After Phil Hughes turned in an impressive effort against the Astros last night, Joe Girardi had the following to say:

“He threw the ball extremely well tonight,” Girardi said. “Attacked the strike zone. Had a good curveball. Threw some good changeups tonight. He let his fielders do the work, too. He looked good tonight. It seems like his fastball command gets better and better each outing, and that’s important.”

Being that spring training results are largely irrelevant (Hughes pitched 4 innings against scrubs from the worst lineup in the sport), it is important to see that Girardi felt Hughes was throwing well. This has rightfully lead many to proclaim Hughes as the obvious frontrunner for the 5th starter job. However, it has also lead to some posts that have imparted an air of finality to Joba Chamberlain’s career as a starter. Most notable is the following article by Joel Sherman, that I will run through in order to dispel some of the myths included therein.

Joba Chamberlain is scheduled to pitch four innings today. This is possibly the last time we will ever see him stretched out this long. He is still considered a candidate for the fifth starter’s spot and Joe Girardi is saying he will get at least one more chance after today to work in extended fashion.

But, at this point he would have to change an awful lot of minds – and quickly – that he is best suited for that job. Or else there will be no next long outing or the next long outing will merely be a formality. Today is his starting Waterloo.

I find it hard to believe that the Yankees will give up on three years of development based on 10 spring training innings. Joba had an ERA of 3.58 entering August last season, an admirable number for a pitcher in his first full year as a starter. At that point, he began to approach his career innings high and his performance suffered mightily. Basically, we are talking about two bad months as being the impetus for the Yankees sacrificing an immense amount of value for the future. I highly doubt that Brian Cashman would be that shortsighted, and I firmly believe that the loser of this competition will get another chance at the rotation. Expect both Joba and Hughes to be in the rotation in 2011. (On that note, see Fack Youk for an explanation of why sending Joba to AAA rather than the bullpen might make sense).

As I reported on Feb. 3 in this column , many Yankee officials were heading into spring already believing that Phil Hughes was going to be the fifth starter and that Chamberlain was going to be Mariano Rivera’s set-up man. That was based on how Chamberlain’s best fastball returned in the postseason as a starter and so did his confident strut – both elements mostly missing when Joba worked as a starter last year.

This is a myth. Joba’s fastball improved out of the bullpen because that is what happens to most pitchers, but his “best fastball” did not return at all. He was throwing 95-96, which is actually the velocity that he was averaging as a starter in 2008. In fact, that “best” fastball has been mostly absent from Joba’s repertoire since his shoulder injury in late 2008. Regarding the silliness of Joba’s “confident strut,” I did not see it when he nearly cost the Yankees Game 3 against the Angels (triple, sac fly, double in a tie game) and Game 4 against the Phillies (Feliz homer to tie game). He allowed 10 baserunners in 6.1 innings in the postseason. I’m not saying that he cannot be an effective reliever going forward, but the 2009 postseason is certainly not evidence that supports such a conclusion.

The Yanks truly wanted to believe his repertoire screamed front-of-the-rotation starter and they did an awful lot of work – most of it controversial based on the Joba Rules – to try to shoehorn him into that role. But actions speak louder than words. And Joba’s actions – no matter what he says – are those of someone who wants to relieve and, more important, is mentally built to relieve.

I like Joel Sherman, but this is the typical revisionist history that is only spewed by people who never heard of Chamberlain until he toed the rubber in New York. Joba was a starter in college, a starter in the minors, and became a mega-prospect based on his work in the minor league rotation. The Yankees did no shoehorning, and it was not a matter of the Yankees “truly wanting to believe” that he was a fit as a starter. On the contrary, there was not a scout in all of baseball that would have pegged Chamberlain for the bullpen before the Yankees put him there in August of 2007. He was seen as a power arm with four above average pitches, and projected as an ace. If Joba had never been put in the bullpen for that stretch run, we would be discussing whether he should be in the rotation or in Scranton, because the bullpen would not be an option.

He gets, perhaps, a final chance to change minds today. But if it is more of what we have seen so far in spring, a combination of lack of endurance and refinement, then Joba might not get another shot in five days to work extended innings. Instead, he might be heading to his old new job out of the pen; this time permanently.

I certainly hope not. If Joba Chamberlain never sees the rotation again, the Yankees will have made a massive mistake.

