River Avenue Blues

  • About
    • Privacy Policy
  • Features
    • Yankees Top 30 Prospects
    • Prospect Profiles
    • Fan Confidence
  • Resources
    • 2019 Draft Order
    • Depth Chart
    • Bullpen Workload
    • Guide to Stats
  • Shop and Tickets
    • RAB Tickets
    • MLB Shop
    • Fanatics
    • Amazon
    • Steiner Sports Memorabilia

Update: Nova placed on DL with rotator cuff inflammation

August 23, 2012 by Mike 91 Comments

Thursday: Nova has been diagnosed with inflammation in his rotator cuff and has been placed on the 15-day DL. The treatment is just rest and medication, and he won’t pick up a baseball for at least five days. I expect the club to be very conservative given the Pineda stuff, so it wouldn’t be a total surprise if Nova has already pitched his last game of 2012.

Wednesday: Right-hander Ivan Nova is headed back to New York to be evaluated after complaining of tightness in his throwing shoulder last night. He felt something pull in the back of his shoulder while throwing a fastball to the final batter of the sixth inning. Joe Girardi said that Nova is expected to miss at least one start and is a candidate to be placed on the DL. David Phelps will remain in the rotation for the time being and CC Sabathia is due to come off the DL on Friday.

Obviously any kind of shoulder problem is a concern, especially with the Michael Pineda fiasco fresh in our memories. Nova has been extremely durable throughout his professional career, and the only other arm injury he’s dealt with is the forearm strain that forced him from Game Five of last year’s ALDS. As poorly as he’s pitched of late, Ivan is an important part of the club and the Yankees will surely be conservative.

Filed Under: Asides, Injuries Tagged With: Ivan Nova

Phil Hughes, Sudden Changeup Pitcher

August 23, 2012 by Mike 44 Comments

Changeup! (Jason Szenes/Getty Images)

A usable changeup has long been Phil Hughes’ white whale, that reliable third pitch he’s been unable to develop to help take his game to the next level. Outside of his injury-plagued 2011 season, Phil’s fastball-curveball combination has been strong enough to allow him to survive as a league average starter in the AL East. The kind of guy you’ll take towards the back of the rotation but will leave you wanting more.

Hughes, not so young anymore at 26, has ridden his fastball and two curveballs to a 4.15 ERA and 4.70 FIP in 149.2 innings this year. He’s maddeningly homer prone, but outside of a disastrous April — how stupid does this look in retrospect? — he’s pitching to a 3.70 ERA and 4.46 FIP in his last 21 starts (133.2 IP). Last night’s outing against the White Sox was about as it good as it gets, seven innings of two-run ball against a club with the sixth-highest runs per game average in baseball. The Yankees lost, but not because of their starter.

Against the ChiSox, Phil threw that white whale changeup a total of 17 times out of 98 pitches according to PitchFX. A dozen of those 17 changeups were strikes, including a pair of swings and misses. The last batter he faced, former Yankee Dewayne Wise, saw nothing but changeups in a five-pitch at-bat. Five of those 17 changeups were thrown to right-handed batters, which is notable because Hughes threw a total of four changeups to right-handers in 12 starts from mid-June through mid-August according to Will Cohen.

This isn’t a one-start blip either. Against the Red Sox last week he threw a whopping 29 changeups (106 total pitches), the most he’s ever thrown in a single outing during the PitchFX era. Nineteen of those 29 were strikes and six were thrown to righties. As a result, Hughes threw just seven curveballs. Last night it was a much more normal 18 curveballs. Perhaps all these changeups is an adjustment he’s made after getting shellacked by the Tigers and Blue Jays in back-to-back starts two weeks ago, when just seven of his 182 total pitches were changeups.

Hughes doesn’t need a knockout changeup, just a serviceable third offering that will keep hitters off the fastball and curveball. I feel like I’ve been saying that for five years now. He has really emphasized the pitch these last two times out, and not just against left-handers either. Whether he continues to use the pitch this much in the future remains to be seen, but the fact that he’s been able to use it this heavily and remain effective against good offenses these last two times out is encouraging.

Filed Under: Pitching Tagged With: Phil Hughes

Yankees rank second in ESPN’s Future Power Rankings

August 23, 2012 by Mike 65 Comments

In an Insider-only feature (1-15, 16-30), ESPN ranked all 30 clubs using what they call “an attempt to measure how well each team is set up for sustained success over the next five years.” The rankings are based on five categories — Major League talent, minor league talent, finances, front office, and roster flexibility.

