I was looking over Roy Halladay’s career numbers in anticipation of tonight’s game and was amazed by his career line against the Yankees. Parsing through those numbers provides some amazing little nuggets of information. Remember, the Yankees have been the best offense in baseball for much of Halladay’s career.
Total Career: 1955.2 IP, 142-70, 3.45 ERA, 1.19 WHIP, 8.8 H/9, .7 HR/9, 2.0 BB/9, 6.5 K/9, .254/.299/.373
Vs. the Yankees: 223.1 IP, 16-5, 2.90 ERA, 1.12 WHIP, 8.0 H/9, .8 HR/9, 2.1 BB/9, 6.9 K/9, .239/.290/.363
Well, there you have it. Roy Halladay has pitched better than his career numbers against the best offense in baseball. This likely explains why Yankees fans consider him the best pitcher in baseball, despite the fact that Johan Santana probably has a better case over the last 5-7 years. Halladay just kills the Yankees pretty much every time out.
Speaking of Yankee killers, who else do you recall beating the Yankees on a consistent basis? Conversely, who did the Yankees beat despite their lofty stature?
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AJ Burnett last year was amazing. It seemed everytime we draw those two in every series. That´s why he got all that money. I bet his numberers against non-Yankee teams are league average.
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The other Chris H Reply:
August 4th, 2009 at 6:11 pm
He had a real good past couple of years against the Red Sox and Rays too!
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The Yankees, for some reason, fell in love with the players that beat them in the postseason and got them: Jaret Wright (1997) Randy Johnson (1995 and 2001), Tony Womack (2001), Ivan Rodriguez (2003), Johny Damon (2004). They all had key hits or outings in the postseason that beat them.
The ones they couldn´t get: Sandy Alomar Jr (1997) and Schilling (2001 and 2004)
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Burnett is a good one. Here are others that I always hate to see on the other end of the v. regardless of whther they are good pitchers.
1. John Lackey
2. Beckett
3. Wakefield some years
4. Lopez (the Baltimore guy who would pitch lights out against Yankees.)
5. Kazmir
6. Ervin Santana
7. Smoltz
8. Oliver Perez
Guys that never bothered me.
1. Verlander
2. CC
3. Cliff Lee
4. Matsuzaka
5. Felix Hernandez (I don’t know if this is a flawed memory but I just don’t fear him.)
6. Tim Hudson
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The other Chris H Reply:
August 4th, 2009 at 6:20 pm
Wakefield I always thought of as a fluke loss when we had them against him, we seem to hit his knuckle ball real well (except certain play off Games).
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Craig Reply:
August 5th, 2009 at 12:32 pm
Interesting list, but Smoltz doesn’t scare me one bit if he’s in the starting rotation. Not anymore at least. I love that you have Ollie on this list. He’ll look like trash all year, walk more than he K’s, but when he plays the Yankees, he looks like a perennial Cy Young candidate. I disagree with Verlander, he’s been a beast against us this year and tore us up in the playoffs in 2006. Johan Santana, surprisingly, is someone I feel confident going into a matchup against.
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The other Chris H Reply:
August 5th, 2009 at 4:24 pm
CC was a beast against us too, in fact he was the one who tore us up in the playoffs.
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I always thought we handled Pedro pretty well. Santana never really scared me either.
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JD Reply:
August 4th, 2009 at 4:37 pm
Santana always scared me and so did Pedro. Those guys pitched well but the Yanks often got the better of them in a low scoring game.
BTW, “King” Felix had a 7.71 era against the Yanks over the past three seasons. Probably accounts for the fact that I do not value him as much as I probably should. I forget who wrote it but there was a great blog on this site that made the argument that knowing too much about Yankee prospects causes us to over_value them. likewise, how a pitcher does against the Yanks inevitably causes us to over or under value their quality.
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Joe O Reply:
August 4th, 2009 at 4:42 pm
Pedro was usually good for the first 100 pitches and then we would tag him and be his daddy (least that’s what i recall).
I always remembered Chuck Finley beating us (although we always lose to the Angels) and his W-L is much better against us but his other numbers aren’t (least not his ERA or WHIP).
W L W-L% ERA G GS GF CG SHO SV IP H R ER HR BB IBB SO HBP BK WP BF WHIP SO/9 SO/BB
200 173 .536 3.84 524 467 24 63 15 0 3197.1 3069 1517 1364 304 1332 36 2610 76 22 13638 1.376 7.3 1.96
17 10 .630 3.82 40 35 1 4 1 0 238.0 232 107 101 22 109 4 206 8 1 1035 1.433 7.8 1.89
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Eric Schultz Reply:
August 4th, 2009 at 6:58 pm
Funny, Finley was the first guy who came to my mind as well.
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The other Chris H Reply:
August 4th, 2009 at 6:16 pm
We had good pitching against Pedro most of the time though so that helps alot.
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Wakefield is 11-17 with a 5.02 career ERA against us. I love seeing that guy come to town. The only downside is that he always seemed to put Giambi in a funk for about two weeks.
Interestingly, Giambi is the batter with the most career PAs against him and “hit” .163/.304/.359 and I LOVED watching Tex hit a double off of him from the “wrong” side earlier this season
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Teddy Higuera- we should have got that guy back in the day
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Chip,
The wakefield career stats don’t tell the whole story. We killed him early then over the last few years he dominated. Look at the wakefield espn stats for the last three years.
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Denny McLain of the Tigers seemed to beat us all the time.
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don’t like to admit my age but back in the day it was Frank Lary… the Tigers were less than mediocre but Lary would always prevail against those powerful Yankee teams…
From Wikipedia:
Known as “The Yankee Killer”, he had a 28-13 lifetime record against the New York Yankees. In 1958, his record against the Yankees was 7-0. Yankees manager Casey Stengel once delayed the appearance of his star pitcher, Whitey Ford, by one day so Ford wouldn’t have to face Lary. Stengel explained to reporters, “If Lary is going to beat us anyway, why should I waste my best pitcher?”
He played with the Tigers fron 1954 to 1964 the prime years of the Yankee dynasty. Amazing.
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Old Ranger Reply:
August 5th, 2009 at 10:29 am
Thanks Basil…I tried to come up with the name of a tiger but the only one I could think of was McLain. I knew one of the great Yankee Killers was a Tiger but couldn’t remember the name.
I also remember the time Casy did the Ford thing…it was a great move by him.
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Basil Fomeen Reply:
August 5th, 2009 at 11:34 am
He was 16-15 in 1958, but 7-0 against the world series champion Yankees. Mind-boggling, hows that for establishing yourself as a Yankee-killer!
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