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5/25-5/27 Series Preview: Oakland Athletics
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It's the O.co Coliseum now. Seriously. (Ezra Shaw/Getty Images)
The Yankees are kicking off their first of two trips to Oakland and the West Coast this weekend. They’ve won 22 of 28 games against the Athletics over the last three seasons, including 10 of 12 on the road in California.
What Have They Done Lately?
The Athletics are flirting with .500 at 22-23, though their -20 run differential is the third worst in the AL. They just lost two straight to the Angels but had won two straight before that. They lost two straight before that and … well you get the idea. Teams sitting near .500 tend to alternate wins and losses.
Offense
(Thearon W. Henderson/Getty Images)
At 3.40 runs per game, the A’s are the lowest scoring team in the AL this season. Their 77 wRC+ is the second worst in baseball to the Pirates, ditto their .287 team OBP. Former Red Sox Josh Reddick has been their best offensive player by far, with a 143 wRC+ and 11 homers to his credit. Yoenis Cespedes is on the DL with a hand injury and his 112 wRC+ is sorely missed. Seth Smith (106 wRC+) is the only other player on the club with at least 120 plate appearances and above league average production to his credit.
Leadoff man Jemile Weeks (75 wRC+) is off to a terrible start just like his brother, and the number two spot in the lineup has rotated between Coco Crisp (28 wRC+) and Cliff Pennington (64 wRC+) for the most part. With Cespedes out, cleanup duties behind Reddick belong to Smith and Jonny Gomes, who is destroying left-handers (147 wRC+) and holding his own against righties (109 wRC+). Brandon Inge has hit well since being released by Detroit (126 wRC+) but no one really expects him to keep that up. First baseman Daric Barton (86 wRC+) and catcher Kurt Suzuki (48 wRC+) have just stalled out after promising starts to their careers.
Oakland’s bench is just unfathomably bad. Part-time DH/first baseman Kile Ka’aihue is the bright spot with an 89 wRC+, but backup catcher Anthony Recker (26 wRC+), extra outfielder Colin Cowgill (-1 wRC+), and corner infielder Josh Donaldson (-11 wRC+) have been inexcusably bad. I have no idea how you can carry two guys with negative production like that on your bench. Infielder Adam Rosales has one single and four walks in his eight plate appearances. I know the Yankees have been dreadful offensively, but sheesh. This is what a below average lineup really looks like, folks.
Pitching Matchups
Friday: RHP Ivan Nova vs. RHP Tyson Ross
With three starters — Brandon McCarthy, Dallas Braden, Brett Anderson — on the DL, the Athletics’ rotation is patchwork at the moment. Ross has pitched to a 5.73 ERA (4.07 FIP) in seven starts with few strikeouts (4.54 K/9 and 11.2 K%) and too many walks (3.82 BB/9 and 9.4 BB%). He does get a healthy amount of ground balls though (55%). Ross has a very funky, upright delivery that adds deception to his low-90s two and four-seamers and mid-80s slider. He doesn’t have much of a changeup, so it’s basically the two fastballs and one breaking ball. The Yankees briefly saw him out of the bullpen a year or two ago.
(AP Photo/Ben Margot)
Saturday: LHP CC Sabathia vs. RHP Bartolo Colon
Colon threw a complete game shutout for the Yankees in Oakland on Memorial Day last season, and now he’s looking to turn the tides this Memorial Day weekend. The hefty right-hander has a 4.09 ERA and a 3.95 FIP through ten starts, right in line with what he did last season (4.00 ERA and 3.83 FIP) despite the move out of Yankee Stadium and the AL East. Colon’s strikeouts are way down (5.55 K/9 and 14.6 K%) but so are his walks (1.46 BB/9 and 3.8 BB%). His ground ball rate (44.1%) is identical to last season. He’s still primarily an all-fastball guy, though he now sits right around 90 with the four-seamer and in the upper-80s with the two-seamer. His velocity this year is consistent with his second half fade last year (four-seamer and two-seamer). Colon has a slider and changeup, but as you know he rarely uses them.
