River Avenue Blues

Quick hits: Wells, toilets and YES

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No, this isn’t some odd Sesame Street style game of “One of These Doesn’t Belong.” It is, instead, three short stories all rolled into one post.

David Wells to join TBS broadcast

Outspoken former Yankee David Wells has signed a multiyear deal to join the TBS baseball crew. He’ll be serving as an in-game analysts for TBS’ baseball broadcasts throughout the year. We’ll have to see if he can announce with a hangover as well as he can pitch with one. Ostensibly, he’s replacing Harold Reynolds in the booth, but those are big shoes to fill. I’m going to judge him based on whether or not he thinks Joba should be in the starting rotation.

YES, on FiOS, to be available nationally

Good news with a bad twist for Yankee fans living outside of the New York area: The YES Network has become the first regional sports network to earn national distribution of sorts. As Maury Brown reported earlier today, the HD version of the Yankees Entertainment and Sports Network will be available nationally on Verizon FiOS’ Extreme HD packages. That does not, however, include game broadcasts for either the Yankees or Nets. Baseball’s territorial rules do not permit it.

Toilets for Everyone and an Accessible Stadium

With New York City officially opening two new baseball stadiums this week, the local papers are going all out in their coverage. Yesterday, The Times covered the topic of toilets. New Yankee Stadium will have 30 percent more toilet fixtures than the old park, with the following breakdown: 369 women’s toilets; 98 toilets and 298 urinals for men; and 78 unisex bathrooms for families and luxury suite patrons. I can personally attest to the bathrooms at the new stadium. They’re clean, roomy and much, much nicer than those at the old park.

In other stadium news, Yanks’ COO Lonn Trost and the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York touted the accessibility of the new stadium this afternoon. While the new park had to be ADA-compliant, the federal government has praised the new stadium as going above and beyond the call of duty. Most notable is the accessible paths to the field. Fans in wheelchairs can now enter the field during stadium tours.

What’s wrong with Chien-Ming Wang?

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The Yanks are buried 2.5 games back of the first place Blue Jays with only 155 games left to play (/hyperbole), but perhaps the biggest problem facing them right now is Chien-Ming Wang. The incumbent ace has been absolutely brutal in his two starts this year, allowing (gulp) 21 baserunners and 15 earned runs in just four and two-third innings pitched. That makes Sidney Ponson look like Roy frickin’ Halladay. The more troubling part is how Wang just doesn’t look like himself at all; his pitches are all up in the zone, his velocity is down, and his sinker isn’t sinking.

This might not be something that just started last week either. Wang had a 1.56 WHIP and a 6.00 ERA in his previous six starts before lisfrancing his foot last summer, suggesting that something might have been wrong going back as far as last year. Of course that ten month layoff doesn’t help any, but we can still look at the data to see if we can find anything. Wang did have a good but not great Spring Training (21.2 IP, 25 H, 16 R, 10 ER, 4 BB, 10 K, 3 HR), however no one in their right mind would use Spring Training stats to evaluate anything, especially for a player with a signficant track record.

Let’s compare three versions of Chien-Ming Wang using Pitch f/x:

  1. Pre-May 18th, 2008: This was the light’s out CMW last year, when he had a 2.90 ERA and a 1.17 WHIP through his first nine starts and 59 IP.
  2. Post-May 18th, 2008: Wang had his first of a series of clunkers on May 18th last year, which marks the point of that 6.00 ERA/1.56 WHIP era I mentioned earlier. I fail at labeling, but this version includes his May 18th start.
  3. 2009: This year’s pair of starts, i.e. the really, really crappy version of CMW.

I’m going to focus on Wang’s two main pitches in this analysis: his sinking fastball and slider. He’s also been known to throw changeups, splitters, and even the occasional curveball, but because he throws them so rarely it’s not worth the time and effort to take a deeper look at them. I’m going to start with the pitch trajectories as always, and to make life easier I gave fastballs and sliders their own individual graphs. Make sure you remember to click each graph for a larger, squinting at a computer screen has to be bad for your eyes.

Fun starts after the jump.

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Who’s contributing to the Yanks offense?

