Joba's Troubles Concerning

The Yankees, as of September 5th 2009, do not have a lot of concerns.

They have the best record in baseball by a decent margin and have had quite a few win streaks of seven games or more. Losses are rare; the team has lost only two series entirely since the All Star Break.

Life, as a Yankees fan, is pretty darned good.

It is not, however, perfect.

There are concerns, and right now there is probably none looming as large as Joba Chamberlain.

It's true that AJ Burnett hasn't won in a month, but some of those non-decisions and losses have more to do with the Yankees giving him no run support than they do Burnett pitching poorly.

Chamberlain, on the other hand, has not pitched well since before that first Boston game of that four-game sweep we remember so fondly.

Since that game, Chamberlain has pitched to an ERA of 7.96, which, even considering ERA's inaccuracies, is really, really bad. Like, Sergio Mitre in that time has been almost twice as good.

Seriously.

Chamberlain's 20-17 strikeouts to walks is nearly identical, which is not something you'd want even from your number five starter, let alone someone that's going to start games for your team in the playoffs.

Opponents are OPSing .923 against Chamberlain--that's better than Mark Teixeira.

Then there's also the fact that Joba is fast (okay, maybe not so fast) approaching the 150 innings gray area, in which the Yankees will begin to risk his long-term health if he keeps going out there.

In short, Joba has about four weeks to show some massive improvement, or else the Yankees might seriously consider starting Mitre, because if the Yankees are in the ALCS, fans will remember easily that a game four win actually matters. At least Mitre can get the occasional out.

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.

The Hangover (Postgame Notes 10 August 2009)

It's common that when a team comes off a playoff-clinching performance to play flat the next day. A hangover, if you will.

The Yankees didn't clinch anything in their four game sweep of Boston, but you would have never known it from the atmosphere at the Stadium and the intensity in which those games were played.

Although the Yankees weren't exactly flat--they were done in more by bad pitching from Sergio Mitre than anything else--there was just something different about tonight.

It wasn't until the ninth inning that the crowd at the Stadium was anything close to alive, and by then it was pretty much too late--the Yankees best opportunities to tie the game had come earlier.

To be fair, had Sergio Mitre pitched to a modicum of a decent effort, the Yankees four runs could have been enough. One gets the feeling that any of the other Yankee starters and the 1-0 and 2-1 leads would not have been blown (almost) as soon as they were obtained.

At any rate, because of a heroic effort from Alfredo Aceves, no one else in the bullpen was used tonight, and Johnny Damon and Hideki Matsui got (most) of a much-needed day off, while Posada had a day off from catching.

No, no one likes to lose, but when you're 31 of your last 42 it's hard to find decent reasons to complain.

The Yankees will be back at it tomorrow. Joba Chamberlain needs a decent outing to prove that his struggles against the Red Sox were an aberration and not him slipping back into his pre-All Star break whatchamacallits. However, the difference here is that while giving up 4 or 5 runs from Mitre constitutes an average and almost expected performance, the same from Chamberlain is considered failure. That's the difference between the first four in the Yankees' rotation and the guy that's pitching only because Wang's hurt and Hughes is otherwise occupied.

The important thing, as always, is to make sure that one loss doesn't become two.

The Joba Theory--Explained and Expanded

Many of you saw the post I wrote last night, in which, with the help of a couple of Mets fans, I arrived at a very, very simple conclusion for the pitching woes of Joba Chamberlain.

Now that I've had a night to sleep on it, I thought I'd go and expand it, mention some caveats and correct some errors on my part, as well as provide you with some raw data--so if you'd like, you can draw your own conclusion.

The "Joba theory", as I'm callling it (feel free to call it whatever you want) centers around one basic premise: the pitching woes of Joba Chamberlain may be at least partly, if not wholly, attributed to the fact that, combining college and minor league performances, Chamberlain has not built up the proper arm strength to be a starter over the long haul.

Reduced endurance/stamina can be a cause of reduced arm strength, which in turns means reduced velocity, more hittable pitches, more pitches thrown and shorter outings.

