The stars are night are big and bright…Photo courtesy of daylife.com

As the Yankees and the Rays battle for the AL East division crown and the Twins fight off the White Sox, the Rangers enter September as the clear favorite to win the AL West.  Barring something catastrophic, they will win wrest the division title away from the Angels and return to the playoffs for the first time since 1999.  The Rangers have been a model of playoff futility in the past.  Texas is one of three MLB franchises never to appear in the World Series, with the Mariners and Nationals being the others, and is the oldest franchise of that group.  They have never won a playoff series, and have only won one single playoff game in their three appearances.  Yet, this year hopes in Texas are high.  Texas is a club with a lot of young talent and high variance players, and mostly everything has gone right for them this year.  They’re getting an MVP performance from Josh Hamilton and great results from starters CJ Wilson and Colby Lewis, and they added one of the best pitchers in the game in Cliff Lee in July.  The Rangers are the American League version of the Cincinnati Reds: everything has clicked at once, and nothing major has gone wrong.  Yet, not all is well in Texas.

The Texas Rangers have watched Cliff Lee struggle after snatching him out from underneath the Yankees’ nose in July.  In 80 innings, Lee has a 4.79 ERA and has yielded 10 home runs.  He has still maintained good peripherals with 72 strikeouts and 8 walks, but the results just haven’t been there.  Recently, Lee admitted that he has been suffering from lower back discomfort, and returned to Texas to receive an injection. The Rangers are optimistic that he will start on Tuesday, but the Cliff Lee experiment in Texas has not gone well so far.  Adding to the Rangers’ worries is the fact that Josh Hamilton’s knee seems to be worsening.  His knee has been something that has bothered him all year, and he has received two cortisone injections already in an attempt to alleviate the pain.  However, the pain appears to be getting worse.  While another cortisone injection might help, most clubs don’t like to give more than two in a single season.  So instead the Rangers gave him an injection of the lubricant Synvisc.  Hamilton has reported that his knee feels 40-50 percent better, and he has been able to perform at peak levels all season despite the pain.  However, if the pain continues to persist and the knee deteriorates further, Hamilton’s knee could be a serious problem for Texas.

These aren’t the Rangers’ only problems.  Their rotation behind Cliff Lee has big questions.  Derek Holland has struggled with injury and inconsistency this year, despite his immense talent and impressive minor-league pedigree.  CJ Wilson has been a revelation for the Rangers, but has now thrown 171 innings on the year, 100 more than his major league high and around 40 more than his career high established as a 21 year-old in A/AA ball nine years ago.  On the offensive side, the Rangers have seen Vladimir Guerrero cool off in a major way: since the All-Star Break, he is batting .238/.284/.368 with 6 HR.  After fielding Cristian Guzman and varying outfield platoons, the Rangers have finally gotten  reinforcements with the returns of Ian Kinsler and Nelson Cruz.  However, neither of those players are the paragons of health and seem to be a constant risk of straining a groin (Kinsler) or hamstring (Cruz).

The futility of the Rangers franchise is somewhat sad.  To have only won one playoff game in franchise history is pitiful, especially considering the kind of talent that has passed through Texas in the past decade.  Yet thanks to some smart managing in the past (the Teixeira trade, in particular) and some aggressive maneuvering this season, the Rangers are set to make the playoffs this year and do so with two of the best players in baseball.  Yet, there are major injury questions surrounding this club, and the absence of either Hamilton or Lee could be devastating to their postseason chances.  Fortunately for them, they have a giant lead in the AL West and can afford to rest their players down the stretch.  But a Texas Rangers ballclub at less than 100% might find their postseason visit cut short yet again.

In many ways, the really talented guys in the system are easy to judge. Jesus Montero has a great scouting report, hits well, and meets expectations, or hits poorly and fails to meet expectations. The really fringy guys are easy to judge as well. Eric Wordekemper does not have major league stuff, so his performance doesn’t really matter. The guys in between are the hard part. David Phelps is an experienced, mostly talented starting pitcher whom the Yankees drafted out of Notre Damn in 2008.

