(Mike Stobe/Getty Images)

Yesterday I wrote about the Yankees and their increasingly impatient offense, showing that they haven’t been working the count this season like we’ve seen in the past. It’s unlikely that seeing fewer pitches per plate appearance is the root cause of the team’s recent offensive woes, but I do think it’s a contributing factor. Not getting in favorable counts and swinging at the pitches pitchers want you to swing at will drag down anyone’s numbers.

Plate discipline isn’t just swinging at strikes and laying off balls though, it’s also about swinging at quality strikes. Not every strike is one you can drive. Here’s a PitchFX breakdown of the team’s plate discipline tendencies — swing and contact rates on pitches both in and out of the strike zone — over the last four seasons…

Notice the in-zone stats I’ve highlighted in yellow. Starting with 2009, the Yankees have swung at more pitches in the strike zone each season but have made less contact. We’re talking about a three percentage point difference in each category over a four-year span so it’s not a huge change, but it is a change for the worse. The Yankees have become more aggressive within the strike zone in recent years but have less to show for it. Simply put, their swing-and-miss rate within the zone is climbing.

As a whole, pitchers around the league have not changed their overall approach against the Yankees since 2009…

Other than the expected year-to-year fluctuations, the Yankees have seen the same percentage of fastballs and offspeed pitches over the last few years. They’ve also seen the exact same number of first pitch strikes, so it’s not like they’re falling behind in the count more often. Pitchers may be pitching them differently in different counts and in specific situations (men on base, etc.), but that’s beyond my PitchFX capabilities at the moment. That would help explain the in-zone plate discipline issues, however.

The Yankees are anything but an offensive powerhouse these days and there are many reasons why. Missing more hittable pitches in the strike zone could be one of those reasons, though the little bit of data above hardly confirms that. The team is trending in the wrong direction when it comes to making contact on pitches in the strike zone, and some of those misses very likely came on pitches they should have hit hard somewhere.

Post from: River Ave. Blues A New York Yankees blog

The Yankees and pitches in the strike zone

(Mike Stobe/Getty Images)

Power and patience. Those two traits have defined the Yankees’ offense for more than two decades now. They work deep counts and force pitchers to throw a ton of pitches, then take advantage by driving the ball all over the field and homers over the fence. It’s brutally effective, but lately the Yankees seem to have gotten away from the patience part. They’re still hitting for a ton of power — second in baseball in homers (61) and fifth in extra-base hits (135) — but the at-bats don’t seem to be as long as usual.

Anecdotally, we’ve seen a whole lotta first pitch swinging of late. Heck, Alex Rodriguez saw a total of six pitches (!) in four trips to the plate just yesterday, so this isn’t completely a case of my mind playing tricks on me. Bronson Arroyo started the eighth inning with a pitch count of just 83 on Friday and a day later Homey Bailey needed 97 pitches to navigate seven innings. When right, the Yankees have the opponent’s pitch count up in the 80s by the fourth or fifth inning, so clearly something has been amiss during this recent offensive slide.

At the moment, the Yankees average 3.83 pitches per plate appearances and that is actually below the league average. Granted, it’s below average by one-hundredth of a pitch per plate appearance, but below average is below average. The Yankees as currently constructed should be far above the league average in terms of seeing pitches. I was floored when I dug this up. It just doesn’t make sense. Worst of all, they’ve been hovering right around the league average all season…

(click to embiggen)

Other than a short climb in late-April and early-May, the Yankees have sat right around the league average in pitches per plate appearance since things stabilized about ten games into the season. That coincides with Brett Gardner‘s injury and he’s obviously a guy that will work counts and see a ton of pitches each time up. One guy isn’t enough to explain the huge difference from what the Yankees have established as the norm. They saw 3.92 pitches per plate appearance in each of the last two seasons and that’s right around where they should be in 2012 even though Jorge Posada has been replaced by Raul Ibanez.

It stands to reason that fewer pitches seen would result in a decline in walk rate, and sure enough…

(click to embiggen)

The Yankees have walked in 9.0% of their plate appearances this season, above the 8.4% league average. That walk rate has steadily declined as the season has progressed, particularly in the last 15-20 games. Last season they had a 9.9% walk rate and the year before it was 10.4%, and that’s right around where they were sitting this year until this ridiculous offensive slump set in about three weeks ago. Obviously hits are better than walks but this isn’t an either/or situation, the Yankees have dominated offensively for years because they’ve done both, hit and walked. Lately they haven’t done much of either.

