IMPORTANT BLOG ANNOUNCEMENT

PLEASE CHANGE YOUR BOOKMARKS AND FEEDS TO THE NEW URL, YANKEEANALYSTS.COM. TYU IS IN NO WAY AFFILIATED WITH THE NEW YORK YANKEES OR YANKEES UNIVERSE.

Yankees Sweep Doubleheader; Reduce Magic Number to Whitey Ford

Posted by Rebecca Glass at 10:46 pm 7 Responses »
Sep 072009

What better way to remedy one of the sloppiest games of the season than with a double header where the games were started by CC Sabathia and AJ Burnett?

Perhaps it’s a microcosm of how this season has gone for the Yankees, but both Sabathia and Burnett turned in stellar outings–though Burnett struggled a bit in the first inning of the second game and had an elevated pitch count.

This was a doubleheader that certainly mattered a lot more to the Rays–who were nominally fighting for their playoff lives–than the Yankees, who are fighting for home field advantage, but you wouldn’t have known that from the way it was played.

In the first game, the Yankees remained deadlocked at 1-1 in a pitchers’ duel until the Yankees scored three runs–two on sacrifice flies–in the eighth. Mariano Rivera did the rest.

In the second game, the Yankees scored eight runs in the third inning, and never looked back. By the end of the game, almost every member of the so-called “A” line-up was sitting on the bench, watching and enjoying the game’s conclusion. The best part? AJ Burnett notching his first win since late July. Wins are horrible indicators of pitching performance, we know, but they’re still counted.

The game took on, as one Twitterer put it, a spring training feel, just lazy baseball with no one paying too much attention. The Yankees haven’t clinched anything yet, so the games are still meaningful, but when the Yankees have a chance to rest guys down the stretch, they will.

Of course, the elephant in the room would be Derek Jeter’s quest to break Lou Gehrig’s record for hits as a Yankee, but as luck would have it, Jeter was held hitless in both games. Jeter did have an RBI on a fielder’s choice and a walk in the second game, but the quest to unseat Lou will have to wait at least one more night.

Still, if you ask Jeter if he’d rather have the hits or the doubleheader sweep, it is, if you’ve watched Jeter at all during the entirety of his career, a pretty easy question to answer.

The magic number is now 16–any combination of Red Sox losses and Yankees victories would give them a postseason berth.

They are 39 games over .500–and I can’t remember the last time a team was this good.

At 89 wins, the team now has matched their win total for all of last year, and there are still over 20 games left to play. If the Yankees just win 11 of those games–that is, go under .500 the rest of the season–they’ll still win 100 games.

If they win 15 more games of the 23 they have left–which they are roughly on pace to do, they would win 104 games on the year–easily the best season since 1998.

Also worth noting: Larry Mahnken of Replacement Level fame mentioned to me that the Yankees are now getting above league-average production at every position.

This is a special team we’re watching.

Tagged with: ,

New Stadium set to witness first historical moment

Posted by Rebecca Glass at 4:00 pm 8 Responses »
Sep 072009

Sometime this week, Derek Jeter will break Lou Gehrig’s record for all time hits as a Yankee.

When Jeter does so, he will have accomplished the feat at the New Yankee Stadium–and it will be the first historic Yankee moment unrelated to the Stadium itself to occur there.

The selling point of the old Stadium, to many, had less to do with the physical building itself, but more to do with all of the historical (in the baseball world, anyway) events that occurred on it. The knock against the New Stadium, by some, was that it had none of the history, none of the emotion, none of the memory of the old park.

Thing is, new ballparks can’t be built with history already made, like a frozen meal.

History has to be created.

The more history you want, the longer it takes to make.

Right now, the very first of what we hope will be many historical moments is right at the doorstep. Don’t talk to Jeter about it–he’s not one for personal milestones, it’s been well reported–but for someone who is about to become the all time most prolific Yankees hitter, there’s something fitting about the fact that he will achieve his mark in a place where he will be the first to really do something truly historic.