After thinking about Phelps, the content of this post has changed. I originally wanted to sit down and write a “David Phelps, meet Pittsburgh Pirates”, but I think that I may be wrong. If I apply the criteria for a good prospect laid out in this post, I think Phelps actually stacks up pretty well. To review: those criteria are fastball velocity, innings pitched, strikeout rate and walk rate. In all of those departments, Phelps has made key improvements over 2009. Before I go into the criteria, here are his statistics:

Fastball Velocity – We’ve heard reports that Phelps throws between 89 and 95 mph with a two seem fastball. In reality, he’s probably a 90-93 mph thrower with a little bit of sink. That’s pretty strong, and he compliments it with a newly-improved slider. The sinker-slider combination is a pretty classic recipe for pitching, but also tends to produce misleading minor league numbers. For whatever reason, minor leaguers can’t handle the sinker-slider combination in any way proportional to how major leaguers handle it. I can’t count the number of sinker-slider guys who put up great numbers (but, and we’ll get to this, usually strikeout-light numbers) in High-A and Double-A before being knocked out in Triple-A or the majors. Hockey fans might know this as the “Alexander Daigle” effect. Luckily, the Yankees understand this, and it hasn’t seemed to ruin their confidence in Phelps.

Innings Pitched - Since being drafted, Phelps has been a healthy, reliable innings eater. He has yet to miss a start, and has put up a pretty consistent 5.8-6.0 innings per start rate all the way through the minor leagues. This means that he is fairly economical with his pitch counts, and consistent week to week. His healthiness is another big plus.

Strikeout Rate – Here’s the big improvement. Sinker-slider pitchers tend to dominate the low minors, but peter out as they rise through the minor leagues. Phelps has actually done the opposite. His K rate has risen as he has rises. Much of this can be owed to an improved slider. Phelps has also been knowing as more of a pitcher than a thrower, so there could be a little bit of added pitching aptitude in there too. His K rate dipped a bit in a half-season of Triple-A ball, but it still remained elevated from previous levels. The Yankees have been promoting him out of pure confidence.

Walk rate – Phelps has excellent control. He has enough stuff to throw strikes, and enough command to not throw balls. His walk rate has been pretty consistent. If nothing else, Phelps will be a major league starter somewhere just on the basis of being able to throw low 90s strikes.

The big question? Will Phelps be throwing his strikes out a first-division team like the Yankees, or will he join the ranks of interesting Yankee prospects throwing for the Pittsburgh Pirates. After thinking about it for a little bit, and sticking with my chosen criteria, I think that Phelps is going to be good enough to pitch for the Yankees. He has fewer warning signs than Ivan Nova, even if his ceiling is lower. The Yankees can probably rely on Phelps to be their first man out of the minors next season, and I could even see them give him an outside shot to earn the job in spring training. A 3.32 ERA at Triple-A is nothing to sniff at, and its made even better by his consistent K/BB ratio. He’s changed my opinion is six short months, and I hope the Yankees have noticed too.

Over the last few months, I’ve looked at Derek Jeter’s season from a singular perspective: that of Jeter himself. Granted, that’s what makes the most sense. Jeter is the player and he is the one who’s most responsible for his performance (or lack thereof). There is, however, the possibility that pitchers are attacking Jeter differently and he’s been unable to adjust.

To test this theory, I decided to look at Jeter’s pitch data on Texas Leaguers to see if pitchers were approaching Jeter’s at bats differently over the last two years. I chose the last two seasons, a relatively small amount of data admittedly, because they highlight Jeter’s biggest problem this year: his insane ground ball rate. In 2009, his GB% was essentially at his career average (over by about .04). This year, as we know, it’s much higher. Maybe Jeter’s gotten more balls thrown to him down in the zone in 2010 and that’s leading him to hammer the ball down and burn some worms.

