--and that's to let Mitre keep starting every fifth day. Against the Athletics and Orioles is one thing; against the White Sox or the Rangers is something probably guaranteed to fail.

Concerned about CC?

Take a look at this list here.

The list ranks pitchers by "abuse points", with the pitchers that are most abused--that is, the most overworked--at the top.

Is it much of a surprise to see CC Sabathia at the top?

When the Yankees signed Sabathia, one of the selling points was that he was a workhorse. His effort with Milwaukee at the end of last season--pitching on multiple occasions on three days' rest--was Herculean.

The problem is, however, that the selling point of Sabathia being a workhorse was also a concern point.

It's perhaps, in some odd and cruel sense, kind of funny that we, as fans, bloggers, analysts, and what have you, put so much stock into the Verducci effect--the idea that too great an increase in innings for a young pitcher is an injury risk--and yet, at the same time seem to decide after a pitcher hits a certain age that being overworked is no longer a concern.

There's no denying that Sabathia has pitched a lot in 2007 and 2008, and that in both of those postseasons he struggled. Of course, we don't know the reason for struggling in those postseasons, but it'd be foolish to ignore the amount that Sabathia pitched during the season.

Could it be, now, that Sabathia is feeling the effects, in-season, of the past two years?


I'm leaving this question open. I'm no pitching expert, and Sabathia's inconsistency could be due to something completley different. I'm just suggesting this as a possibility.


At any rate, whatever's going on, the Yankees should hope they can figure something out--barring injury or rain outs, Sabathia's next two starts would involve facing Buerhle at Chicago and then Boston.


Alfredo Aceves Update: Via Pete Abraham, Alfredo Aceves has admitted to having a sore shoulder, though he doesn't think it's serious. Still, the track record for the Yankees and admitting the severity of injuries isn't exactly stellar.

Jorge Posada Must Not Like Pie (Postgame Notes 25 July 2009)

No baseball team can win every single game it plays, and it's even harder when the line-up the manager posts can best be described as the "C" line-up--but don't blame the Yankees for trying.

In a game in which the Yankees did not get their first hit until the fifth inning (and a bunt single, at that), they still found a way to bring the winning run to the plate with nobody out in the bottom of the ninth inning.

Had Jorge Posada merely struck out, instead of grounding into the double play, the Yankees might still be playing in extra innings right now.

Since we can't alter the past, however, it's no use playing the what-if game. Here is what is:

Andy Pettitte was phenomenal in the first six innings, and whether we like it or not, earned himself the ability to try to get out of the seventh inning. Alas, he could not, and so Joe Girardi called on the next-most-prudent thing to do in bringing in Alfredo Aceves.

Aceves has been so good for the Yankees for so much of this season, that one might forgive a Yankee fan his or her shock when faced with Aceves', well, clunker this afternoon. Pettitte will be tagged for the loss, but Aceves' total inability to get that final out is really what cost the team the game.


Much will be made of the offense's inability to do anything against Oakland's starter Gio Gonzalez, but, as always, it all comes back to the pitching. Had the Yankees found some way to get out of that seventh inning, that 1-0 lead holds for just that much longer...


At day's end, however, the Yankees are still in first. One loss can change everything, but it shouldn't.

It's up to the Yankees to start a new streak tomorrow.

Breaking Down the Yankees for the Second Half--The Rotation

So the All Star Game is officially over--and we can thus consider ourselves in the second half.

This is where it gets fun.

All of those days players got rested in the first half? Well, now they have to play. Now the pennant races start to heat up, and every move a team makes, be it a trade, a free agent signing or simply bringing someone up from AAA has even more added meaning.

What do we expect from the Yankees?

I'm going to do a series of posts addressing this, because there's so much to say that having it all in one post would a) kill your eyes and mine, and b) give me carpal tunnel at the age of 23.

So for now, I'm going to start with the starting rotation, because everything depends on the success and/or failure of these guys.

The Rotation

This is the biggest problem area for the Yankees, which is strange to say given how much was spent in the off-season to improve it.

The truth is, however, that outside of AJ Burnett's most recent string of domination, no one has emerged as an ace in the way that Mike Mussina did last year.

CC Sabathia and Burnett have been fairly reliable--although Sabathia's peripherals, the worst they've been since 2005 are a source of concern--but Andy Pettitte and Joba Chamberlain have been inefficient at best and the fifth starter is, right now, non-existent.