Many will still say that the New Stadium won’t be truly christened until the Yankees win it all, but Jeter’s milestone, and its place should not be ignored.

Tagged with: ,

Neyer On The Nady-Marte Trade

Posted by Moshe Mandel at 11:04 am 7 Responses »
Sep 072009

Tyler Kepner recently wrote a blog post on Ross Ohlendorf and the trade that sent him to the Pirates, and Rob Neyer quickly caught on and riffed off of it, focusing instead on Jose Tabata:

Granted, the equation would look quite a bit different if Marte hadn’t fallen apart the moment the Yankees got him, and if Nady hadn’t missed most of this season with a serious elbow injury.

But even if both players had done exactly what we’d expected — Marte a serviceable lefty reliever, Nady an average (at best) American League outfielder — this deal still would have been a steal for the Pirates.
Or it would probably have been a steal, anyway. That’s what happens when you trade two marginal veterans for a quartet of talented young players. Ohlendorf’s good enough to start for the Yankees, right now. Karstens may yet find himself as a reliever. McCutchen may soon be as good as Ohlendorf. And Tabata … well, he’s the real prize, isn’t he?

Between the ages of 16 and 19, Tabata was routinely the youngest player in his league, and he routinely batted .300 (while drawing plenty of walks for a teenager). Everybody said Tabata couldn’t miss. Said he was the Yankees’ best prospect. Said they wouldn’t trade him, because he was their Center Fielder of the Future.

And then he got off to a lousy start in Class AA last year. He was still just a teenager, and probably was yet again the youngest player in his league. But he got off to a lousy start, and the Yankees needed Xavier Nady. Well, they didn’t need Xavier Nady. Nobody in the history of baseball has needed a player like Xavier Nady. (Not until after the fact, anyway. If the Yankees had qualified for the playoffs last season, afterward it would have seemed like they had indeed needed him.)

So the Yankees essentially traded Jose Tabata, so recently their very best prospect, to the Pirates for Xavier Nady. Someday, historians will read that sentence and snicker.

I love Rob, but there is a whole lot of WRONG in this little blogpost. Firstly, the idea that no one ever needs Xavier Nady is a bit silly, in that Nady is not a replacement level player, just a league average player. He was better than anything the Yankees had readily available, and therefore represented an improvement for the club. For a team that was in a playoff race at the time, the marginal improvement from Justin Christian to Xavier Nady was significant, and I am not sure how Rob can represent it as being anything but a net positive. Adding a lefty reliever like Marte was similarly a drastic improvement over the options the Yankees had at that moment, although the marginal upgrade was likely less than the one gained from adding an everyday player like Nady.

Additionally, let’s not rush to anoint these “talented young players” as stars quite yet. McCutchen has made one start and profiles as, at-best, a back of the rotation guy, while Karstens is the very definition of replacement level. Ohlendorf has improved, but he still has an ERA just under 4 in the AL Central, with a FIP of 4.74, and a K/9 of 5.57. He may turn into a good pitcher, but the performances of Brad Penny and John Smoltz in the NL after being awful in the AL East suggests that the level of competition is incredibly different in the two leagues. The three pitchers are exactly the kind of assets an organization with plenty of pitching in its system should be giving up to get pieces that can help in a pennant race. The key here is Tabata, who took a step forward this year but still has yet to flash the power that would make him an elite prospect.

While the Yankees were quick to give up on Tabata, it is important to note that he had a huge attitude problem with the Yankees that many felt would torpedo his career. Furthermore, you need to give up something of value to complete most trades, and Tabata represented that value here. He had enough question marks about reaching his talent that it made for a good gamble by the Yankees. Most analysts felt that the Yankees made a good or even great deal, and cited the unknowns regarding Tabata as their primary reasons for reaching that conclusion. Just to quote one pundit at the time of the trade:

I wasn’t thrilled with the Xavier Nady deal, from the Pirates’ perspective. Jose Tabata’s star seems to have fallen (though of course he’s still young).