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The Yankees have scored 40 runs over their first seven games, a beefy 5.71 runs per game. Extrapolate that over the course of the season and you get 925 runs, 24 more than the league leader from 2008. Of course, seven games does not make a sample, so it’s unlikely that the Yankees keep up this pace. Then again, they’ve been without their best hitter all season and have been sans their second-best hitter for the past three games. So perhaps 900 runs is still a possibility.

The strangest part about the Yanks’ offensive success is that so many players are hitting poorly. As mentioned in last night’s recap, the top of the order has been pretty terrible lately. Derek Jeter has a line of .207/.358/.310 on the season and is one for his last 20. Johnny Damon has a .227/.308/.318 line and is two for his last 16. So the guys atop the order aren’t getting on base to set up the guys in the middle of the order. Yet the Yanks continue to score runs.

At the other end of the lineup things look just as bad, perhaps worse. No. 8 hitter Cody Ransom has been downright terrible thisyear, posting a line of .083/.154/.125. Since his double in the season’s second game, Ransom went hitless for his next 17 at bats before driving in a run last night. He’s been on base all of four times this season, with two hits and two walks. Brett Gardner is hitting .227/.261/.273 with just one walk on the season. Those are four guys, who hit consecutively, posting black holes. Add to that Hideki Matsui’s .125/.192/.292 line and that’s five straight black holes.

Thankfully, the middle of the order has seen a bit more success. Nick Swisher has more than earned his playing time, as he’s hitting .450/.542/1.150 with three homers and three doubles. In fact, Swisher is so good that he has more home runs than singles. More doubles than singles, too. Jorge Posada has come back guns blazing, hitting .350/.409/.700 on the young season. Robinson Cano has shown a bit better plate discipline so far, and has posted a .385/.467/.538 line. Xavier Nady has taken just one walk in 26 plate appearances, but is still hitting .280 with four doubles.

Swisher, Nady, Posada, and Cano have powered the Yanks through the first seven games. Now it’s time for the other guys to step up. Those four can’t keep up this torrid pace forever. They’re going to regress, and when they do it’s going to be up to Jeter, Damon, Matsui, and Gardner to pick up the slack. Ransom’s slack, of course, will be picked up by A-Rod in due time. Just imagine how many runs they can score then.

On A-Rod’s ‘tunnel vision’

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With the Yanks in Tampa this week and A-Rod’s arrival at the Yanks’ complex yesterday, yesterday was a great day to check in on the rehabbing slugger. For the most part, A-Rod’s day was largely uneventful. The third baseman played catch, took a bunch of swings and participated in some other baseball activities.

At one point, A-Rod stopped to talk to the gaggle of reporters who gathered to watch him work out. It had, after all, been a while since A-Rod had faced the press, and outside of some gossip about A-Rod’s latest fling, his name hadn’t found its way into the press, bold-faced or otherwise.

There is, it seems, a reason for it. A-Rod is trying to put on his blinders and enact his own version of baseball tunnel vision. “In a funny way,” A-Rod said, “Colorado has been unbelievable. It’s been a blessing in disguise. Not only did I go down there to get my hip fixed, but I also got an opportunity to relax and take a time out to re-think, re-evaluate and re-focus my career and what’s important. It also gives you an opportunity to cut some of the fat. I understand my responsibility and I’m excited to face the challenge.”

There’s an initial tendency to make a lot out of this statement. After all, shouldn’t A-Rod have “cut some of the fat” a long time ago? Shouldn’t he already have baseball blinders on? Does he really need a six-week rehab to gain that tunnel vision focus?

But reality is not that simple. Like the rest of us, A-Rod is human, and over the last year, he’s been through a divorce and some fairly stunning steroid allegations. We expected a man making $280 million to be better than all of that, but it will wear down on A-Rod as much as it would wear down on the rest of us.

For eight months, professional baseball players partake in a grueling game. We call it a marathon and not a sprint, but it’s closer to a slog than anything else. It’s emotionally and physically taxing, and while we sit and enjoy it, the players life out its ups and downs every day.

I appreciate what A-Rod has to say. If he’s truly intent on focusing on just baseball this year — as Selena Roberts’ book comes out, as crowds gear up to boo him — then good for him. But with over 155 games left in the year, that’s a tough claim for anyone to make.

