Archive for Pitching
A tale of two pitchers
Posted by: | CommentsOn April 26, 2007, the Yankees found themselves without a starting pitcher, and so a few months — or possibly a year — ahead of schedule, they handed the ball over to a 20-year-old right-hander named Phil Hughes. A few months later, on August 7, 2007, they again found themselves short a pitcher. This time, the team needed a reliever, and they found one in a young flamethrowing starter nearing his innings limit named Joba Chamberlain.
Over the course of the 2007 and 2008 seasons, Joba’s and Phil’s paths diverged. Almost immediately, Joba established himself as someone who could thrive in a high-pressure situation on the big stage. The brash kid from Nebraska emerged as a dominant set-up man, faltering only when a swarm of bugs attacked him. When the Yanks, amidst much criticism, moved him back to his natural spot in the starting rotation, he still thrived. Armed with the confidence he built up in the pen, he has emerged, at 23, as a kid on the way to Major League stardom.
Hughes, on the other hand, saw his fortunes follow a different path. His first start was nothing spectacular, and he couldn’t make it out of the fifth inning against the Blue Jays. Five days later though, he was dealing. Through 6.1 innings, he was no-hitting the Rangers in Texas when his hamstring popped.
For much of the next 18 months, Hughes would deal with the fallout from this injury. He came back by the end of the year but seemed tentative on the mound. He didn’t want to land too hard on his front leg or overstride again. In 2008, given a spot in the starting rotation, he couldn’t hold it. He went 0-4 and landed on the DL for much of the year with a mechanics-induced stress fracture in one of his ribs.
While he was still just 22 when the 2008 season ended, scouts and talent evaluators wondered if Hughes was destined to be a — I shudder to type it — bust. He was 5-7 with a 5.15 ERA in 21 starts spanning 106.1 innings. He wasn’t giving the team depth or getting outs.
When the Yanks called upon Hughes this year, the results looked disappointingly similar to his 2008 effort at first. He got shelled in Baltimore, and Yankee fans were wondering what the hype was about. But Hughes took his bad outing in stride. In four starts after it, before ceding his spot to Chien-Ming Wang, he went 2-0 with a 3.91 ERA in 23 innings. Even better were his 23 strike outs and seven walks over that span. This was the first sign of the Hughes we had expected.
When Wang returned, the Yankees pulled a reverse Joba on Hughes. They knew he could contribute at the Major League level, and they knew they would need someone to step in if or when Wang proved to be ineffective. Phil Hughes in the pen though has been a revelation. He has thrown 12 innings with a 1.50 ERA. He has given up just two runs on five hits and three walks while striking out 15. He has flashed that mid-to-upper 90s fastball we had heard about but never seen before. He was throwing with renewed confidence and ability, and he is not shy about admitting it.
Of course, as New York is the unnecessary debate capital of the world, the voices grew loud. “Let’s keep Phil Hughes in the pen,” they screamed. “He can be the bridge to Mariano.” The Yankees would have none of it. As Bryan Hoch noted in his Monday mailbag, the Yanks have tried to shut down this faux-debate before it grows too loud. “Anybody who is a good starter is going to be a hell of a setup guy, I promise you. Anybody who has a plus fastball and a plus secondary pitch would make a great setup guy or closer, in theory. But it’s not the same,” Brian Cashman said. It’s not the same because starting pitching is far more valuable than relief pitching.
Young pitchers can be certainly be used effectively in the pen. Joba was able to contribute at the big league level while facing an innings cap in 2007. He got to know the competition and Major League life. For Phil, the pen has restored his spot atop the Yankee pitching prospect pecking order. He struggled in the early going, as young 20-somethings are wont to do, but he has learned this year that he can succeed as a starter and let loose as a reliever. As baseball psychology goes, this move has worked wonders so far for a pitcher on whom the Yankees are counting in the near future.
That is what it’s about. The Yanks are no B-Jobbers or B-Hughesers, pushing for a permanent move to the pen. Rather, there is a team with a plan learning how, after years of producing nothing out of the farm, to develop a young pitcher who has mastered the minors but not yet gotten a handle on the majors. While 12 innings is of course a small sample, we are watching Phil Hughes arrive, and it looks good.
