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River Ave. Blues » Brian Gordon » Page 2

The year of magical pitching

June 18, 2011 by Stephen Rhoads 29 Comments

You could almost taste it. Cliff Lee was going to sign, Andy was going to come back, Hughes would take a step forward, the bullpen would stay healthy and the Yankees would have one of the most dominant pitching staffs in baseball and march towards a 100-win season. It sounds idealistic in retrospect, but at certain junctures this winter it didn’t seem all that far off. Of course, it didn’t quite play out that way. Cliff Lee signed up for the inferior transit system and culture of Philadelphia, Andy retired, and Hughes got hurt and took half of the bullpen with him. And then something funny happened. Brian Cashman made a bunch of little moves, earning screams from the haters, and a lot of them actually worked. I say this tongue-in-cheek, but in 2011 the new market inefficiency has been whatever Cashman says it is.

In the bullpen, Cashman picked up Luis Ayala on a minor-league deal, and while Ayala did make a brief trip to the disabled list in April he’s pitched very well out of the pen. He’s given the Yankees 22.2 innings, giving up 19 hits, 8 walks and striking out 18. He’s getting groundballs at a very nice rate, almost 50%, and he has an ERA of 1.25. Even though his BABIP is relatively normal he has a super-high strand rate and a lower HR/FB ratio, which means his xFIP of 3.77 is likely more predictive of his future performance than his ERA. Regardless, he’s been a useful cog for the team so far nonetheless. The other surprising reliever has been Cory Wade, profiled extensively by Mike here. As Mike noted, he has obvious limitations but he’s a very nice minor league depth move at this time of the year. He’s found his way to the major league roster and he’s pitched perfectly so far, allowing no hits over 3 innings and striking out 3.

In the rotation the hot story right now is Brian Gordon, who pitched 5.1 innings of two run ball against Texas on Thursday, walking three and striking out three. Some wanted Hector Noesi to take this spot, but the organization didn’t feel that he was able to provide the necessary length for a starter given that he has been pitching in relief. Others wanted one of David Phelps, D.J. Mitchell or Adam Warren didn’t get the opportunity to start the major league level. In a piece reviewing Gordon’s performance at Baseball Prospectus, Jay Jaffe quoted his fellow Pinstriped Bible author Steven Goldman as getting quite upset about this, saying, “The only possible message is that they will never be good enough, that the Yankees are so deeply suspicious of their own prospects that they would rather take someone else’s trash over their own treasure.” Yet as Jaffe so aptly noted, this isn’t the only possible message the organization is sending the young bucks:

The glass-half-full take on Gordon’s addition is that at no cost, Cashman alertly added another arm to the organizational larder at a time when the Yankees have two starters and two key relievers on the disabled list, with zero guarantee that Colon, Phil Hughes, and Rafael Soriano will be effective and bulletproof the rest of the way

The other two scrap heap rotation pickups are obvious. The first is Freddy Garcia. Despite the fact that he always seems on the verge of getting lit up, Freddy Garcia has been an entirely serviceable fifth starter for the Yankees this year. He has a strikeout rate of 6.38/9 and a walk rate of 3.25/9 to go along with his ERA of 3.63. He doesn’t get a lot of fly balls, and so he lives and dies by his ability to command the ball well and command it low in the zone. He’s managed to throw 72 innings for the Yankees so far this year, and he threw 157 for the White Sox last year, so Sweaty Freddy may be able to keep chugging along all summer long.

And of course there’s Bartolo Colon, arguably the best pitcher on the Yankees until he got hurt. That isn’t meant as disrespect to staff ace CC Sabathia, but it’s remarkable how similar their lines have been. Sabathia has a 3.28 ERA, 2.85 FIP, 3.50 xFIP, a 2.89 K/BB ratio and a 47.3 GB%, whereas Colon has a 3.10 ERA, a 3.34 FIP, a 2.99 xFIP, a 4.00 K/BB ratio and a 47.3 GB%. Colon has struck out more than a batter per nine innings more than Sabathia, but Sabathia has an obvious edge on innings over Colon. But whether or not he compares favorably to Sabathia only demonstrates how spectacular Colon has been on the year. For $900,000 the Yankees have gotten some of the best pitching in baseball this year. To say that he’s exceeded expectations is an understatement. He’s been the $2 scratch-off ticket that wins you a cool grand.

