And the thread-pen door open …
Game 56: Getting Back On Track
The best and worst thing about baseball is that they play every day. It’s great because you have a chance to make up for a loss or extend a winning streak right away. It sucks because it wears you down. But after a deflating loss like yesterday’s, you’re thankful for the chance to get right back at it.
The Yanks are sending Joba Chamberlain to the mound and hope he builds on his dominant outing in Cleveland last time out. There’s also a good chance he’ll be relieved by Phil Hughes, who was warming up in the bullpen to pitch a potential 10th inning yesterday and hasn’t pitched in six days. With any luck, the Yanks will put up a boatload of runs, Joba will go six strong and Hughes finishes up the final three frames.
Scoring runs might not be easy though, because Matt Garza has quietly been one of the best pitchers in the league over the last month and a half. He’s put up a 2.98 ERA, 1.03 WHIP & .596 OPS against over his last seven starts. Thankfully, the Yanks will be trotting the A-lineup out there:
Jeter, SS
Damon, LF
Teixeira, 1B
A-Rod, 3B
Cano, 2B
Posada, C
Matsui, DH
Swisher, RF
Melky, CF
And on the mound, Jobber Chamberlain.
Ohlendorf on draft value: “On average, the player brought twice the return”
One Yankee I always admired, though he didn’t pitch all that well during his tenure, was Ross Ohlendorf. I suppose it’s an affinity for a guy who has some brains to back up his athletic skill. It’s a shame, really, that more wasn’t made of Ohlendorf’s Princeton thesis while he was with the Yanks. It’s topic: the amateur draft and the return teams get on their investments compared to what players produce before reaching free agency. ESPN’s Tim Kurkjian has a wonderful report on Ohlendorf and his thesis. In it, the 6’4″ righty deftly demonstrates that playing skill doesn’t necessarily correlate with understanding of the game.
Here’s Ohlie on his thesis:
“Many of the players in the study did not make the major leagues,” Ohlendorf said. “However, many of those who did produced tremendous returns for the teams who drafted them. When looked at as a group, the internal rate of return on all the draft picks in the study was 60 percent. This is an extremely high rate of return. It is saying that if you invest $1, it will grow to $1.60 after a year and $2.56 after two years, and so on … I believe the stock market has had a historical rate of about 7 or 8 percent, prior to the last year. So even though many of the investments did not work out, the upside on those that did was so great, signing the high picks to large bonuses appears to have been a very smart investment.”
…
“So based on the assumptions I made in my paper, the A’s signing Giambi was the biggest winner in top-100 picks of the 1989 through 1993 drafts because he played extremely well in his first six years of major league service,” Ohlendorf said. “The White Sox did the best job in these drafts, with an internal rate of return of 217 percent. Their best signing was Frank Thomas.”
The ESPN article has a chart with the best returns on investment for drafted players. They’re all familiar names, and three current and former Yanks appear on the list: Jason Giambi, Alex Rodriguez, and Mike Mussina. Unfortunately, the Yankees drafted none of them.
The the entire article is a great read. After Ohlendorf explains the parameters of his thesis, which received an A and got him membership in the Sigma Xi Scientific Research Society, his teammates and former coaches gush about his intelligence and baseball prowess. Chances are Ohlendorf will never break through as a top-flight starter, but if the guy wants a future in baseball he’s got it.
YES, Cablevision ready online streaming deal
A few hours after the Yanks’ loss to the Rays on Saturday while many fans were away from their computers, Sports Business Journal broke a story of some significance to Yankee fans. Per a report by John Ourand and Eric Fisher, Cablevision is in line to become the first in-market cable company to stream baseball games live to certain subscribers.
The details are fairly straightforward:
The New York Yankees will become the first MLB team to have its games streamed live online within its home market, thanks to a landmark carriage deal YES Network signed with Cablevision earlier this spring.
The streamed games will begin later this season and will be available via subscription to Cablevision’s TV and broadband customers who subscribe to a tier that carries the YES Network, according to several baseball and cable industry sources.
The move is part of an overall renewal of Cablevision’s YES Network affiliation deal that was signed earlier this spring but never officially announced.
The pact also marks the first major effort within baseball for in-market streaming — an issue that has troubled the industry for years. Several clubs that hold equity interest in regional sports networks, such as the Boston Red Sox and Baltimore Orioles, have pressed for in-market streaming to complement MLB.TV’s out-of-market online video package.
In the article, Ourand and Fisher go more in depth on the issues and hurdles. They note that that live Yankee games will be available through three sites now — MLB.com and YESNetwork.com via the MLB.tv subscriptions and now Cablevision’s offering as well. They note too that this deal could be a breakthrough for teams and regional sports networks that have had to work through league revenue and broadcast rights plans to reach potential in-market streaming customers.
But don’t go out and cancel your cable subscriptions quite yet. While this deal is groundbreaking in the fact that it’s the first streaming deal outside of the MLB Advanced Media umbrella, Cablevision is making the games available only for customers who already subscribe to a cable TV package that includes the YES Network. Basically, those customers are simply getting what they have already paid for but through a different delivery system.
