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Yankee Run Scoring Sputtering, Lineup Changes Needed?

Posted by EJ Fagan at 7:02 pm 11 Responses »
Jun 192010

The Yankees are 2nd in the American League in runs scored. They are 1st in OBP, 2nd in Slg%, 1st in walks, 3rd in home runs, and hold the league’s best record. Generally, run scoring would not be a cause for concern. But I don’t think that I’ve been alone over the past month or so among Yankee fans in worrying about the Yankee offense. I ran the numbers and came up with this relatively disturbing graph:

This graph contains two elements. First, I took a 3-unit moving average of runs scored each game and charted it over 64 periods. Second, I drew an exponentially smoothed trend line to more clearly demonstrate the decline in scoring. The trend is disturbingly clear: the Yankees began the season looking like a league-leading, dominant offense, and have since scored runs in fits and starts, and look much more like a below average offense. Even worse: the moving average has stayed consistently low since about the beginning of May. We’ve seen sputters, but no consistent offensive recovery.

The culprits should be pretty clear. Mark Teixeira is hitting .224/.342/.399. Alex Rodriguez is hitting .282/.354/.466. Curtis Granderson is hitting .240/.324/.447. Derek Jeter is hitting .280/.334/.419. The Yankees have been playing one of Randy Winn, Ramiro Pena, or Kevin Russo every day for some time now. Despite strong performances from Brett Gardner, Jorge Posada and Nick Swisher, and a career season from Robinson Cano, the Yank’s cast of characters just doesn’t look like a particularly strong offense.

I’m generally in favor of the radical solutions, so I’d like to propose pretty big lineup shift. If I were Joe Girardi, my healthy lineup tomorrow would look like this:

LF Brett Gardner
RF Nick Swisher
DH Jorge Posada
2b Robinson Cano
3b Alex Rodriguez
1b Mark Teixeira
SS Derek Jeter
CF Curtis Granderson
C Francisco Cervelli

Marcus Thames and Juan Miranda can platoon at DH once Thames is healthy and Posada looks good enough for the team to ditch Chad Moeller.

I understand that egos and lineup politics make this impossible, but the Yankees should still do it. The Boston Red Sox are charging hard, and the Tampa Bay Rays are right there with the Yankees. One team in this division will miss the playoffs, and there’s a very good chance that the unlucky team will miss it by a margin of one or two games. The Yankees owe it to themselves and their fans to field the best possible lineup, which means replacing slumping legacy players with the best hitters possible.

If Alex Rodriguez, Derek Jeter, and Mark Teixeira hit like their old selves, then they should be restored to their traditional spots in the lineup. However, after nearly three months they are still sputtering. Jeter and Rodriguez are aging players who may never recover, and it could be time to starting getting them used to a diminishing role on the team. Mark Teixeira may just be in the middle of a down year, but for now he’s taking up a valuable RBI spot without doing a whole lot to help the team.

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Projection and Performance: The 2010 Boston Red Sox

Posted by Stephen R. at 1:00 pm No Responses »
Jun 192010

Yesterday we looked at how the Tampa Bay Rays were stacking up thus far to their preseason CHONE projections.  We continue this series today with the hated Red Sox.  We will go through the offense and the starting pitchers, and then hand out some awards.

OFFENSE

C – Victor Martinez. Projection: .294/.366/.450, 17 HR and 89 RBI. Performance: .294/.344/.493, 8 HR and 35 RBI.

1B – Kevin Youkilis. Projection: .284/.384/.473, 23 HR and 88 RBI.  Performance: .310/.437/.585, 13 HR and 43 RBI.

2B – Dustin Pedroia. Projection: .308/.379/.443, 13 HR and 65 RBI. Performance: .275/.352/.458, 9 HR and 35 RBI.

SS – Marco Scutaro. Projection: .268/.360/.367, 7 HR and 48 RBI. Performance: .284/.354/.393, 4 HR and 23 RBI.

3B – Adrian Beltre. Projection: .271/.318/.428, 16 HR and 72 RBI. Performance: .335/.379/.533, 10 HR and 48 RBI.

LF – Jacoby Ellsbury. Projection: .302/.360/.412, 8 HR and 48 RBI. Performance: .250/.267/.341, 0 HR and 3 RBI.

CF – Mike Cameron. Projection: .235/.318/.393, 18 HR and 62 RBI. Performance: .267/.345/.353, 0 HR and 2 RBI.

RF – JD Drew.  Projection: .263/.372/.443, 18 HR and 68 RBI. Performance: .267/.359/.467, 8 HR and 39 RBI.