That's just the physical aspect of it--there's also something to be said for the psychological aspect that without adequate time in the minor leagues, pitchers who experience sudden success at the major league level may not know how to handle the situation when they first begin to struggle. That, would, however, be over-reaching. Only a player and his psychiatrist/psychologist/whomever knows what's really going through his mind.

I am digressing.

Back to the theory at-large.

If I were to make a statement about what the theory is, without using the words "Joba" or "Chamberlain", it would be thus:

While long stints in the minor league do not guarantee a pitcher success, not pitching enough, either in the minors or in a combination of college ball and the minor leagues, can actively work against a pitcher's development.

This is what I wrote last night re: Joba

If you look here, you can see Chamberlain's innings totals for both his time in Nebraska and his time with the Yankees.

What do you notice?

Chamberlain did not even pitch 100 innings in the minor leagues; at Nebraska he did not reach 120 innings.

This season, he's already logged 89 innings--and if we keep the Verducci Effect (the idea that excess increases in innings pitched from year to year substantially increases injury risk) in mind, he probably won't top 130 IP--perhaps 140 if the Yankees are feeling like living on the edge with a pitcher who sustained a can't-be-overlooked shoulder injury last season.

Now, I did leave out the winter ball that Chamberlain pitched in 2006. While that does bump his 2006 innings total over 100 innings, you are still left with Chamberlain having pitched two years of college ball and one year in the minor leagues.

How does that compare with other?

Take a look at the chart I created here (it's in PDF form).

Now, some notes and observations:

• The pitchers selected are, for the most part, considered either the #1 or #2 pitcher on their team, are no longer rookies (I believe Gallardo is an exception due to last year's injury) and are either considered young or in their prime--ie no Randy Johnson or John Smoltz or Andy Pettitte, all of whom are on the obvious downswing of their careers.

• The first column is innings pitched in the minors before a pitcher's first call up; second is whether or not the pitcher was sent back down; third is total innings in the minors and fourth is the number of years in the minors.
  

• I included the innings pitched totals for college ball for Tim Lincecum and Justin Verlander because of the low number of innings they pitched in the minor leagues. Both Lincecum and Verlander pitched three years of college ball--not Joba's two--and pitched over 100 innings in each season. It's not the minor leagues, but it would certainly contribute to stamina.

• Aside from Verlander and Lincecum, only Mark Buehrle (out of 20 pretty randomly chosen pitchers) pitched less than three years in the minor leagues before their first call up. Six pitchers not named Verlander or Lincecum pitched between 200 and 300 innings, with Cole Hamels at the low end and Johan Santana at the high end (at 294). Twelve pitched at least 300 innings before their first call up.

• You can guess a lot at those who went back down to the minors--shorter stints likely indicate rehab for an injury, while longer stints may reflect ineffectiveness or else that a team wanted to further develop a pitcher.

• If we want to establish a baseline for what is most common--ie, the rule and not the exception--it'd seem to be three seasons in the minors (with a potential call up to the majors in the third) and 200 innings pitched. Even if you make the argument--and you can--that the combination of Joba's college innings and one year in the minors puts him over the 200 IP mark, he's still missing a year. He's not the only pitcher to have ever shot through all four levels of the minor league system in one year, but such things are an exception, not a rule, and sooner or later the law of averages tends to catch up.

• Twenty pitchers, even twenty name-brand pitchers, is still of course far too small of a sample size, so I'll work on expanding it. Theoretically. If there's a pitcher you would like to test, it's pretty simple--go to the Baseball Cube, type in the pitcher's name, and look at the inning pitched in the minor leagues. Have fun! Ones you might consider trying, for the hell of it: Phil Hughes, Clay Buchholz, Mark Prior, Kerry Wood, Chris Carpenter, Ben Sheets, Josh Beckett, Josh Johnson, Mike Pelfrey, Matt Garza, et al. Stay away from rookies who may be riding beginner's luck.

• Relievers don't work here, either. Since relievers by their very nature don't pitch as many innings, the endurance they need to build is not as important as brute arm strength: Can you throw it 100 mph? Can you locate it vaguely close to the strike zone? Can you make believe it's got movement? Congratulations, there's team waiting to sign you right now! Starting pitching is a much different thing.

