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Letting Go Of Wood

Posted by Moshe Mandel at 3:00 pm 4 Responses »
Oct 292010

Cliff Corcoran of the excellent Pinstriped Bible checks in on Kerry Wood:

Kerry Wood posted a 1.344 WXRL and 0.69 ERA with the Yankees, but he also walked 18 men in 26 innings. He was lucky. Opponents hit .236 on balls in play against Wood after he came over from Cleveland, and just 3.1 percent of his fly balls left the ballpark, down from a career rate of 8.6 percent. Meanwhile, he gave up fly balls and line drives more often than he had previously in his career.

Wood’s high strikeout rates allow him to get away with more walks more than a less powerful pitcher could, but walking 5.7 men per nine innings, as Wood did in 2010, is playing with fire, and his home run rate is sure to shoot back up next year, particularly if he spends half of his home games pitching in the new Yankee Stadium. Wood will be 34 in June and has a extensive injury history, which begs an unwelcome comparison to Marte, who turned 34 soon after signing his current contract.

Cliff goes on to note that there are better and likely cheaper options available on the free agent market, and that the Yankees could fill bullpen roles internally as well. I am partial to Scott Downs, a lefty who can actually get righthanders out, which would give Girardi more options in the late innings. However, Downs is a Type-A free agent, which means that signing him would cost the Yankees a draft pick. This is the one advantage that Wood has over the free agent options, as he would not cost the Yankees picks should they resign him.

Nevertheless, I would pass on Kerry. I think Wood is likely to disappoint the team that inks him to a pricey two or three year deal this offseason. He has been worth more than .4 wins once since 2004, and his inability to stay healthy combined with the general volatility of relievers make him a poor investment. He simply puts too many runners on base to be trusted regularly in important spots. During the regular season, you do not want to be forced to use your closer to bail him out in the 8th inning of games in which he does not have his control. Someone will sign him to close, and the lack of a safety net will prove problematic when he start to walk the ballpark. The Yankees got an excellent few months out of Wood, and they should be content with that and walk away.

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No Need For An Upgrade Like Cliff Lee

Posted by EJ Fagan at 1:00 pm 29 Responses »
Oct 292010

So far, I’ve given my argument against signing Cliff Lee, and laid out some alternatives (most of which don’t look pretty good), and stated my belief that the Yankees should stand pat and fill the position internally. Assuming Andy Pettitte re-signs, the team will go into 2011 with the same top-four as they did last year. How much of a problem is this?

The 2o10 Yankees won 95 games, giving them the second-best record in the American League by just 1 game. They scored 859 runs (leading the league by a good margin) and allowed 693 (6th-best in the league) for a Pythagorean record of 97-65, the best in either league. In the playoffs, they swept the ALDS against the Minnesota Twins, and lost in 6 games against the Texas Rangers in the ALCS.

If the 2011 Yankees replicate the performance of the 2010 Yankees, they will almost certainly make the playoffs. Once there, you roll the dice. Few Yankees pitched or hit well in the ALCS, and the Texas Rangers put together some outstanding performances. That’s how baseball works: any team can win on any day. Playoff victories are almost all about luck. Cliff Lee isn’t a magic baseball fairy – look at what the light-hitting Giants did to him. Its still about luck.

The Yankees would need an upgrade if they think that the 2011 Yankees will be significantly worse than the 2010 Yankees. However, looking at the team’s performance last season, I think that its fair to argue that the team as currently constituted will be better. The Yankee offense led the league without too many players having career years. Robinson Cano had a great year, but his only real improvement over past great years was new plate discipline. There’s no reason to believe he can’t bring that discipline through his prime. Nick Swisher had what looked like a career year, but in reality he improved only mildly over his career norms by trading on base percentage for slugging percentage. Brett Gardner could very easily play much worse next season, and probably isn’t an odds-on favorite to post a .383 OBP again, but his defensive value should remain. And Marcus Thames’ production on the bench probably won’t be replicated.

