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.

How Reactivating Chien Ming Wang Messed With Phil Hughes

Recently, I've been seeing a lot of posts suggesting that to solve the rotation problems, the Yankees should move Phil Hughes back from the bullpen to the rotation.

On the surface, it's hard to disagree with this.

As a starter, Hughes this season was showing improvement outside of one disastrous Baltimore start. He was gradually becoming more efficient, less tentative and better at keeping a bad inning from imploding.

Things, in short, were going well.

Then the Yankees panicked in re-activating Chien Ming Wang from the DL, and things got hairy.

After a time it became clear that the Yankees couldn't keep Wang in the bullpen, or else risk losing all the arm strength that he had built up. Long story short, Hughes got sent to the bullpen.


And here the problem begins.


Hughes, out of the bullpen, has primarily been a one inning, and rarely a two inning pitcher. Since he's been so efficient out of the bullpen--he's had more than one nine pitch inning--at most, right now, I'd say he could throw about thirty pitches.

What does this mean?

If you were to tell Hughes tomorrow that he was starting again, he could probably pitch about two innings before tiring.

Now, some have suggested that the Yankees use the All Star break to stretch Hughes out, but here they are missing something: it takes longer than just a week to stretch a pitcher from a reliever to a starter.

There are two players to look at as models: Alfredo Aceves and Joba Chamberlain.

Aceves made a spot start last Thursday, which on the surface would seem to be a reliever-to-starter transition without a period of stretching. There are, however, two caveats: 1) Aceves was already a long reliever. Him pitching four innings the Sunday previous was not a terrible strain because he has already spent much of this season giving the Yankees two or three innings at a time, and 2) he only did pitch into the fourth inning--65 pitches on the nose--which ended up taxing the bullpen that day and bleeding into the next three.

The better example to look at is Joba Chamberlain.

Chamberlain had, in '07 and the first two months of'08, been an eighth-inning short reliever, but the Yankee plan was always for him to be a starter, so, towards, but not at, the end of May 2008, they announced plans to turn Chamberlain into a starter.

They had him first pitch longer stints out of the bullpen, and then, in the beginning of June, he made his first start--limited in pitch count, he did not get out of the third inning.

By the time Chien Ming Wang had gotten hurt, Chamberlain had stretched out not quite enough to pitch a complete game, but enough to pitch himself into the sixth-or-so inning, so that instead of the Yankees looking for another one starter, they looked instead for a five starter and found Sidney Ponson. You can debate the merits of this idea at your leisure, but that's not our concern here.

It took nearly a month for Chamberlain to go from set-up man, a role similar to what Hughes is doing now, to a full fledged starter--and it was not long afterward that Chamberlain hurt his shoulder. While the back-breaker was likely a fall Chamberlain took in Texas, the injury was likely building for some time--whether or not it had to do with the pitching transition, we can only guess, but it's highly doubtful that the Yankees would overlook it.


If Hughes took the same trajectory, in that the Yankees started to stretch him out now, we would be looking at the middle of August before he would really be a full-fledged starter. One needs to forget that Hughes started the season as a starter; after so long in the bullpen the arm strength and endurance that was there has likely gone.

Waiting until mid-August in the thick of a division race that will likely be decided by one or two games at most is not in the Yankees' best interests, especially when one considers how burnt out the bullpen would get covering for Hughes in the first few innings when a pitch count would prevent him from going more than four or five innings.

Should Hughes be in the bullpen long term? Absolutely not. Next season, he should come to Spring Training a starter and then remain a starter all through the season.

If the goal, however, is winning the World Series in 2009, the Yankees can't afford to muddle with Hughes for a month and risk exposing the bullpen even more. We saw the trouble that comes when Aceves is removed from the bullpen this week; any time the bullpen has to pitch more than two or three innings, especially in a row, it resists over-exposure--and then it gets hit. With Chamberlain and Andy Pettitte already so inefficient, Hughes on a limited pitch count is exactly the thing the Yankees don't need.


There's no one to blame on this one but the Yankees themselves.

The Yankees, for whatever reason, appeared to have not thought it through entirely in bringing Wang back before coming up with a plan for Hughes.

In an over-used cliché, "it is what it is", and the Yankees will have to make their peace with it.