‘Andy Pettitte is a starting pitchah’
Posted by: | CommentsSay what you will about Mike Francesa’s opinion, but the man does his job. As the midday host on the city’s most popular sports talk radio station, he is supposed to drive listeners to his show and keep people talking. By taking controversial stands and harping on them to no end, he succeeds and what we do here at River Ave. Blues is, in a way, a natural step in the evolution of sports talk radio.
Today, the man talking about the news is the news. In a piece on MLB.com, Bryan Hoch profiled Francesa and the Great Joba Debate. There’s no needs to rehash any of the debate right now. We know it by heart, and we know how heated the discussion can be. “Whenever the topic is brought up, there is always a spirited debate on both sides, and it really can come up out of nowhere,” Francesa says. “It’s what you would call a hot-button issue. Everybody seems to have an opinion, and there are a lot of people who feel the way I do.”
Hoch didn’t, at least in print, push Francesa on that quote. The debate never really comes up “out of nowhere.” It comes up out of a quest for listeners. Shouting “Andy Pettitte is a starting pitchah!” over a caller trying to make a valid point does wonders for the ratings.
(As an aside, Joba himself seems to recognize the absurdity of this whole charade. He said to Hoch: “I guess it’s a good conversation piece over lunch, and it gives people something to talk about. I could win 20 games and people are still going to think I could save 50. No matter what happens, I just think it’s going to be debated.”)
While the debate outside of the Yankee organization continues to rage, the team is committed to keeping Joba as a starter. Meanwhile, this whole thing coupled with a Tweet by Mike a few hours ago got me thinking about Andy Pettitte and the state of the Yankees’ starting pitching.
After April, Pettitte was 2-1 with a 2.96 ERA. While I had my reservations about re-signing Pettitte this year, he was on his way toward proving his doubters wrong. Since then, though, it’s been a downward spiral for Pettitte, culminating in last night’s appearance. Staked to a seven-run lead, he couldn’t get out of the fourth.
Let’s see then how the four Yankee starters who haven’t missed a turn in the rotation since the start of May have done since then.
| Since May 1 | Starts | IP | K/BB | K/9 IP | ERA | WHIP | BA | OPS |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Andy Pettitte | 11 | 63.0 | 1.55 | 6.43 | 5.00 | 1.71 | .304 | .849 |
| Joba Chamberlain | 10 | 52.2 | 2.17 | 8.89 | 4.10 | 1.37 | .245 | .723 |
| A.J. Burnett | 9 | 55.1 | 1.84 | 9.27 | 3.58 | 1.50 | .249 | .751 |
| CC Sabathia | 10 | 69.2 | 3.00 | 6.59 | 3.23 | 1.02 | .212 | .586 |
The funny thing about this table is its lack of a win column. It’s easy to conflate pitchers’ win totals with their ability to pitch effectively, and Pettitte is a prime example of that phenomenon. The Yankees are 8-3 in his 11 starts, and he and CC lead the team with five W’s since May 1. That win total is, though, largely a function of run support for Pettitte. While he has given up 40 runs, the Yanks have scored 64.
At some point, the question will become what to do with Pettitte. He hasn’t pitched terribly, but he hasn’t pitched terribly well either. Because the Yankees have a question mark in Chien-Ming Wang and an innings limit for Joba, Phil Hughes will get his starts but so will Pettitte. I have a feeling though that, despite his Francesa-inspired “starting pitchah” moniker, what you see is what you get from Pettitte. He won’t be as good as he was in April, and he won’t be as bad as he was last night. As long as the Yanks keep scoring those runs for him, the team can get by.
Choosing among starting pitchers
Posted by: | CommentsThe Phil Hughes and Chien-Ming Wang show hit the field again last night. Wang went five good enough innings, and Hughes came in for a two-inning relief cameo. He turned in a now-familiar line: 2 IP, 0 H, 0 R, 0 BB, 2 K. He threw first-pitch strikes to all six batters he faced.