Alex Rodriguez stated yesterday that will be speaking with federal investigators regarding Dr. Tony Galea, a doctor connected to HGH who has ties to A-Rod’s rehab doctor. Of course, this set off a firestorm among some Yankees columnists, despite the fact that Bud Selig has noted that he does not believe there in anything to worry about for the sport in reference to Dr. Galea. Of course, Jose Reyes and Carlos Beltran will be speaking to investigators as well, but the NY media did not see an opportunity for sanctimony in regard to those players. Let’s look at the worst overreaction, from Ian O’Connor, who famously penned a column last spring advocating that the Yankees dump Alex Rodriguez:

So yes, technically, this is about someone else. It’s about Galea. It’s about a doctor who reportedly used HGH for years and yet still found his way into the inner sanctums of megastars the likes of Tiger Woods.

But no, realistically, this isn’t about someone else. It’s about Alex Rodriguez. It’s about a once-in-a-generation ballplayer who cheated the game, cheated the fans and cheated himself, and who now is discovering that even a World Series ring and ticker-tape parade can’t absolve him of his not-so-venial steroid sins.

Investigators want to know if Rodriguez went back to playing boli-ball.

You would be hard pressed to find a more hyperbolic bit of text than the one cited above. A number of players have been questioned, and more are likely to be approached. If A-Rod had wished, he could have refused to speak with the investigators. Instead, he is being open about his connection to Galea, and has stated on a number of occasions that he has nothing to do with this and will simply be discussing “someone else.” While it is possible that A-Rod comes out of this entire situation looking bad, we have absolutely zero evidence at this point by which to make any sort of determination.

O’Connor is simply taking the opportunity provided by a story that places HGH and A-Rod in the same paragraph to throw some more barbs at Alex. For O’Connor to try and turn this into another steroid frenzy about A-Rod when he is simply one of many players who have had some incidental contact with Galea is irresponsible. Of course, it is hard to expect much journalistic integrity from a scribe who allowed his anti-ARod column from last year to be removed from the internet due to its embarrassing lack of perspective.

This is the sober moral of the Alex Rodriguez story. His presumption of game-day innocence is much like a baseball hit way out of the park.

He’s never getting it back.

The same could be said of any modicum of respectability and credibility that O’Connor had after the A-Rod column fiasco of 2009. After this disaster, he’s never getting it back.

Yesterday at River Ave. Blues, Ben Kabak did a good job at breaking down a shoddy John Harper B-Jobber article. Both Moshe and I were planning on doing something like this, but Ben beat us to it and did a great job.

Instead of talking about the article now, though, I’d like to discuss the Joba/5th starter situation, and in more general terms.

First off, I know everyone–from Cashman, to Girardi, to Eiland, to Joba, to Hughes–has said that the fifth starter competition is just that: a competition. I don’t believe this for more than…five seconds. This job is Joba’s to lose. Obviously, the Yankees can’t come out and say that. It could send a bad message to the other players and it could lead to a sense of complacency in Chamberlain. Perhaps the Yankees are “gun shy” after guaranteeing roles to Hughes and Ian Kennedy before the ‘08 season. The results were rather ugly, so the Yankees have to at least put on the air of competition. But, in reality, the only way Joba isn’t the fifth starter to start the year is if he either completely loses it in Spring Training (like, Ankiel style) or gets injured. Neither one of those things seem likely.

The biggest reason that this isn’t a competition is because out of himself, Hughes, Aceves, Gaudin, and Mitre, Chamberlain is the only one to throw a full season last year. After that, it makes absolutely no sense to reduce his innings (unless he’s injured). The Yankees have put a lot of time and effort into securing Chamberlain’s future as a starter, even if they haven’t done it perfectly.

In 2007, the Yankees called Chamberlain up to pitch in the Major Leagues, even though he’d pitched fewer than 90 innings in the minors. The reason they did this was two fold: Chamberlain was approaching an innings limit and the Yankees needed bullpen help for the late season pushed. Obviously both things worked; Chamberlain’s innings were limited and he pitched brilliantly out of the bullpen. Of course, this got people talking. They said Chamberlain should be groomed as the eventual replacement for closer Mariano Rivera when the time came for him to retire. The Yankees, however, said that Chamberlain would remain a starter.

2008 is where things took a bit of a negative turn. 2008 saw the Yankees put two young starters in the rotation. The only problem was that neither one of them was Joba Chamberlain. He started 2008 off in the bullpen, only to be converted to a starter later that year. While he pitched brilliantly as a starter in that brief time, he eventually suffered an injury and returned to relieving after coming off of the disabled list. As a result, Chamberlain pitched only 100.1 innings in 2008. This short sighted move set Chamberlain back an entire year. With the injury and limited amount of starts, Joba actually pitched fewer innings in 2008 than he did in 2009.

