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Dellin Dealin'

Posted by Eric Schultz at 3:04 pm 9 Responses »
Jun 242010

For the several week period while I was out of the country, a lot of exciting things have happened.  The draft obviously tops the list, as the Yankees look to have taken a new direction by taking more high-ceiling athletic high school players than they have in past years, including Cito Culver, Angelo Gumbs, and Mason Williams.  I was surprised as anyone about the Culver pick, but given the Yankees’ track record at taking the top player on their board in the first round, I will give Damon Oppenheimer the benefit of the doubt.  Jesus Montero has continued to struggle in AAA, though his performance has gradually improved.  The beginning of the Staten Island and Gulf Coast League seasons, and especially the debut of Gary Sanchez, are also quite intriguing.  Nothing has been as exciting, however, in the last few weeks, as the impressive return of Dellin Betances.

22 year-old Dellin Betances has more or less fallen off the prospect radar following a disappointing and injury-shortened 2009, with a 5.48 ERA and 27 walks in 44 1/3 innings (though the 44 strikeouts were a good sign).  In his injury-filled career, he was only able to complete a full season once (in 2008), when he threw 121 2/3 innings.  After having elbow surgery in 2009, it was easy to dismiss Betances, then 21, as unlikely to ever approach the tantalizing potential that he flashed as a high-ceiling draftee in the ballyhooed 2006 draft class, and in his dominant 23 1/3 inning stint in the Gulf Coast League after signing as an 8th-round pick.

Betances made his season debut for high-A Tampa on June 10 with a stellar outing, giving up 3 hits and a run on 6 hits, with 6 strikeouts.  He followed this up with two even better performances on June 15 and June 22nd.  On the season, the 6’8″ righty has allowed just one run in 18 innings, with a ridiculous 21:2 strikeout:walk ratio, demonstrating that his stuff and control may be back.  Kevin Goldstein had high praise for Betances, writing:

…Just as scary, one of baseball’s most notable high-risk/high-ceiling pitchers is impressing with his stuff as well, sitting comfortably at 93-95 mph with his fastball, throwing his plus curve for strikes, and showcasing a surprisingly solid changeup.”

Betances’ biggest problem (besides health) has been control, and his curveball historically has been inconsistent.  If he is commanding the curve and flashing a good changeup to go along with mid-90′s heat, prospect watchers will have to get back on the Betances bandwagon.  Obviously it’s premature to get too excited about an 18-inning sample, but if Dellin can keep this up, he could find himself in Trenton.  But for now, he makes up part of a strong Tampa pitching staff that includes erratic but improving Andrew Brackman (5.10 ERA on the season, but fanned 11 in 6 innings on June 14), the dominant Graham Stoneburner (1.93 ERA, 39 k’s and. 11 bb’s), and Adam Warren (2.86 ERA, 48:14 k:bb, 2.41 GO/AO).  Hopefully he can keep this up.

Reds About to Do Something Stupid

Posted by Matt Imbrogno at 3:00 pm 5 Responses »
Jun 242010

I’ve written about this sort of thing before and it’s, again, rearing its ugly head.

The Reds may use Aroldis Chapman as a reliever.

The article doesn’t say anything about this being a permanent move, but the fact that they’re even thinking about it is disheartening. Frankly, that last line scares me. You can never ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever have too much starting pitching depth. Maybe they could put him there towards the end of the season IF Chapman is coming up on an innings limit and IF the big league team REALLY needs some bullpen help and IF the Reds have a shot at making the playoffs and IF that an extra bullpen arm could put them over the top.

Look, Reds execs, if you’re seriously thinking about doing this long term, don’t. You need only to look at your N.L. East counterpart the Mets and their crosstown neighbors, the Yankees.

The Road Ahead

Posted by Stephen R. at 1:00 pm No Responses »
Jun 242010

Ok.  So the win last night was ugly.  But it was a win nonetheless, and the Yankees are now 2.5 games up on the Red Sox and Rays on June 24.  How they got there, I have no idea.  To me, the past week has been a rotten stretch of baseball for the team.  Despite that, the Yankees are leading the league in several key measures.  They have more wins (45) and fewer losses (27) than any other club in baseball.  They have baseball’s best run differential (+102) and their Pythagorean record is 46-26, one game better than their actual W-L.  Baseball Prospectus projects them to finish 97-65, and lists their Postseason Odds at 79% overall, with a 54% chance of winning the AL East and a 25% chance of winning the Wild Card.  Despite AJ Burnett’s Hyde and Hyde act, Vazquez and Chamberlain’s inconsistency, mediocrity from everyone in the bullpen not named Mo, injuries to Rodriguez, Granderson, Swisher, Posada and Aceves, serious undperforming from Teixeira and Rodriguez, and the fact that Jesus Montero is a total bust (not even remotely serious), the Yankees are on top with 16 games until the All-Star Break.

The team will travel to Los Angeles to face the Dodgers for three games.  The Sunday game will be a very interesting pitching matchup, Pettitte v. Kershaw, and I’ll profile Kershaw on Sunday.  After a day off on Monday, the Yankees return home for a a six-game homestand in which they’ll host the Mariners and the Blue Jays. Unfortunately, it looks like the team will face both Cliff Lee and Felix Hernandez in the series.  After that, the Yankees will travel to Oakland for a three game series and then to Seattle for a four game series.  Unfortunately, again, it appears that the rotations will line up for Lee and Hernandez to face the team again, in the second set.  One small schedule gripe: the team is on the West Coast right now.  It’s really too bad they have to travel back to New York for a week and then truck it all the way back out to the West Coast again the next week.  I’m sure there’s a good reason for it, but it’s unfortunate nonetheless.

