Archive for What Went Wrong
What Went Wrong: Joba Chamberlain
Posted by: | CommentsOver the next few weeks, we’re going to look back at what went right, what went wrong, and what went as expected during the 2011 campaign.
(AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)
For the fourth year in a row, the Yankees relief corps was a strength in 2011. Joe Girardi‘s bullpen machinations helped keep everyone fresh and effective, including journeymen like Luis Ayala and Cory Wade. It also helps when you have three power arms that can pass as relief aces for most teams, but not everything went right with those guys. In fact, in the case, of Joba Chamberlain, this season went about as wrong as possible.
With big money signee Rafael Soriano taking over eighth inning duties to start the season, Joba was pushed back to the seventh inning. No big deal, he was still responsible for three outs either way. He allowed seven runs in his first eleven appearances before settling down and firing off six straight scoreless outings, then took over the eighth when Soriano came down with some elbow issues in mid-May. Joba continued to pitch well, allowing just one run across eight innings before needing 35 pitches to record five outs against the Angels on June 5th. It was his highest pitch count of the season (by seven pitches) and his most since since September of 2009, when he was a starter.
Three days later, the Yankees announced that Joba had been placed on the disabled list with a strained flexor muscle in his right elbow after feeling soreness for weeks. He would not throw for ten days, and was expected back in about three weeks. One day later, the news was much more grim. Chamberlain’s strained flexor muscle turned into a torn elbow ligament, and he would ultimately require Tommy John surgery. He hadn’t shown any of the usual symptoms or experienced any of the usual pain associated with a torn ligament, so the diagnosis was a bot of a surprise.
The elbow reconstruction was performed in mid-June, and while on the shelf, Joba required another surgery for an appendectomy. Not long after that, he needed another surgery to clean out an infection that developed during said appendectomy. Despite all that, Joba started his throwing program late last month, about two weeks ahead of schedule (unofficially). Tommy John rehab is a long and arduous process, and even the most optimistic of time tables have him returning in late-April. June would be the much more reasonable expectation.
Joba’s fastball velocity was perfectly fine this year, but that’s not really an indicator of elbow trouble. Velocity is more indicative of shoulder issues. Elbow problems general show in control, or lack thereof. Joba threw 45.3% of his pitches in the strike zone this year, which is actually perfectly league average, but it is down from his 48.4% from 2008-2010. Although his swing and miss rate (10.3%) was his best since 2008, his strikeout rate (7.53 K/9) was a career low and down more than two full strikeouts from last year. The strikeouts had been replaced by ground balls (59.7%), either intentionally or unintentionally.
The Yankees were able to survive Joba’s season-ending injury because of their bullpen depth, and they’re going to have to get by without him early next year as well. It would make sense for the team to have him stretch out and rehab as a starter, but we all know it won’t happen. They should be able to ease him back into late-inning work thanks for Soriano and David Robertson, but command is usually the last thing to come back after elbow surgery. It’s very possible that we won’t see the real Joba again until Opening Day 2013.
What Went Wrong: Pre-DL Derek Jeter
Posted by: | CommentsOver the next few weeks, we’re going to look back at what went right, what went wrong, and what went as expected during the 2011 campaign.
(AP Photo/LM Otero)
There’s no denying that 2010 was a down season for Derek Jeter. Just one year removed from a .334/.406/.465 batting line (.390 wOBA) during the Yankees run to the World Series, the Cap’n hit a punchless .270/.340/.370 (.320 wOBA) last season. His ground ball rate (65.7%) was the highest by a non-Luis Castillo hitter since the data started being recorded in 2002, and most of those grounders were weak, as you know. At 36-years-old, it was fair to wonder if this was the beginning of the end of one of the greatest Yankees ever, and early this season, it certainly looked like it was.
Jeter picked up just two hits through the team’s first four games, and just two extra-base hits (both doubles) through the season’s first month. His ground ball rate sat at a sky high 72.3% though April, explaining the utter lack of power. And yet, because he’s Derek Jeter, he remained atop the lineup despite a paltry .303 OBP in his first 211 plate appearances, essentially the first third of the season.
Every once in a while there would be a flash of the old Jeter, like the four-hit game against the Orioles on April 24th or the two-homer game against the Rangers on May 8th, but he was never able to build on it. That two-homer game in Texas was followed by a .247/.321/.301 batting line through the end of the month, and yet he continued to lead off. Joe Girardi stood by the Captain through it all, saying they would wait 150 at-bats, 250 at-bats, 350 at-bats, whatever it took until Jeter was right. Problem was, those arbitrary at-bat milestones kept passing by without improvement.
On the morning of June 13th, Derek was hitting .259/.324/.324 through 64 team games. The Yankees had one of the best offenses in baseball and were scoring boatloads of runs in spite of his presence as leadoff hitter, not because of it. That night, Jeter tapped a harmless fly ball to right to lead off the fifth inning in a game against the Indians, and appeared to have a little hitch in his step as he ran down to first. Eduardo Nunez took over at shortstop in the next half inning, indicating that the Cap’n did have some kind of physical problem.