For Hughes, this outing marked another in a series of stellar relief appearances. He has now thrown 10.2 innings out of the pen and has allowed just two earned runs. Opponents have just five hits off of the Yanks’ youngster, and he has struck out 14 while waking two. The drubbing he suffered at the hands of the Orioles in early May is but a memory.
With this latest appearance, Hughes’ numbers now don’t even require us to take out that disastrous 1.2 innings in Maryland to look good. He has thrown 45.1 innings and has allowed 42 hits. He has given up 17 walks while striking out 45. His ERA is down to 4.57. (Without that bad outing, his ERA sits at 3.09.) He has been, in other words, as good as advertised a few years ago.
The other half of his pitching partnership hasn’t been as good this month. After a horrendous April and three relief appearances, Chien-Ming Wang has tried to find himself in the starting rotation. The results are decidedly mixed. He needed just 62 pitches to make it through five innings against the Braves but didn’t have his best location. Since returning to the rotation, he has made four starts spanning just 17.1 innings. He has given up 24 hits and 14 earned runs for an ERA of 7.27. It’s an improvement over his 34.50 mark from April, but it’s not quite what we expect or need from the 0-6 Wang.
It would seem, then, that the Yankees will soon be faced with a decision. Do they stick with Wang and continue to ride out this winless streak of ineffectiveness and inconsistency? Do they turn the ball over to Hughes and look to see if the confidence and mentality he has shown out of the pen can translate into success over six or seven innings as a starter? It’s a quite the conundrum. They need Wang to pitch well, and they need to straighten out his problems. But as Joe said in the recap, more Phil Hughes please.
For now, the Yankees do not actually need to answer this question. Hughes will have to shadow CC Sabathia and his sore bicep until at least Friday, and the Yankees seem committed to letting Wang toss in the pitcher-happy haven that is Citi Field. I’m OK with that for this week, but one of these pitchers is making a case for himself. It’s not the one getting the ball in the first inning every five days, and we can’t ignore that reality, no matter how uncomfortable it might be.
A good sign from A.J. Burnett
Posted by: | CommentsLast night’s start by A.J. Burnett was a very positive sign for the Yanks regardless of the fact that the team lost. Simply put, for the first time all season, Burnett pitched well in a loss. In games the Yanks won, Burnett has been lights out. In those eight starts, he has throw 53.1 innings with a 2.70 ERA and a .653 OPS against. Before last night, in the five Yankee losses he had started, he had thrown 27.1 innings with a 7.90 ERA and a .995 OPS against. When he was bad, he was really bad. Against the Marlins, though, Burnett had his best stuff, but he was simply out-pitched. If he can bring that to the table every five days, the Yankees will be a good position to win indeed. Consistency is king.
Starting pitching letting down Yanks in June
Posted by: | CommentsAfter the dismal series against the Nats, it’s easy to blame the Yanks’ recent woes on the bats. They scored just six runs in three games against the league’s worst-pitching team, and that is inexcusable. They have had troubles hitting with runners in scoring position lately, an ailment which plagued their 2008 campaign. That obviously has to change if this team is going to come charging back, but there is one other area in which the team has been lacking this month. Starting pitching.
Teams win and lose by their starters. Good starting pitching will translate into more wins. Poor starting pitching will put more pressure on the offense which, as we’ve seen over the past series, doesn’t always come through. In May, when the Yankees ripped off nine straight and then continued playing well for a few more weeks, they saw an improvement in their starting pitching. In April the rotation sported a 5.41 ERA. In May that dropped a full run. That, along with the resurgence of Teixeira, explains much of the Yankees successful run that month.
Where do they stand in June? The staff in general has posted a respectable 4.15 ERA, but that doesn’t tell the whole story. The bullpen has been beyond stellar this month, allowing just 15 earned runs over 49.1 innings for a 2.74 ERA. The starters have been much worse, raising their ERA a half point over May, 4.91. This has put more pressure on the offense, which hasn’t responded. After posting a collective .282/.349/.497 line in May, they’ve sunk to .245/.344/.435 in June. In other words, it’s no surprise that the team is 8-8 this month.