The run production has been dreadful of late, like throw your remote at the television awful. The Yankees have scored two runs or less in half of their last 20 games and it’s no surprise given some of the at-bats. Maybe they’re pressing, maybe it’s irreversible decline, maybe it’s bad coaching, maybe it’s just small sample size noise, maybe it’s all of that and more. The Yankees have gotten away from being patient and waiting for the pitcher to make mistakes, and although we can’t definitively say it’s the root cause of their offensive problems, it sure seems to be a contributing factor. The sooner they get back to grinding out at-bats (in all situations!), the better.

Post from: River Ave. Blues A New York Yankees blog

The increasingly impatient offense

(photo: Rick Yeatts/Getty)

In the aftermath of yet another strong Jeff Niemann performance against the Yankees — whose seven-inning, one-run outing last night improved his career ERA against New York to 2.75 over six starts — I couldn’t help but wonder what Niemann’s overall numbers against the Bombers looked like in relation to other starters that have consistently had success when facing the team.

Going back to the beginning of 2009, here are the top 10 starters against the Yankees by lowest ERA (minimum three starts), courtesy of David Pinto’s wonderful day-by-day database:

Most of the names on this list would probably align with Yankee fans’ perceptions of pitchers the team typically struggles against — and frankly I was shocked that King Felix’s name didn’t top the list. His aberrant start last September slightly skewed his numbers, but prior to that completely out-of-character dud, no pitcher in baseball had had more success against the Yankees. Felix had thrown 40 innings of six-run ball (1.35 ERA) against the Yankees, including 24 innings of one-run ball (0.38 ERA!) at Yankee Stadium dating back to the beginning of 2010, and not having been saddled with a loss against the Bombers since May 3, 2008.

However, there are a couple of eye-openers — I can’t say I expected Carl Pavano to make the top 10, although I suppose that makes some sense given his unique brand of right-handed slop. And the other is Niemann, who, believe it or not, has the third-lowest ERA among all starters against the Yankees since the beginning of 2009, his first full season in the bigs. Now, I don’t mean to knock on Niemann, who clearly has the Yankees’ number, but it does seem a bit odd that a hurler who’s been a decidedly average — if not below-average — right-hander during his career (102 ERA-; 105 FIP-) would be so successful against the best offensive team in baseball during that timeframe.

For the most part, aside from Niemann and Pavano, almost everyone else in that group makes sense — hard-throwing, high-strikeout right-handers, but I was also curious to see whether there were any other similarities among this group that might uncover why they’ve routinely stymied the Bombers’ bats. Courtesy of Brooks’ Pitcher Cards, here’s what each pitcher in the top 10 throws and how hard they throw it:

Here’s where things get interesting. Four of the top five pitchers in this study throw a sinker more than 30% of the time, and the fifth — Niemann — just misses that cutoff, at 29% of the time. Additionally, both Pavano and Jake Arrieta are also sinker-heavy, which means that seven of the top 10 throw a sinker more than 25% of the time.

Of course, it’d be easy to say, “well maybe the Yankees just stink against sinkers,” but that’s not even remotely true, as they have the second-best wSI/C in baseball since 2009. Still, there’s something about this variety of sinkerballer — several of whom also prominently feature a curve (Hernandez, Niemann, Haren and Arrieta each go to the hook more than 10% of the time) — that seem to have the Yankees’ goose cooked.

Post from: River Ave. Blues A New York Yankees blog

Top 10 starting pitchers against the Yankees by ERA since 2009

(Ronald Martinez/Getty Images)

Answer: Jerome Williams.
Question: Who was the last pitcher to walk Mark Teixeira?

It’s been 52 plate appearances since Teixeira last drew a walk, dating all the way back to the final game of the home-opener series against the Angels. He’d drawn five walks in his previous 38 plate appearances, a 13.2% walk rate that isn’t completely out of line with the 11.5% career walk rate he brought into the season. But since then, nothing. Tex hasn’t drawn a walk or even been hit by a pitch — something he’s quite good at, actually — since his plate appearance against Williams more than two full weeks ago.

Sample sizes are one of the biggest analytical dangers this early in the season, but swing and contact rates are the very first thing to stabilize. They only take 50-75 plate appearances to even out. Teixeira is at 90 plate appearances at the moment, so we can start to draw some conclusions from his swing tendencies and performance even though it’s still only April. Here’s a look at his swing and contact rates, courtesy of FanGraphs…

Right off the bat you can see that Teixeira is not only swinging at more pitches out of the strike zone than ever before (30.5%), he’s also making more contact with those pitches as well (75.5%). That’s a great recipe for not drawing walks. His swing rate on pitches in the zone (60.5%) is pretty normal compared to recent years, though his contact rate on those offerings is a touch high (94.9%). That’s why Teixeira has struck out in just 11.1% of his plate appearances, a career-low by several percentage points.