It will be interesting to see where this deal goes. It’s certainly a trend-setter, but until MLB and regional cable providers are offering the games live over the Internet but without a cable TV package, it won’t redefine how we watch baseball.
Bruney, Marte & Nady closer to returning
Marc Carig has updates on some injured Yanks: Brian Bruney threw 20 pitches yesterday and felt no pain in his elbow (so he says). He thinks he’s a week and a half, or possible less away. Damaso Marte threw 25 pitches from a mound in Tampa and has started to throw some breaking balls, but there is no timetable for his return. Xavier Nady played catch at 75 feet and played in another Extended Spring Training game, but like Marte there is no timetable for his return. Mo knows the Yanks could use all three now.
Brackman struggles, but Charleston walks off with a win
Three years ago today, the Yankees drafted Ian Kennedy, Joba Chamberlain, Zach McAllister, Dellin Betances and Mark Melancon on Day One of the 2006 Draft.
Triple-A Scranton (3-1 loss to Charlotte)
Kevin Russo, Shelley Duncan & John Rodriguez: all 1 for 4, 1 K – Russo drew a walk & drove in a run
Austin Jackson & Todd Linden: both 0 for 3, 1 BB, 1 K – Linden threw a runner out at home from RF
Cody Ransom: 1 for 2, 1 2B, 1 BB, 1 E (fielding)
Juan Miranda: 2 for 4, 1 K
Justin Leone: 0 for 2, 1 R, 1 BB, 1 K, 1 HBP
Kevin Cash: 0 for 4, 2 K
George Kontos: 8 IP, 4 H, 3 R, 2 ER, 2 BB, 5 K, 1 WP, 8-10 GB/FB – 66 of 102 pitches were strikes (64.7%) … tough luck loss, that’s plenty good enough to win most days
Rivera falters in 9th as Tampa tops Yanks 9-7
We begin and end the recap today with the 9th inning. Outside of a Mark Teixeira blast that nearly reached the upper deck in right field, the other eight innings were mostly forgettable, and the controversy, if we can even call it that, focused around the Yanks’ moves in the final frame.
As the Yankees and those reporters, writers and fans who follow them digested the disappointing 9-7 loss in what was supposed to be a pitcher’s duel between David Price and CC Sabathia, a few themes have emerged. We start first with a critique by Peter Abraham leveled at Joe Girardi on his blog and aired during the post-game interview. CC Sabathia had been averaging 111 pitches per start and threw just 101 today. He hadn’t thrown fewer than 105 since a complete-game 99-pitch effort in Detroit on April 27.
After the Yanks tied the game during a lengthy 8th inning, Joe Girardi opted to take Sabathia out of the game and turned the ball over to Rivera. Generally, that’s a sound decision, but today, it backfired. Rivera was charged with three earned runs and could not escape the ninth. He was tagged with the loss, and his ERA is now an unsightly-for-him 3.47.
This turn of events led Michael Kay to second-guess Girardi in the post-game wrap-up as well. “He’s never been great when it’s not a save situation,” Kay said of Rivera.
Great is, of course, relative. In non-save situations in his career as a reliever, Rivera has thrown 334.2 innings and has an ERA of 2.47. In save situations, that number drops to 1.92. Michael Kay demands only perfection from his great relievers.
So in that sense, sure, we could second-guess Girardi for taking out Sabathia. But he didn’t take out Sabathia for Phil Coke or Jose Veras. He put in one of the game’s greatest pitchers of all time, and Rivera faltered. It happens, and I refuse to second-guess that decision.
More interesting was the one to intentionally walk Evan Longoria. In his illustrious career, Rivera had issued 30 intentional passes before today, and the last two came in the same inning on August 24. In that game, the Yanks were in Detroit and tied at 6 in the bottom of the 10th. With a runner on third and one out, Rivera intentionally walked Pudge and Ryan Raburn before retiring the next two Tigers.
Today, with two outs and a runner on third, Joe Girardi called upon Rivera to intentionally walk pinch hitter Evan Longoria. B.J. Upton, the next batter, singled home the Rays’ seventh run, and that hit would push Rivera out of the game. While Phil Coke didn’t do the job yet again, the decision to walk Longoria came back to haunt the Yanks.
After the game, Rivera seemingly threw Girardi under the bus. “That’s the manager’s decision. If it was me, I would have pitched to him,” he said. The IBB had just a -0.6 percent impact on the Yanks’ win expectancy, but it put in motion a series of plays that led to a larger deficit. Maybe I wouldn’t choose to walk Longoria, but of all the second-guessing we do, today’s game hardly deserves the scrutiny.
In the end, the Yankees couldn’t make it happen. They had three shots to tie the game in the 9th and couldn’t do it. They enjoyed four Tampa errors and made two of their own. They went just 1 for 9 with runners in scoring position and could not take advantage of seven walks. Today just wasn’t the Yanks’ day. We’ll get ’em tomorrow.