Teixeira expects to play tonight

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Last Wednesday in Baltimore, Mark Teixeira made a great diving stop on a scorched ground ball and jammed his wrist in the process. He has missed the last three days with what the team is calling tendinitis but sounds to me like a mild sprain. While Nick Swisher has filled in admirably at first, the Yanks got some good news on Teixeira yesterday. His MRI came back negative, and according to Bryan Hoch, Teixeira is planning on playing tonight. As Nick Swisher has done nothing but hit, Teixeira’s return should push either Hideki Matsui or Xavier Nady to the bench. However, if Brett Gardner or Melky Cabrera don’t show signs of offensive life, the Yanks may begin to consider Swisher for center.

Nick Swisher is the greatest Yankee of all time

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Nick Swisher once won a game of Connect Four in three moves.

When you go to see Nick Swisher play, you have to buy two tickets. One for the game, and one for the gun show.

Nick Swisher’s intangibles are tangible.

Nick Swisher let the dogs out.

Carlos Delgado stood for the National Anthem because Nick Swisher told him too.

I would go on, but we only have so much bandwidth. Once again Swisher the best player on the team last night, hitting his team leading third homer while being the only pitcher to not allow a run. Forget chasing the MVP trophy, Swish is going after the Cy Young too.

Here’s a look at his pitch trajectories, via Pitch f/x. Remember to click on each graph for a larger view.

Bird's Eye View

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Not even worth a double entendre headline

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I always wonder what a team thinks after losing a game like this. Sure, they talk to the media about how much it hurts, but they’re likely holding back from their true feelings. Can you imagine being a professional athlete and being utterly decimated by your opponent? What happened tonight was pathetic, and every single player in the Yanks clubhouse feels it. The only question we can ask now is of what they’re going to do about it.

There’s no reason to break down this game. It all came undone in the first two innings and only got worse throughout. The only way to properly recap this game is through bullet points.

  • Not only has Chien-Ming Wang been a problem over his first two starts, but he could be a major, major problem down the road if this isn’t just some dead-arm period. Guys weren’t tattooing him like this in Spring Training, so we can still hold out hope that there’s an underlying issue and that Wang will overcome it. To those who think that his lack of strikeouts are catching up to him: Do you think he succeeded over the past few seasons by throwing belt-high sinkers with no movement?
  • Once Wang left after 1+ innings, we all knew the bullpen was in for a horrible night. We got just about the worst case scenario. Albaladejo threw 60 pitches and Edwar tossed 51, meaning they’re both unavailable for at least tomorrow, possibly Wednesday. Phil Coke used 38 pitches to get through one inning — though it was prolonged by the miscommunication between Cano and Pena. — so after the past two days he can’t go tomorrow. Things could get rough over the next few days, without a day off in sight.
  • Chances of the Yanks making a roster move to call up a reliever: basically 100 percent. The bad news is that the prime candidate for promotion, David Robertson, pitched three innings yesterday, so he won’t be of much help. Coke will almost certainly be demoted, with Anthony Claggett or Stephen Jackson taking his place. We could see both if they demote Jon Albaladejo, too (not because of performance, but rather because of the pressing need for bullpen arms).
  • From the “there has to be a bright side” dept.: Of 10 Yankees baserunners, five scored. Nady’s DP meant the team left only four men on base.
  • Is Nick Swisher everyone’s favorite Yankee yet? Not only did he put the Bombers on the board with a fourth-inning homer, but he nearly hit another later on. Oh, and the whole pitching thing was pretty cool — despite the fact that I’m pretty sure nothing good has ever come from a position player pitching. He was their most effective arm, for whatever that’s worth.
  • Since homering in the 9th in Baltimore last Wednesday, Jeter is one for his last 20 with just one walk. The hot start didn’t last too long. Not helping matters is Johnny Damon, who is 2 for his last 16 with two walks. That’s not how you want to lead off your lineup. Swisher and Jorge need men on base.
  • The Rays only failed to score in two innings. Nick Swisher pitched one of them. That is all.

We get to do it all over again today when A.J. Burnett tries to give the bullpen a break. He’ll face off against Matt Garza. Bold prediction: it will be a better game than last night.