We have an idea of why Teixeira hasn’t been drawing walks lately, but why has he been swinging at more pitches out of the zone? That’s not something we can answer here, it could be a countless number of different reasons. Maybe he’s pressing, maybe he’s swinging at more pitches on the outside corner in an effort to go the other way, or maybe it’s one of a million other things. Teixeira’s latest slump — 2-for-24 with no extra-base hits — has dragged his season line down to .229/.278/.386, so the lack of walks is just one piece of the problem. Plate discipline is the root of offensive performance, and right now Tex’s isn’t where it should be.

Post from: River Ave. Blues A New York Yankees blog

Missing: Mark Teixeira’s walks

If the Yankee starters were to finish April out at their current 5.73 ERA, it would represent the second-worst mark the team has put up in a month in the last 10 seasons. The worst was April 2007′s 5.94, much of which was due to Kei Igawa being allowed to throw 20.2 innings of 7.84 ERA ball, although Chien-Ming Wang‘s 5.84 in 12.1 innings and Chase Wright’s 7.88 in 8 innings didn’t help things, either.

Now obviously ERA only tells a very small and flawed portion of the story. I was also curious to see how the team got to this point and whether they were doing anything substantially different, so I grabbed their PITCHf/x stats for April 2012, April 2011, and the MLB average.

The first thing that jumps out is the team’s deployment of the four-seamer appears to be way down from a year ago in favor of more sinkers and way more sliders. And this is problematic in that the rotation’s sinkers are collectively getting crushed to the tune of -5.3 runs above average and -1.91 per 100 pitches thrown. The latter figure is 92%(!) worse than league average. This appears to be due to location issues — the team is leaving its sinkers closer to the middle of the plate horizontally than the league, and its sinkers are rising nearly an inch-and-a-half higher. As always, we need to approach the classification algorithm with some wariness, but if this data is accurate it helps partially explain why the execution’s been so poor.

Somewhat surprisingly, one of the primary culprits for the poor sinker showing is CC Sabathia, who TYA’s Mike Eder noticed last week was leaving the pitch up during his first few innings against the Twins until correcting whatever flaw in his mechanics led to this happening. Given Sabathia’s improvement in the latter half of the Twins game and strong showing against the Rangers last Monday, I wouldn’t expect the sinker to be an issue going forward. Sweaty Freddy’s sinker has been the worst in baseball in the early going, though I have less confidence that he’ll be able to rectify his situation.

The other bizarre aspect relating to the Yankee starters’ performance this month is that their peripherals have been, for the most part, outstanding.

They’ve been striking a ton of men out — second-highest K/9 in the AL, behind Chicago by 0.01 — and walking almost no one. The team’s biggest bugaboo has been the home-run ball. Surprisingly the starters haven’t even given up the most total home runs in the AL, but on a rate basis they’ve been abysmal, with a second-worst-in-MLB 1.73 HR/9, and a 17.3% HR/FB% ranking third-worst. They also have the highest BABIP in the league by a not-small margin, and all three of these figures are way, way above league average.

Despite all of this starting ineptitude, at 10-8 the team is only two games behind where it was last year after 18 games, and two games better than the 2007 team and its decade-worst monthly ERA. Even better news for Yankee fans is that it would be almost impossible for the team’s starters to perform any worse than they have, and hopefully they start turning it around sooner rather than later.

Post from: River Ave. Blues A New York Yankees blog

Yanks vying for worst monthly starters’ ERA in a decade

At least someone in Maryland likes him. (Rob Carr/Getty Images)

Over the last two days we’ve taken a look at the two different Mark Teixeiras to help get an idea of his where his offensive decline is coming from. There’s a right-handed hitting version of Teixeira, who continues to mash and has actually shown signs of improving in recent years, not decline. Then there’s a left-handed hitting version of Teixeira, who has racked up fewer and fewer hits over the last three years. The good news that he’s still hitting the ball over the fence and isn’t striking out any more or walking any less, the problem is isolated to the balls he’s putting in play from the left side of the plate.