The injury was announced as a sore right calf after the game, and an MRI confirmed a Grade I calf strain. The Yankees waited a day before placing Jeter on the disabled list, a move he strongly opposed. It’s not a big deal for the team to play a man short he said, but the team couldn’t afford to play short-handed with the NL leg of interleague play coming up. An injury that was supposed to take ten days to heal wound up taking three weeks.
At the time of the injury, Jeter was hitting a lowly .260/.324/.324, a well-below-average .295 wOBA. For a defensive whiz, that would be tolerable production at short. Derek is no defensive whiz though, and his age made his already shaky defense play even worse. The Yankees had one of the worst regulars in baseball not just suiting up for them every night, but also getting more plate appearances than everyone else on the team while playing a key position. In a way, the injury was a relief, almost like it put him (and us) out of his (and our) misery, at least temporarily. A little later today we’ll look at the other side of the Jeter coin, his resurgence following his return from the disabled list, but for now there’s no way around admitting that pre-injury Jeter went very, very wrong.
What Went Wrong: 4-5-6 Hitters In The ALDS
Posted by: | CommentsOver the next few weeks, we’re going to look back at what went right, what went wrong, and what went as expected during the 2011 campaign.
That's all she wrote. (Nick Laham/Getty Images)
The Yankees somewhat surprisingly won 97 games during the regular season and finished with the best record in the American League, but they lost three of five to the Tigers in the ALDS to end their season. They outscored Detroit 28-17 during the five-game set, showing that when faced with a small sample, it’s not about how many runs you score, but when you score them. The Yankees posted the lowest ERA (3.27) among the eight teams during the LDS round, but they lost the three games by a total of four runs.
A number of things will typically go wrong whenever a team loses a playoff series, but nothing went more wrong for the Yankees than their supposed heart of the order. Alex Rodriguez, Mark Teixeira, and Nick Swisher, otherwise known as the 4-5-6 hitters, went a combined 9-for-55 with two doubles, one homer, seven walks, and 16 strikeouts. That works out to a .164/.266/.255 batting line and a .243 wOBA. All the other Yankees in the series combined to hit .305/.386/.466, roughly a .378 wOBA. It seemed like every time the Yankees had something cooking on offense, these three would come to the plate and almost immediately put out the fire for Detroit.
To get an idea of how awful A-Rod, Tex, and Swish were during the ALDS, just look at the players around them. Robinson Cano, who hit third in front of them, reached base nine times in the five games but scored just two runs, when he drove himself in on a pair of homeruns. Jorge Posada, who hit seventh behind them, had a monster ALDS (six hits and four walks), but he drove in a total of zero runs because no one was on base in front of him. The 4-5-6 hitters went a combined 1-for-13 with two walks and five strikeouts with runners in scoring position, and the most damning instance of their RISPFAIL came in the seventh inning of Game Five. With the bases loaded and one out, A-Rod struck out, Teixeira walks, and Swisher struck out to end the threat. It was the last time the Yankees would make any kind of sustained rally on the season.
The Yankees didn’t lose to the Tigers in the ALDS solely because of A-Rod, Teixeira, and Swisher, but they were certainly a significant contributor to the series loss. When your third, fourth, and fifth best hitters in the regular season (by wOBA) combine to hit like the corpse of Chone Figgins in the postseason, it’s going to be really tough to advance. Quality pitching, which the Yankees generally received in the ALDS, can only take you so far.
What Went _____: Joba Chamberlain
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(AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
Over the past four seasons, few Yankees have inspired as much analysis, hand-wringing and debate than Joba Chamberlain. He seems to embody both the impossibly high expectations the Yankees and their fans place on young players and the ways in which the organization seemingly cannot get out of its own way when it comes to developing young pitchers. In that latter sense, then, Joba’s 2010 campaign is a microcosm of his career. Joba made 73 appearances, and the results should have been better than they were.
By now we know the Joba story. Drafted out of Nebraska in 2006, Joba rocketed through the system in 2007 as a starter and made his Yankee debut in August of that year as a reliever when Kyle Farnsworth could not be trusted. Limited by the Joba Rules, Chamberlain dazzled out of the pen, and his initial success set himself up for inevitable failure. Transitioned into the starting rotation in 2008, he was excellent until a shoulder injury in Texas derailed his season, and while he showed flashes of brilliance in 2009, he didn’t regain his velocity. When the team again instituted a variety of rules at the end of last year, the Yanks seemed to consider him a lost soul at the ripe old age of 24.
Heading into Spring Training in February, the Yankees had reportedly planned to host a competition for the fifth starter spot, but it was an unfair one from the start. Before camp began, Joel Sherman reported that the rotation spot was Phil Hughes‘ to lose, and Joba stumbled through Grapefruit League play. Destined for the bullpen, Joba inherited the eighth inning role and seemed to excel.