After an offseason that saw the Yankees throw yet another gigantic contract at yet another highly regarded free agent, only to see him go elsewhere, Brian Cashman has shown a remarkable ability to create and preserve depth in the rotation and the bullpen by picking up starters on the cheap and snatching other extraneous pitchers off the lower rungs of the depth charts of other teams. 2011 is a season in which a lot could have gone wrong so far. At times it feels like this team is walking a high wire. But it’s also a season in which a lot of what Brian Cashman has touched has turned to gold. It’s true that you don’t count on these things lasting forever. Is Cory Wade really a shutdown reliever? Is Brian Gordon anything but an organizational arm capable of filling in for a few starts? Will Sweaty Freddy’s stream of junkballs really baffle hitters for another hundred and forty innings? It doesn’t seem likely, and that’s why it’s good to hear that the front office isn’t resting on its laurels and counting on the current crew to take them into October. But it shouldn’t obscure the fact that the contributions of the cast-offs have proven vital to this team’s early season success.

Filed Under: Pitching Tagged With: Bartolo Colon, Brian Gordon, Cory Wade, Freddy Garcia, Luis Ayala

Yankees add Gordon to roster, demote Pendleton, release Sanit

June 16, 2011 by Mike 45 Comments

Update (12:25pm): Via Peter Botte, the Yankees have flat out released Amaury Sanit to make room on the 40-man roster for Gordon. Releasing a man while he’s injured? Ouch. At least he’ll get a Major League salary for the rest of the season.

Original Post (11:55am): Via Dan Barbarisi, the Yankees have officially added Brian Gordon to the roster, and it appears as though Lance Pendleton is being sent down in the corresponding move. He was seen packing his bags. I’m not sure what the 40-man roster move is yet, though I supposed Pendleton could have been designated for assignment rather than just sent down.

Filed Under: Asides, Transactions Tagged With: Brian Gordon, Lance Pendleton

What’s a Brian Gordon?

June 15, 2011 by Mike 82 Comments

(milb.com)

Word got out last night that the Yankees not only agreed to sign some 32-year-old right-hander named Brian Gordon, but they agreed to sign him to a big league contract and have put him in the mix to start against the Rangers on Thursday. Yeah, this move came completely out of nowhere, so let’s take some time to introduce you to the newest member of the Yankees’ rotation, or potential member anyway.

Originally selected in the seventh round of the 1997 draft by the Diamondbacks, Gordon was an outfielder when he came out of Round Rock High School in Texas. He steadily climbed the minor league ladder with Arizona, making it all the way to Triple-A before becoming a minor league free agent after the 2003 season. In over 2,900 plate appearances in the D’Backs system, Gordon hit a very respectable .280/.323/.446 with 63 homers and a 22.8% strikeout rate. He hooked on with the Astros the next year, hitting a serviceable .241/.310/.488 with 16 homers in just 340 plate appearances for their Triple-A team. That was the end of Gordon’s career as a position player; he went to Houston and suggested he give pitching a whirl rather than retire. He’s been doing that ever since.

Gordon, 28 at the time, made his pitching debut with the Astros’ Double-A affiliate in 2007. He struck out 51 and walked just 14 unintentionally in 61 IP (39 appearances) in his pitching debut, posting a fine 3.25 ERA. He made one appearance with Houston’s Double-A affiliate in 2008 before they released him in early-April. Gordon caught on with the Rangers, pitched to a 3.51 ERA in 95 relief innings for their Double-A and Triple-A affiliates, then earned his first and only big league call-up that September. He gave up a single to the first batter he faced as a Major Leaguer (Dusty Ryan), retired the second (Curtis Granderson), and then finished the season with four scoreless innings for Texas.