This is, of course, just a theory.

There are certainly holes, exceptions that don't fit and other issues to consider--like, perhaps, whether or not a pitcher has a history of arm injuries--but it does fit the model of Occam's Razor: the simplest explanation is usually the best.

Unfortunately, merely knowing what the problem is won't solve it--and with Chamberlain, that's a whole, other impossible-to-answer question.

A deceptively simple cause for Joba's problems

Tonight, I appeared as a guest on Steve Keane's Pro Baseball Central show on BlogTalkRadio.

Through much arguing and bickering about the importance of the eighth inning and what will happen when Mariano Rivera's contract expires, there was a point raised that I found worthy of further investigation:

Among the many reasons cited for Joba Chamberlains's inconsistency and lack of stamina, I have not yet seen someone tackle the issue of whether or not Chamberlain's lack of innings pitched--both in college and in the minor leagues--and the affect that might have on him now.

If you look here, you can see Chamberlain's innings totals for both his time in Nebraska and his time with the Yankees.

What do you notice?

Chamberlain did not even pitch 100 innings in the minor leagues; at Nebraska he did not reach 120 innings.

This season, he's already logged 89 innings--and if we keep the Verducci Effect (the idea that excess increases in innings pitched from year to year substantially increases injury risk) in mind, he probably won't top 130 IP--perhaps 140 if the Yankees are feeling like living on the edge with a pitcher who sustained a can't-be-overlooked shoulder injury last season.

How does this compare with others?

Roy Halladay, since he's topical, pitched about 640 innings in the minor leagues; with about 150 or so (if my random mental math is accurate) after his first call up to the major leagues.


Dan Haren pitched 472 innings in the minors; about 128 of them coming after his first call-up to the majors.

Justin Verlander pitched only 118 innings in the minors (over one season), but preceded that with three straight 100+ innings pitched seasons in college ball--Chamberlain only had two years at Nebraska and only pitched more than 100 innings in his first season.

Johan Santana pitched 340 innings in the minors; some after his first call up but the majority before.


Notice a pattern here?


It would seem, then, that there is perhaps a case to be made for "Joba hasn't pitched enough" as a reason for his depleted stamina--which in turn means lower velocity, more hittable pitches and shortened outings.

Now, there are some things to consider:

1) Chamberlain was injured in college--which is part of the reason he fell to the Yankees as low as he did in the draft.

2) He was rushed through the minors because he had been pitching so well--and also because the 2007 Yankees needed pitching help like, uh, (pick your own grossly inappropriate comparison)

3) Going from 89 innings pitched in 2006 at Nebraska to 112 innings pitched in 2007 for the Yankees at multiple levels was a 23 inning increase--perhaps not the Verduccian 30, but for a guy coming off an injury, probably close enough. I'm not sure how many innings pitched he was on pace for before he got hurt in 2008, but it's probably safe to assume that again the Yankees would have been toying with the Verducci line.

Now, already at 89 innings pitched, it doesn't seem likely that Chamberlain will be able to pitch himself out of August without really risking damage, which, of course, would create a whole other set of problems--but you knew this already.



At the time, back in 2007, I don't remember there being too much debate about Chamberlain being rushed--the team's needs were that desperate at the time. In the off-season, Chamberlain was hailed as untouchable by the fans when discussing Santana rumors, but no one--or nearly no one--suggested Chamberlain be sent back down to the minors to build up arm strength, even though the conversion from reliever to starter would surely require that.

It is--perhaps in some sick sense--almost amusing that an issue we as fans (and even writers) have seen as so complicated and so mysterious might actually be really simple: he hasn't pitched enough.

Unfortunately, I'm not sure how you'd address that situation. We're already at a point in the season in which even if you did send Chamberlain back to the minors to work on his pitches, he's pitched so many innings that it's hard to see exactly how beneficial it might be.

It's certainly, however, a warning sign--if the Yankees did trade Chamberlain for Halladay and Toronto did have Chamberlain pitch substantial innings in the minors to build up arm strength and stamina (given Toronto's history in developing--or, as it were, not-- pitchers, they'd probably take this to the other extreme), Chamberlain could yet end up being the effective starter the Yankees hoped for in the first place.