DH/Util – David Ortiz. Projection: .258/.355/.479, 30 HR and 96 RBI.  Performance: .268/.374/.572, 15 HR and 45 RBI.

STARTING PITCHERS

SP 1 – Josh Beckett. Projection: 188 IP, 3.73 ERA, 1.21 WHIP, 174 K, 46 BB, 8.33 K/9, 2.20 BB/9.

Performance: 45 IP, 7.29 ERA, 1.66 WHIP, 40 Ks, 19 BB, 7.9 K/9, 3.7 BB/9.

SP 2 – Jon Lester. Projection: 182 IP, 3.46 ERA, 1.25 WHIP, 167 K, 61 BB, 8.26 K/9, 3.02 BB/9

Performance: 92 IP, 3.13 ERA, 1.152 WHIP, 96 K, 39 BB, 9.4 K/9, 3.8 BB/9.  Them’s some Cy Young numbers.

SP 3 – John Lackey.  Projection: 186 IP, 3.92 ERA, 1.27 WHIP, 141 Ks, 51 BB, 6.82 K/9, 2.47 BB/9.

Performance: 87 IP, 4.53 ERA, 1.58 WHIP, 49 K, 37 BB, 5.0 K/9, 3.8 BB/9.

SP 4 – Clay Buchholz.  Projection: 151 IP, 4.23 ERA, 1.38 WHIP, 123 K, 59 BB, 7.33 K/9, 3.52 BB/9.

Performance: 84 IP, 2.67 ERA, 1.269 WHIP, 58 Ks, 34 BB, 6.2 K/9, 3.6 BB/9. If he keeps pitching well, the Red Sox won’t have to shell out a bunch of cash on the free agent market for a starting pitcher.  Oh, wait.  Too late.

SP 5 – Daisuke Matsuzaka. Projection: 138 IP, 4.30 ERA, 1.41 WHIP, 121 K, 62 BB, 7.89 K/9, 4.04 BB/9.

Performance: 49 IP, 4.59 ERA, 1.306 WHIP, 37 K, 23 BB, 6.8 K/9, 4.2 BB/9. Bust.

And now, the Awards.  The “Baseball Isn’t Played on Spreadsheets” goes to…

Adrian Beltre!  While Beltre is getting some good luck from BABIP, he’s still putting together a very solid season. Both his ISO and his line-drive percentages are up from last year’s campaign and he currently has a wOBA of .393.  Even if he sees some regression in the way of batted balls, he will still be likely to have posted a very decent year in Boston, which is exactly the way Scott Boras and the Red Sox planned it.  Ugh.

The “He Needs LASIK, a New Workout Regimen, a New Pitch/Stance, and/or To Get Into the Best Shape of His Life” Award goes to…

John Lackey!  Really, you could gives this to Beckett too, but I think Lackey’s performance is more troubling in terms of peripherals.  As you can see here, Lackey has been a bit worse than his modest ERA would suggest.  His FIP is 4.61 and his xFIP is 5.15.  His K/BB ratio is a career worst 1.32.  Obviously, this is not what the Red Sox had in mind when they acted like a small-market team and shelled out $82 M for Lackey this offseason.  Best of all, from the perspective of Yankees fans, is that Lackey isn’t interested in striking out batters as much as he has been in the past.  That’s right, he’s fine with a 5.0 K/9:

Lackey’s strikeouts are also down this year — 4.9 per nine innings compared with 7.1 for his career — but he stressed that the stat he’s worried about most is the one that matters in the standings. “Strikeouts are nice, but they’re good for a free agent year,’’ Lackey said. “I’m not going to be doing that for a while. I’m here to win.’’  So far, he’s done just that. At 8-3, Lackey is on pace to win more than 14 games for just the second time in his career, and Francona said Lackey’s brand of competitiveness was part of the plan.

Lovely.  If you’re a statistically-inclined Yankees fan, you’ll be very happy to read that. I’m not interested in getting into a discussion of the value of the Win as a stat, so I’ll simply say that Lackey is underperforming his projection by a wide margin in 2010.  If this is the result of intent, then the Red Sox may have some severe buyer’s remorse.  We can only hope.

Tomorrow we will take a look at how the Yankees are faring against their CHONE projections.