Today we’re going to look at those balls in play as a left-handed batter. This post is very image-heavy, so I’ve added a Read More button just to make sure we don’t have any loading issues with the front page. You have been forewarning, there are a bunch of images on the other side of that jump…

With some help from Texas Leaguers, we can separate Teixeira’s spray charts by handedness. Since we already know that his right-handed swing is a-okay, we’re only going to focus on the data as a left-handed hitter. We’re going to start with 2008 simply because the batted ball data doesn’t go back any further. In fact, even the 2008 data set isn’t 100% complete. It’s still more than enough to help us out, however. Take note of the batted ball percentages in the image caption…

38.6% GB | 40.1% FB | 21.3% LD | 2.8% IFFB

Most of Teixeira’s left-handed power in 2008 — his walk year split between the Braves and Angels — is to the pull side, which isn’t surprising. Just about every 30+ homer guy is going to do most of their damage by pulling the ball. Teixeira still hit the ball with authority the other way as a lefty however, including two homers to left plus about a dozen other balls hit to warning track-ish.

Check out the right side of the infield though. Tex was hitting a ton of ground balls in that direction before he ever came to the Yankees, so it’s not like the shift came out of nowhere. Here, check this out…

That (low-quality) screen cap comes from this highlight clip of Gabe Gross robbing Teixeira of an extra-base hit at the wall on August 19th, 2008. It’s not the exaggerated shift we see today, but you can see Rays’ second baseman Akinori Iwamura swung around and playing much deeper than a second baseman normally would with no one on base. Tampa was trying to exploit Tex’s tendency to hit the ball on the ground to the right side before he ever wore pinstripes. Now let’s look at his batted balls in 2009, his first season in New York…

34.3% GB | 46.1% FB | 19.6% LD | 3.2% IFFB

Again, most of the homers are to right field as expected, but there are fewer balls hit deep to the opposite field. Most of the ground balls were hit to the right side again, but the shift started to become a regular tactic around the league and the number of outs made in shallow right field increased. Let’s split the spray chart up just a little bit, starting with the first half (pre-All-Star break)…

Now here’s the second half, after the All-Star break…

The right side of the field is pretty similar, but the big difference is found in left and left-center field, right in front of the 399 sign. Teixeira didn’t hit as many balls to deep left field as a left-handed batter in the second half, indicating that he started to alter his swing in an effort to take advantage of the short porch in right as far back as 2009.

Let’s not obsess over left field, because there is other stuff going on here. The shift became more problematic mostly because more teams started to use it, but also take note of Teixeira’s fly ball percentage. He went from putting the ball in the air 40.1% of the time as a lefty in 2008 to 46.1% of the time in 2009. His infield pop-up rate barely changed (2.8% in 2008 and 3.2% in 2009), however. Fly balls have a tendency to go over the fence, but they also turn into routine outs more than any non-infield pop-up batted ball. Teixeira’s BABIP as a lefty went from .314 in 2008 to .290 in 2009. That’s a small enough changed to be ignored as just the usual year-to-year fluctuation of the stat, but it turned out to be a harbinger of things to come. Now let’s look at his 2010 spray chart…

33.0% GB | 48.3% FB | 18.6% LD | 7.5% IFFB

The ground ball to the right side thing really started to become an issue two seasons ago, and again we see a lesser amount of balls hit towards that 399 sign. Teixeira’s fly ball rate as a left-handed batter again rose, this time to 48.3%. His infield pop-up rate more than doubled as well. Unsurprisingly, his BABIP dropped again to .255. It’s hard to notice a drop from .314 to .290 when you’re watching games every day, but going from .314 to .290 to .255 is something fans can pick up on, and we all certainly did that summer. The shift gets most of the attention because it’s right there smacking us in the face, but the extra fly balls have been doing a number on Teixeira’s production as well. Let’s look at his 2011 spray chart now…

34.1% GB | 48.3% FB | 17.7% LD | 5.7% IFFB

Things started to get really silly last season. Teixeira didn’t hit a ball anywhere near that 399 sign we’ve been using as reference, and the same ground ball to the right side and fly ball/infield pop-ups problems persist. He started swinging for the short porch back in 2009 and it’s gradually gotten worse and worse in the two full seasons since. Teixeira has gotten pull happy and that’s hurt because the shift is regularly used around the league, but the more serious problem is the uppercut he’s added to his swing. Look at how level his swing was in middle of 2008…

…compared to this swing from the other day…

You can see the uppercut Teixeira has added over the last few years. It’s pretty severe, and it’s led to all those increased fly balls and declining batting average. The shift is only one piece of the puzzle; he’s also made it easier for the defense to turn his balls in play into outs by knocking so many of them up in the air.

I’m going to tie a bow on all this with some kind of wrap-up post tomorrow, but again I want to point out that the shift isn’t the only reason Teixeira’s batting average and BABIP has declined from the left side of the plate. He’s developed some bad habits aiming for the short porch, specifically the uppercut that has led to so many more fly balls. I have no idea how much work it would take to correct something like that, but I can’t imagine it would be easy and/or happen overnight.