Sunday: RHP Hiroki Kuroda vs. LHP Tom Milone
Part of the Gio Gonzalez trade, Milone is another low strikeout (4.99 K/9 and 13.9 K%), low walk (2.18 BB/9 and 6.1 BB%), moderate ground ball (44.2%) type. It’s like the Twins are spreading. Anyway, Milone is a classic finesse lefty. He sits in the mid-to-upper-80s with two and four-seamers and uses an upper-70s changeup as his go-to offspeed pitch. A mid-80s cutter and a mid-70s curveball are rarely used fourth and fifth offerings. Soft-tossing rookie left-handers usually give the Yankees fits, especially if they’ve never seen them before, but they did take care of business against Will Smith on Wednesday night.
(AP Photo/Ben Margot)
Bullpen Status
With a 2.57 ERA and a 3.74 FIP, the Athletics boast one of the game’s most effective bullpens. Setup man Ryan Cook (2.69 FIP) is the only pitcher in baseball who has spent the entire season on the active 25-man roster and not allowed run. His scoreless streak is up to 22.2 IP. Brian Fuentes (2.79 FIP) replaced Grant Balfour (4.28 FIP) at closer after he had some rough outings a few weeks ago. Those three are manager Bob Melvin’s go-to relievers in the late innings.
Travis Blackley (1.63 FIP in six innings), Jerry Blevins (4.61 FIP), and Jordan Norberto (3.00 FIP) give Oakland three more lefties in addition to Fuentes. Blevins is a specialist but Norberto has the stuff to face both righties and lefties, which he’s been doing all season. Blackley had been out of baseball and playing all over the world until resurfacing this season, so his role hasn’t really been defined yet. Jim Miller (3.99 FIP) is the only other right-hander in their bullpen. Like the Yankees, the Athletics had yesterday off so their entire bullpen is fresh. For the latest and greatest from Oakland, we recommend Athletics Nation and Beaneball.
Mailbag: A-Rod, Hamilton, Halladay, AL vs. NL
Posted by: | CommentsGot a massive mailbag for you this week. I dunno, I just couldn’t stop once I got going. Blame yesterday’s day off. Remember to use the Submit A Tip box in the sidebar to send us stuff, mailbag questions or otherwise.
(REUTERS/Adam Hunger)
Nathan asks: What’s up with A-Rod and the lack of power? Is he not fully healthy, losing bat speed, or just getting old?
This came in before Alex Rodriguez hit those two homers on Wednesday night, somewhat obviously. Anyway, I think it’s all of the above. He’s going to turn 37 next month and not many players maintain 30+ homerun power into their late-30s. Only 34 players age 36 or older hitt 30+ dingers in a single season (49 total instances), and the vast majority of them took place during the offense-crazy late-1990s/early-2000s. The power decline has been a gradual thing for Alex, look at his ISO through the years…
Source: FanGraphs — Alex Rodriguez
That looks an awful lot like normal age-related decline. That monster 2007 season (.331 ISO) came at age 31, right at the end of his prime years. On top of getting old, he also had the torn labrum in his hip. Players need their lower halves to generate power and Alex’s was compromised a bit. Lots of people will blame the past PED usage and hey, they might be right, but I don’t think there’s anything that unusual about a player on the wrong side of 35 losing his power, even a historically great player like A-Rod.
The Ivan Nova Story
Posted by: | CommentsIvan Nova‘s journey from amateur to prospect to big leaguer is a unique one, partly because he wasn’t a high-profile player who signed for a lot of money as a teenager. ESPN’s Jorge Arangure chronicled Nova’s journey, explaining how he transitioned from position player to pitcher with some help from his father, who woke him up for 5am workouts every day. He spent two weeks working out for the Red Sox at age 16, but says “I really didn’t want to sign with Boston … My father and I were both Yankee fans.”
Interestingly enough, the article explains that Nova is working on a new changeup grip with pitching coach Larry Rothschild because he shelved the pitch for much of last season and lost feel for it. He uses the new pitch sparingly (6.9% according to PitchFX) and both Nova and Rothschild say it’s a root cause of his homerun problem — PitchFX confirms that five of the ten homers he’s allowed this season have come off that new changeup. Arangure’s article is a great read and gets RAB’s highest level of recommendation. Make sure you check it out.
Thunder walk-off with a win
Posted by: | CommentsThe Triple-A SWB Yankees have set up a Twitter account (@SWBBallpark) with updates on the construction at PNC Field, if you’re interested. They even put together a live construction cam for those of you who want to stare at the parking lot for various lengths of time.
