You’d think after that first inning they’d have scored a few more by now.
Game 34: Let’s take two out of three
Since the inception of baseball blogs sometime in 2001 or 2002, perhaps no recording artist has been quoted as frequently as Meatloaf. Writers and bloggers invoke his second hit single, “Two out of Three Ain’t Bad,” before nearly every rubber match. Hey, two out of three is a .667 winning percentage, which extrapolates to a 108-win season. We haven’t seen one of those in quite a while.
The cliche could be no more true than for the Yanks today. Not only can they take two out of three from the Jays, and thereby their second straight series, but they can do it in the most acceptable of ways. Hey, if you face Roy Halladay in the series opener and can come back to win the next two, that’s all right in anybody’s book. The Yanks get their chance against reliever-turned-starter Brian Tallet.
Yanks fans will recognize Tallet’s name because he’s been with the Jays since 2006, pitching mostly in relief. This will be his sixth start of the season, and his seventh since becoming a Blue Jay. He entered the Jays’ rotation amid injuries to most of their starters: Dustin McGowan, Shaun Marcum, Rickey Romero, and Jesse Litsch are all on the DL. Tallet has filled in admirably, allowing 16 runs, 15 earned, in 29 innings so far as a starter. He’s having a bit of trouble with the walks, which the Yanks will surely try to exploit tonight.
As a reliever, Tallet has given the Yanks some trouble. He’s faced them 20 times in his career, spanning 28.1 innings, in which he has allowed 9 runs. The walks are still an issue, as he’s issued 12 through those 29 innings — almost the exact rate he’s showing as a starter so far. Hopefully the Yanks can catch up to Tallet in an extended viewing.
The Yanks send their guy to the mound tonight, the behemoth that is CC Sabathia. He was masterful his last time out, pitching like the guy the Yanks signed to a $161 million contract this winter. As Pettitte did last night, he’ll face a righty-heavy Blue Jays lineup tonight. It’s even more extreme tonight, with John McDonald entering the lineup. That makes it righties or switch hitters one through nine. Something tells me this will not bother Sabathia one bit.
Both Jeter and Matsui make their return to the lineup tonight. Jeter is a bit more concerning at this point. Obliques are tricky muscles, and the last thing the Yanks want is for Jeter to try to play through a small strain and turn it into a considerable tear. Missing 15 days now is obviously better than missing two months. We just have to put our faith in the Yanks training staff at this point.
Lineup:
1. Derek Jeter, SS
2. Johnny Damon, LF
3. Mark Teixeira, 1B
4. Alex Rodriguez, 3B
5. Hideki Matsui, DH
6. Nick Swisher, RF
7. Robinson Cano, 2B
8. Brett Gardner, CF
9. Francisco Cervelli, C
And on the mound, number fifty-two, CC Sabathia.
The difference defense makes
Defensive quantification, the final frontier. Since its introduction to mainstream culture, baseball has been a sport obsessed with statistics. Yet one aspect of the game which has flustered analysts for years is defense. We’ve seen some breakthroughs over the past few years, with Zone Rating, Ultimate Zone Rating, John Dewan’s plus minus, and Dave Pinto’s PMR, but none of them provide us with the concrete information we get from batting and pitching stats. All that means is that we should be looking for other ways to accurately evaluate defensive and its effect on the outcome of games.
On Wednesday, Rob Neyer explored the first-place Texas Rangers and their improved pitching staff. A team which has ranked no better than 12 out of 14 AL teams the past four years is currently sixth best in the young season. They’ve combined that fortune, which comes mostly on the effort of Kevin Millwood and his 2.92 ERA, with 191 runs scored, two behind Boston for second most in the AL. While it might sound funny to hear “first place Texas Rangers,” it’s not so odd to hear that the team with the sixth-best pitching and third-best offense leads its division.
At FanGraphs today, Dave Cameron flips the argument a bit and gives the Rangers defense a lot of credit for the team’s pitching success. His evidence: the team’s FIP — that is, Fielding Independent Pitching, defined below — is actually worse this year, at 5.17, than it was all of last year, 4.83. This would indicate that the defense is doing quite the job in converting balls in play into outs.
We can see this from an anecdotal and a statistical standpoint. The Rangers rearranged their infield over the winter in order to eradicate a few of their weaknesses. For instance, the team featured a revolving door at third base, none of whom were any good at the position, as evidenced by their -26.7 collective UZR. At shortstop, Michael Young featured a -5.4 UZR. So the Rangers slid Young over to third, and though it hasn’t gone quite as planned there’s still time for him to make the adjustment. They replaced him with defensive whiz Elvis Andrus, who is into the positive UZR rankings already. They moved Chris Davis over to first, where his bat will play just fine and he’s less of a liability than he was at third. Even Ian Kinsler is playing better this year, projecting to a 14.4 UZR/150 after negative values in his earlier years.
The question, of course, is how much of this is related to a small sample size and how much is for real. We can’t tell yet if Kinsler is getting extremely lucky or if having Andrus up the middle is giving him a boost. We don’t know if Michael Young is bad at third — and that comes in two senses. First, is he really bad, in the sense of, is UZR accurately depicting his ability? Second, is he just bad, or is this just a transition after having played shortstop from 2004 through 2008? Perhaps the biggest question here is, how does this relate to the Yankees?
One area in which the Yanks could have really done something to improve this off-season was on defense. Signing Mark Teixeira improved the glovework at first, but what about the rest of the infield? In order to see an improvement, they’d have to see Robinson Cano return to 2007 form, Jeter maintain what he did in 2008, and for A-Rod to continue being league average. Is it working? Well, the team has a 5.18 team FIP against a 5.64 team ERA, so it doesn’t look like it. That’s not the final word, of course — comparing FIP to ERA is just a tool to aid in analysis. But, with this one readily-available tool, it doesn’t appear the Yanks defense is doing much to bail out the pitchers.
