River Avenue Blues

Little chance Bruney makes the postseason roster

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It’s no wonder the Yankees have shown so much patience with Brian Bruney. Dominant relief pitchers don’t come around that often, and in 2008 and early 2009 Bruney appeared to be just that. He pitched well both before and after a lisfranc injury last season, and opened 2009 with a bang. Two injuries later and he’s just not the same. The Yankees continue to give Bruney chances, but each one is a reminder that this is not the guy who struck out five straight Rays over two games.

Even in August, when he had a 0.87 ERA, Bruney still didn’t look reliable. He only allowed one run over 10.1 innings, but that might have been a string of reliever’s luck. He struck out only five in that span and walked seven. Opponents reached base 37.5 percent of the time. He threw 201 pitches, almost 20 per inning. With peripherals like that, it’s no wonder he’s struggled in September.

This month Bruney has appeared in nine games, the same number as August, though has pitched 4.2 fewer innings. He’s throwing fewer pitches, but not many, around 19 per inning. Opponents get on base 41.4 percent of the time. His strikeout to walks ratio sits at 4:5. The difference is that teams have gotten to him this time around, going deep twice for a .583 slugging percentage.

Over the course of 2009, Bruney has gone from lights out setup man to questionable postseason roster candidate. The Yankees will take only 10 pitchers to the ALDS, and Bruney doesn’t appear to be one of the 10 best on the roster. Can they trust him in a playoff appearance? Certainly not the way he’s pitching now. He’ll have to show considerable improvement in the season’s last 10 games, and even that might not be enough to convince the Yankees to take the chance.

Bryan Hoch examines Bruney’s woes which, the Yankees think, relate to a mechanical issue. There are plenty “I feel good” quotes in the article, but perhaps the most interesting paragraph reads

The question is if the Yankees have enough time to allow Bruney to continue ironing out what he said have been season-long mechanical problems — bad habits on the mound that have plagued him relating to his hip rotation.

That doesn’t sound like an easy problem to fix. Bruney will have a maximum five games to work it out, and even then he’ll likely only get into three or four more before the regular season ends. Some improvement would be encouraging, but would it be enough to put him on the postseason roster? Not quite, I would think. There are certainly 10 more deserving candidates, especially with David Robertson slated to return this weekend.

It’s a shame what happened to Bruney this season. It appeared he was coming into his own, and then we found out he was unavailable for the first game of the first Boston series. It’s been downhill from there. There’s a chance Bruney could recover, but he probably won’t get a real chance again until 2010.

2009 Draft: Lane Meyer’s Draft Grades

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Draft coverage all-star Lane Meyer of NoMaas posted his review of this year’s draft class, grading the thing out on a pick-by-pick basis. I think Lane might be a little too optimistic with some of the grades (Caleb Cotham screams generic college starter to me), but there’s nothing wrong with that, and overall he did a great job. He gives the entire class a B+, but I’m a tough grader so I consider it more of a C+/B- haul because of the lack of an obvious impact player. Don’t get me wrong, Slade Heathcott and JR Murphy are studs, but more like above average regulars than true impact talents.

Anyway, make sure you head on over and check it out.

The return of Godzilla

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Get your pencils ready; it’s time for a quiz. Who has the second most home runs on the Yanks? Third most RBIs? Third highest OPS? And who has done this in 495 plate appearances, fewer than all but Jorge Posada among Yankee regulars? By now, of course, the answer is clear: Hideki Matsui is having a season, for him, for the ages, and in doing so, he is going to force the Yanks’ hand in November.

Matsui’s season wasn’t on pace to end up this way. June 28 marked the Yanks’ last Interleague game, and Hideki Matsui pinch hit against the Mets. That wrapped up a month of irregular play and little success for the once-mighty Yankee DH. He was hitting .246/.345/.463 with 10 HR and just 28 RBIs. Unable to play the outfield due to his very creaky knees, Matsui seemed to be on his last legs.

Since then, however, Matsui has been every bit the force in the Yankee lineup that the team expected him to be. Over his last 261 PAs, Hideki is hitting .310/.396/.588 with 18 HR and 60 RBI. He leads all Yankees in home runs and slugging over that stretch and is one of the key movers behind the Yanks’ run toward the best record in baseball. His home run last night was an unsung moment in the game, a blast well into the high porch in right field.

Matsui is also heading toward free agency, and the Yankees are going to have to decide if they want to bring him back as their full-time DH. Over the course of the season, the Yanks have intimated that, with their aging team, they would prefer to keep the designated hitter spot open for its veterans. They can rest Jorge Posada without losing his bat. They can cycle Derek Jeter, A-Rod and Johnny Damon — if he returns — through that spot. With Matsui limited to DH duties, the Yanks would have more roster flexibility without him. They would also have fewer wins.

I’ve briefly touched upon this idea in the past, but Matsui’s value to the team’s offense cannot be understated. Few teams have a DH as good as he is. In fact, among full-time designated hitters, Matsui’s .905 OPS ranks him second. While the league’s DHs are averaging a .255 BA with a .781 OPS, the Yanks are far outpacing that figure thanks to Matsui.