First let’s look at the swing data and see what we can find:

2009

2010

Maybe I’m missing something, but I looked at those pictures a lot last night while writing this and could not find much difference between them. It appears that Jeter’s swinging at the changeup down and away a little more and he’s swinging at more balls out of the zone (highest career OOZ%, though it’s worth noting he’s below the league average OOZ which is way up to 29.2% this year). The fastball placement–mostly up and away–is pretty similar, too. The difference, then, isn’t what the pitchers are doing against Jeter, but what he’s doing against the pitches they’re throwing.

The take plots don’t offer much either.

2009

2010

It seems that 2010 features fewer takes on the inner part o the plate. Maybe that’s leading to the influx in groundballs. But, that’s more of a Jeter issue than a pitcher issue.

Derek has seen about 6% fewer fastballs (four seam and two seam combined) this year, though, so maybe that’s an issue. That is the only real noticeable difference in pitches he’s seen this year, along with an uptick in two seamers from 3.5% to 12.2%.

I’m trying to find any angle I can to explain Jeter’s struggles in 2010 but I’m having trouble doing that. It seems that there is one explanation, the simplest explanation possible: he’s just having a bad year.

As Derek Jeter’s free agency draws closer, fans and analysts alike are having difficulty imagining what his next contract will look like.  On one hand, you have an aging shortstop in the midst of one of the worst years of his career. On the other hand, you have the “face of the franchise”, an iconic New York sports legend who has been synonymous with the Yankee brand for the past 15 years.  Like it or not, resigning Derek Jeter is messy and complicated, and represents one of the more intriguing cases of free agency in recent memory.

On August 6th, Mark Feinsand took a stab at picturing Jeter’s next contract.  In his piece, “Cannot value Jeter but millions will do”, Feinsand argues that Jeter isn’t going anywhere and should command an extremely lucrative contract from the Yankees this offseason.

“There will be a lot of talk this winter about what Jeter is worth as he finishes his 10-year, $189 million contract. Contracts aren’t what they were a decade ago, but if there’s one player who should be handed a blank check, it’s Jeter, who has represented the franchise with as much class and dignity as any player could.”

Handing a blank check to Jeter, who has gone .208/.292/.292 since August 6th (h/t Larry Koestler), doesn’t seem like the wisest idea.  Plenty of time could be spent demonstrating how this sort of sentiment is, well, insane, but that’s not really the point of this exercise.  Instead, it is relevant to note that the potential difficulty that Alex Rodriguez’s contract poses for the Yankees when negotiating with Jeter.  It’s hard to sell the need for austerity measures when you just finished spreading money around like a politician in an election year.  It may be necessary, but it’s unsavory.  As Feinsand notes:

“Alex Rodriguez is due to earn $184 million over the next seven years - and that doesn’t even include the $30 million he can collect from his pursuit of Barry Bonds‘ home run record. Jeter won’t get that kind of money, but if A-Rod is making an average of $26.2 million through 2014, how can the Yankees pay Jeter less than the $21 million he’s making now?

It’s more likely that Jeter will get a raise to $22 million to $25 million per over the next four or five years. That sounds like a ton of money for a shortstop who will turn 37 next summer, but as the rival GM points out, the value of Jeter’s 3,000th hit alone - he was recently named the most marketable player in baseball by Sports Business Daily - is enough to make an inflated deal worthwhile for the Yankees.

“He’s always going to be worth far more to the Yankees than he will be anywhere else,” the GM said. “You can’t quantify what he’s worth with a normal equation. Forget what he does on the field - and he’s still an excellent player - but the business reasons alone are so compelling, it makes too much sense on both sides.”"