Post from: River Ave. Blues A New York Yankees blog

The Teixeira Analysis: Left-Handed Balls In Play

(AP Photo/Kathy Willens)

We started our little mini-series looking at Mark Teixeira‘s declining offense yesterday by first acknowledging that as a right-handed batter, the guy is still an elite hitter. He hasn’t shown any signs of decline from that side of the plate, and in fact he’s been able to increase his homer output with sacrificing his batting average, walk rate, or strikeout rate in recent years. The decline has been limited to his left-handed swing exclusively.

First things first, let’s take a look at Teixeira’s offensive performance as a left-handed batter over the last five seasons…

Just as a reminder, HR/CON is homers per plate appearances with contact. That’s the best way to measure over-the-fence power. Anyway, there’s quite a bit going on here, so let’s take it piece by piece…

Walk & Strikeout Rates

Let’s do the easiest stuff first. There’s no issue here; Teixeira’s walk and strikeout rates as a left-handed batter have barely changed over the years. His walk rate is much better than the league average while his strikeout rate is right there at the average. Given his power production, Teixeira really doesn’t get enough credit for striking out as infrequently as he does. Most 30+ homer guys whiff in 20+% of their plate appearances. So like I said, no problem here. Tex’s ability to control the strike zone has not changed over the last few years.

Power Production

This one’s kinda weird. The HR/CON rates indicates a very slight decline in over-the-fence power but nothing outrageous. A 6.9% HR/CON rate, which represents Teixeira’s worst year in our admittedly arbitrary five-year sample, was still well above the 3.4% league average that year. We’re talking about a guy that hits the ball out of the park at approximately double the league average rate when he makes contact. That’s impressive.

On the other hand, Teixeira’s year-by-year ISO indicates a significant decline in his over power numbers. That decline is relatively speaking of course, because a .213 ISO — his 2010 rate — is still really good. Tex has just gone from an elite power hitter (.270+ ISO) in 2007-2009 to just a really really good one (<.230 ISO) in 2010-2011. The HR/CON and ISO rates seem to be telling us two different things, that Teixeira is both hitting for less and the same amount of power simultaneously, but they’re not. It’s explained in the next section.

Batting Average & BABIP

As you probably knew coming into this post/series, this is where the problem lies. Teixeira has acknowledged that he’s altered his left-handed swing in an effort to take advantage of the short right field porch in Yankee Stadium, and that pull happy approach has led to a decline in his total number of base hits. That explains the contradicting HR/CON and ISO; Teixeira is still hitting homers at (approximately) the same rate as past years but he’s hitting fewer doubles as a result of his pull happiness, hence the declining ISO but relatively static HR/CON.

A lot of times a BABIP — and subsequently, batting average — drop is lazily written off as a fluke, but in Teixeira’s case we have tangible evidence supporting the decline. Being a pull-hitter is not automatically a bad thing, but in this case it has sapped his ability to get a simple base knock.

* * *

It’s easy to forget that Teixeira was still above-average as a left-handed batter last season, roughly 10% better than league average. That’s good but not great, and not what we’re used to seeing or expecting out of him. Given the lack of change in his walk, strikeout, and homerun power rates over the last few years, it’s safe the say the guy hasn’t just forgotten how to hit or hit the point where age is taking its toll. He’s gotten into some bad habits that are robbing him of base hits, dragging down his batting average and overall performance as a lefty. Tomorrow we’re going to look at Teixeira’s batted balls from the left side of the plate, so get ready to talk about the shift. That is not the only problem, however.

Post from: River Ave. Blues A New York Yankees blog

The Teixeira Analysis: Left-Handed Production

(REUTERS/Steve Nesius)

During his three full seasons with the Yankees, Mark Teixeira’s overall offensive performance has declined each year. He put up a .410 wOBA with the Braves and Angels during his walk year in 2008, then put together a still stellar .402 wOBA during his first year in New York. That dropped to a .367 wOBA in 2010, then again to a .361 wOBA in 2009. Now a .361 wOBA is still really good — more than 20% better than the league average — but it’s not up to the lofty standards Teixeira has set for himself with his past production and contract.

Before we get into the nuts and bolts of Teixeira’s declining offense, the very first thing we have to understand is that we’re dealing with two different hitters. As a switch-hitter, there’s a right-handed version of Teixeira and a left-handed version of Teixeira. They’re two different hitters with two different swings and two different sets of tendencies. Lumping the two together doesn’t help us identify the problem.