The importance of good starting pitching cannot be overstated. Perhaps no franchise better illustrates this point than the 2000/2001 Seattle Mariners. In 2000 the team won 91 games, a respectable total, and the staff put up a 4.53 ERA (4.56 for the starters). Then, in 2001, after A-Rod left for Texas*, the team won 116 games. The reason? Their staff ERA dropped to 3.54 (3.77 for the starters).
*This is where I think the “A-Rod will never win” meme began. People saw that he left, and that the Mariners got better, but failed to recognize that it was the pitching which put them over the top. / Posnanski’d
We can and will talk about the Yankees offense later. On the pitching front, though, the bullpen has saved the team this month. Remember when they were a liability? Now they’re a big part of the reason the team has managed to go 8-8 this month, despite a half-run increase in the starters’ ERA and a .066 drop in the offense’s OPS.
The adage “pitching wins championships” has become a cliche for a reason. As the team is currently playing, they look much like the Yankees teams of the past five years: all offense, mediocre pitching. So when the offense starts to slump, as it’s going to do at various points in the season, the pitching isn’t there to compensate. If the Yanks are going to hit their stride and retake the AL East, the starters will have to play to expectations. Otherwise, the Yanks will find themselves in a place similar to last year.
Are Mariano’s stats really in decline?
Posted by: | CommentsTo date, Mariano Rivera has been pretty lights out for the Yankees. Not quite like he was last year; that was otherworldly. Still, save for a few rough outings, two of which came against the Rays, he’s locked down just about everything handed to him. Yet his numbers suggest that he’s lost a little something. Matthew Carruth of FanGraphs takes a look at what’s changed in 2009.
To sum up:
- Mo has a 7.5% swinging strike rate, the lowest of his career.
- He is throwing more pitches out of the zone.
- More pitches thrown out of the zone + fewer swings and misses = unsustainable strikeout rate (which is right around where it was last year).
- His home run rate is way up, but is unlikely to continue.
- His groundball rate is at its lowest ever.
Carruth doesn’t make any projections based on this data, but he does wonder: “which regression, the strikeout and walk rates or the home run rate, [will influence] Rivera’s final line the most.” It depends, really, on how you choose to look at the data.
Yes, Mo has a 7.5 swinging strike percentage, which is the lowest of his career. That is indisputable. However, it seems that this might be overblown a bit. He started off in April getting 10 swinging strikes on 148 pitches (6.7%). In May he increased that to 14 for 180 (7.8%). That has gone down slightly in June, but remember that June includes his sick day against the Rays. He’s currently at 7.6%, but if you’re kind enough to excuse the Rays appearance, in which he generated zero swings and misses, he’s at 9.1%. If we can accept that his illness was the reason for his performance that day, this is an encouraging trend.
As to him throwing more pitches out of the zone this year, it’s not by a huge margin. From 2006 through 2008, Mo has thrown 69%, 70%, and 69% of his pitches for strikes. This year it is at 67%. Again, let’s look to that Rays game. Mo threw 21 pitches, 10 of which were strikes. Remove those and his strike percentage is up to 68%. Also, it’s not like Mo hasn’t gone seasons at a 67 or 68 percent strike rate. I don’t think this is a big deal at all, especially considering the anomalous Rays appearance.
This speaks to the strikeout rate argument. Again, if Mo isn’t really deviating from his career norms in strike percentage, and if his swing and miss percentage, outside of the Rays appearance, is on the rise, this doesn’t seem to be much of a concern. Maybe he won’t sustain the same rate as last year, but that’s again not a huge concern because last year’s was the highest of his career outside of 1996. In 2006, when he had a 1.80 ERA, he struck out 18.8 percent of hitters.
To the home run rate, I’m obviously going to agree with Carruth. He has allowed just one homer, a meaningless bomb in a blowout of the Orioles, since allowing back to back shots against the Rays on May 7. Mo has also allowed a homer on 15.2 percent of fly balls hit off him, which is more than double the career high (outside of ‘95) he set last year.