From a value perspective, Matsui has a 32.1 VORP and a 2.5 WAR (wins above replacement). If the Yanks go with their rotation DH plans, their lineup would include a subpar hitter nearly every day. Ramiro Peña has a 1.1 VORP and a 0.3 WAR. Jose Molina’s and Franciso Cervelli’s respective offenses both put them below replacement level on the VORP scale. Molina’s WAR is 0.2, and Cervelli’s is 0.1. Faced with a very competitive Red Sox team, the Yanks can ill afford to let Matsui’s 2.5 wins simply walk away unreplaced.

As the Yankees head into the playoffs, Hideki Matsui will anchor this offense. He can hit lefties; he can hit righties; and apparently, he can hit in Anaheim too. He may be old; his knees may be frail; but he can hit with the best of them. The Yanks should look to bring him back next year on a one-year deal. Unless they can find a suitable replacement, the team will miss his bat if it isn’t there.

Yanks rally, crumble, rally again in 6-5 win

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For half the game, everything went well. The Yankees put up four runs and Chad Gaudin was cruising. Even two outs into the bottom of the fifth, the Yanks looked poised to win their first game in Anaheim this season. But from that point on almost nothing went the Yankees’ way. Gaudin couldn’t finish the fifth, Aceves almost blew the lead in the sixth, and a pair of errors cost the Yankees the lead in the eighth. But a short rally in the ninth put them back on top again, and Mariano Rivera closed the door.

The game started off as a few have recently: the Yanks put a few men on in the first, but failed to score. Ervin Santana kept dropping breaking balls and off-speed pitches, and the Yanks just couldn’t get a feel for him. It was more of the same in the second. Robinson Cano doubled to lead off, but Santana struck out two Yanks to strand him. But then came the third.

Santana, while getting swings and misses on breaking balls out of the zone, was nonetheless missing the zone. A-Rod took advantage of this, working a 3-0 count following a Teixeira single. Then came the BP fastball, and there it went, way out to dead center. It gave the Yanks their first lead of the series, and Posada would add to that with a two-run homer two batters later. Hideki Matsui struck in the fifth, and the Yanks offense had put them on top 5-0.

On the other side of the ball, Chad Gaudin had it going. It took him only nine pitches to retire the Angels in the first, and while the second was a bit longer he still allowed just one hit. A hit, a walk, and six outs later, the Yanks had a decent lead heading into the second half of the game. And that’s when Gaudin broke down.

It wasn’t the first time Gaudin lost it before the end of the fifth. Girardi pulled him with two outs in the fifth in Oakland, Gaudin’s first start in pinstripes, with the bases loaded. On that night he allowed no runs, and Al Aceves came on to finish the inning without damage. The latter was true again this time. Aceves came in and got Torii Hunter swinging to end the frame, but not before Gaudin allowed a homer, a double, a walk, and a single, putting the Angels on the board for the first time.

Aceves then had his own set of troubles in the sixth. Four of the first five hitters in the inning singled, allowing one run to score and loading the bases with one out. Maicer Izturis popped out, but Aceves couldn’t sneak one past the patient Abreu. Bobby didn’t even take the bat off his shoulder, and the Yanks lead was cut to one. Only a diving stop by and perfect throw to first from Alex Rodriguez saved the lead.

That would be the end of the Yanks’ pitching problems for the evening, though Phil Hughes did escape a mini-jam in the seventh, and pitched pretty well in eighth. It was the defense that failed the team. Howie Kendrick smoked an outside pitch, but right at Robinson Cano. The ball just got away from him, a play that unfolded so fast that the replay couldn’t really capture it. That was the first error.

On an 0-1 count, Kendrick took off for second. Jorge pulled the throw a bit and it went into center field, moving Kendrick to third with none out. There seemed little chance the Yanks could escape without blowing the lead. Hughes got Figgins to pop out weakly, but Izturis punched one into right to tie the game. Just three innings after the Yankees were flying high, they found themselves back at the drawing board.

Thankfully, the drawing board is often a productive place for the Yanks. Brett Gardner started off the ninth with a single, and then he was off to the races. While he was safe by the call, replay showed that he strayed a bit off the bag with the tag on him. Oh well. After the bottom of the eighth, the Yanks needed a break. Jeter ended up walking, and then Johnny Damon bunted the runners over.

Not wanting to face Mark Teixeira with runners on second and third, Mike Scioscia walked him to get to A-Rod. That didn’t work, as Alex lined one into center, just deep enough to score Gardner. That put the game in Mo’s hands, and while Juan Rivera’s at bat was tense, it ended with a great release: a strike ’em out, throw ’em out double play. One pitch later and the Yanks were celebrating a playoff berth, though they had locked that up a bit earlier when Texas lost to Oakland.

The Yankees got swept at Fenway in the first half and came back to go two out of three in the second half. They got swept in Anaheim before the All-Star Break, and now have a chance to go two out of three with a win today. A.J. Burnett starts against Scott Kazmir. It’s an afternoon affair, an odd 3:30 start.