As for our opponents, the Red Sox will travel to San Francisco for three games, with Lincecum facing Lester in the series finale on Sunday.  I’m all for the Yankees getting the Sunday night game, but as a fan of pitching I would prefer to see Lester and Lincecum face off in San Francisco.  C’est la vie. After that, the Red Sox will return home for two games against the Rays.  The pitching matchups for those games are: Lackey v. Shields and Garza v. Matsuzaka.  Advantage: Rays.  The Red Sox will then host the Orioles for three games, before traveling to Tampa and Toronto for three games in each city.    The Rays will host the Diamondbacks for three games this weekend, before traveling to Boston for two games.  They will then go to Minnesota for four games, return home to host Boston for three games and the Indians for four.

Normally, I would say that the schedule favors the Yankees, but they’ll be facing the Cliff Lee and Felix Hernandez show while the Rays and Red Sox play in their first series.  When the Rays and Red Sox meet again, the Yankees will be playing Oakland.  My hope is that the team can make it to the All-Star Break with at least a two-game lead.  They’ll need it, as 10 of their first 22 games post-ASB are against the Rays and the Red Sox.  It’s gonna be on like Donkey Kong.

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A.J.'s K's

Posted by Matt Imbrogno at 11:00 am 1 Response »
Jun 242010

A.J. Burnett’s K/9 is at an uncharacteristically low 6.60 so far in 2010. That mark would be the lowest of his career since 2000, when he started 13 games (82.2 IP) for the Marlins in his second bit of action as a Major Leaguer (6.21 K/9). As a guy who was signed because of his strikeout abilities–career 8.28 K/9–this is pretty troubling. Let’s look at the ramifications of the lack of strikeouts before we get to any possible causes.

Because of the lack of strikeouts–and a fairly sharp increase in homers given up–A.J.’s FIP is all the way up to 4.96 (xFIP of 4.67). I thought that, perhaps, the lack of strikeouts would be reason for Burnett’s low strand rate (70.3), but it turns out that’s not really the case. That mark isn’t too far off of A.J.’s career percentage–71.9%–and there doesn’t seem to be any correlation between his strand rate and his K/9 in any given season. It appears that the only going up because of the lack of strikeouts–aside from the FIP–is his HR/9, but that link is rather tenuous. Let’s look at the batted ball data and see what that tells us.

Starting at the top, there’s A.J.’s BABIP. It’s at .308 this year, which isn’t all that high. His career mark is .295 so there isn’t much variance here. Burnett’s LD%, 16.8, is actually below his career rate of just over 18% so he’s not getting hit overly hard. Other than that, though, there isn’t a whole lot of change in his batted ball data. However, it’s worth noting that his HR/FB% is higher this year (12.5) than it has been for his career (10.4). So, when guys do hit balls in the air, they’re hitting it with authority.

So, let’s get to the crux of it: why is A.J. getting fewer strikeouts? I looked at Burnett’s Pitch F/X numbers to see what I could find there.

Here’s 2009 and here’s 2010.

As you can see, he’s getting more swings and misses on his fastball this year, but the big difference is on the curveball. Last year, he got a swing and miss on number two nearly 17% of the time. This season, that’s down to 12.4%. As logic would follow, that curveball is being put into play more often in 2010 than it was in 2009. His curveball was worth 1.49 runs per 100 pitches last year. This year? -0.53. That pitch is Burnett’s punch out pitch and this year, it hasn’t been as effective as it should be or as Burnett wants it to be.

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Torre weighs in on facing the Yanks

Posted by Steve S. at 7:06 am 6 Responses »
Jun 242010

Like Politics, Baseball makes strange bedfellows

Dodgers manager Joe Torre weighed in yesterday on facing the Yanks and managing against many players who once called him their Manager. Here’s what he said-

“It’s going to be weird for me, just the fact that I’m going to be pulling against guys I’ve never pulled against before,” Torre said. “But that’s my job, and once you get buried in the game and know what you need to do, that’s what you do.”

Torre has family flying in from New York and Cincinnati for the weekend. Family, however, is exactly how he characterized his relationship with the core of Yankees that remains from the teams he managed to championships in 1996, 1998, 1999 and 2000.

“They’re like kids to me in a lot of ways,” Torre said. “Watching them accomplish what they accomplished last year after being together for such a long time was pretty amazing. You don’t normally keep even a small core together for that long a period, especially on a ballclub like the Yankees that has a habit of mixing and matching. For them to be just about as significant in the late 2000s as they were in the late 1990s is not easy to do.”

I can’t say that my personal feelings will be as mixed as Joe’s. We enjoyed 8 great seasons from 1996-2003 with Joe at the helm, but from 2004-on there wasn’t much magic left in the Torre reign. I thought Joe was really exposed after Don Zimmer left, who balanced off Joe’s passive nature. I was in the camp that felt a dismissal was appropriate a year or two earlier than when it actually happened in late 2007. But what really bothered me was Joe’s exit. The high profile way he left the team served no purpose other than to try to make Joe look like a victim and try to make the Yanks look bad. There was a sense of entitlement to hang on to his job, and that’s not how it works in professional sports, especially when it comes to the Yanks. His book ‘The Yankee Years’ betrayed clubhouse confidences with former players and was downright cruel to George Stienbrenner, who was in no mental condition to defend himself. Needless to say I’m no longer wishing him well (which I would have, had his exit been more graceful) and I’m looking forward to the Yanks having a big series facing their former skipper.

BTW-Don’t be surprised to see Joe managing across town next year, should the Mets have a rough 2nd half.

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