Daily Archives: May 6, 2006

The Yankees hope to clinch the first of their two series in Texas this year with a far less eventful game tonight than last night’s. The pitching matchup will see Shawn Chacon take on the lone holdover in the Rangers’ rotation, Kameron Loe (though Loe pitched primarily in relief last year, he did do it in a Texas uniform). Chacon’s last start got washed out by rain in Boston. As a result he’ll take the mound tonight on eight day’s rest. Here’s what I wrote in anticipation of Tuesday night’s game in Boston:

After a couple of rough outings and an ugly stint in the bullpen, Chacon has come around in his last two starts working his low BABIP magic to hold the Orioles and Devil Rays to a combined .190 BABIP over 13 1/3 innings that saw just two runs cross the plate. That sort of thing won’t continue, of course, and the Red Sox, even with their diminished offense, are exactly the sort of team in exactly the sort of park in which such a stat is likely to correct itself.

The same could be said of the Rangers and their ballpark, though the Texas hitters are in general a less patient sort, which gives Chacon a little more leeway.

Loe, meanwhile, has alternated good and bad starts over his first five turns. His last start saw him hold the A’s to three runs over six innings. If the pattern holds, the Yanks will do some damange tonight.

Perhaps the hardest part of any manager’s job is managing his bullpen. Some relievers need to pitch regularly to stay sharp. Others need proper rest to avoid fatigue and injury. And there’s often a very fine line between one and the other. But in a pen such as the Yankees’ that has a clear hierarchy of talent, there is one overriding principle. There are high-leverage relievers (Rivera, Farnsworth, Myers against lefties) and low-leverage relievers (Sturtze, Proctor, Villone, Small). The high-leverage guys need to pitch in high-leverage situations (leads of three runs or less, tie games at home or on the road, and, depending on the relative strengths of your offense and the opposing pitching staff, trailing by one or two). The low-leverage guys, meanwhile, are there to eat low-leverage innings, allowing the manager to save the high-leverage guys for when they’re most needed.

Of course, it’s impossible to stick to this formula exactly. Going deep into extra innings will require the use of a low-leverage pitcher in a high-leverage situation, as might playing many tight games in a row. Conversely, participating in a number of blowouts in a row might force a manager to use one of his high-leverage guys in a low-leverage situation just to keep him fresh. Last night was not one of those situations.

Mike Mussina entered the eighth inning with an 8-1 lead having held the Rangers to a run on three hits over seven innings, striking out five, walking none, and needing just 85 pitches, 72 percent of which were strikes, to do it. After Kevin Mench lined Moose’s first pitch of the eight into center for a lead-off single, Joe Torre popped out of the dugout and signaled for Aaron Small.

Fair enough. Sure, Mussina was cruising and a first-pitch single with a seven-run lead hardly amounted to a sign of struggle, but Small had pitched just once since coming off the disabled list on Monday and here was an extreme low-leverage situation in which to get him a couple of innings of work, both for his own good, and so Torre and his staff could have a better idea what Small has to offer now that his surprising 10-0 run is a thing of the past.

Brad Wilkerson hit a sharp grounder through the second base hole into center on Small’s second pitch to put runners on the corners. Rod Barajas then a punched a 1-1 pitch past Derek Jeter to score Mench and push Wilkerson to third. Mark DeRosa followed by grounding into a fielder’s choice to score Wilkerson, and Gary Matthews followed that by singling under the dive of a drawn-in Alex Rodriguez to put runners on first and second for the Rangers who still trailed by five runs.

That brought Torre back out to the mound, but he didn’t call for Sturtze, Villone or Proctor. No, he went straight to Kyle Farnsworth. The very same Kyle Farnsworth who sat and watched as the Yankees lost a tie game on the road in Oakland in the season’s second game. The same Kyle Farnsworth who didn’t get into the next night’s game until after Jaret Wright had allowed the A’s to break another tie in the eighth inning. The very same Kyle Farnsworth who got the night off in Boston on Monday while Small and Tanyon Sturtze allowed the arch rival Red Sox to break another eighth-inning tie. True, Farnsworth was rested, having not pitched on Thursday, but he was not in need of work, having gone an inning and a third in a high-leverage win on Wednesday.

What happened next was not Joe Torre’s fault, but it exacerbated the damage done by going to his high-leverage pitchers in a low-leverage situation.

(more…)

“If the guys behind me would have come in and it would have been smooth, nobody would have thought anything of it,” [Mike] Mussina said. “You’ve got to believe those guys can come in and pitch, and they can. Today was the day when it was tough to get through that one inning.” (New York Times)

Yeah, and if Woody had gone straight to the police, none of this would have ever happened…

The Yanks and Rangers played two games on Friday night in Arlington. The first saw Mike Mussina continue his stellar early-season pitching, while the offense patiently beat the bejesus out of the Rangers’ pitching. Alex Rodriguez, dropped to fifth in the order, had two hits, a walk and three RBI–nothing like being back in Texas. The first game ended when Moose allowed a single to open the bottom of the eighth and was relieved by Aaron Small. Certainly Mussina could have continued to pitch, but with a huge lead, it didn’t seem odd that he was pulled.

Then the second game began. The one where the Rangers rallied for six runs against the Bombers’ bullpen in the same eighth inning. Aaron Small, then Kyle Farnsworth and Mariano Rivera were slapped around as the home team pulled to within 8-7. With a runner on first and one out in the ninth, Michael Young hit a hard ground ball to the hole between shortstop and third base. Derek Jeter moved to his right and made a nifty, mid-play adjustment, stabbing at the ball which had taken a late, high hop. There would be no chance to get Young at first; Jeter’s only play was to second. As his body carried him out to left, Jeter spun and fired to second to nab Gary Matthews, Jr by a half a step. It was a fine play and most likely helped save the game for Rivera, who then retired the Rangers’ slumping Mark Teixeira on a well-struck line drive to right to end it. (Rivera’s location was off all night and he was hit relatively hard.)

In a Sports Illustrated poll released earlier this week, Jeter was voted by his fellow-players as the most overrated player in the game. I haven’t mentioned it earlier because this doesn’t really tell us anything we don’t already know. Jeter makes a lot of money, and has had the good fortune to be the star player on a string of championship teams in New York. He is as over-exposed as a player can get. You could say he’s overrated, but I think if you asked players who the most respected player in the game is, Jeter would find his way to the top of the list too, so you’ve got to take these things with a grain of salt.

I don’t need to argue Jeter’s case–his numbers speak for themselves: the man is a sure-fire Hall of Famer. One thing that I think is interesting is that in the same issue of SI, there is a piece on the Rangers’ Michael Young, talking about what a stand-up guy he is, what an overachiever he’s been. One of his teammates said that if Young played in New York he’d be bigger than Jeter. Now, I don’t know about that, but Young is very much like Jeter–a hard-working gamer.

There is a little blurb in the Young article about the three great shortstops in the American League right now–Miguel Tejada, Michael Young and Derek Jeter. Ten years ago, Jeter was the weakest link in the Rodriguez-Nomar-Trio of great young shortstops. Nomar fell off that list due to injuries a few seasons back, and Rodriguez has shifted positions. But Jeter still remains. I’m not saying he’s better than Tejada or Young, but he’s right up there with them, and if either of those two players are still amongst the best in six, seven years, that’ll be something too, wouldn’t it?