Daily Archives: November 20, 2008

If you’ve ever tried to solve a crossword puzzle, you know that there are many ways to attack it.

Some folks dive right in and look for the clues directly tied to the longest words.  Maybe they’ll get lucky and connect the title of the puzzle with those answers.  Some seek out the “fill in the blank” clues first, as they have a finite number of possible responses.  Others go for the 3-letter words first, as they are used repeatedly in puzzles.

You start working through the puzzle, and you inevitably hit some rough patches.  You notice if the clue ends in -ED or -ING or -S, and then figure that the answer will most likely do the same.  You take note of circumstances of too many vowels or consonants in a row in one of your answers.  You keep your mind open to the possibility of puns and alternate definitions being used.  In other words, you realize you have to find some other ways of getting the answers.

Pitching is like that too … its all about adjustments on the fly.  Maybe that’s why Mike Mussina liked to solve crossword puzzles when he wasn’t solving the riddles of pitching.   With a degree in economics from Stanford, one can understand that Mussina would always look for a new challenge … a new puzzle to solve.  To him, reading the title of the puzzle is akin to going over the scouting report with his catcher.  What are we gonna face today … what sort of things are gonna be tried against me?  Figuring out how to get the opposing batters out the second time through the lineup is like unlocking a tricky corner of a crossword grid.

For the most part, they are solitary pursuits, pitching and crossword puzzles.  Yes, you do have a catcher calling the pitches for you and fielders to back you up, but you have a plan of attack based upon the clues the batter has given you, and you have to execute the pitches.  When that moment arrives when you’ve frozen the batter with a 3-2 changeup when you figured he was sitting “dead red”, its not unlike when you’ve finally come upon the theme of that enigmatic crossword puzzle, and filled in all the blanks.

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Back with more McCarron and Lamster. Today’s topic: AJ Burnett or Derek Lowe?

I’ve never been keen on Burnett. Last week, I was talking to my good friend Rich Lederer who accused me of being overly critical of players like Burnett, guys who have tremendous “stuff.” Guilty as charged. I got an e-mail from Rich last night, highlighting the many good things about Burnett’s 2008 season:

A.J. was 7th in FIP (Fielding Independent Pitching ERA) among American League pitchers last year. FIP is based on the three variables a pitcher can control: strikeouts, walks, and home runs. The six pitchers ahead of him were Lee, Halladay, Beckett, E. Santana, Mussina, and Danks. He was one of only 16 starters whose FIP was lower than his ERA and FIP is a better indicator of pitching prowess than ERA. As such, Burnett’s ERA of 4.07 doesn’t accurately portray just how good he pitched last year.

A.J. was first in K/9 and, in fact, was the only starter in the AL who struck out more than one batter per inning. His closest competitor (Beckett) was more than a half of a batter per nine behind Burnett.

A.J. was ninth in HR/9. The eight pitchers head of him were Lee, Eveland (not so good), Lester, Matsuzaka, Halladay, Danks, Hernandez, and Mussina.

Not to be dismissed, A.J. had the fourth highest batting average on balls in play (BABIP) at .328 (vs. about .300 for league average), suggesting that he may have been unlucky. No other Blue Jays starter had a BABIP over .293.

A.J. had the 8th highest groundball rate and GB/FB ratio. Burnett is a rarity in that he can miss bats and keep the ball on the ground, which is exactly what you want in a pitcher.

Not for nothing, A.J. tied for the third hardest average fastball at 94.3 mph. Only Hernandez (94.6) and Santana (94.4) threw harder. Burnett also has one of the best curve balls in the game, a hard, hump-backed curve (second in velocity only to Felix) that is one of the best out pitches in the game.

Oh, and A.J. did all this in the AL East, facing the Rays, Red Sox, and Yankees multiple times.

I’m not making a call on the length and size of the contract or his injury history. Instead, I’m just vouching for the quality of the pitcher.

Given a cherce, which guy would you take?

Yesterday I looked at the state of the Yankee rotation and of the organizational starting pitching depth as it stands right now. Today, I want to try to figure out which free agents best fit into the Yankees plans for 2009 and beyond and how.

To begin with, I want to rerun my chart of the returning 2008 starters, but I’m going to add one name to it. With Mike Mussina’s retirement confirmed (though not yet official), the Yankees are all but guaranteed to bring Andy Pettitte back on a one-year deal. Though Pettitte had a poor year in 2008, I support this move for two reasons. The first is that a one-year deal essentially serves as a stop-gap as the Yankees’ pitching prospects continue to mature. Joba Chamberlain is ready to start the 2009 season in the Yankee rotation, but though the Yankees have nine intriguing starting prospects in their system, none of the other eight is fully ready just yet. Even Phil Hughes would benefit from starting the season at Triple-A. A one-year deal for Pettitte gives Hughes (or Kennedy, or even George Kontos) time to refine his skills, then gets Pettitte out of the way for that pitcher to join the rotation in 2010.