Through mid-May, Joba was as good as we could have hoped. He struck out 21 over his first 16.2 innings and allowed just four runs on 12 hits and five walks. But after giving up a combined seven earned runs in back-to-back appearances on May 16 and 18, the wheels fell off. From May 16-July 25, Joba pitched to an 8.42 ERA as opponents hit .348/.408/.500. Stick Joba on the mound, and everyone became Albert Pujols.
Over that span of 26 appearances, Joba gave up runs in 11 of them, and he did so in spectacular fashion. He allowed four runs to Boston in the 8th inning of a game the Yanks were winning and then choked away a six-run lead against the hapless Indians two weeks later. His nadir came on July 10 when he came in with a 1-0 lead and gave up a grand slam to Jose Lopez.
But through it all, the numbers just didn’t add up. Over those 25.2 innings, Joba had a FIP of 3.49, a mark nearly 5 runs per 9 innings lower than his actual results. He was still striking out more than a batter an inning, and the home run to Lopez was just the second he had surrendered all season. We were waiting for the market correction to come, and it finally did in late July.
Over the final two months of the season, Joba returned to form. In 29.1 innings, he struck out 30, walked just five and gave up seven earned runs on 20 hits for a nifty 2.15 ERA and a FIP — 2.89 — nearly to match. Joba saw limited playoff action in 2010 but gave up just a run in 3.3 innings against the Rangers.
The 2010 data on Joba's fastball velocity shows an upward trend. (Via Fangraphs)
So what do we make of this? On the one hand, Joba’s 9.7 K/9 IP was his best mark since 2008; his 2.8 BB/9 IP was his lowest since his debut season in 2007; and he showed a marked improvement in keeping the ball in the park. On the other hand, at times, he just didn’t have the confidence in his stuff. He threw too many 3-2 sliders and seemed tentative. Even though his velocity seemed to return to pre-shoulder injury levels and improved as the season wore on, he went through stretches where he fooled no one.
The numbers too bear out these struggles. Fewer than half of his pitches were inside the strike zone, and only 9.4 percent of his strikes were of the swinging variety. In 2007, he notched an impressive 16.7 percent mark in that category. His fastball, a whopping negative 20 runs below average last year, rebounded to 2.8 runs above average while the slider dipped from 7.6 runs above average to just 3.6. Perhaps the league has caught on to Joba’s approach and his stuff. Perhaps he’ll never be as consistently good as he was for a few months in 2007.
Going forward, the Yankees seem intent on keeping Joba in the bullpen. “We consider him a bullpen guy in the back end of the bullpen,” Joe Girardi said last month. Even though Joba’s stuff seems to be rebounding, even though he can gets the outs and could be a more valuable member of the pitching staff, the Yanks like his stuff in the pen and clearly view him as the heir apparent to Mariano Rivera if he can keep his head in the game.
And so I’m left without a word to put into the blank. Did Joba’s season go wrong because of his mid-summer struggles? Did it go right because it validated the Yanks’ decision to put him in the pen and saw his strike out abilities return? Whatever the answer, Joba remains an enigma who just might not be as good as we all hoped and dreamed he would be.
What Went Wrong: A.J. Burnett
Posted by: | CommentsThe Yankees added two high priced free agent starters last offseason, and while CC Sabathia has been worth every penny of his contract so far, the same can’t be said of A.J. Burnett. He was good enough during his first year in pinstripes and nothing short of brilliant in the team’s most important game of the 2009 season, but Burnett’s follow-up campaign was well below expectations and left a bad taste in everyone’s mouth.
(AP Photo/Charles Krupa)
Ironically enough, Burnett’s season started in a very good way. Following his first outing of the year, in which he allowed three runs in five innings against the Red Sox, Burnett went through a stretch in which he allowed zero earned runs in three of four starts. His ERA sat at 1.99 through his first five starts of the season (with a sparkly 4-1 record), and after eleven starts he was still sporting a 3.28 ERA while the Yanks were 8-3 with him on the mound. There were some warning signs, however, most notably with A.J.’s strikeout rate. It had dropped to just 6.7 K/9, just about two full strikeouts off from last year’s pace. But hey, it was just eleven starts and Burnett was throwing the ball well, we all figured the strikeouts would come eventually.
Unfortunately, it didn’t last. Well, the low strikeout rate did, but not the success. In his 12th start of the season Burnett allowed six runs in six innings against the Blue Jays. Six days later he surrendered four runs in six innings to the Orioles, and the next three starts after that resulted in 33 baserunners and 19 runs in just 10.1 innings. Put it all together and Burnett’s June was statistically the worst ever by a Yankee starter: five starts, five losses, an 11.35 ERA and an almost unfathomable .471 wOBA against. All of the good work he did in April and May was washed away, and halfway through the season he was sporting a 5.25 ERA and the Yanks were just 8-8 in his starts.