The Rangers claim the top spot with a score of 88.7 (out of 100) and the Yankees were second at 79.6. Pretty big gap there. The Cardinals were right there in third at 79.5, so we might as well call New York and St. Louis numbers 2A and 2B. The write-up includes all the usual storylines — the Yankees have an older core, a huge payroll, and just about all of their young pitchers took a step back this season — and notes that the Bombers also ranked second behind Texas in their preseason rankings. I missed those, apparently.

Filed Under: Asides

Road woes behind second half slide

August 23, 2012 by Mike 20 Comments

(AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)

The Yankees still sit atop the AL East and own the second best overall record in the league, but they’ve scuffled to a 20-19 record in the second half and a 14-18 record since heading out to Oakland a few weeks ago. They did win seven of nine about a week ago but have since lost five of seven. No team plays roughly .500-ball for more than a month by alternating wins and losses, there’s a few hot and cold streaks mixed in there.

On a macro level, the club’s performance on the road is responsible for their second half slide. The Yankees have won just six of 17 games away from Yankee Stadium since the All-Star break, including that four-game sweep at the hand of the Athletics and this week’s three-game sweep in Chicago. At home, they’re 14-8 in the second half. Here’s a real quick breakdown of the team’s basic home/road splits…

Home Record Home RS/G Home RA/G Road Record Road RS/G Road RA/G
First Half 25-16 (.610) 4.6 4.0 27-17 (.614) 5.0 4.2
Second Half 14-8 (.636) 5.4 3.8 6-11 (.353) 4.5 4.6

The Yankees have only been outscored by three total runs on the road in the second half (76 to 79), which tends to happen when six of the eleven losses were by one run. The club is scoring roughly half-a-run fewer run per game on average away from the Bronx though, and their overall road batting line sits at .263/.320/.411 since the All-Star break. It was .263/.340/.453 in the first half. With a .263/.334/.441 overall road line on the season (108 wRC+), the Yankees have been the second best hitting team in baseball away from their home park this year (Angels, 113 wRC+).

Given the small sample, I think the second half drop in OBP and power production is tied directly to the four games in the pitcher friendly Coliseum in Oakland (ten total runs in the four games) as well as Curtis Granderson’s mega-slump. He’s typically a major source of on-base skills and especially power. Robinson Cano’s smaller and more recent slump factors in as well, plus the Raul Ibanez-Andruw Jones platoon hasn’t done much since the break either. The increase in runs allowed per game (also roughly half-a-run) has an awful lot to do with Phil Hughes throwing duds in Detroit and Toronto as well as the sketchy middle relief.

Twenty of the club’s final 38 games are on the road, including the upcoming three-game series in Cleveland. After that it’s nothing but AL East parks and a quick three games in Target Field. The Yankees haven’t forgotten to play on the road or anything, they’ve just lost an inordinate number of close games away from the Bronx since the All-Star break. I don’t think these road struggles are a big concern going forward, but those losses are already in the bank and they do count in the standings. Taking care of business against the Indians would be a real good (and necessary!) step twards fixing these second half road issues.

Filed Under: Analysis

Thoughts following the sweep in Chicago

August 23, 2012 by Mike 77 Comments

(REUTERS/Jeff Haynes)

The Yankees just got swept by the White Sox in a three-game set in Chicago for the first time in 21 years, dropping their AL East lead to three games. That’s the smallest lead they’ve had in 52 games, since June 25th. Coincidentally enough, their opponent that day was the same Indians team they’ll face tomorrow in Cleveland. The Bombers are off today, so here are a few scattered thoughts for the morning…

1. The Yankees have way too any platoon players right now. The Brett Gardner and Alex Rodriguez injuries play a huge part in that, but so has Robinson Cano’s inability to hit left-handers this year (71 wRC+). He’s been a lefty masher his entire career up to this point. Hopefully it’s just a one-year blip, but the point still stands: all of these platoon guys really limit flexibility. If the Yankees let the switch-hitting Nick Swisher walk after the season and don’t replace him with someone capable of hitting both lefties and righties, it’s going to stand out like a sore thumb. Using two players to approximate the production of one is no way to build half a lineup.

