River Avenue Blues

Empire State & Trenton open playoffs with losses

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Based on his Twitter feed, RHP David Aardsma will make his next minor league rehab appearance with Double-A Trenton tomorrow.

Triple-A Empire State (7-4 loss to Pawtucket) Pawtucket leads the best-of-five series 1-0
3B Kevin Russo: 1-5, 1 R, 1 HR, 1 RBI, 1 K
2B Corban Joseph: 2-4, 1 R, 1 BB, 2 K — he and Russo hit a nice job atop the lineup, but…
LF Ronnie Mustelier: 0-4 — didn’t make them pay
1B Luke Murton: 1-4, 1 R, 1 HR, 2 RBI, 1 K — first game at the Triple-A level and he goes deep after leading the system in homers during the regular season
CF Melky Mesa, RF Cole Garner & DH Darnell McDonald: both 1-4, 1 2B — Garner drove in a run and struck out three times … McDonald whiffed
C Austin Romine: 0-3, 1 R, 1 BB
SS Ramiro Pena: 2-4
RHP John Maine: 4.2 IP, 7 H, 5 R, 5 ER, 2 BB, 6 K, 1/2 GB/FB — 64 of 101 pitches were strikes … had two very strong innings before things came apart in the middle of the game
RHP Chase Whitley: 2.1 IP, 2 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 1 BB, 3 K, 3/0 GB/FB — 19 of 31 pitches were strikes (61%)
RHP Kelvin Perez: 1 IP, 2 H, 2 R, 2 ER, 0 BB, 0 K, 0/1 GB/FB — 13 of 19 pitches were strikes

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Update: Yankees & Dodgers will play a home-and-home next year

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September 5th: Via Shaikin, the Yankees and Dodgers will play a home-and-home series next year. The Dodgers will play two games in the Bronx in June while the Yankees will play three out in Los Angeles in July. Hooray for that.

August 26th: Via Bill Shaikin, the Dodgers will visit Yankee Stadium for an interleague series next season. This is long, long overdue — the Dodgers have not played the Yankees in the Bronx since the 1981 World Series. The clubs also met in the 1963, 1977, and 1978 Fall Classics after the Dodgers moved to Los Angeles in 1958.

Over the last few weeks we’ve learned that the Giants are also tentatively scheduled to visit Yankee Stadium next summer, and that the Bombers will open their season with three games at home against the Red Sox. The Dodgers have very suddenly morphed into the Yankees West, which is kinda exciting to watch as a baseball fan from afar. I’ll enjoy seeing it up close next season, that’s for sure.

Game 136: Game One

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(Ronald Martinez/Getty)

It’s a new season. The Yankees and Orioles are tied atop the AL East — the Rays are right on their tails as well — and they have 27 games to sort this thing out. The division lead has already been blown, there’s nothing anyone can do about that. Start this season with a win and get off a right foot. Here’s the starting nine…

SS Derek Jeter
RF Nick Swisher
DH Robinson Cano
3B Alex Rodriguez
C  Russell Martin
CF Curtis Granderson
LF Andruw Jones
1B Steve Pearce
2B Jayson Nix

RHP Hiroki Kuroda

Tonight’s game starts a little after 7pm ET and can seen on YES locally and MLB Network nationally.

Team Meeting Update: The Yankees did hold a 20-ish minute team meeting before tonight’s game, just to kinda talk about the next 27 games and stuff. As you can imagine, Joe Girardi wasn’t exactly willing to divulge the details afterward. It’s the club’s second team meeting in the last week.

Report: September roster expansion rules may change as soon as 2013

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Via Scott Miller, there is “increasing momentum” to change the September roster expansion rules as soon as next year. Teams can currently deploy their entire 40-man roster in the season’s final month, but the new scenario would limit clubs to a designated 30-man roster for each game.

I think I’ve said this before but I’m a big fan of the current incarnation of expanded rosters. Everyone plays by the same rules — if a team doesn’t call-up as many players as another, tough, that’s a willful decision on their part — and it rewards depth. You need more than 25 players to win anything these days anyway, so the clubs with better 28th and 30th and 35th men should have the opportunity to take advantage of that down the stretch when fatigue becomes a factor. Anyway, it’s only a matter of time before MLB changes the rules somehow, probably for the worst.

Pettitte faces hitters for first time since leg injury

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For the first time since suffering a left leg fracture in late-June, left-hander Andy Pettitte faced hitters in a simulated game/live batting practice this afternoon. He threw 15 pitches in one “inning,” facing four hitters — Casey McGehee (twice), Eduardo Nunez, Chris Dickerson. From the look of it, Andy was throwing with full effort or at least very close to it. He did use an L-screen, if you care about such things.