Two routes could’ve, and should’ve, been taken to avoid this measure: either Chamberlain should’ve been allowed to compete with Hughes and Kennedy for a rotation spot or he should’ve started the year in Scranton, building up innings (and this is exactly what I want the Yankees to do with Phil Hughes). Then, he could’ve built up innings from the 112.1 he pitched in 2007 and could’ve been uncapped in terms of innings in 2009. Instead, poor planning an in jury set Joba back a full year.

Putting Chamberlain in the bullpen in 2008 set a bad precedent that was carried out again in 2009 when Phil Hughes was placed in the bullpen after a panic move, Chien-Ming Wang being hastily reactivated after a line drive hit Joba, even though he had been pitching decently in his previous starts. Because he wasn’t sent back to Scranton to start, Hughes pitched fewer innings than the Yankees had expected. If Hughes pitches out of the bullpen again in 2010, it’s unlikely he pitches more than 80 innings and will then be four years removed from his previous innings high of ~147 in 2006. That would not be desirable, as Hughes will likely be looked at to start in 2011. But, this piece is supposed to be about Joba, so let’s get back to him.

Now, this has seemed rather critical of the Yankees and maybe it should be. They did some things with Joba that I didn’t like. However, they seem to realize that developing him as a starter is the best thing they can do for him and, more importantly, for the organization. Consistently, they’ve stayed above the mediotic fray and stuck to the plan of keep Joba on the path to ace-dom. After 2009, it’s clear that it won’t be as easy as we all want it to be. Realizing potential that high is a process and Chamberlain still needs to take some more steps to get there. Joba clearly has the talent to arrive at the top of the Yankee rotation and with the application of hard work in 2010, he will come even closer to attaining that goal.

Just a few days ago, January 29th, our own Moshe Mandel pulled a Fire Joe Morgan on Mike Lupica due to Lupica’s hypocrisy regarding the Yankees and their spending. Well, Lupica threw out another silly piece on Sunday the 31st. The title? “New York Yankees and…Johnny Damon still have time to make a deal.” Before I get into the actual piece, I have some advice for Mr. Lupica: let it go. Seriously, man. Let. It. Go. We get it. You’re not going to be happy with the Yankees no matter what they do. Your act is, frankly, getting tired. When I was younger, I used to look up to your writing as something to behold. Something’s definitely changed. The question is: did I change or did you change, Mike? It’s probably both; but if it’s more of the former than the latter, that’s a good thing. So, let’s start the insanity.

There is still time for the Yankees to make a deal with Johnny Damon and for Damon to make a deal with them, just because there is no ticking clock here the way there is no real “budget” for the Yankees.

Okay, sure, the season hasn’t started and Johnny Damon hasn’t been signed so there is technically time to get a deal done. But, in reality, Damon isn’t coming back. He’s constantly said no and the Yankees are sticking to a budget, even if it is high.

Damon? He should make a deal for the best possible reason, because this is the best possible place for him to continue playing baseball. The Yankees make the deal for the only reason that is supposed to matter:

They are a better team with him than they are without him and they don’t have to lay off members of the grounds crew to get him.

I agree with Lupica: Damon’s best option is the Yankees and the Yankees’ best LF option is Damon. The fact of the matter is that they could not come to any sort of agreement. Johnny Damon may be a good player in many ways–he can hit, he can at least stand out in the field, and by all accounts, he’s a good clubhouse guy. Despite all that, Johnny Damon at this stage in his career, is not a guy you rip open the checkbook for, especially if there’s no one else willing to do the same.

It’s painfully obvious here, and later on, but I want to mention it here, that Lupica has no grasp of “context.” In the last two offseasons, we’ve seen the market for most older corner outfielders, even good ones like Damon and Bobby Abreu, completely bottom out. Why should the Yankees pay more for Damon just because Lupica thinks/acts like/wants to believe that they can, especially when no other team has made an offer for Damon? That’s just awful business and the Yankees would be bidding against themselves, like they (the Steinbrenners, not CashMoney) did with A-Rod in late 2007 and the Cardinals and Mets did with Matt Holliday and Jason Bay in this off-season. If the Yankees did that, I guarantee Lupica would be writing an angry article about the Yankees being too free-wheeling with their money in tough economic times and about the bad business practice about the team bidding against itself.