The June collapse coincided with the absence of the now departed pitching coach Dave Eiland, who was away for personal reasons. The narrative practically wrote itself, Burnett would get better once his regular pitching coach returns. And you know what? He did for a while. With Eiland back with the team, A.J. threw 6.2 scoreless innings against the Jays, then limited Oakland to two runs in seven innings next time out. Things seemed to be going well, but after the Rays hung for runs on him in just two innings, Burnett slammed his hand into a clubhouse door out of frustration, cutting it open. He apologized to his teammates and had his next pushed back a few days to deal with the injury, but he then threw 11.1 scoreless innings against the lowly Royals and Indians.
(AP Photo/Tony Gutierrez)
As late as August 1st Burnett had himself a tolerable 4.52 ERA that lined up with his 4.59 FIP, certainly not what the Yankees were expecting out of their Opening Day number two starter but not completely horrific. Well, that’s when things got horrific. In his first outing of August, the Jays scored eight runs before Burnett could complete the fifth. The rest of the month featured a 7.80 ERA and yet again five losses in five starts. After the end of July, A.J. pitched to a 6.61 ERA (5.23 FIP) and as hard as it is to believe, the Yankees won just two of his final dozen starts the rest of the season.
Unsurprisingly, Burnett did not make the team’s three-man ALDS rotation, and their pounding of the Twins meant his services weren’t needed in relief either. He did make the team’s ALCS rotation by default, taking the mound in Game Four with the Rangers up two games to one in the series. Burnett actually wasn’t terrible in that start, holding the Rangers to just a pair of runs (without the benefit of a ball leaving the infield) in the first five innings. With the tying run on second with two outs in the sixth inning, Joe Girardi had Burnett intentionally walk David Murphy to face Bengie Molina. The first pitch pitch of the encounter was supposed to be low and away but it wound up up and in, and Molina turned on it for a go-ahead three run homer. The damage was done, and instead of walking off the mound feeling good about himself, A.J. went back to the dugout hearing the loudest boos of the season. Rather remarkable considering how the fans treated him in the second half.
The end result of Burnett’s season was 33 starts but just 186.2 innings (almost exactly 5.2 IP per start), so he was taxing the bullpen on a regular basis. In fairness, that number is slightly skewed by three starts in which Burnett was forced to exit early due to rain. His 5.26 ERA was easily a career worst, though his 4.83 FIP was merely awful. The 6.99 batters Burnett struck out per nine innings pitched was his worst mark since 2001, and he led the league with 19 hit batters and 37 stolen bases allowed. All told, opposing batters posted a .362 wOBA against the Yanks’ $16.5M man, so he basically turned every hitter he faced into the 2010 version of Alex Rodriguez. The total package was worth just 1.3 fWAR, ranking 90th out of the 103 pitchers that threw at least 150 innings in 2010.
The Yankees knew that Burnett was pretty unpredictable when they signed him to that five-year, $82.5M contract last winter, but I don’t think anyone expected him to go south this hard, this quickly. The lack of strikeouts is most concerning, since the ability to miss bats was the one thing A.J. has excelled at his entire career. His curveball, which checked in at 16.0 runs above average in 2009 (fourth best in baseball) dropped off to 3.9 runs below average, one of the eleven worst in the game. Whoever replaces Eiland as pitching coach will have the work cut out for them, starting right here with Burnett.
What Went Wrong: Winn & Kearns
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You hit it in the wrong direction, Randy. (AP Photo/Steven Senne)
Given the general construction of their roster, it’s always difficult for the Yankees to sign quality bench players as free agents in the offseason. No one in their right mind wants to sit for weeks at a time behind a cast of All Stars, especially when their playing time will impact their future earnings. As a result, the Yanks have had to resort to signing cast-offs late in the offseason and/or trading for help at midseason. They did both in 2010, signing a reserve outfielder right before pitchers and catchers reported, then replacing him with a trade deadline pickup. Unfortunately, neither worked.
The Yankees signed Winn to a relatively cheap contract in February, a one-year pact worth just $1.1M guaranteed, though there was another $900,000 tied up in incentives based on plate appearances against left-handed pitchers only. That told everyone right away that they viewed him as some sort of a platoon bat, not to mention a defensive specialist and occasional pinch runner.
As it turned out, Winn’s tenure in pinstripes lasted less than two months. He was designated for assignment on May 28th, less than 50 games into the season. His time with the Yanks featured just 71 plate appearances (0-for-11 vs. LHP) and a lowly .276 wOBA, though I will say that I thought he had some decent at-bats. He seemed to work the count well and at least make the pitcher work, though the results just weren’t there. Perhaps even more damning is that the supposed defensive specialist cost the team 1.2 runs in 162.2 defensive innings. Mash it all together, and Winn was worth three-tenths of a win below replacement level during his time in New York. Thankfully the Cardinals lessened the blow somewhat by assuming roughly $270,000 of Winn’s contract when they signed him in June.