It’s tough to make any kind of far-reaching judgments when the season is barely a month over. However, in the early going it looks like the Yanks are having problems all around: with their pitching, with their defense, and with their hitting, particularly with runners in scoring position. That’s quite a stack of problems for a team to overcome. The saving grace is that the Yankees have the talent to do it. They’re currently 10th in the AL in UZR, though they’re off of 9th place by a decent margin. Still, with even a modest improvement from here on out — say, league average — they can make the necessary adjustments and play this season like we’d imagined it in March.
Scenes from the dismantling
Tom Kaminski, WCBS 880 AM’s man in the sky, took Chopper 88 for another pass over Yankee Stadium. As the photogallery shows, the crews are hard at work dismantling the stadium. The right field seats are nearly gone, and sections of the wall have been stripped bare. We’ll miss the old gal. That’s for sure.
In other stadium news, NYU students are ripping into the Yanks for not allowing any of them to sit in the plush seats during yesterday’s graduation ceremony. After the jump, a photo of the scene. By now, though, we’re used to seeing empty seats right at field level. Gothamist has more shots from the ceremony.
Damon reiterates desire to stay in the Bronx
Johnny Damon is engaged in a one-man lobbying effort to stay in the Bronx. Every few weeks, after delivering another huge home run or game-winning hit, Damon restates his dream of staying in New York. He said something to the effect two weeks ago and reiterated his desire again yesterday.
Speaking with MLB.com beat writer Bryan Hoch before the game yesterday, Damon chatted about his desire to get to 3000 hits and his desire for one more contract. Damon is 689 hits short and says he wants to retire shortly before his 40th birthday. He obviously wants to stay in New York.
“This would definitely be the best place for me,” Damon said. “I feel like this could be my last chance to be on a winner, so I understand the free-agent game, how it is. We have a bunch of young outfielders coming up. I can’t concern myself with that. I have to go out and play every day and pretend like it could be my last chance to get to the playoffs or possibly make a World Series run.”
Damon with his nine home runs has certainly enjoyed playing in the home run-happy Yankee Stadium. He’s not afraid to admit that, either. “I’d sure love to keep taking advantage of that right-field porch,” Damon said to Hoch.
The Yanks will have a decision to make with Damon. They know what they’re getting with him. He’ll play hard, and he’ll play every day, aching or not. Considering our discussion on the age of the Yanks yesterday, though, I’m not so sure the Yankees should include Damon in their long-term plans. He’s not your prototypical DH type even though he could probably keep pace with the average AL DH.
At 35, he’s heading toward a dangerous part of his career. He’ll slow down a bit both with the bat and on the base paths. He wants just one four-year contract, but like Bobby Abreu last year, he probably won’t find it if the Yanks don’t give it to him. Right now, if I had to bet, I’d say they don’t.
KLaw’s Top 100 Draft Prospects
RAB fave Keith Law posted his list of the top 100 prospects for the upcoming draft over at ESPN yesterday, but you might have missed it because it was immediately buried behind a bunch of other stuff. Unfortunately, it’s subscriber only. Now that Dustin Ackley has shown he can handle the outfield post-Tommy John surgery, he’s climbed up draft boards and checks in at number two on KLaw’s list, behind only Stephen Strasburg. This year’s crop is very pitching heavy, and only four high school shortstops (a precious demographic) made the top 100. From the looks of it, it seems like Jiovanni Mier and Matt Davidson will be gone before the Yanks pick at number 29.
A tale of two Swishers
Oh, Nick Swisher, where have you gone?
Last night, the Yanks knocked out seven extra-base hits. They hammered a home run, two triples and four doubles against the Blue Jays pitchers, and only two of the starting nine failed to hit. A-Rod went 0-for-2 but walked three times, and Nick Swisher, once the 2009 Yankees’ most popular player, went 0-for-5.
For Swisher, Wednesday night’s 0-fer was another in a long line of disappointing May efforts. On the month, he is not doing much of anything. After an April in which he hit .312/.430/.714 with 7 HR and 19 RBI, Swisher has basically disappeared. In May, he is 3 for 30. He’s hitting .100 with a .243 OBP and a .233 slugging. He has just one double and one home run to complement his two RBI, and he has struck out 16 times this month. That isn’t what the Yankees hoped to get out of Swisher this month.
The Yankees right now have few options to pursue in dealing with Swisher. They acquired him for nothing and owe him a good deal of money over the next few seasons. They know what he can do, but they also know — as the 2008 White Sox could tell us — how bad he can be when things aren’t going his way. With Xavier Nady out, though, Swisher will get his hacks in every day.
I have my own pet theories. I think Swisher’s elbow, hurt last week on a hit-by-pitch, may be impacting his hitting more than he is letting on. I think the Yankee lineup, with Nady on the shelf, is far too depleted for Joe Girardi to bench Swisher. However, at this point, the Yanks’ right fielder is doing little to help the team.
Swisher’s numbers in May suffer from a clear sample size bias. He has just 30 ABs, and the season is still young. Still, as the injured Yankees tend to their wounds, the team needs Swisher to step up again. They can’t expect a an OPS over 1.100, but they need more than a .476 OPS mark. The team needs an impact player who can get on base and score some runs. Right now, Swisher isn’t cutting it, and it just goes to show last month’s hero can be this month’s goat.