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Yanks spotty Bullpen flies under radar

Posted by Steve S. at 8:15 am 4 Responses »
Jun 192010

Photo courtesy of Sports Illustrated

While everyone has been focusing on the recent Yankee hitting woes, the bullpen failures have gone largely unnoticed. Of course, a 4 run lead will help gloss over the occasional hiccup, but the Yankee bullpen has been inconsistent so far this season. Overall, the numbers aren’t bad. They’re 6th in the American League with a 4.04 ERA. But looking at each pitcher individually, you quickly realize most of the positive contributions have come from The Great Mariano. Here’s the numbers:

Player TEAM W L ERA G GS CG SHO SV SVO IP H R ER HR HBP BB SO
1. J Chamberlain
NYY 1 3 5.72 30 0 0 0 2 3 28.1 31 19 18 1 0 9 32
2. M Rivera
NYY 0 1 1.21 24 0 0 0 15 16 22.1 9 5 3 1 2 5 20
3. D Robertson
NYY 0 2 5.48 23 0 0 0 0 2 21.1 27 13 13 3 2 11 24
4. C Park
NYY 1 1 6.16 15 0 0 0 0 2 19.0 25 14 13 5 0 5 16
5. S Mitre
NYY 0 0 2.30 10 0 0 0 0 0 15.2 7 4 4 1 1 6 8
6. B Logan
NYY 0 0 4.20 15 0 0 0 0 0 15.0 16 7 7 1 0 10 10
7. D Marte
NYY 0 0 3.65 24 0 0 0 0 2 12.1 8 5 5 1 1 9 9
8. A Aceves
NYY 3 0 3.00 10 0 0 0 1 1 12.0 10 5 4 1 1 4 2
9. C Gaudin
NYY 0 1 5.25 7 0 0 0 0 0 12.0 13 7 7 3 1 6 10
10. M Melancon
NYY 0 0 9.00 2 0 0 0 0 0 4.0 7 5 4 1 0 0 3
11. R Sanchez
NYY 0 0 0.00 1 0 0 0 0 0 3.2 1 0 0 0 0 1 3
12. I Nova
NYY 0 0 0.00 2 0 0 0 0 0 3.0 4 0 0 0 0 0 1
13. J Vazquez
NYY 1 0 0.00 1 0 0 0 0 0 0.1 0 0 0 0 0 0 1

.

Except for Mariano and (surprisingly) Sergio Mitre, there are a lot of ugly numbers there. Dave Robertson is still trying to work his way back from a slow start, his ERA peaking on May 7th at an ugly 14.73 and has declined steadily since then. But he has pitched well since, giving up only 2 ER in his last 13 appearances. Chan Ho Park started off the season with a horrendous outing in Boston where he gave up 3 ER in 2/3 of an inning, but even if you eliminate that appearance he’s been up and down all year. He was coming off 5 straight scoreless outings going into last night’s contest, but his contributions in April and May were pretty brutal. It’s telling that Girardi has only given him 3 inherited runners to work with all season, that shows how little faith he has in him. Damaso Marte has been fine, he’s mainly used as a LOOGY and his numbers against Lefties have been very good. I can’t help but think all of these lesser relievers would be helped by a healthy Alfredo Aceves coming in and getting key outs, but given his lower back injury we can’t expect much from El Paton this year.

Now we get to everyone’s favorite topic, one Joba Chamberlain. His season has been up and down, the down parts coming recently and being spectacularly bad. He was doing well up to May 12th, pitching to a 2.16 ERA. Over his next 5 appearances, he gave up a whopping 11 ER in just 5.0 IP. He was better in June, giving up just 1 ER over his next 7 outings before his disastrous outing against the Phillies on Thursday. While everyone obsesses over Joba’s velocity, it hasn’t been his fastball this year. He’s averaging 94 MPH and his Fastball has been only a slight negative in terms of Pitch Value. There’s evidence to suggest he’s been unluckly, his BABIP has been an ungodly .385 (career .326) and his FIP (2.28) tERA (2.51) and xFIP (3.22) all suggest his results should be better going forward. It’s important to remember he’s still just 24 years old and this is the first season he’s been a full-time reliever, he was a starter in College at Nebraska State and for most of the 07-09 seasons. But his up and down nature will need to improve if we are to consider him the ‘Heir to Mariano’ at some point in the future. He’s been too combustible to be a reliable 8th inning guy this year, much less a future Closer.

This year has followed a familiar pattern of Girardi’s tenure as manager. The Yankee bullpen gets off to a slow start in April and May, as the Yanks assess what they have and how the pieces fit. Then roles begin to become more defined as the season rolls on, and the results improve. But you also have to consider that the Yanks hit a very soft part of their schedule in the first few weeks of June, playing 6 games against Baltimore and 3 against Houston, the AL and NL’s worst offensive teams. The jury’s still out on this group, and I’m sure that some bullpen help will be high on Cashman’s shopping list this July 31st.

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