The Yankees don’t know where they’ll be playing or which team they’ll draw for the American League Division Series, but they do know who will start Game 1. As Joe Girardi just told reporters, Carsten Charles Sabathia will get the ball. Shocking, I know.
The shortsightedness of starting Sabathia
Joe Girardi announced after last night’s game that CC Sabathia will in fact make tonight’s start on his normal turn rather than be pushed back to Friday, which would have set him up perfectly to start Game One of the ALDS on normal rest. Instead, the Yanks are prioritizing their magic number of one over setting up the playoff rotation. There’s almost no other way to view this move as anything but panic and shockingly bad decision making.
Like I said, the magic number is one. All the Yankees have to do to finally clinch that damn playoff spot is win one of their last five regular season games or have the Red Sox lose one their six remaining games. There’s no need to pray for a miracle here, no need to go out and make such shortsighted decisions. I know that everyone on the team has maintained that they still have their eyes on the division and home field advantage, but get real. The Rays hold a virtual one-and-a-half game lead (because of the tie breaker) and time has simply run out on that front. This recent 6-14 stretch has ruined any AL East crown aspirations.
So what happens now is that Sabathia starts tonight’s game, then has a full eight days off before starting Game One of the ALDS next Wednesday. They could do something ridiculous like have him throw 40-50 pitches on Sunday as a tune-up, but who knows if or how that will work. That’s why starting him tonight is so asinine. Instead of starting him Friday and getting the eight day’s rest out of the way early they’re doing it backwards and rolling the dice that the long layoff won’t effect their ace too much. That seems like a mighty big risk to take given the importance of next Wednesday’s start.
There’s no question that Sabathia could use a little extra rest before the playoffs, everyone can, it’s just a matter of when he gets it. He’s two outs away from last year’s total of 230 regular season innings with one start left. Because of their enormous division lead, the Yanks were able to give all of their starters extra days off last September, with CC’s last four starts coming on no fewer than five day’s rest. There has been no such luxury this year, with just one of his last four starts coming on more than the usual four day’s rest. After 266.1 combined innings (regular season and playoffs) last year, the Yanks have been unable to give their ace a little bit of a breather down the stretch. There’s nothing they can do about it now, they just have to hope for the best next Wednesday.
The alternative to Sabathia tonight would be Javy Vazquez, who hasn’t had a good start in what feels like months. Even if he were to lose they’d still be able to fall back on Andy Pettitte tomorrow to clinch that playoff spot, or Phil Hughes over the weekend. Like I said, all it takes is one win or one Red Sox loss the rest of the way to lock up that playoff berth. If the worst case plays out the and the two teams need to play a Game 163 to determine the Wild Card, well then the Yankees have far, far bigger problems that setting up their playoff rotation.
Who knows, maybe Sabathia went to Girardi and rest of the decision makers and demanded the ball for tonight’s game. He’s proven to be a rather dogged competitor that always puts the team first, but that’s a situation where the parents have to take the lollipop away from the kid. They have to do what’s best for the team rather than meet CC’s wants, and in this case the most important thing for the Yankees is to get their playoff rotation in order. Starting him tonight does the exact opposite.
The Yanks have been playing like garbage for close to three weeks now and like a .500 team for two months, and it’s turned up the heat in the kitchen a little bit. They still have a 99.8% chance of making the playoffs, and get that final 0.2% seems to have consumed the decision making. Girardi’s managerial style has flip flopped between resting players for the long haul and slamming his foot on the pedal to win this month, but this is a scenario where he and everyone else involved needs to lay back and look at the big picture. The lack of … I almost want to call it planning and foresight, is stunning.
A lot of things have gone wrong over the last few weeks, particularly with the starting pitching. Vazquez lost his job to a rookie that struggles to complete five innings, A.J. Burnett has been historically bad, and Andy Pettitte’s return from a groin injury has been half good, half awful. They have one sure thing in the starting rotation right now, and that’s CC Sabathia, but they sure are doing one hell of job in trying to screw that up too.
Yankees name Moseley Sunday’s starter, other rotation changes coming
Via Bryan Hoch, the Yankees have announced that Dustin Moseley, not Phil Hughes, will start Sunday night’s game against the Red Sox. Hughes will instead start on Wednesday, and that will be his final start of the regular season. He’s at 169.1 innings right now, so that last start will get him right around 175, where we all expected he’d finish. Hard to complain about this (unless you have tickets to Sunday’s game), might as well save those bullets for a game that counts.
Update: Ben Shpigel says that the team is planning some more changes to the rotation as well, but nothing will go into effect until after they clinch a playoff spot. CC Sabathia’s next start would be pushed to Friday (as opposed to Tuesday), lining him up perfectly for Game One of the ALDS. Based on that, it seems clear that Hughes will be the fourth starter in the postseason and not the third.