The final bullet point might be troubling. Groundballs and strikeouts are a pitcher’s best friend. Mo is getting his strikeouts, but apparently his groundball rate is a tad on the low end. As in, his groundball to flyball ratio, not to be confused with groundout to airout ratio, is 0.90. Mo hasn’t been that low since his injury-shortened 2002 season, and hasn’t had a full season at that level since 2000. This does seem troubling. Not even removing the Rays outing helps mitigate that stat.
On the whole, we shouldn’t be concerned about Mo. He’s pitched damn well since getting shelled against Tampa Bay on May 7. Outside, of course, his sick day on June 6. If you’re willing to forgive that, he’s mostly on track. Even if you’re not, the trend is encouraging. The only real area where he’s slacking is in groundball outs, and that could be a real concern. We’ll have to see that one play out. Otherwise, we can sit back and enjoy the Mo.
Blaming the stadium for the pitching woes
Posted by: | CommentsOver the last few days, we’ve tried to explore the problems with the Yankee pitching staff. Yesterday, we looked at both the starters’ issues with pitchers per plate appearance and Jorge Posada’s impact on the pitching staff. It made good fodder for conversation but offered up nothing conclusive.
Today, we have another culprit: New Yankee Stadium. As mentioned by George A. King in The Post yesterday and Michael Kay and John Flaherty during the My9 broadcast, a few Yankee pitchers are wary about throwing in the home run-happy new stadium. King has actual on-the-record quotes about this problem:
“They are pitching away from contact, mostly it is at home,” pitching coach Dave Eiland said yesterday. “For some guys, the ballpark has gotten in their heads a bit.”
Eiland refused to divulge which pitchers are worrying about the cozy confines, but he knows that when pitchers grouse about the $1.5 billion launching pad, the issue is live. “When you hear pitchers talk about it, you know they are thinking about it,” Eiland said.
It was noble but unnecessary of Eiland to refrain from naming names. Last month, Andy Pettitte flat-out told reporters he wasn’t a fan of the new Stadium. “If you leave a ball up and they hit it off the barrel, it’s a home run,” he said. “You can’t make a mistake up in the zone.”
Mariano, King of the Yankee pitching staff, expressed similar concerns. “You can’t give them a chance to put the ball in the air, he said. “It’s risky. You have to pitch to your strengths, but it’s risky. The ball definitely flies.”
And so into the home-road splits we go. Let’s start with Andy Pettitte, the new stadium critic. On the road, Pettitte is 3-1 with a 2.59 ERA in 31.1 innings and one home run allowed. At home, he is 3-2 with a 5.77 ERA. In 48.1 innings, he has surrendered nine Yankee Stadium home runs, and his walk rate is up as well. Score one for the stadium theory.
Next up is A.J. Burnett. On the road, he is 3-2 with a 5.19 ERA in 34.2 innings. He has given up five home runs, and opponents have a .785 OPS against him. At home, he is 2-1 with a 3.91 ERA and has allowed seven home runs in 46 innings. Opponents sport a .775 OPS against. Considering that two of his road starts were the disasters in Boston, this one is a wash.
Joba Chamberlain is another who has struggling at home, but his problems could be sample-size related. His ERA at home is 5.33 in 27 innings. On the road, it is 2.72 in 36.1 innings. His walk rate at home is 5.66 per 9 IP while on the road it is 3.96. Yet, opponents are slugging just .343 against him at Yankee Stadium but .412 on the road. His home run rate is the same.
After last night’s start, Sabathia’s home and road splits are nearly identical. He’s allowed four home runs at home in 49.2 IP and four on the road in 51 IP. His ERA at home is 3.99, and on the road, it’s 3.35. Opponents are hitting him the same at home as they are on the road.
So where does this leave us? Unfortunately for Stadium theorists, nowhere. The Yankees have created a stadium where some pitchers are not as successful or comfortable at home while others are. Some of the differences are due to the small sample sizes; it’s tough to judge anything in 35-40 innings.
Yet, there is a conclusion to draw as well. As with Jorge’s defense, this too is a matter of sports psychology. If Andy Pettitte and perhaps Joba Chamberlain don’t like pitching at home, the Yankees will have to address the home run issue. Considering Joba’s reluctance this past weekend to attack the zone with runners on base, this trend is definitely worth examining over the course of the season. We won’t, though, know whether it amounts to something definite for some time.