Austin Kearns
Fans know Kearns' strikeout face well. (AP Photo/Brandon Wade)
After Winn flunked out of pinstripes and it became painfully obvious that Marcus Thames was a hazard to himself and anyone around him defensively, the Yanks went out and acquired Kearns from the Indians in exchange for a player to be named later (Zach McAllister) at the trade deadline. The former Red had rebuilt his value with the Indians in the first half, wOBA’ing .343 overall and (more importantly to the Yanks) .353 against southpaws.
Kearns instantly improved the team’s bench and overall depth, and his first three weeks in pinstripes were superb: .434 wOBA in 45 plate appearances while filling in at both outfield corners and occasionally pinch-hitting. That was basically all the Yankees would get out of Kearns though, as his production simply cratered after that. His final 74 plate appearances of the season featured just 24 times on base (inflated by four hit by pitches and one reached on an error) and 26 strikeouts, or one every 3.08 times to the plate. Although he made the postseason roster, Kearns didn’t make it into a single game even after Mark Teixeira‘s injury.
Kearns wasn’t a total loss for the Yankees (.310 wOBA) because his defense was rock solid (1.6 runs better than average), coming in at three-tenths of a win better than some replacement level scrub. In his defense, he was battling some sort of hand/wrist injury down the stretch that I’m sure hampered his swing, but still. Kearns was as close to useless as it gets in the last six or so weeks of the season.
* * *
A pair of approximately replacement level fourth (or fifth, depending on your point of view) outfielders didn’t sink the Yankees’ season, though they certainly didn’t help. Thankfully the starting trio of Brett Gardner, Curtis Granderson, and Nick Swisher were all above average performers this year, ditto Thames in a reserve role, so the lack of a true outfield bat off the bench wasn’t as much of a problem as it could have been.
What Went Wrong: Brett Gardner
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Gardner likes to flip his bat after striking out (Paul Sancya/AP)
Mike set the stage in his post on what went right with Brett Gardner:
Gardner showed up to Dodger Stadium the proud owner of a .321/.401/.408 (.373 wOBA) batting line on the morning of June 27th, but he took a Clayton Kershaw fastball off his right wrist in his second plate appearance of the game.
In reaching that .373 wOBA, Gardner had pulled off a fantastic month of June. In his 72 PA he hit .383/.472/.533, by far the best month in his short career. The hit by pitch ended that month a few days early, but he was back in the starting lineup on July 1, ready to continue his assault on opponents’ pitch counts.
When a player sustains a wrist injury we often fear for his power. So many players have seen their power completely sapped because of wrist troubles. The Yankees’ very own Nick Johnson presented such a case. He underwent season-ending wrist surgery in 2008 and came back in 2009 to produce a mere .114 ISO; his career mark to that point was .187. Gardner appeared to put those fears to rest in just his third game back from the injury. He hit a grand slam off Toronto’s Ricky Romero. The next day he hit another homer, though that was of the inside-the-park variety.
One home run by itself, even from a player who does not normally hit them, does not necessarily signal something about a player’s condition. Those two homers — one of which should have been a caught ball — represented Gardner’s only extra base hits in his first 68 PA back from the injury. During that time he hit just .185/.353/.296. The next eight games saved his month; in those 29 PA Gardner hit three doubles, which improved his month-long ISO to .117, which ended up being his second highest of the season. He also produced a .141 ISO in September. So much for the wrist injury effect.
While a power dip might not have coincided with the wrist injury, a heightened strikeout rate did. Gardner did strike out in 20 percent of his AB in June, a jump from his 14.7 percent rate in the first two months, but given his other numbers that was fine. He was making fewer outs and hitting for more power. You trade that for strikeouts without hesitation. But from July through September Gardner lost those power and on-base gains while seeing a significant uptick in his strikeout rate, 26.3 percent. That’s not a good thing for a guy who can create favorable situations when he puts the ball in play.
Still, it’s tough to pin the causation of Gardner’s rising K rate on the wrist injury. As you can see, it had been a rising trend all season long:
Gardner's strikeout rate
Might pitchers have figured out to start throwing him more strikes, since he can’t do much damage with them? Conventional wisdom might suggest that, but Gardner’s walk rate says something else:
Gardner's walk rate
I’m not sure what this says about how pitchers approached Gardner. It might appear as though he got a lot less aggressive. Fewer pitches swung at could lead to more looking strikeouts and more walks at the same time. But that wasn’t necessarily the case with Gardner. Prior to June 27 Gardner saw 1,227 pitches. He swung at 391 of them, about 32 percent. After June 27 he saw 1,355 pitches and swung at 423 of them, 31.2 percent. The biggest difference is in his swing and miss percentage, which went from 2.4 percent before the injury to 3.5 percent afterward.
Gardner’s spray chart changed around the same time as the injury as well. We’re dealing with half-season samples, so there’s nothing definitive in what we’re seeing. But it does appear suspicious that Gardner stopped hitting as many balls to shallow center and right, spots at which he got hits in the first half.