Another solid season for the Rangers’ Triple-A affiliate in 2009 (3.49 ERA in 77.1 IP) was following by a fine season for the Phillies’ Triple-A affiliate in 2010 (3.46 ERA in 78 IP), but not another taste of the big leagues. Gordon returned to Philadelphia’s top farm team in his usual relief role this season, but when injuries to the big league rotation sent Vance Worley to the show, Gordon told the Triple-A Lehigh Valley coaching staff that he wanted the opportunity to work as a starter. Since moving into the rotation in April, he’s struck out 53 against just five walks in 51.1 IP with a 1.23 ERA. Over his last three starts, Gordon has whiffed 31 of 72 batters he’s faced (43.1%) with no fewer than nine strikeouts each time out. He had an opt-out clause in his contract that was contingent on him finding a big league job elsewhere, which is what the Yankees are giving him. Since he made his last start on Saturday, the newest Yankee lines up perfectly for Thursday’s game.

As for the scouting report, Gordon told Jack Curry lasts night that he’s a six pitch pitcher that relies on command more than overpowering stuff. PitchFX data from 2008 says that his three fastballs (four-seamer, two-seamer, cutter) sit in the high-80’s and occasionally touch the low-90’s while his slider will run in low-80’s, his curve in the low-70’s, and his splitter in low-80’s. His swing and miss rate has climbed from 9.3% in 2009 to 10.1% in 2010 to 11.6% in 2011, though his ground ball rate has sat below 40% for the last few years. That could be problematic in Yankee Stadium, although he hasn’t demonstrated much of a platoon split in his relatively brief career as a pitcher.

The Yankees have had some luck with scrap heap pickups like this over the last few years, and I get why they made this move. Gordon’s having a fine year and he adds depth, plus starting him on Thursday will allow them to keep one of the kids (Hector Noesi, David Phelps, whoever) away from a powerhouse Texas Rangers’ offense. Given his bullpen experience, he could easily slide back into that role if Noesi steps up or if Bartolo Colon and/or Phil Hughes start getting healthy. They could certainly use the help there, if nothing else. And heck, with interleague play coming up, his position player experience might allow him to serve as an extra pinch hitter in NL parks (.275/.321/.460 career in more than 4,100 minor league plate appearances). Gordon’s not going to save the Yankees’ pitching staff, not by any means, but he’s an upgrade over Lance Pendleton and Jeff Marquez on the margins of the roster, and every little bit helps.

Note: Mark Feinsand is reporting that the Gordon signing can not become official until 6pm ET time today. If one of the Phillies’ starters gets hurt between now and then, they could still call him up and the deal with the Yankees is off. Since Cole Hamels’ back tightened up last night, there’s a non-zero chance I may have written this post prematurely.

Filed Under: Pitching Tagged With: Brian Gordon

Yankees sign Brian Gordon, may start Thursday

June 14, 2011 by Mike 49 Comments

Update (9:27pm): Jack Curry spoke to Gordon, who clarified that his Thursday start is not set in stone. “I don’t know if it’s 100 %,” said Gordon. “I was told be mentally prepared to start on Thursday. That could change.”

Original Post (7:53pm): Via Ken Davidoff and Bob Brookover, the Yankees have signed right-hander Brian Gordon, who had been pitching for the Phillies’ Triple-A affiliate. He will be added to the big league roster as a condition of his opt-out clause with Philadelphia and start for the Yankees on Thursday. That would be his regular turn, conveniently.

Gordon, 32, has pitched extremely well this year. He owns a 2.55 FIP in nine starts and three relief appearances (55.1 IP) with Triple-A Lehigh Valley, striking out 56 and walked just seven. His 38% ground ball rate is scary though. Gordon has all of four big league innings to his credit, all coming with the Rangers back in 2008. Brian Cashman told Mark Feinsand earlier today that they were leaning towards David Phelps to make that start, but Gordon represented a veteran alternative. Interesting move.

Filed Under: Asides Tagged With: Brian Gordon

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