CC Sabathia

Last time out, in Anaheim, Sabathia's ridiculously low road BABIP (batting average on balls in play) caught up to him. If you look here, you'll see that his strikeouts are down, walks are up and K/BB ratio is the worst it's been since 2005.

In the second half the Yankees, theoretically, should have enough starting pitching depth that Sabathia doesn't have to pull a stunt like he did with Milwaukee at the end of 2008, but he will have to be better. The peripheral stats are something that more and more seem to be noticing, and the Yankees will need to decide how much of it has to do with moving to the AL East and how much has some other, undiagnosed cause, and thus, how concerned they need to be.

Sabathia is the biggest pitching investment the Yankees have made since, well, Pavano and Igawa, so expect that the Yankees will do everything possible to make sure he is right.


AJ Burnett

Burnett got off to a very rocky start, and found no love from the fans after, well, you-know-what-ing the bed in two starts in Boston. He was in desperate need of a decent start against Johan Santana of the Mets, and it is entirely possible that his ultimate turning point in the season came when he had the bases loaded, none out, and got out of the inning without giving up a run.

Since then, AJ has really been the Yankee ace. He has faced the Mets, Marlins, Mets, Jays and Twins in that time span and has not given up more than 2 ER in any of those starts.

His last pre-break start, however, was not so much dominant as it was getting lucky and delivering the right pitch to escape jam after jam. In the words of, I think, the Associated Press, he had nothing, but still found a way to win.

If there's one thing the Yankees would probably ask a genie to do, if such genies existed, it would be to reduce Burnett's walk total--which leads the league.

Against teams with weak offenses, like the Mets, the walks don't hurt as much because no one ever makes you pay, but against stronger offenses, like Boston, the walks are killer. Burnett's always had control issues--he walked nine when he pitched a no-hitter for the Florida Marlins--but the Yankees aren't paying him $88 million over five years so that he can dazzle you with spectacularly wild pitches.


Andy Pettitte

Here's where things begin to get dicey. While Sabathia and Burnett have some issues, they are, for the most part, giving the Yankees enough length to keep the team in the game and not overexpose the bullpen.

Pettitte and Chamberlain? It's a little different.


Pettitte actually started the season strong, pitching into the sixth inning (and often beyond) in each of his first nine starts. That efficiency hasn't lasted, and his ERA has jumped from under 3.00 at the end of April to nearly 5.00 now.

The easiest way to explain it is that it looks as though Pettitte's body is having trouble keeping up with the grind of pitching every five days--as is what happens when most pitchers not named Moyer or Paige reach their later 30s.

Pettitte's first start after the break will be very telling--if the extra rest seems to have helped him, the Yankees could possibly consider skipping a start or two of his down the stretch to give him some extra breathing room (but somehow I doubt they will). If, however, he still continues to struggle in his next two or three starts, the Yankees will need to address whether or not it really is beneficial to the team to have him pitching in the rotation. If the Yankees, by some miracle, acquire someone like Halladay (see my previous post), or if Chien Ming Wang miraculously regains his form (also unlikely), then Pettitte's trending ineffectiveness is easier to bear.


Joba Chamberlain

Ah. Well. Here we go. The Wunderkind of 2007 and pre-injury 2008 has struggled in 2009.

Everyone's trying to figure out the root cause of the struggle, if it's psychological or physical or mechanical, and watching everyone go at it like a rat race would be incredibly amusing if the consequences weren't so large.

Each cause of his struggle has different results: if it's mechanical, this would be the easiest to fix--the Yankees could try to fix him up here or send him to AAA to sort it out, and if Joba's as good a pitcher as he's supposed to be, he'll be a quick study. If, however, it was as simple as this one would have seen improvement already.

The real answer is that the root cause is probably more complex, a combination of perhaps a nagging shoulder, an inexplicable fear of strike three, and maybe, since we're making this like a soup here, you can throw in some could-be-conditioned-better for extra spice. Like paprika.

Anyway, what the Yankees need, and need almost immediately, is to see if there's any indication that they can get Joba right, or at least that they can get Joba to pitch past the fifth inning. If they can, great. If they can't, the argument to turn him into a Canadian becomes all that stronger.

I think--and this is just opinion here--that the Yankees still see quite a bit of potential in Chamberlain. He is, after all, only 23, and he has shown that, when right, he can touch triple digits in the seventh inning.