First half spray chart
Second half spray chart
We can still see that patch in left where Gardner slaps the ball for base hits, but we don’t see that shallow belt that led to so many hits in the first half. What we do see, though, is a number of balls fielded deeper in the outfield. While the focus of this post is on the negatives of Gardner’s second half, the deeper hit balls has to be taken as a positive.
Again, while we’re looking at the wrongs of Gardner’s season, we need to put them in perspective. Part of his second half woes stem from a diving BABIP. As you can see:
Gardner's BABIP
I’m not sure exactly what caused the dip in BABIP. Maybe Gardner was swinging at poorer pitches — his whiff rate does suggest that. Maybe he was getting unlucky — the subsequent rise towards the end of the season does point in that direction. My best guess is that he just went through a normal slump, exacerbated by the wrist injury. Thankfully, towards the end of the season he started to look more like he did in April.
The title of this article is What Went Wrong, but that isn’t to say Gardner’s season went wrong. It actually went great on the whole. But there were some issues during the season that perhaps prevented him from performing to the best of his abilities. There is a sentiment among some fans — I’m not sure how widespread — that Gardner is nothing more than a fourth outfielder and that he hit over his head in 2010. I beg to differ. During the off-season I ranked among the “you can’t count on Gardner” crowd, but after watching him for a full season and examining him closely I feel differently. I think Gardner can be a solid option both in the lineup and in the field.
That isn’t to say that his season went perfectly. It obviously didn’t. In the second half he swung and missed more often, which led to more and more strikeouts. A guy with Gardner’s speed, and lack of power, needs to put the ball in play more often. But even as he faltered he ended up with a spectacular season. I don’t see any reason, barring injury, why we can’t expect him to improve in 2011.
What Went Wrong: Curtis Granderson
Posted by: | CommentsOver the next few weeks we’re going to explore what went right and what went wrong for the Yankees in 2010.
We saw the Granderson strikeout pose often in the first half (Brandon Wade/AP)
The Yankees needed an outfielder. They had won the 2009 World Series with a unit of Johnny Damon, Melky Cabrera, and Nick Swisher, but that was going to change during the off-season. For starters, Damon was a free agent and didn’t appear willing to accept a cut from his $13 million salary. That created a potential opening in left field. In center field the Yankees could have improved, too. Their center fielders, Cabrera and Brett Gardner, combined to produce league average numbers, a 101 wRC+. While there’s nothing wrong with a league-average center field unit, the Yankees needed to improve if Damon were to depart. The solution became apparent early during the 2009 Winter Meetings.
After a day or so of heavy rumors, the Yankees finally completed a trade that went Austin Jackson, Ian Kennedy, and Phil Coke to Detroit for Curtis Granderson. But the move was not met with universal praise. Granderson has produced poor numbers in 2009, which left many wondering why the Yankees would trade one of their best prospects, also a center fielder, for a player whose numbers — to paraphrase a common thought last winter — had declined in each of the last two years. That, of course, didn’t tell the whole story of Granderson’s development as a player.
Looking at Granderson’s minor league numbers it’s easy to see the makings of a star. His lowest OPS in those four seasons was .823, and he followed it up with a .922 season, after which he was named Baseball America’s 57th best prospect. He followed that up with a very good season in AAA, which he followed up with a decent, though powerful, stint in the bigs. While his 2006 season didn’t go so well, Granderson absolutely broke out in 2007, hitting .302/.361/.552 (.395 wOBA). The next season he again hit well, a .374 wOBA. That’s what the Yankees sought to acquire. It would have been unrealistic to expect a center fielder to perpetually produce a nearly .400 wOBA. But .375? If he could do that while continuing to play an excellent center field, he could be the next in the line of stupendous Yankees center fielders.
At the start it appeared as though Granderson might fulfill that promise. On the seventh pitch of his first at-bat as a Yankee, Granderson homered off Josh Beckett, giving the Yankees a 2-0 lead. Three nights later he broke a 1-1 tie in the 10th inning with a home run off Jonathan Papelbon. If nothing else he endeared himself to the fan base. He furthered that effort in the next week and a half, going 10 for 28 (.357) with three walks (.419 OBP) and three extra base hits (.607 SLG). Might the Yankees have found the star center fielder that had eluded them since the days of Bernie Williams?
The hot streak, as we know, did not last. In his next 60 PA Granderson hit .154/.254/.250. While going first-to-third in a game against the White Sox on May 1, Granderson came up limping. The groin strain put him on the 15-day DL, with a three to four week estimated return time. Considering his slumping ways, he wasn’t much missed. In his first seven games back he went 10 for 24 with five extra base hits, but that again was a short-lived hot streak. From June 4 through August 9, Granderson hit .224/.284/.398 in 217 PA, striking out 24.4 percent of his PA (27 percent of his AB). That was enough for him. He went to hitting instructor Kevin Long for some work on his swing. He sat out two games while trying to iron out the kinks.