Late Add: This came across my Twitter feed and I thought it was appropriate to mention here…

Chavez has had the platoon advantage in 88.9% of his PA. Ibanez in 86.4%. 4th- and 6th-highest rates, respectively. Yankees win platooning.

— Ben Lindbergh (@ben_lindbergh) August 23, 2012

2. Speaking of Cano, I think the Yankees are much better off batting him cleanup and Mark Teixeira third with A-Rod out. Derek Jeter and Swisher have been a dynamite one-two punch for the last two weeks, but Robbie goes up their hacking and is prone to the bat at-bat, especially during this recent slump. Teixeira is far more patient and will continue to let the pitcher work himself into trouble if that’s what he’s trying to do. If and when Cano starts hitting again, they can bump him back up. Right now though, Tex is the more dangerous hitter and they should stack their best hitters together atop the lineup.

PED = Performance-Enhancing Donuts. (Jonathan Daniel/Getty)

3. So how about this Bartolo Colon stuff? It hasn’t been a great week for the “shoulda kept Colon! shoulda kept Melky Cabrera!” crowd. Do you think the Yankees knew something was up and that’s why they decided to re-sign Freddy Garcia instead of Bart? I think it has more to do with his second half collapse myself, but you never know. I guess you can’t be surprised that a guy who underwent an experimental stem cell procedure to revive his career would be willing to take some less than legal drugs as well.

4. Joe and I were talking about this a bit yesterday, but I have absolutely no idea who the Yankees are going to call up in September, especially on the pitching side of things. The only non-MLB, non-DL pitchers on the 40-man roster right now are Dellin Betances, Adam Warren, Justin Thomas, and Cory Wade. That’s it. Even the non-40-man players in Triple-A like Manny Delcarmen and Ryota Igarashi are unappealing. The Yankees opened the season with a ton of pitching depth in Triple-A, and five months later it has completely vanished.

5. When we first learned about the club’s intention to get under the $189M luxury tax threshold in 2014, we knew that was going to require some cheap production from young players. CC Sabathia was supposed to be joined in the rotation by Ivan Nova, Michael Pineda, and Manny Banuelos, and now all three are injured following Nova’s shoulder problem. Hopefully it’s not serious like the injuries that cost Pineda the entire season and Banuelos most of it, but Ivan wasn’t exactly pitching well before he got hurt anyway. They’re going to have to go back to the drawing board for this whole 2014 payroll plan, because the pitching aspect has blown up already.

Filed Under: Musings Tagged With: Bartolo Colon

Swept: ChiSox beat Yanks 2-1

August 22, 2012 by Mike 65 Comments

The Yankees went from winning seven of nine to losing five of seven in short order. The White Sox finished off their three-game sweep of the Bombers on Wednesday night with a 2-1 win that frankly didn’t feel all that close.

Amazing. (Jonathan Daniel/Getty Images)

Follow The Leader

For the first time in his career, Derek Jeter has homered in three straight games. All three homers were pulled as well, which just isn’t something you’re going to see the Cap’n do very often. He’s suddenly raised his season line to .324/.364/.450 and has been, by far, the club’s best offensive player for the last few weeks.

Jeter’s homer tied the game at one in the sixth and was only the second run the Yankees scored in the final 17 innings of the series. As a team, they struck out a season-high 15 times against Chris Sale and Addison Reed (with a little Brett Myers mixed in as well) on Wednesday night while twice stranding runners on second base with less than two outs. The bottom five hitters in the order went a combined 0-for-15 with one walk (Andruw Jones) and nine strikeouts. Sale’s really good but I don’t want to give him all the credit — the Yankees swung at an awful lot of balls off the plate. Good way to suffocate the offense.

(REUTERS/Jeff Haynes)

Fly Ball Phil

He wasn’t as good as Sale, but Phil Hughes was pretty damn effective on Wednesday. He allowed two runs in seven innings, the first of which scored after the umpire blew a call on a Dewayne Wise bunt. That would have been the first out and maybe they score the runner from third anyway, but first-and-third with no outs is an entirely different animal than man on third and one out. Anyway, the other run came on an Alex Rios solo homer in the sixth, a whole three pitches after Jeter tied the game. That was incredibly annoying.