Also, make sure you check out Dom Amore’s piece on Tim Norton. The right-hander has officially retired as a player and has begun his career as a coach within the organization. We heard he was leaning that way last month.
Triple-A Empire State (6-2 loss to Buffalo)
CF Kevin Russo & 2B Matt Antonelli: both 1-4, 1 R
1B Steve Pearce: 1-3, 1 2B, 2 RBI, 1 BB — six hits in his last 12 at-bats
DH Jack Cust & LF Ronnie Mustelier: both 0-4 — Cust struck out three times
3B Brandon Laird, RF Cole Garner & SS Ramiro Pena: all 0-3 — Laird walked and whiffed … Gardner struck out
C Frankie Cervelli: 1-3, 1 K
RHP Adam Warren: 5.2 IP, 8 H, 4 R, 4 ER, 1 BB, 3 K, 10/2 GB/FB — 63 of 103 pitches were strikes (61.2%) … underwhelming again
LHP Justin Thomas: 1 IP, 1 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 0 BB, 1 K, 1/0 GB/FB — 11 of 17 pitches were strikes
RHP Nelson Figueroa: 1.1 IP, 3 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 2 BB, 1 K, 1 WP, 1/2 GB/FB — 20 of 37 pitches were strikes (54.1%)
RHP Manny Delcarmen: 1 IP, zeroes, 0/3 GB/FB — 10 of 12 pitches were strikes
Thursday Night Open Thread
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(Al Bello/Getty Images)
Scheduled days off never seem to come at the right time. When the Yankees couldn’t score a run to save their lives last week, they played. Everyday. Even when the rain threatened, they still played. No matter what, the baseball gods make sure they played so they could struggle. Now that they’ve won two in a row and things are starting to look up, they’re off. Off on Thursday and off to the West Coast for a nine-game road trip through Oakland, Anaheim, and Detroit. Funny how that works.
Anyway, here’s your open thread for the evening. Weather permitting, the Mets are playing the Padres at home (Jeremy Hefner vs. Eric Stults, so yuck) and MLB Network will also air the Phillies and Cardinals (Blanton vs. Westbrook) a little later on. There’s also some NBA playoff action going on somewhere. Hooray for sports. Talk about those games or anything else here. Enjoy.
Williams ranks 24th on Law’s midseason top 25 prospects list
Posted by: | CommentsIt’s only late-May, but Keith Law posted an updated list of the top 25 prospects in the minors today (subs. req’d). RHP Dylan Bundy of the Orioles claims the top spot with OF Bryce Harper now in the big leagues, and Baltimore also owns the number three prospect in SS Manny Machado. SS Jurickson Profar of the Rangers is sandwiched between them at number two.
OF Mason Williams check in at #24, up ten spots from KLaw’s preseason ranking. “He’s not walking, but he’s also making a ton of contact, and he’s barely begun to fill out physically,” he wrote. “There’s a lot of projection involved in this ranking but he’s a favorite of many scouts (and of me) because of the substantial upside here.” LHP Manny Banuelos was ineligible for the list because he’s on the DL, but I confirmed with Law that he would have made the top 25 as well. He ranked 23rd on the preseason list.
Looking back at the 2007 draft
Posted by: | CommentsThey say you need five years before you can properly evaluate a draft class in baseball, so with the 2012 event less than two weeks away, let’s look back at what the Yankees did five years ago. It was Damon Oppenheimer’s third draft class as scouting director and he was coming off a banner 2006 haul that would place two pitchers — Ian Kennedy and Joba Chamberlain — on the big league roster less than 15 months after being selected. The 2007 class wasn’t nearly as successful.
(AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)
The Top Pick
There has been no more polarizing first round pick in recent Yankees history than Andrew Brackman. The Yankees took him 30th overall after most pre-draft projections ranked him as one of the draft’s top three talents (with David Price and Matt Wieters) but concerns about his elbow caused him to slide. New York rolled the dice knowing Brackman would likely need Tommy John surgery, giving him a four-year big league contract worth $4.55M and incentives that could have pushed the total value to $13M. A week later he was under the knife having his elbow rebuilt.
After missing all of 2008, Brackman impressed in Hawaii Winter Baseball (number two prospect in the league according to Baseball America) but did not build on the success. He pitched to a 4.66 FIP in 106.2 Low-A innings in 2009, then rebounded to post a stellar 3.22 FIP in 140.2 innings split between High-A and Double-A in 2010. That had us all thinking Brackman was on his way to helping the Yankees, but he flopped in 2011 (5.77 FIP in 96 Triple-A innings) despite making his big league debut in September*. He walked three and struck out zero in 2.1 innings. After two bad years, one good year, and one year lost to injury, he was released after last season.