Yikes.  Jeter won’t be worth $25 million dollars per year going forward, few players are, and the club doesn’t have that kind of payroll flexibility if they plan to sign Cliff Lee.  Aside from that, and the idea that he would get a raise really should be put aside, are two distinct claims that merit examination. First is the argument that Jeter’s pursuit of 3000 hits is “enough to make an inflated deal worthwhile for the Yankees”.  This is probably hollow.  The Yankees already sell plenty of tickets, so there isn’t upside in gate revenue.  It’s possible that they would get a bump in television ratings, but it’s dubious that they would get the extra viewers necessary to make up tens of millions of dollars in salary to Derek Jeter.  It’s a spurious argument, really.  More persuasive is the claim that his off-the-field value provides the Yankees with reason to keep him.  Giving that concept more than just lip service is Baseball Prospectus’ Ben Lindbergh in his piece “Overthinking It: A Captain’s Ransom“.  First, Lindbergh examines all aspects of Jeter’s performance and then makes the following conclusion:

That combination of weak contact and poor discipline could be a passing phase, but it could also be the mark of a player with declining bat speed, who’s starting his swing early to compensate and adopting a less discriminating approach as a result (as Frankie Piliere suggested yesterday). A mild rebound certainly isn’t out of the question, but an improvement on defense or a complete return to form with the bat at the age of 37 is unlikely, to say the least, and shouldn’t be taken for granted by a prospective employer.

Noting that Jeter’s performance looks a lot like, gulp, Marco Scutaro, Lindberg goes on to argue that Jeter would likely command a salary with an average annual value south of $10M, were he a generic, faceless 37 year-old shortstop hitting the open market after a down year.  But he’s not:

“Jeter boasts not only a far more impressive pedigree as a player but appreciable ancillary off-field value. Can we quantify what sort of worth Jeter brings to a team’s coffers, above and beyond his on-field contributions?”

Lindberg cites a book written by Vincent Gennaro in which he attempts to identify the way that marquee, or brand, value contributes to higher gate receipts, revenue, and franchise value.  Gennaro evaluated all the factors that comprise a “brand”, like image, recognizability, performance and continuity, and concluded that Jeter’s off-the-field value to the Yankees was $3.9 million, separate from his actual on-the-field performance.

“All told, Gennaro set Jeter’s value to the Yankees at $3.9 million, above and beyond any on-field contributions he might make. Jeter’s performance factor has suffered since then, which lowers his marquee value, but in light of inflation, increased continuity and association with the Yankees brand, and his pursuit of his 3,000^th hit, it’s not unreasonable to credit him with upward of $5 million in marquee value alone. Essentially, if when the terms of a deal are eventually announced, it seems like the Yankees paid for one more win than they’re likely to get from Jeter’s bat and glove, they may have simply valued his persona and overall package accurately. While Jeter would retain some of his marquee value in any uniform, he’d sacrifice much of it by forsaking the team with which his brand has become identified. Thus, independent of performance, payroll, or position on the win curve, Jeter is worth more to the Yankees than he is to any other club.”

It’s obvious that Jeter and the New York Yankees have good reason to stay joined at the hip.  What is less clear is how aggressive Jeter will be in attempting to secure another long-term deal for himself, and how reluctant the Yankees will be in doling out big money for an aging star.  It is important, though, to recognize that Jeter’s off-the-field value has a limit.  Whether you buy Gennaro’s analysis and specific figures or not, Jeter’s brand isn’t an endless, unimaginable source of monetary value for the Yankees meriting a giant payday.  Even with all his championships, his pursuit of 3000 hits, and the inimitable way he sells the Ford Edge,  the brand value of Derek Jeter has a limit.

Dallas Braden gained some notoriety a few months ago by jawing at Alex Rodriguez after A-Rod ran across “Braden’s mound” on his way back to first base following a foul ball. It was an unwritten rule that many had never heard before, and was a popular topic of discussion for a few days back in May. With Braden starting today, it is only fitting that an incident in last night’s Marlins-Nationals game has brought the unwritten code back into the limelight.