–snip–

They’re not being asked to break the bank here. It’s not like the gap between the two sides is as wide as CC Sabathia. But are we really supposed to believe that Hal Steinbrenner found $180 million under the bed for Mark Teixeira last winter and now can’t find whatever it will take to bring back a popular, winning ballplayer and stick him back in the No. 2 slot behind Jeter?

1. 2010 =/= 2009. The Yankees are clearly operating differently this off-season than they did in last year’s off-season. Isn’t this painfully obvious? How does Lupica not see this? He can’t be this thickheaded, can he? Is it possible he’s playing a Kaufman-like joke on us?
2. In just about every single way possible, Mark Teixeira is a better player than Johnny Damon. He was younger, entering his prime. He can field his position much better than Damon can feel his. He is a switch hitter. He is a better hitter than Johnny Damon…by a lot. Mark Teixeira is a perennial MVP candidate. Mark Teixeira is a team-changing player. Johnny Damon, at this point in his career, is not.
3. Stop placing all the blame on the Yankees, Mike. Damon rejected some offers, as I pointed out above via Moshe’s other article, and Scott Boras likely didn’t help things. It’s not as if Damon came to the hypothetical door with a smile and an “Anything goes, Bri-man!” attitude and Cashman kicked him to the hypothetical curb.

Come on. You know how many home runs Nick Johnson, Randy Winn and Brett Gardner hit among them last season? Thirteen.

Nick Johnson had a freakishly low HR/FB rate that is likely going to go up for multiple reasons. Brett Gardner and Randy Winn are not power hitters and bring other skills to the plate–they both are pretty good at getting on base and have good speed–and they’re also good fielders. It’s also worth noting that Johnson’s top-notch on base skills will play very nicely in the two hole. Another important thing that Lupica skips over is that Damon’s real offensive replacement–Curtis Granderson–hit 30 home runs in what was more or less a “down” year for him. That number should also go up, playing in a park that’s friendly to lefty power hitters. This brings to a point that a lot of people have glossed over: Randy Winn is not replacing Johnny Damon. Nick Johnson is replacing Hideki Matsui, but Randy Winn, who will be a bench player, is replacing Melky Cabrera.

–snip–

It’s in his best interests to get his client the best situation as well as the most money. And Damon’s best situation is left field, Yankee Stadium, batting second.

The Yankees found $300 million when they wanted Alex Rodriguez back. They found the money for Teixeira. They can still find the money for Johnny Damon. Can they win without him? Of course they can.

Alex Rodriguez, at the time, was the 2nd best player in baseball and the best player in his league. I’ve already been over the Teixeira thing, so I won’t bore you with a repeat. Those two guys–along with the coupling of Sabathia and Burnett last off-season–are team changing players. A mid-30’s Johnny Damon, playing a non-premium position, coming off a year he probably won’t be able to repeat, is not a team changing player.

Does it suck that the Yankees had to let two fan favorites walk this off-season? Yeah, it does. However, they had good baseball and business reasons, and I can’t fault them too much for it. I’ll miss Johnny and Hideki, but their production is likely to be replaced by Nick Johnson and Curtis Granderson. Despite what Mike Lupica would have you believe, Johnny Damon needs the Yankees more than the Yankees need Johnny Damon.

I had promised a few readers an article on the PECOTA projections this morning, but will push that until next week because SG over at RLYW has suggested that their math is a bit off, and Colin Wyers has responded that they are looking into it. I will wait until there is more news on that before I discuss it.

Anyhow, Mike Lupica wrote a column this morning so ridiculously devoid of logic that it needed to be addressed. I am going to go at it FJM-style, addressing the most egregious suggestions made by the once-great writer whose opinions have, for the most part, jumped the shark.

The headline is that the Yankees have a budget. We are supposed to believe that this budget is the reason that Johnny Damon goes now. Sure it is.

Now you can take the Yankees at their word, buy this notion that they can’t spend $200 million on baseball players anymore. But if you do, you sort of have to wonder if the team really is rolling in dough, the way we’re constantly told.

Just because a team is “rolling in dough” does not mean that they should not have a budget. The fact that the Yankees were run as if they were a trust for fans for the last 30 years does not mean that they should be forced to operate that way in perpetuity. They have chosen to act like the business that they are, and maximize profits. Doing so requires setting a budget, so as to have some cost certainty when planning for the upcoming season. The Yankees are not cutting costs because they are running out of cash. Rather, they are doing so to try and become as efficient as possible.