That’s it. Everyone else actually had a down year – a testament to how strong the team’s hitting core is. The team lost Nick Johnson, their primary DH, early in the season. Curtis Granderson missed time and had a down year. Alex Rodriguez and Derek Jeter had horrendous down years. Francisco Cervelli played almost as much as Jorge Posada. Mark Teixeira had a season to forget. After Thames, contributions from the Yankee bench were anemic, with Russo, Pena, Winn, Curtis, Kearns, and Miranda all getting playing time but playing terribly.

Regressions go both ways. Players that were better than average tend to regress to the mean. But players that were worse than average tend to get better. Most of the Yankee hitters are odds-on favorites to play better than they did last year. The offense should be even better. Especially if the Yankees use some of their extra cash (they aren’t really freeing much up this offseason) to do a better job on the bench.

There is good news on the pitching side too. They balanced out terrible performances by A.J. Burnett and Javy Vazquez with great years by Andy Pettitte and C.C. Sabathia, plus a strong introduction to starting from Phil Hughes. We all saw how good Hughes was at the beginning of the season, and can probably expect him to improve in his second MLB season as a starting pitcher. Hughes probably got tired as the season went on, which is understandable. He’s your #2-3 pitcher with Andy Pettitte. Pettitte won’t be nearly as good as he was last year, but he’s still a pretty good pitcher and a great guy for the playoffs. Any regression by Pettitte should be made up from the poor performance of his replacement pitchers. And regressions work this way with A.J. Burnett: we may not like him, but he’s usually reasonable effective as a pitcher. This year, he everything took a dive. It may be age-related decline, but even so he should rebound a bit.

So, if we can upgrade from Javy Vazquez, we probably will upgrade our pitching staff. I don’t see any reason why the best of Ivan Nova, David Phelps, Lance Pendleton, and Joba Chamberlain (who was already a lot better than Vazquez just a year ago. and actually had a pretty good FIP this season and his best K/BB since he was a rookie) and whomever else comes along can’t beat a 5.37 ERA. By mid-season, players like Andrew Brackman, Hector Noesi, and even Dellin Betances or Manuel Banuelos will be ready to take the ball.

Signing Cliff Lee would add another long term commitment on top of Alex Rodriguez, Mark Teixeira, C.C. Sabathia, and A.J. Burnett (and soon, Robinson Cano) deep into the next decade. Long term contracts, especially for aging players, are very risky. Lee would be a win-now move at the expense of win-later. The Yankees are already set up to win now. For a marginally better chance at winning now, the Yankees could jeopardize their chance to win later. Don’t sign Cliff Lee.

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Questions for the Hot Stove and Beyond

Posted by Matt Imbrogno at 11:00 am 2 Responses »
Oct 292010

The official start of the Hot Stove season isn’t until after the World Series, but friends, it is never too early to start thinking about it. Steve hit on the top ten things the Yankees must do in the offseason earlier, so I won’t rehash something like that. Instead, I’m going to offer up a few brief questions, give a few brief answers, and leave them for you all to talk amongst yourselves.

1. Brandon Laird is coming off of a career year and has a 1.002 OPS in the Arizona Fall League thus far. The way I see it, there isn’t much room for Laird on the big club in the near future. His trade value is never going to be higher than it is now, unless he hits well at AAA Scranton to start the 2011 season. I don’t know if that’s worth risking. The Yankees should look to shop Laird now, likely as part of a package, because I think he’ll add more value to the team going forward as a trade piece than he will with his own play.

2. What’s going to happen with the OF bench situation in 2011? I’m assuming the Yankees will employ the same outfield they did for most of 2010–Gardner, Granderson, Swisher from LF-RF. It’s the extra outfielders who may look different. Austin Kearns will most certainly be gone. Marcus Thames may be back, but I honestly hope not. It’s nothing personal, Marcus…only business. He did great job in 2010 but the chances of 2010 being repeated are really, really, REALLY small. If the Yankees are smart–and they usually are–they’ll let Thames walk. The only problem is that there aren’t many good free agent options and the in house options–Colin Curtis and possibly Brandon Laird–are uninspiring. New York may have a lot of 40 man spots open, though, so they could snatch someone up from the Rule V draft like they did last year with Chad Huffman (even though that didn’t go well).