The talent's there. The Yankees have to figure out how to access it.


The Fifth Starter

At this point, you just feel bad for Chien Ming Wang. He wasn't quite right in Spring Training, but it went ignored (because hey, it's Spring Training), and he imploded in the beginning of the year. He had a long and largely inefficient road back, but finally, finally looked something like the Chien Ming Wang of old while dueling Roy Halladay on July 4th--before he promptly strained his shoulder.

I don't believe in coincidences, so the fact that Wang got hurt while Halladay was starting for the Jays has to be considered some sort of divine sign, no?

Anyway.

There are those that would prefer to see Hughes or Aceves take the fifth spot, instead of Sergio Mitre and whomever the Yankees end up trading for (and they probably will), but there are problems with each.

Hughes, first of all, is not stretched out, and as I detailed in a recent post, the process of stretching him out, at this point in the season, might simply just take too long and create more problems for the Yankees and their bullpen than the ones it solves.

Aceves could be a perfectly competent starter, but when he's removed from the bullpen, the bullpen seems to fall apart. I'm not sure it's him, personally--although you have to consider the eerie similarity between his numbers and Mariano's of 1996 (his ERA has risen from 2.49 from 2.02 after his spot start, but if he stays in the bullpen it will likely come down again)--but I think there's a case to be made that his value lies in since he can pitch so many innings, the short relievers pitch less. The less the non-Mo short relievers pitch, the more they remain hidden, and the more they become a strength.

All we really know about this spot is that the next time it comes round it's probably Sergio Mitre's shot--but after that, who knows?

Obviously, the sooner the Yankees figure something out for the long term, the better, but don't be surprised if one good Mitre start spells another, and the Yankees try to recapture the ghost of Aaron Small circa late summer 2005.

Yankees Get Series Win in Final Visit to Metrodome (Postgame Notes 08 July 2009)

The Yankees' 12th win in their last 14 games was a bit of an odd one.

For example, take AJ Burnett, who had been stellar in his past four starts. It wasn't quite a bad start, at least not by the final results--technically it was a quality start--but it involved making a lot of good pitches at the right time.

He didn't get his first strike out until later in the game, but it came with two outs and the bases loaded.

Talk about wiggling out of jams.


Ultimately, it was a start that would have thwarted lesser pitchers--there were always, it seemed, men on base and control was in short supply, as the three wild pitches will attest--but AJ Burnett is not a lesser pitcher.

Actually, when you think about it--and friends at River Ave Blues took this line--the game was less Yanks-vs-Twins and more Yanks-vs-Mauer. Given what Mauer's been doing this season, that's not entirely shameful.

On many rotations he could be the ace of the staff, and tonight he showed why.


As for the offense, it wasn't the offensive show of yesterday, athough it looked in the beginning like it might be, but as has been so often the case in this 12-of-14 stretch, the Yankee hitters did just enough.

For you A-Rod hitters, just remember that Alex Rodriguez had the RBI hit that ended up being the winning run for the Yankees.


Now, as Alfredo Aceves takes the mound tomorrow, he can do so knowing that the Yankees have already won the series and that the bullpen, for the most part, is fairly well rested. Phils Coke and Hughes pitched tonight, and Hughes is probably unavailable for tomorrow. Still, though, Tomko, Robertson and Bruney should all be available--and, if necessary, Mo--so, unless Aceves completley flames out, the Yankees are not in poor shape.

This is a Blasphemous Post

Yesterday, on our three hour ride back from the postponed Scranton doubleheader, Brent and I got into an argument about Alfredo Aceves.

I maintained that the best comparison for what he's done this season is Ramiro Mendoza.

Brent suggested the 1996 version of Mariano Rivera.

As you might imagined, I laughed it off completely.

And then Brent got me the stats.


In 1996, Mariano had a 2.06 ERA. A WHIP of .994, 6.1 h/9, an ERA+ of 239 (!!!) 2.8 walks per nine, 10.9 K's per nine and 3.82 K/BB. Mo stats

In 2009, Aceves has an ERA of 2.02, a WHIP of .925, 6.8 h/9, an ERA+ of 216 (!!), 1.6 walks per nine, 7.7 K's per nine and 4.86 K/BB. Ace stats



Now, there is of course the caveat that Ace's 40 innings pitched do not equal Mo's 100+ innings pitched, but at the halfway point of the season the 40 IP is not a horrendously small sample size.