But for now the story, and the Yankees are sticking to it, is that they’ve got a by-God budget. That they couldn’t afford what they say Damon wanted. Or what they thought he wanted. Or what they were afraid Damon’s agent, Scott Boras, might try to weasel out of them, because nobody can out-weasel Boras.

Really? Johnny Damon turns out to be the one guy the Yankees can’t afford? It would be like finding the one bar girl Tiger Woods didn’t want to take home with him.

Again, Lupica’s column shows a lack of understanding regarding a fairly basic concept. Lupica is trying to plant the idea that it is ridiculous for the Yankees to reject Johnny Damon after all of the money that they have spent on players. However, Johnny Damon is not “the one guy the Yankees cannot afford.” At this point, they have reached the line in the sand that they drew and therefore cannot afford anyone. This has nothing to do with them rejecting Damon in particular.

This Yankee budget, by the way, revolves around the completely arbitrary figure of $200 million. To them, it is some kind of magic number, even though nobody else in baseball spends anything close to that, has ever spent anything close, will ever spend anything close to that.

This is where the column loses me for good. Lupica baldly states that the Yankees budget is an arbitrarily drawn line when he has no evidence to that point. I do not think they need Johnny Damon, but it is hard to deny that he would help the 2010 Yankees. It is highly doubtful that they would not push the budget past 200 million for him if it was simply an arbitrarily drawn line. It is significantly more likely that they analyzed their likely revenues and projected costs and then came to a fairly precise figure that they were comfortable paying on salaries. To call the line arbitrary is a serious claim, and one that would require actual reporting and evidence to make.

But does anybody believe that Johnny Damon, who helped beat the Yankees in 2004 when he was with the Red Sox and played such a spectacular World Series for the Yankees five years later against the Phillies, has to go because of money? Or because Boras made Brian Cashman mad?

Let me see if I have this straight: Boras’ No. 1 top-dog client, Alex Rodriguez, got to opt out of his Yankees contract during Game 4 of the 2007 World Series, show up the Yankees as much as anybody ever has, but that wasn’t a career-ender in New York?

Yes, I believe that Damon, who was a very good player for the Yankees, had to go because of money. I also believe that if Scott Boras had read the market a bit better and come down on his asking price prior to the Yankees signing Nick Johnson, Damon would likely still be a Yankee. Finally, I believe that Lupica is creating a storyline here that does not exist, by suggesting that they let Damon go due to problems with Boras and then comparing him to A-Rod.

Ignoring the fact that it was the Steinbrenners, not Cashman, who worked things out with Alex, the Yankees did not pass on Damon because Boras made them mad. As Lupica himself makes clear by citing the A-Rod situation, that is not the way the Yankees operate. They, like most properly run organizations, decide whether the player makes sense for them on the field and then make decisions based on that. The parallel to A-Rod is intellectually dishonest because it suggests a reasoning behind the decision that Boras himself has not claimed, let alone the Yankees. The Yankees’ sole issue with Scott is that he priced Damon out of their market and is now trying to suggest that they never entered the market.

You know what the bottom line is on this sudden bottom line the Yankees have? If they wanted Damon to play two more years here, he’d be playing two more years here. They just don’t want to say that. And for some loopy reason, they want to act as if they’re the victims here.

Lupica is suggesting that if the Yankees wanted Damon back, he would be back, and that they are simply covering up a lack of interest due to heretofore unrevealed reasons. However, the idea that “if they wanted him, they would have him” could be said about any free agent player and any team. If the Royals really wanted John Lackey, they could have offered him 25M a year and snared him. Again, Lupica misses a very simple point: the Yankees wanted Damon back, but only at their price. And quite frankly, they were right all along about Damon’s value, as evidenced by his difficulty even securing a one year deal. As Brian said on Hot Stove last night (h/t to YankCrank):

“We had a strong desire to have Johnny back, but not at all costs. We put a value on Johnny, shared that opinion on what that value was and Scott Boras and Johnny had a different value and a different opinion.”

Of course Cashman doesn’t want to be regarded as the guy who can only buy the World Series. Of course he wants to have the kind of rep as a personnel savant the way Theo Epstein and Billy Beane do. Of course he did make a whole series of terrific small moves to improve the ‘09 Yankees.

Except: Except none of those moves matters if Cashman didn’t get to spend nearly a half-billion dollars on CC Sabathia and A.J. Burnett and Mark Teixeira last winter! And if the Yankees don’t win this season, you can only imagine what happens to this new budget next winter if somebody like Joe Mauer is in play. What kind of money will they throw at him?