The importance of putting away hitters
Posted by: | CommentsOn Sunday morning, I published a post about the ineffectiveness of the Yankees starters. Looking at the number of pitchers per plate appearance for four of the Yanks’ starting pitchers, I noticed that Andy Pettitte, A.J. Burnett, Joba Chamberlain, and Phil Hughes were all throwing more pitches per plate appearance than the league average. Only CC Sabathia and Chien-Ming Wang were more effective than the league.
Following Sunday’s A.J. Burnett start in which he used far too many pitches to give up no runs in 7 innings, I re-ran the numbers. The following is the updated chart:
| Pitcher | Pitches Per Plate Appearance |
|---|---|
| Phil Hughes | 3.97 |
| Joba Chamberlain | 3.93 |
| A.J. Burnett | 3.92 |
| Andy Pettitte | 3.84 |
| League Average | 3.82 |
While I’ve been turning over the problems that plague the Yankee starting pitchers in my head, I haven’t yet come to a conclusion. However, something on Fangraphs has attracted my attention. R.J. Anderson examined how a few young pitchers are suffering from a put-away problem. Chamberlain along with Clayton Kershaw and David Price, three highly-touted pitchers, are not doing a very good job finishing hitters off.
Anderson doesn’t really have a real explanation for it. Price, he says, is struggling in terms of pitch efficiency because hitters aren’t chasing pitches out of the zone. Based on the percentages, Joba is having the opposite problem. With just 43.9 percent of his pitches in the zone, he’s not getting nearly enough straight-up strikes and is generally throwing too many pitches out of the zone.
But Joba is not the only Yankee pitching having problems. A.J. Burnett, sneaking up the list at 3.90 pitches per plate appearances, has suffered through efficiency problems all season. So far, he’s gone to three balls on 75 of the 351 batters he faced. That rate — 21.4 percent — is nearly double Roy Halladay’s three-ball percentage of 11.1. The extra pitches add up. Joba’s rate, by the way, is a whopping 26.4 percent. That’s way too many three-ball counts.
Right now, all we have are a bunch of numbers without much of an explanation. In The Times today, Tyler Kepner points his finger at Jorge Posada. Relying on the shaky catcher’s ERA stat, Kepner wonders whether Posada is partly to blame for the pitchers’ struggles. So far this season, Jorge’s ERA is 6.31 — 5.47 without Chien-Ming Wang — while the Yanks’ other catchers are at 3.81. Considering Jorge’s track record of at least a team average CERA, I’m skeptical of a one-year difference.
In the end, we’re left with data and evidence pointing at no obvious conclusion. The Yankees’ pitchers need to be more effective and economic with their pitches. They have to go deeper into games. They have to avoid putting on too many base runners, and they have to wean the team off its reliance on a bullpen that, while better of late, still doesn’t inspire much confidence. Whether the cause be youth, a less-than-stellar defensive catcher, or the coaching staff, it matters little. Right now, the Yankees have to make a strong push to solidify their playoff status. That will begin and end with better starting pitching.
A brief musing on the starting pitching
Posted by: | CommentsHeading into this season, the Yanks’ starting pitching was all the rage. Having spent gobs of money on CC Sabathia and A.J. Burnett and with Chien-Ming Wang, Andy Petitte and Joba Chamberlain returning to the team, the Yanks’ pitching seemed set for take off. They even had Phil Hughes, Al Aceves and Ian Kennedy in the wings.
While Kennedy is injured, the picture remains the same. The colors however have dimmed significantly. A.J. Burnett has alternated between greatness and awfulness. Joba Chamberlain hasn’t found his efficiency or velocity. Chien-Ming Wang is trying to find himself. And steadfast Andy Pettitte has been terrible lately. How did this come to pass?