Nyjer Morgan was hit by a pitch due to an incident from the night before, and may have deserved it. Later in the game, Morgan stole 2nd and 3rd despite trailing 14-3, and then scored on a sac fly. The Marlins took exception to Morgan stealing bases in a blowout and threw behind Morgan, at which point Nyjer charged the mound and a brawl ensued. Brien Jackson of IIATMS had a solid take on all this:

That’s right, the Nationals were down by 10 runs and Morgan was still trying to score runs. Everyone knows that this violates sacred baseball rule 12(b); when a game gets to a certain (undefined) level of out-of-handedness, both teams must stop trying to score runs and get the game over with as soon as possible. Nevermind that the Marlins weren’t holding Morgan on, so he could easily take those bases, or that he wound up scoring on a sacrifice fly, no, none of that matters. Morgan refused to stop trying to win the game, and for that he had to have a message sent to him.

Look, I don’t want it to come off like I’m defending Morgan, but this is totally ridiculous. It’s bad enough that we expect teams that are winning by large margins to stop playing, it’s absolutely absurd to expect the same of teams that are losing. Aside from the fact that it goes against the basic ethos of competition, it’s completely out of line with the game of baseball in particular. After all, baseball doesn’t have a clock governing length of play, you have to record 27 outs to put the other team away. Whereas in football there comes a point where the time on the clock makes it impossible to mount a comeback, that’s never the case in baseball. Unlikely as it may be, you can score any number of runs at any point, even down to your last out. So there’s simply no reason to expect any team to stop trying to win, let alone in the 5th inning. It’s even dumber to have a culture that encourages hurling a pitch at someone because half-way through the game they haven’t stopped trying to win.

I do not have much to add to that, except to note that all of these controversies serve to illustrate how silly and childish the unwritten code of baseball is. As I stated at the time of the Braden incident and a subsequent incident involving Chris Carpenter:

This story, coupled with the Dallas Braden silliness, just displays how silly the unwritten code of baseball is. Players take themselves so seriously that they expect the opposition to be automatons who never celebrate or get frustrated. Baseball is the only sport where excitement, joy, and frustration are taboo, and the refrain of “be a professional” means to take a business-like approach to what is, at heart, an enjoyable game. Players simply need to grow up and ignore the fistpumps and bat-slams of the opposing team, and focus on doing their own jobs and regulating their own behavior. The “Code” is a nebulous group of self-important, undefined rules that allow players like Carpenter and Braden to justify their own actions by disparaging the actions of others. It is time to let it fade into oblivion.

The overwrought machismo of the unwritten rules eventually leads to the sort of melee that we saw last night. Major League Baseball needs to react harshly to all of the involved parties and send a message that the only rules that count in baseball are those codified in the rule book.

Derek Jeter seems to have developed a rather nasty habit this season; well, one that isn’t just his near 70% groundball rate. And, to be fair, it’s not exactly a habit. It’s just something we’ve never quite seen from Jeter: a massive platoon split.

In Derek Jeter’s career, not including last night, he has a .398 wOBA against left handed pitchers and he has a .351 wOBA against right handers. There’s a .047 point difference which is pretty big, but the .351 wOBA against a same handed pitcher is just fine with me.

This year, Jeter has a .382 wOBA against lefties and a .285 wOBA against right handers. His previous low against righties (2002 and beyond) was .334 in ‘08. For some reason, Derek’s just not hitting well against righties this year.

His career IsoP against RHP is .132 (.165 vs. LHP). This year? .077 (182 vs. LHP).

Of course, it’s worth noting that Jeter’s .281 BABIP vs. RHP in 2010, as opposed to .352 in his career. But, this isn’t much of an excuse or explanation because Jeter’s BABIP is down across the board this year and it’s mostly due to weak contact (the aforementioned large amount of grounders). The lack of hard contact can also be traced to Jeter’s plate appearances against right handed pitchers.

His career LD% against right handed pitchers is 19.7%. This year, it’s way down to 15.1%. His ground ball rate is 58.1% for his career vs. RHP. This year, it’s 69.1.

So, it seems that Jeter’s struggles against right handed pitchers is much like a microcosm of his season as a whole: he’s struggling because he’s not hitting the ball hard and when he does hit it, he’s beating it into the ground. As we’ve seen, though, this isn’t a trend in Derek Jeter’s career. This could, for all we know, be a one year thing. Next year, he could come back and hit just fine against righties. We’ll have to check back this time next year and see how Derek is faring against RHP.