Here is where Lupica’s gloves come off and he makes a startling accusation, suggesting that Cashman is deliberately staying away from a player who can help the club to help his own reputation. This claim is ridiculous for two reasons. Firstly, Cashman has never had a problem spending profligate amounts before. He may have gotten a bit ornery with the media about the whole concept of buying a title, but at no point has he made the choice to stay away from a player he legitimately believed was a need to save money. The Mark Teixeira situation illustrates that point perfectly.

Secondly, Cashman does not set the budget, Hal and the other financial managers of the organization do. Blaming Cashman for the organizational policy is irresponsible and dishonest. While Cashman could go to Hal and ask for the budget to be extended, that sort of move is typically reserved for the game-changers of the world, such as Mark Teixiera. We have heard reports that Cashman was rejected by ownership when he had a deal in place for Mike Cameron at the trade deadline. Hal has tightened up the purse strings a little bit, and there is not much Cash can do about that.

Finally, Lupica suggests that the Yankees will disregard the 200M budget next offseason should they be unsuccessful in 2010. While this may be true, it simply ignores the fact that the budget is not a static number that applies uniformly to every season, nor should it be. They set the budget based on a number that they think gives them a chance to win and still be fiscally responsible. If, next offseason, they feel that it would be smarter for the club to have a 230M payroll and add Cliff Lee or Joe Mauer, and that they could sustain that payroll due to added revenues, it does not represent inconsistency. It shows an understanding of the marketplace and their place within it.

I also wanted to note that the fact that writers such as Lupica having decided to rip the Yankees for having a budget after years of ripping them for not having a budget is so incredibly ridiculous as to leave me speechless. I will let Mike Lupica circa 2000 do the talking (h/t to Craig):

The Yankees continue to live big and baseball dies a little bit at a time, even as this as treated like some kind of boom period. If you even suggest that there is something wrong with the assembly line we see working at Yankee Stadium, you’re just anti-Yankee. More and more the Yankees are treated, especially by the local media, like the company in a company town.

The same man, this very morning, wrote a column that criticized the Yankees for creating a budget and sticking to it. Only in NY, my friends, only in NY.

What did you think of Lupica’s column?

We can all argue the merits plus/minus for the top 11, but the deeper you go on the list the more you wonder what some of these guys are smoking. Here’s the list:

Don Mattingly — 87 – 16.1%
Dave Parker – 82 – 15.2%
Dale Murphy — 63 – 11.7%
Harold Baines — 33 – 6.1%
Andres Galarraga – 22 – 4.1%
Robin Ventura — 7 – 1.3%
Ellis Burks — 2 – 0.4%
Eric Karros — 2 — 0.4%
Kevin Appier — 1 – 0.2%
Pat Hentgen — 1 – 0.2%
David Segui — 1 – 0.2%

Twenty two writers voted for Andres “big cat” Galarraga? The guy who went from having an OPS of .673 to 1.005 by changing his address from St Louis to Colorado? Once again, a big smile and great personality get you votes, who cares what the numbers look like. Two writers voted Ellis Burks and Eric Karros. I’ll hazard a guess and say that it must have been the same two writers, were out drinking one night and and decided to do it as a goof. Or maybe they’re Gay and dating each other, and they think both guys are really cute (not that there’s anything wrong with that). Anyone who voted for Kevin Appier must owe him money, he had one Hall of Fame-quality season. Maybe the writer misread the HOF voting rules and thought he was voting on the Hall of Fame of 1993. Wild guess, the BBWAA writer who voted for Pat Hentgen describes himself as “Not a numbers guy”. Turns out the guy who voted for David Segui was a little known sportswriter named Diego Segui.

From Ken Rosenthal:

A rival executive says that neither Phil Hughes nor Joba Chamberlain should be in the Yankees’ rotation next season.

Instead, the exec suggests that the Yankees keep both youngsters in their bullpen and make Chad Gaudin their fifth starter.

Not a crazy thought. But if the Yankees enact such a plan, they are far more likely to use Alfredo Aceves as their fifth starter, according to a source with knowledge of the team’s thinking.

The Yankees mostly have used Aceves as a reliever, but he was a starter in Mexico and at Class AA and AAA — and his ERA in five major- league starts is 3.42.

Aceves, 28, also has been an effective reliever, going 10-1 with a 3.18 ERA in 44 career relief appearances. But the Yankees could put together a powerhouse bullpen without him.

