This means war
It seems that some people don’t like that I rated Tyler Clippard as the Yanks 12th best prospect, but in fact, if it wasn’t for a string of elbow surgeries, he’d have been 15th.
No, I do not have a personal vendetta against the one you so affectionately call T-Clip, there’s just some things about the kid that concern me. But before I get into that, check out the 10 most similar players to Clippard via First Inning’s FIPro (which uses some fancy sabermetric stuff, which I’m sure some people will appreciate):
Beltran Perez
John Stephens
Jarod Matthews
Derrick Van Dusen
Steven Shell
Kris Honel
Jimmy Gobble
James Tiller
Bobby Keppel
Hmmm, interesting. And just who the hell are those people? Jimmy Gobble is the Royals swingman and is surprisingly good at what he does, but the rest of the lot? All but Tiller were once highly thought of prospects, but now they aren’t even has beens, they’re never wases. They all share one thing in common though: ace stats in the minors, average stuff, failed to reach their ceilings. Okay, so that’s 3 things in common.
EJ’s usually great with facts and such, but he makes a gross error here:
Tyler Clippard does not rely on deception.
Contrare, monfrare. I present to you Tyler Clippard’s delivery:
Minor League rosters
As Joe mentioned earlier, Triple-A Scranton’s roster is basically set. Same deal with Double-A Trenton and Low-A Charleston. I’m glad to the see the Yanks took the right approach with Eduardo Nunez and Austin Jackson, leaving them at Charleston so they can get themselves together as opposed to rushing them. I do think they’re making a mistake by sending Tim Norton to Charleston instead of High-A Tampa, but it will be fun to see him put up 6 IP, 2 H, 1 R, 0 ER, 1 BB, 9 K lines until he’s promoted.
Speaking of High-A Tampa, via the highly scientific process of elimination I can tell you that Tampa’s rotation is going to consist of George Kontos, Ian Kennedy, Joba Chamberlain, and 2 guys to be named later (I’m thinking Zack Kroenke and relievers until Lance Pendleton is ready in late April, but just imagine if Christian Garcia was healthy). The lineup will have (in no particular order) Colin Curtis, Marcos Vechionacci, Jose Tabata, Ben Jones, Juan Miranda and Tim Battle, amongst others.
Forget about Scranton, that team in Tampa is going to be stacked.  Like 2005 Jacksonville Suns stacked.
Which team would you choose?
We usually leave matters like this to Mike, but I saw Scranton’s Opening Day roster, and I couldn’t resist.
Phil Hughes | SP | Zach Duke |
---|---|---|
Tyler Clippard | SP | Ian Snell |
Ross Ohlendorf | SP | Paul Maholm |
Matt DeSalvo | SP | Tom Gorzelanny |
Steven Jackson | SP | Tony Armas, Jr. |
Chris Britton | SP | Solomon Torres |
T.J. Beam | SP | Matt Capps |
Colter Bean | SP | Damaso Marte |
Justin Pope | SP | Jonah Bayliss |
Charlie Manning | SP | Juan Perez |
Ben Kozlowski | SP | Jon Wadin |
Raul Chavez | C | Ronny Paulino |
Eric Duncan | 1B | Adam LaRoche |
Chris Basak | 2B | Jose Castillo |
Alberto Gonzalez | SS | Jack Wilson |
Andy Phillips | 3B | Freddie Sanchez |
Kevin Reese | LF | Jason Bay |
Kevin Thompson | CF | Chris Duffy |
Bronson Sardinha | RF | Xavier Nady |
It may net me a worse record this year, but overall, I’m taking the team on the left. As much as I like Duke, Gorzelanny, and Capps, Scranton’s rotation has a much higher ceiling.
I would have done this comparison with the Nationals…but that would have been a slam dunk.
And we thought Carl Pavano was bad
At least he didn’t do this:
Minor league transactions
One of my favorite things to do twice a month is scroll through Baseball America’s minor league transactions page. It’s always fun to see where former Yankees are currently finding/losing employment (Travis Lee was signed and released by the Nats so fast that both moves show up on the same page), as well as scroll around for potential scrap heap pickups, like sinkerballing reliever Bob Zimmermann, who the Angels just cut loose.
Anywho, here’s some highlights from the most recent set of moves:
- The Yanks cut ties with LHPs Abel Gomez and RJ Swindle, OFer Estee Harris, and 1B Karl Amonite. They also marked the end of an era by releasing OF Jon Poterson.
Yanks open with a win, 9-5
If you want the game recap, go read the live blog. It’ll only take you an hour, I swear. Anyway, onto the WPA analysis.
The consensus is that Carl Pavano didn’t pitch too poorly, and I tend to agree with that, though WPA does not. He ended up with -.222 for the game, meaning he took the Yankees 20 percent further away from a win. The Upton single in the second hurt a bit, costing him .115. This is where WPA gets very tough, though; I had already debited Jeter for the error that allowed Iwamura to reach base. Do I further debit him for the run he eventually scored?
The Dukes homer cost him another .103, though the Baldelli single was his worst pitch of the day, putting him a further .128 in the hole.
The Yanks picked him up later, though. The biggest gain of the game was — big surprise — Jeter’s two-run single to tie the game (.189). Giambi singling home Alex to take the lead was .118, and that was all the Yanks would need. For sealing the game, Abreu and Alex received .059 and .037, respectively.
Farnsworth headed up the pitching end of the WPA, racking up a total of .120 (it’s easy to calculate relievers). For Vizcaino’s effortless outing, he was credited .089.
A regular features with the WPA graphs last year was a table listing each player’s contribution for the game. Unfortunately, it is just not going to happen this year. I’ve had to switch from the excellent spreadsheet that Dave Studeman from Baseball Graphs and The Hardball Times created to Walk Off Bunt’s WPA calculator. Scoring the game isn’t a ton harder (a few formulas in Excel does the trick), but I’m not nearly advanced enough to have everything sorted by player. If I find someone with the know-how and the time to develop a simple Excel program to help me out, maybe they’ll return. But for now, we’ll just go with the biggest plays of the game and other little tidbits.