What it seems we're seeing now, then, is all the development and growing pains that should be happening at the minor league level--only it's not at the minor leagues; it's at the majors, where the hitters (excluding those on the Royals, Padres and Mets) don't let mistakes go unpunished.

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.

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.

Composure is awesome...when you have it.

Sometimes, as a pitcher, you don't actually pitch all that badly, but your defense plays, well, shoddy baseball.

Last night was a rare instance in which both Alex Rodriguez and Derek Jeter committed errors; although these errors did not directly lead to Anaheim Los Angeles runs, they did continue the innings for Angels' bats and ultimately culminated in two three-run home runs.

***

A few days ago I heard someone mention that the unearned runs a pitcher gives up should be used as a measuring stick more often. After all, unearned runs do more than just tell you the number of runs that don't contribute to ERA; unearned runs tell one about a pitcher's ability to remain unshaken and not get unnerved when his defense falters behind him.

So, how do Yankee pitchers stack up?

It shouldn't be much of a surprise that the best Yankees' pitchers also have the fewest unearned runs, and that the number of UR, for the most part, increases based on spot in the pitching rotation:

CC Sabathia: 53 runs, 50 earned = 3 unearned runs.
AJ Burnett: 48 runs, 45 earned = 3 unearned runs.
Andy Pettitte: 58 runs, 52 earned = 6 unearned runs.
Joba Chamberlain 52 runs, 42 earned = 10 unearned runs.
Chien Ming Wang: 46 runs, 45 earned = 1 unearned run.

In this instance, given Wang's struggles this seasons, the one unearned run all season does say quite a bit--in other words, his struggles are all really on him, and that he really was getting hit that hard.

We can also look at relievers, in descending order of importance (however arbitrary):

Mariano Rivera: 11 runs, 10 earned = 1 unearned run.
Phil Hughes: 24 runs, 23 earned = 1 unearned run. (Also, how far he's come since BAL!)
Alfredo Aceves: 22 runs, 20 earned = 2 unearned runs.
Phil Coke: 16 runs, 13 earned = 3 unearned runs.
David Robertson: 26 runs, 24 earned = 2 unearned runs.
Brian Bruney: 9 runs, 9 earned = 0 unearned runs.


Now, the bullpen needs to be taken with the following caveats:

1) The runs do not account for inherited runners. Hence, Brian Bruney's numbers don't reflect the runners that were on base as a result of Jeter's error because those runners were already on base when Bruney came into the game.

2) Hughes and Aceves' higher run totals can be attributed to Hughes starting the season as a starter and Aceves' long relief stints. It is, of course, natural to think that the more innings one pitches, the more runs one will allow.


Also interesting is that Rivera's run total already equals his total for all of last season, which doesn't so much mean Rivera's having a poor season this year (he struggled early but has been his normal self for nearly two and a half months now), as it does emphasize how good he really was last season.


It's perhaps not that surprising that Joba Chamberlain has the highest total of unearned runs.

In most of his recent starts, he's pulled an '07 Mussina, nibbling and being afraid to throw strikes. Inefficient pitchers lull fielders; fielders that aren't "with it" will, of course, make more errors, and then a nibbling pitcher nibbles even more with runners on base.

It's kind of like the circle-of-nibbling (and it moves us all...to despair and hope...to faith and love... okay, okay I'll stop now)...

On the other hand, while Chamberlain may be struggling, it's nice to see Sabathia and Burnett pitching with the composure one expects of one's #1 and #2 starters...

A Few Thoughts

• My friend, Brent, and I went to Wednesday's game. We sat in the terrace level, seats with a pretty good view, despite my bad eyes. As the game started, one man wearing a Yankee jersey started shouting obnoxious and annoying phrases, actively rooting against the Yankees. When he started to bother other fans in the section, Brent texted Yankees' customer service, asking them to keep an eye on the man. Not two minutes later, there was, in fact, a security official standing on the concourse, right behind the man in question. He was later joined by other ushers and even a cop. Althought the man only stopped while he was being watched, the fast response for a matter that was at the terrace level and not really all that serious, is commendable.