Pitching coach Larry Rothschild told Sweeny Murti that Pettitte was “excellent” and that his arm strength is right where they expected it to be. He’ll face hitters again on Friday, presumably stretching it out to 30 or so pitches. Although Triple-A Empire State and Double-A Trenton are in the postseason, it sounds like Pettitte will do all of his rehab work in sim games these next few weeks. Just eye-balling the schedule, September 26th or 27th is the absolute latest Andy could return while still making two regular season starts in advance of a potential postseason series.

How to blow a ten-game lead in 48 days

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(J. Meric/Getty)

The Yankees have played impossibly bad baseball for a little less than two months now, ever since they went out to the West Coast and got swept in four straight one-run games by the Athletics. It’s easy to forget that they’d won five of their first six games after the All-Star break immediately prior to that road trip. New York was ten games up after beating the Blue Jays on July 18th and 48 days later, they’re tied for the division lead for the first time since June 11th. It’s ugly.

A fall from grace like this takes a total team effort. The starting pitching needs to be bad at times, the offense needs to be bad at times, and the bullpen needs to be bad at times as well. Lately all three seem to have performed poorly simultaneously. Here’s a quick breakdown of some things that have gone wrong during his 48-day slide…

The Bottom of the Order
As a team, the Yankees have hit .253/.315/.416 as a team during this stretch, which is almost exactly league average. This is a team that hit .265/.339/.467 in their first 91 games of the season, which was approximately 15% better than league average. Quite a fall.

Most of the blame goes to the bottom third of the order, the 7-8-9 hitters. Those three spots have combined for a .236/.286/.374 batting line during these 48 days, which is just unfathomably bad. The primary offenders have Raul Ibanez (.202/.284/.356), Russell Martin (.230/.304/.377), and Ichiro Suzuki (.273/.299/.402 as a Yankee) just because they’ve spent the most time hitting there. Once upon a time, guys like Nick Swisher and Brett Gardner were batting in the bottom third of the order. That level of lineup depth has completely disappeared.

Too Many Homers
Since opening up that ten-game lead on July 18th, the pitching staff has allowed 54 homers (!) in 44 games. That’s a 1.25 HR/9 as a team, and don’t just blame Yankee Stadium — they’ve surrendered 27 dingers in 22 road games (1.29 HR/9). Obviously Phil Hughes (1.96 HR/9) is the poster boy of the homer problem, but David Phelps (1.35 HR/9), Freddy Garcia (1.76 HR/9), and even CC Sabathia (1.44 HR/9) should not be absolved of blame. The one guy keeping the ball in the park is the one guy everyone thought would have trouble doing so before the season: Hiroki Kuroda (0.66 HR/9).

(J. Meric/Getty)

The Trade Deadline
This kinda ties into everything else, but the Yankees didn’t make a single significant move to improve the team at midseason. When Ichiro is your impact acquisition, you failed. Casey McGehee and Steve Pearce were brought in to hit lefties and they haven’t done much of that in their limited time. Rather than seek out the quality middle reliever they needed following the loss of Mariano Rivera, the Yankees opted to wait for Joba Chamberlain while supplementing with Chad Qualls and Derek Lowe. Those three have combined for 16 runs allowed on 44 baserunners in 18.2 innings during this 48-day stretch. The help the team needed was not the help it acquired.

Losing to the Losers
During these 44-games, the Yankees have played seven series and 21 total games against teams with a sub-.500 record. They’ve won just 12 of those 21 games. That’s a winning record obviously, but they haven’t fattened up their record enough against the clubs their supposed to beat. The old mantra is pound away on the bad teams while playing even against the good teams, but the Yankees haven’t really held up the first end of the bargain (or the second, for that matter). Sixteen of their final 27 games will be played against clubs with a losing record, and they need to do better against those teams than they have been.

Injuries!
I hate using injuries as an excuse but you can’t ignore their impact. Of these last 44 games, Alex Rodriguez has played in just eight and Mark Teixeira just 32. Andy Pettitte, Gardner, and Rivera have obviously played in zero. It’s common sense that older players are more prone to injury but some of those injuries are just flukes. Mo tripped while running. Andy Pettitte got hit by a comebacker. A-Rod took a pitch to the hand. Do younger players not get hurt long-term in those situations? Eh, that’s very debatable given he nature of the injuries. The point is that’s an awful lot of lost talent to overcome.

* * *

There are plenty of other factors that led to the Yankees blowing their big, cushy lead — Curtis Granderson’s three-month long slump, Robinson Cano’s complete inability to drive in any runner besides himself on a homer, every reliever not named David Robertson or Rafael Soriano, etc. — but those five factors above really stand out to me. The most frustrating part is that the Yankees have typically excelled in those departments in recent years. The bottom of the order was always productive, the pitching staff always found a way to keep the ball in the park relative to what was expected given the division and ballpark, and they did so much damage against sub-.500 teams that people actually thought it was a fault. This kinda stuff was never really a problem, but I guess this now is just the perfect storm.