Overall Performance

Here’s a look at the right-handed hitting version of Teixeira over the last five full seasons, the guy that tees off against left-handed pitchers…

HR/CON is homers per plate appearances with contact, the most accurate way to measure over-the-fence power.

Aside from the typical year-to-year ebbs and flows, Teixeira has been a consistently elite producer as a right-handed hitter since 2007. His strikeout and walk rates are both much better than the league average, he’s a .300 hitter (.306 to be exact), and his power output has actually increased each year. Because he’s hit more and more homers against lefties in recently years, his BABIP has dropped. Homers don’t count as balls in play because the defense never gets a chance to actually field them. That’s why his batting average has remained steady despite the BABIP drops; he’s traded some singles and doubles for homers. I’ll take that trade every day of the week.

Batted Ball Profile

Outside of a pretty big outlier in 2008, Teixeira’s batted ball profile as a right-handed hitter hasn’t changed much in the last half-decade (and dating back even further than that)…

Remember, the batted ball information we have these days isn’t perfect, especially when it comes to balls right on the fly ball/line drive bubble. Teixeira hit a few more air balls against lefties last year, but nothing insane. The continued rise in his HR/FB% jives with his increased homer rate, but otherwise there hasn’t been much of a change through the years. That’s a good thing, because Teixeira is a monster from the right side and any change at this point is unlikely to be positive.

Pitch Profile

Whenever you’re successful at something, the opposition is going to adjust. Here’s a look at how pitchers have attacked the right-handed hitting version of Teixeira over the last four years…

PitchFX data only goes back so far, and anything pre-2008 is unreliable. Even 2008 is pretty sketchy, but anything from 2009 through today is a-okay. Pitchers haven’t been approaching Teixeira any differently in recent years, he’s still seeing the same amount of fastballs and just a touch more changeups.

Teixeira is a difficult guy to pitch to because he always has the platoon advantage. Most left-handed pitchers are fastball-slider guys, and the slider typically isn’t as effective against batters of the opposite hand unless you’re talking a Randy Johnson, CC Sabathia, Madison Bumgarner type of slider. Teixeira has only seen one breaking ball out of every five pitches as a righty over the last few years, and the league hasn’t shown much inclination to adjust. Perhaps that’s a sample size issue, perhaps most left-handed pitchers just aren’t good enough to mix it up any more than they do.

* * *

Teixeira’s offensive problems over the last two years are exclusively limited to his left-handed swing. He still hits for a high average with light tower power from the right side while also drawing walks and avoiding strikeouts. It’s the lesser used half of the platoon, but righty Tex isn’t a problem. Tomorrow we’ll begin breaking down the left-handed hitting version of Teixeira, starting with his overall performance before figuring out where exactly the decline is coming from.

Post from: River Ave. Blues A New York Yankees blog

The Teixeira Analysis: The Right-Handed Batter

The Yankees brass, of course, noticed the sale. How could they not, after all, considering they control the most valuable franchise in baseball right now? “It is an incredible price. If they are worth $2 billion, one can only imagine how high the Yankees’ value is,” Randy Levine said to ESPN New York.

Hal Steinbrenner seemingly spoke in awe of the big figures as well. “It’s certainly a big price. It’s interesting,” he said. “No, I haven’t thought about how this would impact it. We’ll have to see what happens with that sale. It’s a big number.”

It’s a big number indeed, and the Steinbrenners insist they aren’t looking to sell the Yankees. They’re quite content to hold onto their inheritance and allow the team to continue to thrive. Between the YES Network and the team itself, the owners are sitting pretty. We can still play that “what if” game though. What if the Yankees were put up for sale?

As a starting point, we have the recent Forbes valuations. With little explanation, the business mag pegged the Yanks’ value at $1.85 billion, tops in the game. The Dodgers were second at $1.4 billion. A back-of-the-napkin calculation would lead one to believe the Yanks could sell then for $2.775 billion.

Yet, as Richard Sandomir writes in The Times today, not all things are equal. The Dodgers’ deal is a creature of good circumstance and geography that came in $650 million above the next highest bidder. Essentially Magic Johnson and his co-investors — who are going to pay in cash — were bidding against themselves. Sandomir summarizes:

Johnson and Walter are betting on reviving the Dodgers’ fortunes now that the Frank McCourt era is over. More important, the sale price is enormous because the buyers anticipate a huge windfall from a new cable TV deal that would go into effect after the 2013 season. [Investor Mark] Walter said: “It will be substantial.”