Who said that? Why, Rob Neyer, of course.

Tagged with: , , , ,

What's Going on with Joba's fastball?

Posted by Steve S. at 7:36 am 16 Responses »
Sep 072009

Much has been made this year of Joba Chamberlain’s diminished fastball. Many have speculated that he hasn’t been the same since he hurt his shoulder, while others say it’s not unusual for young pitchers to be up and down a tick or two from one year to the next.
First, let’s get the facts on the table as we know them. Fangraphs has the data on Joba’s fastball as follows:

Season FA-Vel SL-Vel CU-Vel CH-Vel FT-Vel IN-Vel PO-Vel Pitches
Total
93.8
85.0
78.9
82.5
89.6
74.2
86.1
4177
2007 97.4 86.7 78.9 83.5 190
2007 91.7 84.0 76.9 82.4 89.1 71.7 84.2 - – -
2008 95.2 85.4 78.3 83.7 74.2 81.2 1695
2008 91.5 83.9 76.7 82.5 89.3 71.2 83.9 - – -
2009 92.5 84.3 79.3 82.0 89.6 74.2 87.7 2292
2009 91.8 83.8 77.4 82.8 90.3 71.1 84.6 - – -

Clearly, the velocity on his fastball has declined since breaking into the bigs. It’s important to note that he came up as a Reliever, and he even split 2008 between starting and relieving which could skew the 08 numbers upward. In 2007 he was exclusively a reliever, in 2009 he has been exclusively a starter.

Next, I wanted to dig up some of the old scouting reports we had on Joba when we drafted him as a starting pitcher to see where his fastball was when he was exclusively a starting pitcher in college. I didn’t want to use the more recent ones, since they all included info on him as a relief pitcher and had reports that reflected his velocity as a relief pitcher. (h/t to Mike A of River Ave for help digging these up)

Here’s what BA said about Joba’s fastball before the draft:

Slowed by triceps tendinitis that caused him to miss a couple of starts early this spring, he has been more inconsistent than he was as a sophomore. But he’s rounding back into peak form, which for Chamberlain means throwing a 92-94 mph fastball that tops out at 97 and a devastating slider. He also has a curveball and feel for a changeup. Once he turns pro his fastball should chew up wood bats.

ESPN’s Keith Law:

Chamberlain then came out throwing bullets in the early going, pitching consistently in the 91-94 range and touching 98, along with two breaking balls and the beginnings of a changeup. Despite missing two starts in mid-March due to what was called “biceps tendinitis,” Chamberlain made starts in each of the season’s last 10 weekends. Still, one executive told me that his club had high medical flags on Chamberlain, both due to the tendinitis and due to another, more serious arm problem.

I’m not worried about him being hurt or anything, the velocity is more than enough at 92-93, which is what he’s averaging.

So it turns out the fastball velocity was almost identical in College as a full time starter to what were seeing today. Also, Joe Girardi has stated on his weekly YES show that the Yanks have him throwing more 2-seamers, to try to get him to be more efficient in getting quick outs, so that will contribute to lower readings as well.

In concluding, I don’t think there’s anything unusual going on here. I don’t believe he’s hurt, because if he was the Yanks would be crazy to send him out there every 5 days. That’s simply not credible, given we all know how uber-cautious the Yanks are with injuries. Chien Ming Wang was pulled out of a game after Posada saw him throw one unusually bad pitch. You may recall we were having this same discussion about Phil Hughes’ fastball last year, and since moving to the bullpen he’s never thrown the ball any better. I suspect our expectations have been skewed by the readings we saw when he came up as a relief pitcher, but it’s unreasonable to expect him to maintain that as a member of the starting rotation.

Tagged with:
© 2011 TYU Suffusion theme by Sayontan Sinha