Over the next few days, we’re going to examine the state of the Yankees starting pitcher, but for now, I offer up one statistic. Below is a table of four Yankee starters and their pitches per plate appearance. CC Sabathia and, surprisingly, Chien-Ming Wang are the only Yankees better than league average in that category.
| Pitcher | Pitches Per Plate Appearance |
|---|---|
| Phil Hughes | 3.97 |
| Joba Chamberlain | 3.92 |
| A.J. Burnett | 3.89 |
| Andy Pettitte | 3.84 |
| League Average | 3.82 |
So what can this tell us? Well, on the surface, we can see that Yankee pitchers are not making the most of their pitches. While it’s true that some of these differences are rather small, an increase of 0.3 pitches per plate appearances adds up to 30 extra pitches per 100 plate appearances. The Yankees’ starters therefore do not go deep into games, and the bullpen, full of lesser arms, is overtaxed.
For now, I am loathe to draw conclusions based on just these numbers. But chew on them. They do not portend success for a pitching staff expected to excel.
Observation: Joba should listen to Jorge
Posted by: | CommentsIt’s a common meme in the comments — not only here, but on other blogs and message boards — that Jorge Posada does not call a good game. I admit to having similar thoughts from time to time, but then I think to the pitching staffs Jorge has handled in the past. Few of them had any problems. The problems with the Yanks starting pitching began, without a doubt, when they trotted out an inferior staff, starting in 2004. Jorge, in other words, has worked with lesser pitchers in general since the days of Roger, Andy, Wells, Cone, Duque, Mussina, et al.
We all know Jorge has an abrasive personality. If he doesn’t like something he’s not going to sugar coat it. The media has often observed that while Derek Jeter’s leaderships stems from the example he sets, Jorge is the more vocal presence in the clubhouse. He will let you know when you screw up, and if you have something coming to you, you can bet Jorge’s the one to deliver it.
Pitchers, it is said, have fragile egos. Clearly that’s a generalization and doesn’t extent to pitchers a baseball species. There are many pitchers, though, who don’t like that tough-minded catcher personality. Hence, a number of pitchers over the years have preferred to work with the backup catcher, whether that be Molina in the last year and a half or Cervelli this year. This isn’t to say that the pitchers in question — most notably Mussina and Sabathia — can’t handle Posada. It’s that their styles don’t exactly match up.
Mussina and Sabathia know what they’re doing. They know their bodies and their know their repertoire. They know situations and what to throw in different ones. Jorge has his own ideas. Jorge has a strong personality. Perhaps Jorge is just a bit over-assertive in these cases with veteran pitchers. It can, after all, be frustrating for both parties when Jorge wants a fastball and the pitcher knows he can bury a curve to finish off the batter.
This leads me to the title of this post. Last night, Joba was shaking off Jorge left and right. Jorge would signal, Joba would shake. That process would repeat a few times. This led to a number of mound visits so the two could talk over the situation. The two went through this a number of times in the super-long third inning. They were not on the same page, and I’m sure that was evident to anyone watching. However, when Joba got his way — which was basically when you saw him throw a breaking ball in a questionable count — he was all over the place.
After yet another walk, you could see Jorge walk halfway out to the mound and say something. I was watching the SNY broadcast so I don’t know if his words were shown on the YES counterpart. However, I imagine he said something to the effect of “now we do it my way.” From that point on we saw Joba throw more fastballs and — surprise surprise — more strikes.
Joba is only 23 years old. He might think that hanging out with vets like CC and Burnett makes him a better pitcher, but all the talk in the world will not make him older and wiser. The idiocy of youth is still present in a 23-year-old, and Joba certainly shows it sometimes. He’s a very good pitcher. We can all see that in his stuff. However, he needs to step back and recognize where he is right now. He needs to listen to his catcher. From the way I watched the game last night, it seemed like he was much better when he did.
This, of course, is just an observation and is not based on some kind of insider knowledge. I do want to foster this discussion, though. Should Joba just listen to what Jorge says? I vote yes. Jorge’s not always right — he called for a curve when Wright was down 0-2, but Robertson knew that an outside fastball would do the trick. In general, though, Joba needs to have more faith in his fastball and throw it when Jorge calls it. Whether the radar gun reads 91 or 96, he still pumps that thing, and it’s a veritable weapon. If he commands that — and to command it one must throw it often — he’ll be fine. If he insists on using his (good) breaking stuff too often, he’ll work up his pitch count as he did last night.