It will have to be. To get the most money, the Dodgers will probably be the centerpiece of a regional sports channel that will funnel enormous annual rights fees to the team and amass monthly subscriber fees from the cable, satellite and telephone companies that will carry its games.

A bevy of media companies are likely to line up to give the Dodgers the most lucrative deal, which could couple ownership of a channel with huge yearly rights payments. Time Warner Cable, for instance, is creating two networks, one in English, one in Spanish, with Johnson’s old team, the Los Angeles Lakers, at their core. The Lakers are expected to ultimately realize huge profits from the deal.

It’s worth noting as well that the Dodgers’ deal involved a significant chunk of change for the rights to revenue from the vast acres of parking lots that surround Chavez Ravine. The Yankees would enjoy no such luxury. The city controls the parking lots around Yankee Stadium, and in fact, the city controls the land underneath the stadium as well. No one wants to park in the transit-rich South Bronx, and the city would raise hell if it tried to sell the former park land. Ultimately, then, TV is king.

In contrast to the recently-acquired Cubs, who carried a purchase price of $845 million, the Dodgers’ next owners will benefit tremendously from a brand new TV deal, and that’s a luxury the Yankees also do not have right now. Their rights lie with the YES Network, in which, according to reports, the Yanks have a 30 percent share. Now, that alone could be worth around $1-$1.5 billion, but how to structure such a sale? To maximize their take, the Steinbrenners would have to sell the entire club and their YES share. Even without the fortuitous circumstances in Los Angeles, a Yankee sale involving the team and the TV network could reach $3 or even $4 billion.

At that point, questions begin to shift from “how much” to “who.” Who would spend $3 billion for a baseball franchise and a broadcast TV station that has no chance of controlling much of its Internet broadcast rights? (Those rights belong to MLB Advanced Media and will for the foreseeable future.) It may be a moot point as the Steinbrenners continue to say the club is not for sale, but one thing is certain: Baseball franchise values are on the rise.

On paper, the rich are getting richer, and so too are the smaller market teams. The Dodgers’ sale is a tide that can lift all boats. Frank McCourt, who invested just over $400 million in the Dodgers, walks away a very wealthy man. The Boss, on the other hand, spent just $10 million on the Yanks 40 years ago, and even as his children vow to keep the team, that allure of the cash must be strong indeed.

Post from: River Ave. Blues A New York Yankees blog

How much is that baseball team in the window?

(Warren by J. Meric/Getty; Phelps by Mark LoMoglio/MiLB.com; Mitchell by Martin Griff/The Times of Trenton)

Following the conclusion of the chapter about the Yankees in the 2012 Baseball Prospectus Annual — a tome edited by The Pinstriped Bible’s (and now Bleacher Report’s) Steven Goldman, and, given his expertise, presumably also featuring his contributions to the chapter devoted to the Bombers — I was inspired to do some research in response to the seemingly endless number of accusations leveled at the team regarding its supposed reluctance to deploy its young pitchers in favor of established veterans.

Now, anyone who reads Steve over at the Pinstriped Bible with any regularity — and lest this post come across as derisive, I’ve long been a big fan of Steve’s work, and have enjoyed his intellectual, verbose and witty take on the state of the Yankees at the Pinstriped Bible ever since I discovered the wonderful world of Yankee blogs back in 2004 — is no doubt familiar with this particular war cry, which seemed to come to a boiling point in the aftermath of Brian Cashman signing journeyman Brian Gordon to spot start against the Rangers on Thursday, June 16, instead of letting one of Hector Noesi, Adam Warren, David Phelps or D.J. Mitchell make their first career Major-League start (and in the case of the latter three, first Major-League appearance). Brien Jackson of IIATMS wrote an eloquent rebuttal at the time (and as also noted by our own Moshe, the Gordon decision was likely entirely driven by not wanting to add a player to the 40-man roster just to make  two starts), but in light of this favored Goldman criticism littering not only the team overview in the Annual, but basically the capsule for every pitcher in the Yankees’ system, I was curious to see just how much water it actually carried.

The below chart lists the number of starters Age 25 or below by team that made their Major League debuts in the last decade. This data was compiled utilizing Baseball-Reference’s Play Index.

As you can see, the Yankees, with nine hurlers, ostensibly fall in the middle of the pack when it comes to letting youngsters make their MLB debuts as starting pitchers. Toronto has debuted the most starting pitchers under 25 during this time frame, with 16, and Seattle the least, with five. The MLB average? 10, or just one more than the Yankees have. This means that, on average, an MLB team will debut one starter under age 25 per year.