Yanks lose early lead, drop finale to Rays
That was not the way a pitchers’ duel is supposed to unfold. It looked good for a few innings, but by the sixth it had come undone. CC suddenly lost it, paving the way for a seven-run inning. Joba Chamberlain couldn’t bail him out, and that was essentially the game. It led to a split and a season series loss to the Rays.
Biggest Hit: The entire sixth inning
It’s one thing to get beat by a team like the Rays. It’s quite another to get beat by the bottom of their lineup. The top guys set the table, but after striking out Ben Zobrist Sabathia should have had an easy time retiring Rocco Baldelli and Willy Aybar — especially considering how well he had pitched to that point.
It started with a dribbler by Rocco Baldelli. The Yanks got bitten by the poorest of poor luck, an infield single and an RBI. That brought the game to within one, but the game didn’t feel in jeopardy. That ball barely traveled 60 feet. But then Willy Aybar followed it up with a single to tie it.
The next two at-bats were positively inexcusable. Walking the eight and nine hitters, and particularly walking the ninth hitter to bring in a run, is — I’m going to use the word — unacceptable. That’s not something that the ace of a staff does unless something is wrong. I’m not sure if CC was just tired by that point or what, but he was not the same guy who threw the first five innings.
Joba then came in to face B.J. Upton and gave up the biggest WPA swing in the Rays’ favor. He doubled over Granderson’s head, leading to two runs and extending the lead to three. Two batters later Carl Crawford cleared the bases with a single and put this one all but out of reach.
Blown chances
When a team scores just three runs on 13 base runners it suggests missed opportunities. That was exactly the case for the Yankees last night. Entering the bottom of the fifth Marcus Thames’s homer still represented the game’s only runs. The Yanks added one when Greg Golson doubled and Nick Swisher drove him in, and it looked like they were ready to tack on more.
With just one out in the inning A-Rod walked to load the bases. That gave the Yankees two chances to score, but they couldn’t come through on either. Robinson Cano went 2 for 5 in the game, but that wasn’t one of them. Thames then fell behind 0-2 and ended up striking out on a curveball in the dirt. The Rays would rally the next half inning.
By the bottom of the six the score was 8-3, giving the Yanks little chance of coming back. But they did manage to load the bases with two outs. Mark Teixeira jumped on a first-pitch fastball, and while Michael Kay got a bit excited it only amounted to a long fly out.
Miscellany
Javier Vazquez provided comic relief with his seventh-inning performance with three consecutive plunked batters. Somehow he managed to retire six of the next seven he faced.
That’s all I’ve got.
Box and graph
Yeah, yeah, yeah, we get it.
More at FanGraphs. Also, the box score.
Up Next
Boston comes to town for the final three home games of the season. Andy Pettitte and Josh Beckett will go tomorrow night.
The question of the Game 2 starter
It wasn’t always like this. Earlier in the year it appeared that the Yankees had their strongest rotation in years, even with Javy Vazquez’s troubled start. But then things started falling apart. A.J. Burnett pitched five times in June and allowed more runs, 29, than innings pitched, 23. The league got a grip on Phil Hughes’s fastball. The situation got better as Javy Vazquez started pitching well, but then they got worse when he fell apart. Andy Pettitte getting hurt was just the last act in a complete rotation downturn.
The situation has improved lately, but the Yankees still have questions about all of their starters after CC Sabathia. Andy Pettitte helped ease some of those issues with a solid start on Sunday, and Phil Hughes continues to battle through starts even when his stuff or his command isn’t the sharpest. A.J. Burnett, too, has shown improvement of late. He might have shown even more improvement, too, if not for rain delays that shortened a couple of his recent starts. But as of now it appears that Sabathia and Pettitte are the clear choices to start Games 1 and 2.
Except that’s not what the Yankees are thinking. During interviews yesterday Girardi expressed a desire to repeat the 2009 playoff rotation, with Sabathia at the head and Burnett following him. The idea, I assume, is to break up the lefties. But given the composition of the rotation, that doesn’t seem like a great idea. If the Yankees want their best pitchers making the most appearances, they’ll ditch the idea of separating pitchers by handedness and just go with their best pitchers.
Sabathia and Pettitte, though they throw with the same hand, are not similar pitchers. This should make enough of a difference that their handedness should not matter. Put another way, what is more important: a theoretical advantage in splitting up starters, or a real advantage in having your best two pitchers not only throw the first two games, but also potential key games later in the series? With the way the ALDS is laid out, the Yankees could start Sabathia on short rest in Game 4 and go back to Pettitte on normal rest in a potential Game 5.