Of course, the major difference between Mo and Aceves is that Mo is, well, Mo with the CUTTER OF DOOM, but he didn't develop the cutter until 1997, while playing catch with Ramiro Mendoza (you see, in baseball things come full circle).


So in 1996 Mo had yet to discover the pitch that would set him apart, and yet many who remember would say Mo was an invaluable resource as to why the Yankees won that world series.

Now look at 2009 and what Aceves is doing--outperforming Mo (even if only by a little) in ERA, WHIP, BB/9 and K/BB.


Aceves won't turn into Mo, because what Mo has done over his career is un-matchable, unless Mo wants to teach Ace that cutter, but...

...I don't know what the Yankees expected when they signed Aceves.

I don't think it was this.

Yankees Do Enough To Beat Cleveland and Take First (Postgame Notes 29 May 2009)

The Yankees have waited more than two years to reclaim solo possession of first place.

So what was waiting another hour and a half rain delay?

Indeed, that is what the Yankees endured before they took the field for today's game, but it did not seem to matter.

The Yankees got to Indians' starter Cliff Lee early; while they didn't really do what they were supposed to do with lots of baserunners and break the game open, they did score three runs before Cleveland scored any, and though they scored without much fanfare, they do still count.

Jorge Posada appeared in his first game after coming off of the DL, and had a couple of the Yankees' best hits in the game. More good news is that instead of having to DFA Kevin Cash to make room for Posada, they were able to option him to AAA. While it's unlikely Cash will reappear with the big club this season, the Yankees do now have some extra insurance if something happens.


Andy Pettitte was far from sharp, but through five made the pitches he needed to make to get out of trouble. The problem was, however, that Andy left early with lower back stiffness. We don't really know more than that right now, but that Pettitte stayed on the bench at the end of the inning has to be an encouraging sign.


Alfredo "Mendoza" Aceves pitched three innings in relief; he allowed an inherited runner to score, but gave up nothing else and Mo pitched a nearly flawless ninth to break the starter-saver record combo (don't ask, baseball likes useless records.)


Anyway, the Yankees now sit eight games above .500 and a half game ahead of the Red Sox in the standings for first place; the first time since the end of 2006.


****

As you may have noticed, I've sort of taken this week sort of off. Everything should be back to normal on Sunday.

Penultimate Show--(postgame notes 20 September 2008)

After eighty five years...

After countless chilly April afternoons and frozen October nights...

After Ruth, Gehrig, DiMaggio, Berra, Mantle, Jackson, Mattingly and Jeter...

After record-setting home runs...

After football, popes and boxers...

After Don and the Davids...

After the drama of November baseball...

After the memories shared by our grandparents, parents and ourselves...

There is only one more game.




And it still matters.

Thanks to Alfredo Aceves, Mariano Rivera and Robinson Canò, tomorrow's game still counts.

The ghosts are out for one last time.



Here's hoping Jeter's injury isn't too serious to keep him from playing tomorrow. He has to play, it's as simple as that.

If you're going to the game tomorrow, please stay safe. It's bound to get a little crazy at the end.

AAAA (Amazing in Anaheim: Alfredo Aceves) Postgame Notes 9 Septembe 08

You may not believe it, but the Yankees won a game in Anaheim tonight.

Maybe it was because the pitcher on the mound for the Yankees, Alfredo Aceves, was making his first major league start and missed the memo that the Yankees were supposed to roll up and play dead while in Anaheim.

Maybe it was because Alex Rodriguez realized he hasn't homered since Tampa and Johnny Damon was that determined to get out of that slump he had been in.

Or maybe, it was simply that for once this season, the Yankees did the right things at the right time.

Of course, while the Yankees are still technically in the playoff race, they are still 8.5 games out of the Wild Card with not nearly enough left to play, so while tonight's win was perhaps a small moral victory, the outlook on October hasn't changed much.

Derek Jeter passed Babe Ruth for 2nd place on the Yankees all-time hits list, but I don't need to tell you about how valuable Jeter is as a player, even if he is beginning to decline. He is still a first ballot Hall of Famer.

****

The New York Jets did enough to win on Sunday, and I can't remember the last time I'd seen a Jets quarterback throw down field like that, and I think as Favre becomes more familiar with the playbook, that he and the team will improve.

The AFC East is now wide open, but I won't favor the Jets just yet. I'd like to see what they do against the Patriots and the Bills first.