There were also cries of despair a little over a month after the Gordon incident, when it looked like Adam Warren might get a shot to start the second game of a doubleheader against the Orioles, but that plan was ultimately scuttled when Ivan Nova — who to that point had already somewhat established himself as a viable, under-25-year-old pitcher — was deemed fit to start. Now I’m not trying to argue that Warren, Phelps, et. al. shouldn’t have been given the opportunity to start one of these games, but rather, in a historical context, Goldman was twice looking for the Yankees to do something — let an under-25 pitcher make his MLB debut as a starter — that many teams let happen maybe once a season.

Further expanding on that point, it seems to me that if the Yankees truly believed that if one of Phelps, Warren or Mitchell were indeed ready to toe the MLB rubber last June, then they would have had that happen. Not that I don’t want to see a young kid be given a chance to succeed, but on the flip side, no one knows these players better than the Yankees. There’s an assumption being made here that just because the AAA pitchers have youth on their side they are going to automatically perform as well or better than hypothetical alternatives.

As much as everyone’s been talking about the starting pitching depth the Yankees have, both at the Major League level and at AAA, it’s being conveniently overlooked that the Warrens, Phelps and Mitchells of the world have all continually been scouted and described as #4/#5-type starters at best. For all the hand-wringing the Brian Gordon decision seemed to result in last year, clearly Cash felt that particular move gave the Yankees a better chance to win at that moment in time than bringing up a kid with back-end starter potential. Gordon gave the Yankees two starts, and they went 1-1 in those contests. Could one of the kids done the same thing? Perhaps, but what happens to, say, Warren’s development if he comes up and pulls a Chase Wright, whose career essentially ended after he gave up four consecutive home runs to the Red Sox? The only reason they went to guys like Wright and Matt DeSalvo that season to begin with was because they had no choice, not because they were stud prospects lighting the world on fire at AAA and forcing their way into the MLB picture.

For all the talk about stalling development, it seems like Warren, Phelps and/or Mitchell would’ve been given a chance in the Majors by now if the team deemed them ready or felt like any of them had an opportunity to be a legitimate part of the future. Ivan Nova — who the team apparently thought so little of that he was actually left unprotected in the 2008 Rule 5 draft — turned his career around and impressed Yankee brass enough to deservedly get his shot. Even Hector Noesi — though many would have liked to have seen him start earlier in the season last year — got his shot in relief. There was a fair amount of statistical evidence that supported these promotions.

The Yankees have also given Phil Hughes and Joba Chamberlain every chance in the world to prove themselves at the MLB level — Joba for one has never been back to the minors — even if I haven’t always been a massive fan of the way the team has handled each pitcher’s development — underscoring that when the team believes it has elite, young, sub-25 talent on its hands that need to be in the Majors now, they will get their opportunities.

While there’s certainly value in back-of-the-rotation starters, that type of pitcher is less valuable to a team like the Yankees that typically requires frontline starters to compete in the gauntlet that is the American League East. I don’t think it would surprise anyone if any or all of the members of that triumvirate found success in the National League.

Here are the nine under-25 starters that have made their MLB debuts as a Yankee during the last decade:

Outside of Ian Kennedy and Chien-Ming Wang, none of these players went on to anything approaching sustained success as a Major League starter.

The list unsurprisingly expands if you change the input to relievers under 25 making their MLB debuts, and if you take the list and add the pitchers who have since spent their careers starting or are expected to primarily start — Ross Ohlendorf, Nova, Noesi and Dellin Betances — the Yankees’ total rises from nine to 12. And I realize we can play that game with every other team, but the overarching point is that it’s simply not true that the Yankees are afraid to give their young pitchers a shot.

Whether or not they merit that shot is clearly a different story. In the cases of Warren, Mitchell and Phelps, simply being young doesn’t necessarily mean “better,” especially if the Yankees ultimately don’t see these players fitting into their long-term plans.

There have also been some rumblings about how the return of the 40-year-old Andy Pettitte to the rotation will further impact the development of the AAA contingent (my pal Brad Vietrogoski has a typically well-thought-out response to that development), to which I say, great — hopefully the rotation crunch will motivate Warren, Phelps and Mitchell to pitch their butts off, throw to mid-2.00 ERAs in the International League, and absolutely force the Yankees to have no choice but to give them a chance. I’d love to see them make it to the Show, but make it because they absolutely deserved/earned it, not just because they’re young. We’ve seen the Yankees bring young guys up when they weren’t ready and after a couple of turns, the results were less-than-pretty and derailed careers. Maybe, just maybe, the team is learning from its mistakes.

Post from: River Ave. Blues A New York Yankees blog

The Yankees and their young pitchers