Hughes in Pen a Bullish Problem (Score One for Bad Puns!)

Let me make something clear, before I get into the meat of this post:

Long term, Phil Hughes is a starter. That's why the Yankees drafted him, and that's where he will end up long term. As it should be.

In fact, right now, as Joe P. of River Ave Blues told me, Hughes is the Yanks' fourth-best starter.


The thing is, Phil Hughes' pitching well in the bullpen, and Chien Ming Wang not pitching poorly enough to show that he should be removed from the rotation means that right now, there's probably not a very big push from Yankees' brass to get Hughes back in the rotation.

If Wang keeps pitching at a not-quite-catastrophic level, there's less time (this season) for Hughes to stretch out as a starter. Keeping him as a long reliever was a good idea, but Hughes is also being used in short relief stints, and he is not starting every five days, as would be more beneficial to his development.

The issue here is that the Yankees are hamstrung by Wang's situation, and, as has been previously discussed, they can't just simply take him out of the rotation without there being consequences, that include risking losing a former 19-game-winner to another team.

It would be easier to say that the Yankees should drop Wang if his last starts had been catastrophic like his first ones, but, while they haven't been spectacular (or necessarily that good), they haven't been horrendous. Giving up three runs each in two starts is not horrendous, and had the Yankees' offense not decided to take that week in June off, the Yankees could have won those games. (It's also worth noting that the Washington start included one horrendous call, that if it had gone Wang's way, would have likely gotten him out of the inning without the runs scoring. Or at least gotten him closer to it. Fallacy of the predetermined outcome, and all. Michael Kay would be proud).


The one possibility that keeps getting mentioned is that when Joba reaches his innings limit, he and Hughes will simply switch places.

This is deceptively simple, as it would mean Hughes would have to stretch out again, and if Joba doesn't hit his cap until, say, the end of August, there simply may not be enough time for this to have any realistic success.


It's quite a pickle the Yankees have gotten themselves into.


At least, to be optimistic, the Yankees have the luxury of having too many starters. Most teams would kill for that.

At What Point Does the Bullpen Become the Blow-pen?

Yankees starters' ER thus far

6 ER, 7*, 2, 1, 0, 1, 8*, 2, 3, 1

(CC, CMW, AJ, Andy, CC, Joba, CMW, AJ, Andy, CC)

*denotes Chien Ming Wang start

Yankees bullpen ER thus far

4 ER, 0, 0, 1, 3, 7, 0, 0, 9


As you can see, with the exception of Chien Ming Wang's starts, the Yankees' starters have been efficient, only allowing more than three earned runs once, and that in the opener. Those kind of number you take from your starting pitching every time, and do what you can to get CMW to join the club.

The bullpen has, on the other hand had four scoreless outings. Four. Out of ten. That is, uh, not a very good ratio.

One of those occasions the Yankees' one the game, but four of the ten occasions the bullpen couldn't stop the bleeding, the Yankees lost the game. That's four out of five Yankees' losses this season.

I know it's still early, and the bullpen road to Mo (who, by the way, exists on a higher plane than mere 'bullpen') hasn't quite sorted itself out yet, but that has got to be a concern.

If the bullpen allowed 0 ER, the Yankees right now would be 7-3 instead of 5-5. It's early in the season, but it's two games in the standings in a division that may only be decided by one game come the end of September.

Now, I'm not so reactionary as to be advocating a complete bullpen makeover-at least, not yet-but heads should be turning. We know what happened to the 2008 Mets.

The Yankees are getting pretty darn good starts from four of their five starters. There have been 10 games, 8 not started by Chien Ming Wang, and of those eight, five were quality starts--with CC's today being only an out shy of a sixth.

The bullpen has got to make sure they stand up.

Dude, People, It's Been Six Games

The level and the number of people freaking out over the Yankees' 3-3 record after six games in a 162 game season is astounding.

Don't know what I'm talking about?

Check out this post. It really only gets worse from there.

Look, I understand the importance of not blowing it in April, because, hey, I've paid attention the last couple of seasons. So yeah, if the Yankees go 10-20 or what have you, it's a pretty big deal, but 3-3 is not 10 games under .500.

The Yankees could be the Red Sox, 2-4, or the Indians, 1-5, or the Nationals, 0-6, but they're not.