3. Lance Berkman, Kerry Wood, and Javier Vazquez are all type B free agents so there is absolutely no point in offering any of them arbitration. Granted, the chances of that wouldn’t be high even if all three were type A free agents. Lance Berkman will most certainly be gone, as will Javier Vazquez. Kerry Wood may be back, but I’m not going to hold my breath.

I’m very torn on Kerry Wood. He pitched well for the Yankees, obviously, but he’s always at risk for injury and chances are someone is going to offer him closer money. If I were going to offer Wood a contract, though, it would probably be pretty modest. His $11MM option was just denied and at most, I think I’d offer Wood a one year deal worth $5-6 million. Not long ago, I was okay with splitting the option over two years, but a two year deal for Kerry Wood isn’t a great idea. Would it be nice to have Wood as the set up guy in 2011? Yeah, sure. But is it necessary? No, I don’t think so.

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Girardi's hits and misses

Posted by Steve S. at 7:31 am 8 Responses »
Oct 292010

Chad Jennings over at LoHud recaps some of the decisions that did and didn’t work for the Yankee manager this season. I’ll go through them individually, with comments of my own. Here goes:

Three decisions that worked
Taking the fifth: Robinson Cano and Phil Hughes

Agree. It was time to challenge him entering his age 27 season and he didn’t disappoint. We all knew the tools were there with Robbie and his profile is that of a perfect #5 hitter given how much he swings the bat and his contact rates. The Yanks have wanted him there for years, and 2010 was when he finally put it all together. On Hughes, his strong 2009 out of the bullpen and upside as a starter made him an easy call as well, unless you had your mind made up about ‘Joba the Starter’ going into 2010 spring training.

Trusting Tex: In the No. 3 spot, Mark Teixeira rebounded

Agree, but it’s not like he was going to bench a player who signed a massive 8 year contract just a season earlier. We all know he’s a notorious slow starter, and this is something the manager and fans will have to live with.

Resting Rodriguez: Days off kept Alex Rodriguez fresh

Again, easy call. The Yanks aren’t about winning games in June, they’re about October. If anything, in retrospect he may wish he rested Alex more given his late season injury and lackluster 2010 playoffs.

Also give him credit for: Recognizing Javier Vazquez couldn’t start… Sticking with Marcus Thames through a brutal spring training… Pushing the right buttons with minor league call-ups in the middle of the season.

Thames I’ll give you, though it was similar to Tex in that the Yanks didn’t have a ton of other options for power off the bench against Lefties. Vazquez’ stuff was way down all year and he pitched himself out of the Yankee rotation, twice. I can’t give Joe too much credit for recognizing the obvious.

Three decisions that didn’t work
Hoping for better: Keeping Derek Jeter in the leadoff spot

Given Derek’s 15 year track record and Brett Gardner’s tenuous status on the team at the time, this was another easy call. You could argue that Derek should have been dropped down around mid season, but Jeter has been so good for so long you almost have to give him a full season to succeed or fail. As Chad said it didn’t work out, but Derek has meant so much to the team over the years that you can’t mess around with him too much, especially as a manager on an expiring contract. Had he fooled around with him, we’d all be blaming Joe for the down year.

Joba rules: Or maybe he doesn’t

The Yankee brass had a lot riding on Joba, with how he’s been handled and all the debate he’s stirred in his time with the team. In 09 he was given every chance to succeed as a starter, in 2010 he was given a full shot as a reliever. Neither worked out, so now the blame falls squarely on him. I’m in the camp that thinks if there’s a deal out there to be made, the Yanks won’t let him stand in the way of acquiring a needed piece.

Bad platoon: Austin Kearns kept getting at-bats

I didn’t get this one either, but between Kearns and Gaudin most of September seemed to be spent auditioning for October. Neither worked out.

Also worth questioning: Using Chad Gaudin ahead of playoff pitcher Sergio Mitre down the stretch… Treating A.J. Burnett considerably differently than Vazquez, despite similar seasons… Keeping Francisco Cervelli partnered with Burnett, despite poor results.

There are 4 years and 67 million reasons why the two pitchers were treated differently. As to pairing Burnett with Cervelli, I think the manager believes Posada is too old and slow to handle Burnett’s hard breaking pitches and overall wildness when he’s off his game. As a former Catcher, I’ll take his word for it.

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