Hughes and Chamberlain would set up for Mariano Rivera. Damaso Marte would be the left-handed specialist. Gaudin, Sergio Mitre and David Robertson could fill the other spots.

Not a crazy thought?!? Has the entire world gone mad, to the point where a respected reporter can suggest that a club should put their two most talented young arms in the bullpen? Ridiculous. The fact that the person who came up with this idea is a rival executive suggests that there are some rather unintelligent people in positions of power in baseball. Advocating the wasting of two assets by putting them in middle relief is so silly and backwards as to constitute a fireable offense. If this is the state of “rival executives” in MLB, the Yankees and Red Sox are going to rule the American League for a long, long time.

Yes, seriously, Mike Silva asked that question:

If you compare both players in their first full season of just starting it looks like this:
Ponson: 4.71 ERA, 1.5 WHIP, 99 ERA+, and FIP of 5.39
Chamberlain: 4.75 ERA, 1.5 WHIP, 90 ERA+, and FIP of 4.82
To be fair Ponson never had Joba’s success in the minors, but he was also younger than Chamberlain when thrown into the rotation. From a build standpoint they are both around 6′1 and weigh 230 pounds. Big boys that probably could afford to get into better shape. I will leave the off the field troubles out of the comparison.

Well, that is the end of this conversation, as Joba is clearly no better than Ponson and therefore should certainly be included in a Roy Halladay deal. Of course, a look in the comments also found the following:

In his first full season starting, Greg Maddux had a 5.61 ERA in his first full season starting with a 4.50 FIP and a handful peripherals (K/9, K/BB, WHIP) that were worse than Chamberlain’s.

Well, that settles it. Ponson=Joba>Maddux. Or……….Mike Silva is warping information as he usually does to try and fit his point (I really hate coming off so harsh, but Silva has done this for a while now and does not get called out on it enough). You can find plenty of players who had similar first years to Chamberlain and conclude Player X>Joba. The key is to look past those meaningless comparisons and try to analyze whether the player has the underlying talent necessary to succeed. I believe Chamberlain does, and I fully respect those that believe he does not and should be traded. But meaningless comparisons to Sidney Ponson do nothing to further that conversation.

Joe Girardi may be the first manager to guide his team to 103 wins and the World Series to spend the entire time prior to the Series getting skewered by the press. First it was Jon Heyman:

Girardi apparently already has a dreary book of overwrought stats in the dugout, and he’s gone to it once or two or maybe even three times too many. Perhaps the worst call of all was removing the tough David Robertson (who hasn’t allowed a run in three extra-inning appearances this postseason) with two outs and nobody on in the 11th to bring in the immortal Alfredo Aceves. That book apparently suggested off-speed stuff against Howie Kendrick, who promptly singled against the soft-tossing Aceves, then scored the game-winning run on Jeff Mathis’ double. I’m not sure what book told Girardi to keep A.J. Burnett in the game too long. But burn it. Same goes for the one that suggested Girardi remove The Great A-Rod for speedy pinch runner Freddy Guzman in case a ball is hit into the gap. A-Rod has decent speed, he’s an excellent baserunner, and there was a greater chance the game was going to extra innings than Guzman’s extra step would make the difference.

If you have been paying much attention to the criticism of Girardi this week, most pundits have pointed to the same two moves, one of which (the A-Rod move) was not that egregious. Furthermore, if the pinch running move had worked, Heyman would have been first in line to laud Girardi for his gutsy call.

Next comes Tim Marchman, in a piece that is quite impossible to decipher:

And in this year’s playoffs, Girardi has done a fantastic job illustrating why baseball is a game for delinquents, not engineers……

The curious thing about these inane moves is that they don’t—at all—match up with Girardi’s reputation as a forward thinker steeped in statistical nuance. There’s nothing more old school than pinch running on a hunch or citing the chemistry between a pitcher and catcher as a reason to bench one of your best hitters. The Yankee manager’s overarching philosophy, then, seems to have less to do with statistics than with the notion that a manager needs to make slick maneuvers to win ballgames……

All these moves are the result of a search for edges that don’t exist. This isn’t the normal annoying tinkering we’ve all seen in 100 boring playoff games; it’s a compulsive effort to control randomness. The difference between Aceves and Robertson is about 12 runs per 500 batters faced, meaning that the lesser of the two gives up about .02 more runs per batter than the other. Neither player is more likely to get any particular hitter out—whatever differences there are in the speed or break of their pitches are utterly irrelevant next to the role of sheer random chance. An “intelligent” manager like La Russa or Girardi consults his color-coded charts as he thinks deeply about whether Howie Kendrick’s swing will work better against Robertson’s curve or Aceves’ cutter. A wise manager understands that there’s really no difference and there’s nothing he can do but call on a decent pitcher and cross his fingers.