• The starting pitching seems to have taken a nose-dive since Chien Ming Wang returned to the team. I don't so much blame Wang for causing Burnett and Pettitte and Joba to have bad starts, as I do the interruption in the flow of the rotation, no doubt also hindered by the rain out. Rule number one of managing almost anything is, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it", and the Yankees tried to fix a rotation that had been performing admirably.

• It seems that the Yankees have lost nearly every game in which there's been a sizable rain delay (a half hour or longer), and they haven't played well when the weather's been nasty, either--and with the way this summer's gone in NY, that's not good. Someone suggested it might have to do with age; I think it would have to be more than ust age at work. Perhaps the team outght to find a different way to spend the rain delays?
  

The Weirdest Walkoff You've Ever Seen (Postgame Notes 12 June 2009

Michael Kay, for all of his faults, said it best: How many times can you fail, and still win?

Because that is, more or less, what happened tonight.

The Yankees failed in many, many ways.

They didn't get good starting pitching, with Joba walking pretty much everyone he saw and throwing 43 pitches in one inning.

They didn't get great bullpen pitching--Tomko was awful, Robertson was good, all right, Coke couldn't hold the lead and Rivera still can't pitch in tie games, even in the eighth.

They got some offense (I mean, dude, they scored nine runs), but they could never build more than a one run lead.

In the bottom of the ninth inning, they had the tying run on second base and the winning run on first, with two out and Alex Rodriguez at the plate. And A-Rod, as we have so often seen, popped up.

Except, this time, Luis Castillo dropped it.

Luis Castillo dropped it, and Mark Teixeira had the grit and the good sense to run hard on a routine pop up, and he and Derek Jeter BOTH scored.

How often do we see a pop up and automatically draw the conclusion? How often do we forget they actually have to see it into the glove? K-Rod forgot; he did a fist pump as A-Rod popped it.

This wasn't so much a game the Yankees won as it was a game the Mets lost; though, to be completley onest here, I think any question about ghosts moving across the street has been resolutely answered.

Anyway, what it means is that instead of the Yankees having lost four in a row, they've opened this portion of interleague play with a win and keep from falling any further behind in the standings.

Yankees fans can sleep just a tiny bit easier tonight.

Luis Castillo may want to watch his back. The Mets fans are apparently not very happy.

Yankees Lose Game of Missed Opportunties (Postgame Notes 03 June 2009)

Tonight's game wasn't lost when Andy Pettitte gave up three runs in the first in what might be considered his worst outing of the season.

Tonight's game was lost when Alex Rodriguez grounded into a double play with the bases loaded and one out in a game in which the winning team never led by more than three runs.

I know it's not fair to harp on A-Rod because, well, everyone does it, but tonight it really hurt the team.

No, Andy Pettitte wasn't any good, especially in the first couple of innings, but a 3-0 or 4-1 deficit is usually not considered the end of the world unless you're facing a Sabathia/Halladay/Santana type, and even then, if you work the counts well enough, you just have to wait for the bullpen.

Not having Mark Teixeira in the line up (banged-up ankle, DTD) certainly didn't help the Yankees, but the Yankees didn't lose because Brett Gardner was in the line up. They lost because, when the team needed them to, Rodriguez and Robinson Canó didn't come through.

To be fair, A-Rod did have an RBI knock in the bottom of the first, but this might be precisely what is most frustrating.

The one run there was great...but then, with the bases loaded, when some real damage could have been done, he was not able to come through.

Still, some things should not be lost, such as Brett Tomko's three scoreless innings in relief. Since the Yankees only used him and Robertson for one inning, there are plenty left in the bullpen--including Alfredo Aceves and Phil Hughes--that can give length if Wang falters tomorrow.

The Yankees didn't get blown out and kept themselves in the game, and in their last 21 games, it's only the second time the starter has been saddled with the loss.

You hope that Pettitte's not hurt (though this seems doubtful), let yourself bemoan for a little while the inability to hit with runners on base tonight, go to sleep and then wake up tomorrow ready to cheer on Wang's first win of the season.

That's the beauty of baseball.

Tomorrow's another day, and we get to play (or, in my instance, watch) again.