Continuing with Monday’s post, I am reviewing things that surprised me while away for three months. The first five items on Monday dealt with players more established in the system. Now, its time for the fresh out of the box surprises.

6. Adam Warren is the real deal.

I’ve been witness to enough Staten Island flash in the pans to be pretty skeptical when someone like Adam Warren comes along and flashes a 1.43 ERA in 56 innings. Weird things happen in a short season, especially when the league is made up mostly of new draftees who are learning how to hit with wooden bats. But Warren did have a pretty impressive season (7.9 K/9, 1.6 BB/9) after being picked in the 3rd round, so he hit all of our radars.

When I left, Warren was enjoying a pretty good season down in High-A Tampa. Before moving up, he pitched 81 innings with an ERA of 2.22, a K/9 of 7.4, and a BB/9 of 1.9. Since his Double-A promotion though, he has dramatically boosted his performance to 10.9 K/9 and 2.1 BB/9 in 50 innings, including a record-breaking 15 K performance.

Now, all is not perfect for Warren. After throwing 94-95 consistently for Staten Island, he has settled back into his expected 91-93 mph range with the fastball. He throws a lot of pitches, and for that reason has generally failed to put up large innings totals. He has pitched just 5.45 innings per start.

Warren is another enigma that is worth taking another look at. He’s excelled beyond where his four years of high-level college experience provide him an advantage, and has the stuff to be a major league starter. He’s not a top-10 prospect, but he’s not a flash in the pan either. He’s one hell of a pick for Damon Oppenheimer and his team.

7. Gary Sanchez is Jesus Montero’s younger brother.

Sanchez will forever be compared to Jesus Montero. Both received huge bonuses (Sanches received 3 million dollars) at the age of 16 out of Latin America. Both are catchers with defensive shortcomings, and both are have phenomenal hitting potential.

Montero, like Sanchez, debuted at age 17 in the Gulf Coast League a year after signing. Unlike Sanchez, Montero’s greatness was mostly confined to scouting reports. We got really excited because scouts were telling us that Montero had a game-changing bat, and he wet our lips enough by hitting .280/.366/.421. He didn’t have a lot of power, and the Yankees almost immediately began to radically change the mechanics of his swing.

Sanchez debuted at the age of 17 in the Gulf Coast league this summer, and did things very differently. He hit .353/.419/.597 with 6 home runs and 11 doubles in 136 plate appearances for the GCL Yankees, and even earned a short promotion to Staten Island to face tougher competition. Where Montero started out walking slow and steadily quickened his pace, Sanches hit the ground running.

31 games in rookie ball carry with them a lot of sample size caveats, but the news is still good. Gary Sanchez is ahead of where Jesus Montero was at this point in his minor league career. Like Montero, he has a lot of defensive work to do, but unlike Montero he carries no athleticism or size criticisms related to his long term ability to play catcher. Folks, with a little luck we’ve got another top-20 prospect in all of baseball on our hands. Check in this time next year to see.

8. The Yankees came ready to spend in the 2010 draft

A lot of us were a little perplexed by the Yankees choice of Cito Culver in the 1st round of the 2010 draft. He signed for under slot money, and immediately started playing in the minors. The next two and a half months saw the team sign 15 of their top 16 picks, including a whole bunch of expensive signability picks.

The team spent over slot money to sign picks in the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 9th, 10th, and 16th rounds. All but one of those picks (3rd rounder Robert Segedin) are highly talented high school players who are probably ticketed for Charleston next year. Along with Gary Sanchez and a few others, they will form a tight, interesting group of players to watch as they climb the ladder together. Make no mistake, the Yankees made a huge investment in this group, and it should at least in part pay off big time.

Eric wrote a great write up of the group here.

After steamrolling the Athletics the past two evenings, the Yankees will run into a tougher opponent tonight.  His name is Brett Anderson.

