Due to a busy weekend, blogging was light. So I have a post relating to Saturday’s game for you here. We’ll talk about yesterday’s win later.

Watching Mike Mussina go 4-0 over his last four starts, I was struck by how utterly the same Mussina seemed on the mound. All of a sudden, with the same stuff that had been getting hit hard earlier in the year, Mussina had hitters flailing at pitches. Over his last 25.1 innings, Mussina has an ERA of 2.84, but he hasn’t found miles on is fastball. I wondered what had changed.

A quick look at the numbers revealed some interesting trends. First, I thought, maybe it was an issue of hits. Was Mike Mussina doing a better job of getting outs? Over those 25.1 innings, Mussina has allowed 29 hits or 1.15 per inning. Over his previous 88.2 innings, Mussina had allowed 1.14 hits per inning. So the answer wasn’t to be found in hits.

Maybe home runs had been Mussina’s bugaboo this year. Moose has surrendered 2 longballs over his last 25.1 innings or 0.7 per 9 IP. Previously, Mussina had given up home runs at a rate of 1.12 per 9 IP. That’s a change but it hardly counts for a change in ERA from 4.97 over 88.1 IP to 2.84 over his last four starts. Something else must be at work here, I thought.

As the game unfolded on Saturday, I realized what has spurred on Mike Mussina’s success, and it is a lesson in pitching and Three True Outcomes. For the third start in a row on Saturday, Mike Mussina had not walked a batter. Recently, Mussina has issued 0.7 BB per 9 IP. Prior to that, he had issued 2.23 per 9 IP.

Meanwhile, on the strike out front, Mussina over his last 25.1 innings has 19 Ks or 6.75 per 9 IP. In the 88.2 IP prior, he had a K/9 IP of 5.48. Ah-ha! Here we have the keys to Mike Mussina’s success. He has allowed fewer home runs while cutting down on the number of baserunners per 9 IP by 1.5. He’s keeping balls out of play by striking out more hitters per game. Thus, he has pitched significantly better of late.

But I can’t help but fear a regression. Despite the increase in strike outs and the decrease in walks, Mussina isn’t throwing anymore strikes than he was before his resurgence. Around two-thirds of his pitches have been strikes during his last 25.1 innings and around two-thirds were strikes during the previous 88.2 IP. So what’s happened?

Well, the Yankees and Mike Mussina have had the distinct pleasure of facing the Royals, the White Sox, the Royals again and the Indians. Mussina is, in other words, beating bad and impatient teams with struggling offenses. He’s beating teams that strike out a lot, that haven’t, of late, been hitting a lot of home runs and are among the worst in the American League at getting on base.

Mussina’s next game will be the big test. He’s due to face Detroit on Thursday. In the Tigers, he’ll face another struggling team but this is one team that is adept at putting the ball in play and hits for power as well. If Mike Mussina can mow down the Tigers this week as he did the Indians on Saturday, then I’ll be a believer. For now, I’ll just enjoy the ride and optimistically hope for the best from a pitcher of which I am always skeptical.

Oh, wait. Nevermind.

Say what you will about Edwar Ramirez’s pitching (or his subsequent teared-eyed performance in the clubhouse), tonight’s goat is Mike Mussina. Facing the Devil Rays, Mussina made it all the way through 4.2 innings of work. He gave up 7 hits and 6 runs as the Yanks fell to the Devil Rays 14-4.

For Moose, this sets him up at 4-7 with an ERA a shade under 5.00. And, ladies and gentleman, this is just year one of this two-year contract. Ugh. I have nothing else left to say about this game.

Meanwhile, down on the farm, Joba Chamberlain, the RAB poster boy, had a bad start. He was tagged for 9 hits and 7 earned runs in 4.2 innings. He walked 3 and struck out 7 while giving up 3 home runs. While Mussina’s bad start is just another in a trend of crappy outings, Chamberlain’s is his first. He had a longer-than-usual layoff due to some rehab starts and the weather, and bad starts happen. He still managed to K 7 in fewer than five innings. We’ll just have to see how he bounces back.

My money’s on Chamberlain having a better start next week than Mike Mussina does. Anyway, Saturday is a long day of baseball. Here’s to hoping disaster does not strike.

Mike Mussina has been with the Yankees for nearly seven years now. He’s seen 619 of Joe Torre’s 2000 wins and 1027 of Joe’s games. Yet, for some reason – some reason I can’t fathom – Mike Mussina was pissed off after getting taken out of a 1-0 game in the 7th inning.

Now, why was Mike Mussina whining? Because he had thrown just 79 pitches and wanted to throw more. He wanted to, as he told Tyler Kepner of The Times, throw 110 pitches. And that’s just ridiculous.

Mussina, the Stanford-educated crossword-puzzle aficionado, is a smart guy. He probably knows that Joe Torre has something of a quick hook (as Joe noted earlier this afternoon). We’ve certainly been critical of Torre’s bullpen tendencies in the past, but last night, he made the right move. Mussina should know that.

Moose had just come off of a few bad outings in a row. Entering last night’s game, he was 2-3 with an ERA north of 6.20. But in six innings, he looked great last night. He had given up two hits while walking no one and striking out four. The seventh started out promisingly enough; he gave up a slow roller to Jim Thome.

But – and this is a big but – with the Thome shift on, Robinson Cano was in no position to field the ball, and Miguel Cairo, hustling all the way, couldn’t range from the second base bag to the second base hole and throw out Thome. It should have been an out, and that look crept onto Mike Mussina’s face. It was that “I’m out of my comfort zone” look. It’s the same look I’ve written about in the past.

I knew what would happen next. Mussina doesn’t get an out; he stops making the pitches. The next batter – Paul Konerko – rocketed a single off of Mussina. And that was the end of him for the night. His final line read 6 IP, 4 H, 1 ER, 0 BB, 4 K. He didn’t get the win, but that’s no big deal as the Yanks crushed the Sox bullpen later on.

After the game, Mussina grumbled like a cranky old man. “Why am I upset? Because I threw 80 pitches and I think I could have thrown 110. It was the first mess I had. I just felt like I could have kept going,” he said. “I understand his thinking, but seventh inning with 79 pitches? I know I haven’t been pitching that well, but oh well. Gotta earn it back, I guess. Gotta earn it back.”

That’s right, Moose. You have to earn it back. You have to suck it up when a squibbler goes for a base hit, and you have to take your lumps like the rest of the team.

And here is just one more nail in the Mike Mussina coffin. Enough already, Mike. Just pitch. You have almost as many excuses as this guy, and we don’t like him too much.