The Yankees are right now in third place at 3-3 behind two teams that probably have weeks left in the first place spot, if even that, in Baltimore and Toronto. Now, Baltimore and Toronto aren't as bad or playing as bad, as some make them out to be, but, whether or not they can hang with Tampa, Boston and New York over the long haul is another matter, entirely.

What's more important to take into account is how the Yankees have been playing their games.

The Yankees, in the six games they have played, have scored 5, 5, 11, 4, 6 and 4 runs. In 2008, over the same span, the Yankees scored 3, 2, 3, 4, 3 and 2 runs.

May I remind you that at this time last year, Alex Rodriguez was in the line up, though he is out so far this season, and, oh, over the past two games in 2009, the Yankees have scored 6 and 4 runs without Teixeira.

Now, 6 and 4 runs hardly counts as a blow out, but when you realize that if not for today's blow-pen, the Yankees would have won both games-even with today's line up including Gardner AND Melky Cabrera AND Cody Ransom AND Jose Molina-then the six runs and four runs loom fairly large, indeed.

Think of it this way: with the exception of the first two games, Yankees' starting has been stellar.

Since game three, ER from the starting pitchers are 2, 1, 0 and 1 (today's other KC runs were either unearned or ER from the bullpen of dooooom). When you consider that a quality start is 3 ER or less over six innings, the only conclusion that can be drawn is that the Yankees have gotten four quality starts in a row. Niether Tampa Bay nor Boston has done that.

Now, it will of course be interesting to see how Chien Ming Wang rebounds from his poor outing last week tomorrow night (or tonight, depending on your time zone), but the fact is that with the Sabathia-Wang-Burnett-Pettitte-Chamberlain rotation, it's unlikely the Yankees will get more than two games in a row where the starting pitching doesn't give the team a chance to win.

In fact, if you consider that the Yankees trailed Baltimore by the score of 6-5 going into the ninth, you can argue that there has only really been one game the Yankees' starting pitching took the team out of the game early, and even then, the Yankees still came within 7-5.

There has not been a single game the Yankees have been 'blown out', which, for this purpose, I'll define as the Yankees scoring less than three runs while the opponent scores at least five more runs than the Yankees. There can be arguments, some valid, that the final score of the first game indicates a blow out loss while the majority of the second game was a blowout for the Yankees, but don't let that fool you: in both games the Yankees showed enough fight to have a chance to win, despite the poor starting pitching.


Even today's loss could be considered more of a result of over-managing the bullpen, though hindsight is still 20/20. Today's loss can be blamed as much on not giving Damon a chance to pinch-hit for Melky in the seventh as much as it is Coke's awful outing, but the fact is, that the Yankees have that option bodes well for the team in the near future.

Oh, also in the near future? The return of Alex Rodriguez.

Whatever you think of him as a person, he's still a damned good baseball player, and having him in the line up over Cody Ransom? Yeah, if Alex is even half as good as he normally is, he'll still be eight times better than Ransom.


So whatever your thoughts, the Yankees are playing well, for the most part. In the first week of April, while the record still matters, what's more important is how well the Yankees are playing, and they are, for all intents and purposes, playing well enough to have a chance every game.

They didn't do that last year.

Chin up.

It's April.

Hope abounds.

Questions to Ask During Spring Training

Now that Spring Training is around the corner, I thought I'd go and list some of the more pressing questions that the Yankees have to address.

Throughout the month of February I'll periodically attempt an answer at some of these questions, and in March, as with last year, I will do a team preview a day which should take us right to the start of baseball season.

So, the questions:

1) What happens if Jorge Posada can't catch?
2) Who will come out of Spring Training as the fifth starter?
3) Will Derek Jeter have a better offensive year or will his decline become more progressed?
4) Who starts in center--Melky or Gardner?
5) Will Andy Pettitte pull an '08 Mussina?
6) How long does General Joe Girardi have before that hot seat starts really heatin' up?
7) What's this year's fist pump/HA/otherwise inane controversy?
8) How much *more* controversy can the New Stadium create?
9) How will the economic collapse of doom affect attendance?
10) Nady or Swisher?

These are just some of the questions the Yankees have; if you've got one you'd like to see me attempt to address, please feel free to leave it in a comment!