The Yankees and Small Ball

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(AP Photo/LM Otero)

The Yankees have fallen into an unfortunate pattern of late. They aren’t just losing games, they’re losing games in what feels like the same way night after night. They push across a run or two early, the other team then takes the lead, and the Yankees never really bother to get back in it. Maybe I’m just crazy and that hasn’t happened at any time other than last night. Either way, the pitching staff owns a solid 4.04 ERA (4.01 FIP) since the All-Star break but the offense has been unable to pick them up far too often.

“We’ve got start doing some things,” said hitting coach Kevin Long following last night’s game. “We might start having some guys bunt that you don’t normally see bunt. That might have to be the case right now until we get it going … We’re going to talk about that, and we’re going to address some of those things, and we’ll see if we can’t turn it around … We’ll stay at it. We’ll keep battling. I think the biggest concern here is we’ve lost our cushion. We’ve got to turn it around, and we’ve got to turn it around in hurry.”

Long specifically mentioned the third inning of last night’s game as an instance in which they may try a bunt going forward. Derek Jeter (single) and Curtis Granderson (hit-by-pitch) put men on first and second with no outs, but Nick Swisher (strikeout) and Robinson Cano (1-6-3 double play) couldn’t advance them any further. If a similar situation arises tonight, Swisher could be asked to bunt the runners into scoring position so Cano could theoretically drive them in with an out. Easier said then done, obviously.

I think you all know by now that I’m no proponent of the small ball, but I’m strangely okay with the Yankees changing their approach right now. Common sense says that if you’re struggling to score runs, the last thing you want to do is volunteer outs to the defense. That said, it’s quite obvious that whatever the Yankees are doing these days just isn’t working. There are too many black holes at the bottom of the order to keep things status quo. They aren’t changing things up just for the heck of it, this is a club that has scored a whopping 36 runs in their last dozen games, an average of exactly three runs per contest. I don’t care how great your pitching is, no team wins with that kind of offense.

There are three important things the Yankees must keep in mind about this shift to a small ball approach. First of all, they have to be smart about picking their spots. They can’t just blindly bunt whenever they get a man on first with no outs. Early in the game they need to continue to play for multiple runs and make the pitcher work a bit, because taking advantage of a pitcher willing to walk his way into trouble is the best way to generate offense. Not by helping him with a free out before the rally can really get started. Later in a close game, sure, go for the small ball if needed. First time and a half through the order? That can be counterproductive.

(AP Photo/Chris O’Meara)

Secondly, they have to do with the right players. Jeter, Swisher, Granderson, Cano, Mark Teixeira (when healthy), and Alex Rodriguez shouldn’t be bunting. The Cap’n has hit the ball far too well this season to be giving away outs and the other guys are still very capable of hitting the ball out of the ballpark at any given moment. I know as well as you that Granderson strikes out a ton, but if he bunts runners over with men on first and second with no outs, I just might lose it. Save the small ball stuff for the guys that are actually automatic outs, the Raul Ibanezes and Andruw Joneses, the Russell Martins and Chris Stewarts, the Ichiros and the Suzukis.

Lastly, this should be a temporary measure. No team bunts and small balls its ways to the World Series, so the Yankees shouldn’t expect that to happen. I can’t even recall the last time a small ball team won the title and the Yankees sure as hell aren’t going to advance through the AL portion of the playoffs one run at a time. They have to get back to mashing the ball like they did earlier this year, but until that happens this is the best possible solution. It shouldn’t last longer than it has to.

There was always a kernel of truth to the “too many homers!” criticism, but it was never expressed correctly. Obviously hitting homers is the best possible team a thing could do, but the Yankees lacked the diversity to score in other ways. Losing Brett Gardner’s speed exacerbated the problem, as did other injuries that pushed all-or-nothing reserve players like Ibanez and Jones into more prominent roles. Teixeira’s steady decline from a complete hitter into a pure slugger has contributed to this as well. Going to the other extreme and playing small ball isn’t necessarily the solution, but it seems like the best the Yankees can do until they’re able to change some personnel this winter.

Changing things up like this immediately after the division lead is blown reeks of desperation — “It’s not desperation, it’s about playing baseball,” said Long last night — and there’s a decent chance it’s too late for the adjustment to have any meaningful impact. I don’t really believe that but I do acknowledge it’s a possibility. I’ve already advocated playing Chris Dickerson and Eduardo Nunez over some of the guys currently stinking up the bottom of the lineup just to get some live bodies into the game, and at the end of the day a shift to a small ball approach is the same thing. They’re trying something different in an effort to spark the offense. It’s much better than the alternative of just sitting around and waiting for everything to click again.