We said a lot about Granderson during those first few months. First we tried to see the positive during his April slump. A disappointing month after his return from the DL we saw the value in exercising patience, noting specifically the curing powers of Kevin Long. He did land in our list of seven players whose first halves fell short of expectations, but again we maintained hope. Then, of course, just as Long is working with Granderson, I opened my fat mouth and called for a Granderson platoon. It made sense, at least at the time. But as Mike will discuss, it wasn’t at all necessary.
No matter what excuses we make, no matter what light we view it in, Curtis Granderson hit very poorly through July. He showed flashes of excellence, especially when he went on a power streak, but the overall package just didn’t seem to be there. The Yankees, though, had a different plan. Instead of platooning Granderson with new acquisition Austin Kearns, they instead placed him on the bench for two games against Texas so that he and Long could work on his swing. Mike will discuss the results of those sessions in the next article.
What Went Wrong: The Return of Javy Vazquez
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(AP Photo/Tony Gutierrez)
The old adage says that momentum is only as good as the next day’s starting pitcher, and the Yankees had plenty of momentum when they relied exclusively on their three best starters during their run to the 2009 World Title. That resulted in tremendous workloads for CC Sabathia (266.1 IP), A.J. Burnett (234.1 IP), and Andy Pettitte (225.1 IP), enough that Brian Cashman was concerned about a carry-over effect in 2010. Despite having Joba Chamberlain, Phil Hughes, Chad Gaudin, and Sergio Mitre in tow, he went out an acquired one of the game’s proven workhorses, bringing Javy Vazquez back to New York in a December trade with the Braves.
Vazquez had been treated as the scapegoat for the 2004 ALCS loss ever since being traded to the Diamondbacks as part of a package for Randy Johnson after that season, but life goes on and he continued to pitch. His lone season in Arizona featured a 4.06 FIP in 215.2 IP, but he demanded a trade during the offseason to be closer to his family on the East Coast, his contractual right. The D-Backs shipped Javy to the White Sox for a package built around young centerfielder Chris Young, and he went on to post a 3.80 FIP in his three seasons on Chicago’s south side. After a 2.77 FIP in 219.1 IP for the Braves in 2009 (and a fourth place finish in the Cy Young voting), Vazquez found himself back in the Bronx.
(AP Photo/Paul J. Bereswill)
Javy had thrown no fewer than 198 innings every year since 2000 (only one season below 200 IP during that stretch), and only that Randy Johnson guy had struck out more batters in that time. Unlike 2004, when a then-28 year old Javy Vazquez was expected to be a cornerstone in New York’s rotation going forward, the 34-year-old version was expected to do nothing more than soak up innings at the back of the rotation. Two-hundred league average innings was all the team needed out of him, and after the season the two sides would part ways with the Yanks landing two high draft picks as compensation when he signed elsewhere.
To say the 2010 season started inauspiciously for Vazquez would be an understatement. His very first pitch of Spring Training went for a solo homer off the bat of Jimmy Rollins, a sign of things to come. Javy’s first start of the season resulted in eight runs allowed to the Rays in just 5.1 innings, and five days later he was booed off the mound in Yankee Stadium after surrendering four runs in 5.1 innings to the Angels. Vazquez’s first five starts were simply atrocious, a 9.78 ERA with eight homers allowed in just 23 IP. Opponents were wOBA‘ing .457 off the Yanks’ fourth starter, and things got so bad that the Yankees had to skip his turn in the rotation in early May just to figure out what they should do.
To his credit, Javy rebounded from the rough start and pitched very well for about two months. He started 11 games (and made one relief appearance) from mid-May through mid-July, pitching to a 2.75 ERA (3.66 FIP) and holding opponents to a measly .249 wOBA. Vazquez was the team’s best starter not named Sabathia during the stretch, and he was giving the Yanks everything they asked of him and then some. Unfortunately it was all downhill from there.
The Angels tagged Vazquez for five runs in five innings on July 21st, and he allowed four or more runs in four of six starts after that stretch of brilliance. Even worse was the obvious physical decline. His fastball, already down two miles an hour from last year, was now regularly sitting in the mid-80′s (right). His breaking balls were flat and lacking depth, leaving the changeup as his only consistent weapon. That didn’t last very long, as Javy was yanked from the rotation for good after allowing four runs in three innings against the lowly Mariners on August 21st. He pitched to a 6.59 ERA the rest of the way, mostly in long-relief though he did make three spot starts. The low point came in his second to last appearance of the season, when he hit three straight Rays to force in a run, turning a blowout into a full-blown laugher. Perhaps all those innings finally caught up to him and/or he was hiding some kind of injury. Doesn’t matter now.
All told, 2010 amounted to the worst season of Vazquez’s career. His 154.2 innings were his fewest since 1999, his 5.32 ERA his worst since 1998, and his 5.56 trailed only Ryan Rowland-Smith (6.55) and Scott Kazmir (5.83) for the worst in baseball among pitchers that threw at least a hundred innings. If he hadn’t been mercifully pulled from the rotation late in the year, he would have led baseball in homeruns allowed. As it stands, the 32 he gave up were the fourth most in the game, and his 1.83 HR/9 was second worst. The Yankees paid him $11.5M and received -0.2 fWAR in return, meaning Javy was no better than some Triple-A fodder toiling away in the minors.