Hughes struck out five and walked two — two of the first four batters of the game –while getting a dozen of his 16 ball-in-play outs in the air. He retired nine of the last ten batters he faced with the one exception being the game-losing homer. Phil hit a bit of a wall about two weeks ago, throwing back-to-back dud starts against the Tigers and Blue Jays, but he’s since rebounded with a pair of solid seven-inning efforts against the Red Sox and first place ChiSox. Tough luck loser in this one.

(AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)

Leftovers

David Robertson allowed a single and plunked Kevin Youkilis in the eighth, but otherwise escaped the jam thanks to a nice double play turn by Robinson Cano and Jeter. He was just getting work in after having a few days off, otherwise Hughes might have thrown another inning — he was at 98 pitches after seven.

Cano went 2-for-4 with a booming double into the right-center field gap and a hot-shot ground ball through the third baseman, which are hopefully indications that his bat is coming around. He came into the game in a 3-for-34 slump and is part of the reason why the Yankees haven’t been scoring as many runs as they should despite Jeter and Swisher doing great things hitting one-two.

That’s pretty much it. If it makes you feel any better, the Yankees lost three straight August games to the White Sox in Chicago back in 2009, and that season ended happily.

Box Score, WPA Graph & Standings

MLB.com has the box score and video highlights, FanGraphs the extra nerdy stuff, and ESPN the updated standings. The Rays beat the Royals, so they are now just three back in the loss column. Yankees need to get themselves straight and soon. The magic number remains 36.


Source: FanGraphs

Up Next

After playing 20 games in 20 days, the Yankees are off on Thursday. They’ll open a three-game series with the abysmal Indians — they’ve won four of their last 25 games — in Cleveland on Friday, when CC Sabathia is expected to turn to the rotation in his old stomping grounds. He’ll get the ball against rookie right-hander Corey Kluber.

Filed Under: Game Stories

Heathcott & Austin have big nights in Tampa loss

August 22, 2012 by Mike 41 Comments

In case you missed it earlier, C Austin Romine was officially activated off the 60-day DL and optioned to Triple-A. To make room on the roster, LHP Lee Hyde was bumped down to Double-A.

Update: Based on the Twitter, RHP Nick Goody has been bumped up to High-A Tampa already. Sure looks like this year’s sixth rounder is going to move up the ladder crazy fast.

Triple-A Empire State(2-1 win over Buffalo in 12 innings)
RF Chris Dickerson: 2-4, 1 RBI, 2 BB, 1 SB
DH Corban Joseph & LF Kevin Russo: both 1-5 — CoJo walked and struck out twice
SS Eduardo Nunez: 1-6, 1 R, 1 K, 2 SB
3B Brandon Laird: 2-6, 1 K
1B Kosuke Fukudome: 1-4, 2 BB
C Frankie Cervelli: 2-5, 1 RBI, 2 K — had the game-winning sac fly in extras
CF Melky Mesa: 1-6, 1 2B, 3 K
2B Ramiro Pena: 0-3, 2 BB
RHP Adam Warren: 5 IP, 2 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 1 BB, 4 K, 5/3 GB/FB – 67 of 104 pitches were strikes (64%)
RHP Chase Whitley: 1.2 IP, 2 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 3 BB, 3 K, 1/0 GB/FB — only 19 of 40 pitches were strikes (48%)
LHP Juan Cedeno: 1.1 IP, 1 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 0 BB, 1 K, 2/1 GB/FB — ten of 15 pitches were strikes (67%)
RHP Kelvin Perez: 2 IP, zeroes, 2 K, 1/2 GB/FB — 14 of 25 pitches were strikes (56%)
RHP Ryota Igarashi: 2 IP, 1 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 1 BB, 4 K, 2/0 GB/FB — 18 of 30 pitches were strikes (60%) … dude is money down here, but not so much in the show

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Down on the Farm

  • « Previous Page
  • 1
  • …
  • 1871
  • 1872
  • 1873
  • 1874
  • 1875
  • …
  • 4059
  • Next Page »

RAB Thoughts on Patreon

Mike is running weekly thoughts-style posts at our "RAB Thoughts" Patreon. $3 per month gets you weekly Yankees analysis. Become a Patron!

Got A Question For The Mailbag?

Email us at RABmailbag (at) gmail (dot) com. The mailbag is posted Friday mornings.

RAB Features

  • 2019 Season Preview series
  • 2019 Top 30 Prospects
  • 'What If' series with OOTP
  • Yankees depth chart

Search RAB

Copyright © 2025 · River Avenue Blues