* Brackman was actually called up in September 2010 but did not appear in a game. He was on the 40-man roster already thanks to his contract and the minor league season had ended.
Brackman’s deal remains the largest the Yankees have ever given to an amateur player and at the time, it was potentially the richest contract in draft history. All told, he pitched to a 5.11 ERA with 7.97 K/9 and a 4.98 BB/9 in 343.1 minor league innings with the Yankees. He’s currently in the Reds organization and pitching very poorly for their Triple-A affiliate: 9.87 ERA with more walks (16) than strikeouts (13) in 17.1 innings across five starts.
(Mike Ashmore)
Reached The Show
In addition to Brackman, two other 2007 draftees have reached the show for New York. The first player to actually play in a big league game out of this draft class was Brandon Laird (27th round), who helped fill out the bench through injuries last July before coming back up in September. He has four singles and three walks in 25 big league plate appearances, all coming last year. Laird is biding his time in Triple-A and is just an up-and-down corner player for the Yankees.
The other big leaguer is catcher Austin Romine (2), who debuted last September following Frankie Cervelli‘s latest concussion. He had three singles and one walk in 20 plate appearances, starting four games behind the plate and appearing in four others off the bench. Romine had a chance to replace Cervelli as the backup catcher this season, but he’s been dealing with a back issue since Spring Training and will be out until July.
Big Money Duds
The Yankees handed out a trio of seven-figure bonuses in 2007. The largest went to Brackman, but Bradley Suttle (4) and Carmen Angelini (10) received $1.3M and $1M, respectively. Suttle has been slowed by a series of shoulder injuries that have required surgery, and he is currently away from the organization and reportedly considering retirement. He’s a .256/.334/.417 career hitter in just shy of 1,400 minor league plate appearances, topping out at Double-A. Angelini was a spectacular failure, hitting just .220/.285/.287 in 930 plate appearances at the Single-A level. He’s been hampered by injury as well, most notably a hip issue.
Last year I opined that the developmental failures of Brackman, Angelini, and Suttle have contributed to the Yankees becoming more conservative in the draft. After giving out those three seven-figure deals in 2007, they’ve handed out just four — Slade Heathcott, Mason Williams, J.R. Murphy, and Greg Bird — in the five drafts since.
Traded Away
You can make an argument that Chase Weems (6) has contributed more to the Yankees without ever wearing pinstripes than any other player in this draft class has so far. The catcher was traded to the Reds for Jerry Hairston Jr. at the 2009 trade deadline, and Hairston went on to become a valuable bench player on that World Championship team. Weems flamed out in Cincinnati’s farm system and was last seen playing independent ball. The Yankees also got some trade mileage out of Adam Olbrychowski (5), trading the right-hander to the Nationals for Justin Maxwell last spring. Olbrychowski is still toiling around in Single-A with Washington.
(Jim McIsaac/Getty Images)
Unsigned Gems
The Yankees drafted four players in 2007 who did not sign but have since gone on to become big leaguers. The most notable is Drew Storen (34), who turned New York down out of high school only to become the tenth overall pick in 2009 as a draft-eligible sophomore. He is currently out with an elbow injury but serves as the Nationals’ closer when healthy. Right-hander Chris Carpenter (18) had injury problems in college, went back to school for his senior year, then was drafted in the third round by the Cubs in 2008. He broke in with them last season and was actually sent to the Red Sox as compensation for Theo Epstein this offseason. Outfielders Eric Thames (39) and Erik Komatsu (38) both went back to school for another season before re-entering the draft. Thames plays semi-regularly for the Blue Jays while Komatsu has seen time with the Cardinals and Twins as a Rule 5 Draft pick this season.
The Rest
Other than Romine and Laird, the only other players from this draft still in the organization are Damon Sublett (7), Manny Barreda (12), and Craig Heyer (22). Pat Venditte (45) returned to school for his senior year and was re-drafted by New York in 2008. The Yankees signed 34 of their 50 picks in 2007, all of whom can be seen here. Romine projects as a solid big league backstop when healthy but Laird and Heyer are spare parts on a contending team. The Yankees have received no impact from this draft class and are unlikely to get any unless one of those three exceeds expectations.