Photo courtesy of Daylife.com and Getty Images

Brett Anderson has just about everything you’d want in a starting pitcher.  To start, he’s a baby.  Born in 1988, Anderson is only 22 years old, about a year and a half younger than Phil Hughes.  The Diamondbacks drafted him straight out of high school in 2006 with their second round pick.  In his first season as a 19 year old he racked up 120 innings, a K/9 of 9.3 and a K/BB ratio of 5.95 between Low A and High A.  Yet the Diamondbacks felt their need for a major league-ready starting pitcher and dealt Anderson, along with Carlos Gonzalez, Dana Eveland, Aaron Cunningham, Greg Smith and Chris Carter, to the Athletics in exchange for Dan Haren and Connor Robertson.  Surely, this was one of Billy Beane’s finer trades.

Oakland was slightly more patient with Anderson.  In 2008 he hurled 105 innings between High A and Double A, striking out 10.1 batters per nine innings and walking a mere 2.3 per nine.  Anderson entered the 2009 season as Baseball America’s 7th best prospect in baseball and the Athletics decided to have him skip Triple A and start the year in the majors.  He didn’t disappoint, posting a 4.06 ERA over 175 innings with a K/9 of 7.7, a BB/9 of 2.3 and a FIP of 3.69.  By most measures, Anderson’s first season in the bigs as a twenty-two year old could not have gone better.  He was an ace in the making, and Oakland locked him up long term with $12.5M guaranteed over 4 years with two club options of $8M in 2014 and $12M in 2015.

But 2010 hasn’t gone as Oakland planned.  Anderson was pulled from his April 24th start with left elbow tightness.  Despite initial reports that the injury wasn’t considered serious, Anderson missed almost a month before retaking the mound on May 30th against Detroit.  The outing went well and Anderson scattered only 3 hits over 5 scoreless innings, walking none and striking out 4.  Yet in his next start he was pulled after two innings with elbow pain, and he returned to the disable list with left elbow tendinitis.  Despite some indications that he would need season-ending surgery, Anderson rehabbed and returned to the mound two months later at the end of July.  Since then, he’s made six starts, throwing 34 innings with a 4.19 ERA, striking out 25 and walking 8.  Some of those starts were great, particularly his outing against the Rays on August 21st, when he allowed 2 runs over 7 innings and struck out 8.  But in his most recent outing against Texas he lasted only two innings before getting pulled with a hyperextended left knee.  Despite that, Anderson is still in line to start against New York tonight.  It’s been a long, injury-filled year for Anderson, and you have to imagine that another knee tweak would result in Oakland shutting him down for the year.  If his left knee is weak and alters his kinetic chain of motion, he could reinjure his elbow or another part of his body.

Yet, when Brett Anderson is healthy he can eat hitters alive.  His fastball sits in the low 90s and he’s capable of dialing it up to 95 mph.  He commands the pitch well and pounds the strike zone.  But his out pitch is his slider*, and he throws it early and often.  The past two years he’s relied on the pitch around 31% of the time, quite a lot given the relative toll a slider takes on an arm.  Francisco Liriano relied on the slider to a similar degree before needing Tommy John surgery.  But like Liriano, it’s not hard to see why he favors the pitch.  In 2009, his slider had the highest pitch type value of any qualifying MLB starter at 22.9 runs above average.  This mark would also be good for the league lead in 2010, currently held by Liriano at 21.2 runs above average.  Anderson also features a curveball and a changeup, and throws them both around 7-8% of the time.  They aren’t just show-me pitches; he’s capable of throwing them for strikes at any point in the count. Additionally, Anderson is primarily a groundball pitcher.  In his major league career he has generated ground balls around 53% of the time, a trend consistent with his minor league pedigree, and one sure to produce great results given Oakland’s tendency to field excellent defenses behind their pitchers.

If he’s healthy, Brett Anderson will eat your lunch and make you thank him for it.  He’s a lefty with a hard fastball and nasty breaking pitches.  He keeps the ball on the ground, he strikes batters out, and he limits the walks.  He’s everything one would want in a pitching prospect, and he’s only 22 years old.