So let’s decipher the argument here. Girardi has too many numbers, but he is not really using them. Rather he is going by feel and scouting reports. Oh, wait, those are not good either. Rather, the manager should just pick a “decent pitcher” and hope it all works out. Does this make any sense to anybody?

(Just as an aside, Howie Kendrick was sent down this year because he could not hit anything but fastballs. To suggest that no particular pitcher is more likely to get him out is silliness, and is entirely unrealted to any of the fundamental precepts of sabermetrics).

All managers make mistakes, and Joe Girardi is no different. Even Mike Scioscia has come under fire for some of his moves during the ALCS, yet Yankees fans are not even aware that Scioscia made any questionable calls. We overanalyze the moves made by our own manager while glossing over the overuse of Gary Matthews Jr. and the underuse of Jered Weaver, and suddenly we begin to believe that Girardi is a buffoon who has committed multiple fireable offenses. The fact of the matter is that every move he made in the ALCS had a legitimate reason and explanation. While some of those moves were probably a bit misguided, none were inexplicable or “fireable.” The club is in the World Series, and Joe has had a part in helping them there. It is time to just tip our caps to him and acknowledge a job well done.

I was listening to Buck Showalter on the Michael Kay Show the other day and, much as I love Buck from his tenure as Yankee manager, he said something that didn’t seem right to me.  Upon being pressed by Kay for a prediction, he wound up reluctantly picking the Angels in 7 games.   This is not suprising, as the Angels are a tremendous team that has had a tone of success in the Bronx over the last several years.  The reason Buck gave, however, was that the Angels lefthanders could take away Cano, Matsui, and Damon while turning around the Yankee switch-hitters.  He also lauded the move to start Saunders (a lefty) tonight for that reason.  He particularly singled out the Angel relievers Fuentes and Oliver as being instrumental in the late innings against the Yankee lefties and switch-hitters.  He also reiterates some of those sentiments on ESPN, here.

I was pretty surprised upon hearing these ideas.  My first thought, as are most of yours, I’m sure, is Matsui?  I thought it was pretty common knowledge that Matsui is generally just as good or even better against lefties.  Buck usually gives pretty deep analysis, but in this case, he didn’t give any numbers to back up his theory, so I figured that I’d take a look at the stats and see if there’s anything at all to this idea.  There are lots of lefties that hit lefties and plenty of lefty pitchers that aren’t necessarily that much better against lefties than righties.  So do the Yankees have a bit of a weakness against lefties?  Are the Angels pure death against lefthanded batters?

Let’s first look at Matsui, which seems, at first glance, to be an obviously ridiculous misstatement by Showalter, but maybe he’s struggled more than I remember against lefties.  Let’s see here….ummmm… nope.  Matsui has an absurd .976 OPS against lefties while hittining .835 against righties.  Gee, he’ll sure be quaking in his cleats against those Angel lefties, huh?  What about Cano, surely he’ll back up Buck’s thesis, right?  Wrong, Robbie is also better against lefties (though closer: .876 to .868).  Damon is the only Yankee lefty who is actually worse against lefties (.889 to .776).

What about the Angels pitchers, though?  Possibly they are so ridiculously tough against lefties that even guys like Cano and Matsui can’t touch them.  The Angels’ starter tonight, Joe Saunders, is definitely tougher against lefties than righties (.692 to .827 OPS), but it’s not like he’s unhittable.  CC Sabathia, for example, has a much, much lower OPS against (.560).  Fuentes is tough (.589 OPS against), but Oliver is actually worse against lefties than righties (.705 to .600).

When you look at the Angels’ batting average agains lefthanded hitting, you see that Buck’s argument has zero basis in reality.  The Angels are actually THE WORST TEAM IN ALL OF BASEBALL against lefty hitters, with a .290 BAA.  Opposing lefties hit .290 against the Angels, yet neutralizing the Yankee lefties is the key to this series?  Much as I love Buck, it’s pretty clear that he mailed this one in, making only a superficial observation with zero deep analysis to back it up.  It’s a common fallacy to just look at left-handedness and make snap judgements about how they perform against other lefties without acknowledging individual differences.  Come on, Buck, it’s bad enough we have to listen to that idiot, McCarver.  Don’t you start making moronic statements as well.  Do your homework.