Second, Pettitte’s poor 2008 season wasn’t all that poor and was weighed down by an ugly second half that Pettitte blamed on his failure to follow his usual offseason conditioning program due to a desire to stay out of sight in the wake of the Mitchell Report’s December 2007 release. Even still, Pettitte threw 204 innings, won 14 games, and posted an ERA just a tick below league average. After 22 starts, Pettitte was 12-7 with a 3.76 ERA. He then went 2-7 with a 6.23 the rest of the way. Over his entire career, Pettitte’s second-half ERA has been nearly a half run lower than his first-half mark. I’m willing to give Pettitte the benefit of the doubt given both his durability (four straight seasons of 200-plus innings) and the roster flexibility his one-year deal would provide following the 2009 season.

And so, our starting point for this discussion is this:

*on Opening Day 2009

Given the above list of “in-house” pitchers (pending Pettitte’s signing, of course), if the Yankees were to land CC Sabathia, which would be a no-brainer addition should Sabathia accept the team’s offer, the 2009 rotation would look like this:

I’d be content to stop there, with Aceves available to start the season in Hughes’ place and to compensate for Chamberlain’s 150-innings limit once Hughes (or Kennedy, etc.) arrives to take over the fifth spot. But what if Sabathia decides that returning to his home state and getting the opportunity to become one of the game’s best-hitting pitchers is more valuable to him than Yankee dollars? And is there a way for the Yankees to provide some more insurance in that fifth spot that might allow them to leave Hughes in Scranton for a larger portion of the season and hold Aceves in reserve in case of an injury to one of the top four?

There are roughly 50 major league starting pitchers on the free agent market right now, with only Ryan Dempster having signed, re-upping with the Cubs for $52 million over four years. I won’t bother you with all 50, as at least half of them are sub-Ponson level dreck (i.e. Horatio Ramirez and Jason Johnson, both of whom pitched primarily in relief last year), perpetually injured (Mark Prior, Matt Clement), or as in the case of future Hall of Famers Mussina and Greg Maddux, retired. Tom Glavine and John Smoltz will only pitch for the Braves if they return, and are also both 40-somethings coming off injury. Randy Johnson is another 40-something who, despite having a solid 2008 season, simply will not return to New York. Curt Schilling, yet another 40-something coming off injury and like Glavine and Smoltz a retirement candidate, has said he would not follow Johnny Damon’s lead by turning traitor on the Red Sox. Carving all of those pitchers out of the list and stopping before we get down to Ponson and his ilk, we get this list (all stats from 2008):

*as of Opening Day 2009

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Everyone on the 2 train had heard it a million times.

“I’m very sorry to bother all of you good people this morning,” said a man standing in the middle of the car. “But I’m down on my luck and could use some help. If anyone can spare a little something – food, change, an extra pair of winter gloves – it would really be appreciated.”

People dug out several dollars and one woman gave him a banana.

“Thank you,” the man said. “I hope everyone has a nice day.”

The man hasn’t had a nice day in a long time.

“I’ve been out of work for almost a year,” the man explained. “I wasn’t worried at the beginning, but jobs have gotten tougher to find and I haven’t been able to land anything steady.”

So he asks for help on the 2 train.

“I know these people hate me,” the man said. “Even those who give probably just want me to go away. They think I’m a lazy bum. But my name is Mark James and I used to ride this train to work just like them.

“I had a life back then,” he continued. “I had an apartment and an iPod and I owned a fantasy baseball team. I drafted Jeter and Mo and did pretty well in the league.”

Mark James – who used to ride the 2 train to his job and had the good sense to draft Derek Jeter and Mariano Rivera for his fantasy baseball team – forced a smile and said:

“Maybe things will get better and I’ll have all that again. I guess anything can happen in fantasy baseball.”

Oh my goodness, its been six days and the Yankees haven’t signed a free agent yet!

Here now the news:

• As you probably already know (and we’ve all been expecting), Mike Mussina will be announcing his retirement (as per ESPN).  Alex has a wonderful post on this, and I’ll chime in on it later today.
• The Times‘ Tyler Kepner has a quote on Mussina’s retirement from Jim Palmer:

“To be as good as Mike Mussina, you’ve got to be a little bit selfish,” Palmer, the Hall of Fame pitcher, said this week. “A lot of times, you have to put your career ahead of what’s good for your family. For him, he said: ‘I don’t want to miss this time. You can’t ever make it up.’ He proved he could still do it, but he didn’t have to do it anymore, and he could prioritize what’s important in his life.”

• The News has a nice photo retrospective on Moose’s time in pinstripes.
• Mike Lupica of the News pays tribute to Mussina:

The MVP of the Yankee season was not Alex Rodriguez, not Mo Rivera or Bobby Abreu or Johnny Damon. It was Mussina, who was pushing 40, who had finished the season before with a 5.15 earned-run average, who was reduced to getting pitching advice from Hank Steinbrenner when he started out the way he did in April of 2008. All Mussina did after that was remind you why he is going to have a full Hall of Fame shot in five years, even if he does walk away from baseball 30 wins shy of 300.

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