*Note that Fangraphs and Texas Leaguers classify his pitches differently.  Fangraphs had his pitch types at 52% fastball, 32.1% slider, 6.7% curveball and 8.5% changeup.  Texas Leaguers has him at 48% 4-seam fastball, 6.4% 2-seam fastball, 29.5% curveball, 9.5% slider, 6.2% changeup.  In reality, Anderson throws a slurvy type breaking ball.  He throws it often, and it’s hard to hit.

The Monday night game featured a six run first inning for the Yankees; they gave up three in the top half and then scored three in the bottom half. Maybe it was just confirmation bias since I’d just seen it happen, but I thought “The Yankee pitchers don’t seem so hot in the first inning lately.” So, I decided to look into it. This doesn’t include last night’s game.

Per Baseball-Reference, the Yankees pitchers have 558 PAs against in the first inning. In the first inning, the Yankees pitchers give up a .282/.337/.442/.779 line. Excluding extra innings (a .491 OBP driven .896 OPSA), the first inning is the second worst inning–by OPS–for Yankee pitchers. The worst is the sixth inning, during which Yankee pitchers surrender a .281/.347/.466/.813 line. The best inning, predictably, is the ninth (.618 OPS). Not shockingly, the opposition puts up a .332 BABIP against Yankee starters in the first (highest). Ironically enough, the 3.03 K/BB in that inning is the best for Yankee pitchers of any inning.

As for hitting, the first inning isn’t exactly kind to the Yankees. They have a .759 OPS in that inning, which is their third worst behind the second inning (.694) and eighth inning (.699).

What does all this mean? Well, apparently not that much. Despite “slow” (by Yankee standards) starts on offense and on the mound, the Yankees still own the best record in baseball and are now 32 games above .500. Here’s what helps counter balance the rough starts:

In high leverage situations, Yankee pitchers hold the batters to a .670 OPS, their best mark. In high leverage situations at the plate, they have an .805 OPS.

Moral of the story: the Yankees are good at baseball.

An interesting post from Dan Szymborski of Baseball Think Factory renown over at ESPN:

What would this AL East race look like if the Sox had stayed healthy?

….For those five starters, there were a combined 996 missed plate appearances compared to what would be expected.

Those 996 plate appearances had to go somewhere, so to do the next phase of this projection, I had to take them back from the guys who got them. I tried to be as fair as I could — Daniel Nava and Ryan Kalish lost the most, as did players like Bill Hall.

Then I used runs created, a Bill James stat. I created an estimate of how many runs the replacements created in those 996 plate appearances — and how many the injured players would have likely created. For the injured players, I used their preseason ZiPS projections as a guide to how they likely would have played, given their normal playing time.

The five injured starters would have created 153 runs; the replacements created 114. That’s a difference of 39 runs, which equates to roughly four wins.

If you look at the AL East standings, that makes the Red Sox a 78-53 team as opposed to their current status as a 74-57 team; they’d be three games back of the New York Yankees and Tampa Bay Rays, as opposed to their current seven games back.

I did not want to reproduce the entire article, and was forced to snip out some of the analysis. I highly recommend reading the original article to make sure you capture the context of his calculations.

Dan’s conclusion seems about right. One thing that the saber revolution has taught us is that even the greatest players tend to be worth only 6-7 wins more than a replacement player over a full season. This does not mean that the player only contributes to 6-7 victories. Rather, it states that all of the player’s contributions add up to 6 or 7 full victories that can be credited to the player (relative to a replacement player baseline). Being that none of the Sox players missed the entire season and that their replacements played above “replacement level,” it seems logical that the injuries cost the Sox fewer wins than you might think if you were, say, an overnight host for WEEI (who stated that the Red Sox lost 10+ games in the standings due to injuries and would be way out in front without them). The injuries have killed Boston, and they would absolutely be more involved in the race if they had remained healthy. But they would likely still be on the outside looking in at the start of September even without their incredible spate of injuries.