The second strange aspect of Girardi’s and Eiland’s desire to have Burnett start Game 2 is his potential for a blow-up. Moshe covered this topic earlier in the week. Why would the Yankees put themselves in a position where they might lose a game because their starter gives up five runs in the first? If the Yankees cannot be talked out of splitting up their lefties, it should be Hughes, and not Burnett, who gets the ball in Game 2. Hughes has had his struggles, but he has also shown the ability to battle through a lineup and keep his team in the game for five or six innings.
Starting with Sabathia and Pettitte also helps the Yankees remain flexible. If they head into Game 4 up two games to one, they can use either Hughes or Burnett, whoever didn’t start Game 3, and hold Sabathia for a potential Game 5. If they’re down two games to one they can throw Sabathia on short rest and still have Pettitte for Game 5. If they use Burnett in Game 2 then they’re basically committing to stick with Sabathia in a potential Game 5. Using Sabathia on three days’ rest might not seem ideal, but it might be a necessary tactic if the Yankees face elimination. Having him backed up by Pettitte in the final game makes the decision a bit easier.
I’m not aware of a study that examines the effects of starting back-to-back left-handers, but intuitively it doesn’t seem like a bad idea. It doesn’t sound right that hitters would somehow fare better against the second lefty just because they faced a pitcher of the same handedness in the previous game. I hope the Yankees don’t fall victim to the traditional thinking. They have two pitchers who have stood out for them. They should get the ball to start each series. It gives the team the best chance to win.
Yanks offense returns for 11-3 rout
Put the man on and get him in. The Yankees had the first half of this formula all month, but they haven’t executed the second. Last night they took care of business, putting 17 runners on base and leaving just seven of them stranded. That helped CC Sabathia through a shaky first few innings. He settled down as the game went on and ultimately was awarded his 20th victory of the season. He cared so much that he was in the clubhouse when the team recorded the final out.
The Yanks had control of this game from the beginning. They loaded the bases on a hit by pitch, a walk, and a single in the first, and then brought around two runner on a Jorge Posada single. Then in the second they got another on a sac fly. While the Orioles did creep back into it with a run in both the second and third, that’s as close as they’d get the rest of the way. The Yankees answered with another run in the fourth and then two in the fifth before tacking on five the rest of the way to seal the game.
Derek Jeter continued his revival, going 2 for 3 with two runs scored and two RBI. It seems like he’s had a good at-bat every single time up since the day off last weekend in Texas. His OBP has actually dropped a bit, but it seems like he’s ready to rip off a string of excellent games. The two runs scored put him over the century mark for the season. Robinson Cano also crossed the century mark tonight, as his two-run home run gave him 101 RBI on the season. He’s the third Yankee to reach the plateau.
What makes these plateaus so remarkable is that they come from infielders. The outfielders are always knows as the heavy bats, but the Yankees don’t operate that way. All four infielders slot into the first five lineup spots. That’s a pretty remarkable feat. What makes it more insane is that all three of the Yankees’ outfielders are among the top 11 AL outfielders in WAR. The offense might have sputtered lately, but it’s tough to question a group this stacked with top players.
Sabathia added a line to his Cy Young resume by recording his 20th win of the season. This shouldn’t matter, but it does. CC has pitched wonderfully this season and has lived up to all expectations of him. He also happens to pitch for the best team in the league. That alone — the best pitcher on the bet team — certainly should warrant consideration for the award. But after further examination it’s clear that other pitchers are having better years. But for the Yanks, CC has done it all. With the magic number down to just 7, it looks like Sabathia can take it easy in his last couple of starts and gear up for a long playoff run.
After a mean slump followed by last night’s dramatics, a blowout was just what the Yankees needed. Berkman was the only starter without a hit, but he gets a pass for the way he’s laced the ball since he returned from the DL. Other than that it was a relatively stress-free game. We’ll take another one of those any day.
Pettitte to start in Baltimore on Sunday
It’s not terribly surprising, but it’s good to know that Andy Pettitte’s return to the starting rotation will officially happen this coming Sunday in Baltimore, the team announced. He will be limited to 90 pitches. Andy has been out since July 18th due to a groin strain, and his absence has been extremely noticeable. It’s good to be getting him back.
Meanwhile, the team also announced that A.J. Burnett will start Friday’s game and CC Sabathia will go on Saturday. Both Javy Vazquez and Dustin Moseley have been bounced from the rotation and will work in long relief. At this time last year, the Yanks were giving all of their guys extra days of rest in preparation for the playoffs, but there’s no such plan this year. Sabathia will start on his usual four days rest despite tomorrow’s off day, and that lines him up for a rematch with David Price next Thursday.
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