How to exceed expectations in three starts
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(REUTERS/Ray Stubblebine)
When Andy Pettitte announced that he was coming out of retirement … well, wait. He never really announced it. The Yankees just signed him out of the blue one Friday afternoon in mid-March and that was it. There were no indications that was planning to come back, in fact there was quite the opposite — insistence that he wasn’t coming back. Pettitte was with the team as a guest instructor in Spring Training but there’s nothing unusual about that. Former players are all over the place in camp.
Anyway, when we found out Pettitte was coming out of retirement to rejoin the Yankees, I admit I was very skeptical about his ability to contribute anything meaningful this summer. We all love Andy, but he was still an almost 40-year-old guy who had spent a year away from the game and had missed a bunch of time due to injury in his final season as a player. The “attempt” part of his “comeback attempt” wasn’t being emphasized enough I thought; the odds were stacked against this thing working out.
Pettitte went through his various minor league tune-up starts and was actually pretty underwhelming statistically. He was allowing a ton of hits and runs to minor league kids but the team said not to worry about it, he was throwing strikes and the wind was blowing really hard. Fine, whatever. The Yankees called him up three weeks ago and to much fanfare and celebration, Pettitte allowed four runs in 6.1 innings against the light-hitting Mariners in his return. All four runs came on a pair of two-run homers and he walked more batters (three) than he struck out (two).
I was still pretty skeptical. There was some obvious rust still to be shaken off and we needed to see how Andy would rebound in five days. One feel-good start back does not a comeback make. Pettitte rebounded well of course, striking out nine Reds in eight shutout innings in his second start before holding the Royals to two runs in seven innings with eight strikeouts last night. It was the first time he struck out at least eight hitters in back-to-back starts since he wore an Astros’ uniform in July of 2006.
I’m not skeptical anymore. Three starts into his comeback, it’s pretty obvious that Pettitte can not only contribute to the Yankees this season, but he can be a damn good starting pitcher for them. Heck, if the Yankees were going to start a best-of-five playoff series today, Andy would be my number two starter. He’s looked that good. He’s running his cutter in on righties, he’s bending his curveball on the corners of the plate, and his changeup looks like it stops in mid-air. Pettitte doesn’t just look like he never left, he looks better than he has in a while. Maybe the year away from the game put some life back into that body.
Who knows what Andy will do from here on out. There is still a lot of season to be played and his body will have plenty of chances to betray him, but it’s hard to look at Pettitte right now and not consider him a bright spot. He’s exceeded my expectations in the sense that he’s shown he can still be dominant and pitch deep into games, curtailing concerns about him becoming a five-and-fly fifth starter type. Andy is no fifth starter right now. He’s the second best pitcher on the team already and the Yankees are going to need him to continue to pitch well as they help shake off this recent slump and climb back in the AL East race.
Report: Steinbrenners may explore sale of Yankees
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(Mike Stobe/Getty Images)
The baseball franchise valuation world shook when Magic Johnson, Stan Kasten & Co. purchased the Dodgers for $2 billion last month, and as expected, that sale has caught the Steinbrenners’ attention. Bill Madden and Michael O’Keeffe have heard from several sources that ownership is “exploring the possibility” of selling the Yankees. “There has been chatter all around the banking and financial industries in the city for a couple of weeks now,” said one source.
Unsurprisingly, team officials has shot down the report. “I can say to you there is absolutely, positively nothing to this. The Steinbrenners are not selling the team,” said president Randy Levine. “I read the Daily News story. It is fiction. The Yankees are not for sale. I expect (the Yankees) to be in my family for many years to come,” said Hal Steinbrenner.
Of course, there’s no harm in exploring the possibility of a sale. It actually would be foolish of the Steinbrenner to not see what the team could fetch following the Dodgers’ sale. If that franchise is worth $2 billion, what are the Yankees worth, $3 billion? Well, it’s not that simple because the Yankees can’t sell the land Yankee Stadium is built on like the Dodgers were able to sell Chavez Revine. As Richard Sandomir notes, the Steinbrenner family would assume a huge tax hit with the sale because of multi-generational trusts set up by George Steinbrenner years ago, which may be a deterrent. I suspect this will not be the last we hear of this.