To make things worse, Vazquez pitched his way out of Type-A free agent status, falling down into Type-B range. Not that the team would offer him salary arbitration after such a horrible year, but they wouldn’t even have been able to get those two high draft picks even if they wanted to risk it.
We know the Yanks didn’t give up much for Vazquez thanks to the benefit of hindsight. Melky Cabrera was the worst everyday player in baseball this season (-1.2 fWAR, min. 450 PA) and has already been released. They didn’t even wait until the non-tender deadline. Mike Dunn has a live arm but has already been replaced by Boone Logan. The x-factor is prospect Arodys Vizcaino, who put together a 2.22 FIP in 114 IP before suffering an elbow injury. He’s a top 100 prospect, and if he comes back well from the injury, the Yanks will regret the deal even more.
Brian Cashman and the rest of the Yankee brain trust wasn’t asking for much out of Vazquez. They wanted 200 league average innings, which meant an ERA right around 4.20. All they wanted was someone to take the pressure off the three guys at the front of the rotation and young Phil Hughes in the back, someone they could ride hard all year and count on for length each time out. Vazquez didn’t give them that at all, pitching so poorly that he couldn’t even beat out Dustin Moseley for a spot on the postseason roster. Expectations were relatively low, and Javy failed to deliver on even that.
What Went Wrong: Teixeira’s Down Year
Posted by: | CommentsOver the next week or two or three, we’re going to recap the season that was by looking at what went right as well as what went wrong for the 2010 Yankees.
Teixeira's season did not start or end well (Charles Krupa/AP)
April struggles are no stranger to Mark Teixeira. In his career he has a .329 wOBA in April, easily his worst month of the year. He makes up for it in the following five months, producing at an elite level. We saw him do that in 2009, which left us with faith that he would do the same in 2010. Unfortunately, his season did not unfold in a similar manner.
For all that’s made of Teixeira’s early season woes, it is actually something that developed fairly recently. In 2004 he had a .422 wOBA in April, but then dipped in May to .323. In 2005 his .347 April wOBA surged to .416 in May and .419 in June. The next year he posted a .375 wOBA in April. Even in 2008 he had a .341 wOBA in April — not up to his normal standard, but certainly better than what we’ve seen lately.
Teixeira’s first April in New York actually didn’t go that poorly, or at least not as poorly as it felt at the time. While a .330 wOBA is low for him, it’s not terrible. His problem, unsurprisingly, was the inability to hit the ball on a line. He had a mere 11.9 percent line drive rate and a 57.6 fly ball rate. That poor contact led to a .196 BABIP. But after he got into a groove he started to hit the ball much better, raising both his line drive and ground ball rates. That led to more hits and more power.
When Tex again struggled in April 2010, it was easy to write it off as a repeat of 2009. In fact, there were indicators that he might make an even better recovery. While his numbers were worse — an abysmal .270 wOBA — his hit tendencies were a bit better. He hit 19 percent of balls in play on a line and just 39.7 percent in the air, but still had a .148 BABIP. Yet that recovery took a while. And once it did kick in, Tex hit further troubles.
May started with a bang. Teixeira went 6 for 9 with a double in the first two days. A few days later he hit three home runs in a game against Boston (though one, to be fair, was off non-pitcher Jonathan Van Every). But the slump resumed shortly thereafter. After he went 0 for 4 with three strikeouts in a game against the Mets reporters flooded to his locker and asked what was wrong. Tex took it as well as he possibly could have, but his struggles were undeniable. He didn’t help his case with another good, but not to Teixeira standards, month of June.
Recovery was in the cards, but it would be short lived. Teixeira went berserk in July, 33 for 96 (.344) with 20 walks (.462 OBP) and 18 extra base hits (.698 SLG). August was another quality month, .289/.355/.629 (.411 wOBA). The team streaked towards the end of the month, and it appeared as though they would soar to another AL East title. But then the injuries happened.
At the end of August he missed a day with a thumb injury; the team admitted that he wouldn’t fully heal until the off-season. Then in mid-month he fractured his little toe. That caused him to overcompensate, which led to knee inflammation. It’s unclear whether that was a big factor in his season-ending hamstring strain, but the cascade does make sense. Teixeira, for his part, produced a mere .312 wOBA in September, his power noticeably absent. In the playoffs he did hit a big home run in Game 1 of the ALDS, but after that he went just 2 for 22, both singles.
Even the best players have down years. It’s unfortunate that the Yankees experienced them from their Nos. 3 and 4 hitters, but that will sometimes happen. The good news is that one down year does not render a player useless in the future. After an off-season of recovery and reflection Teixeira will be back in 2011, and I expect he’ll return to his normal production. And who knows: maybe he’ll produce in April as he did in 2004 and put together a career year.
