by Cliff Corcoran |
April 20, 2009 8:38 pm |
51 Comments
In the comments to Alex’s post on Chien-Ming Wang below, reader “cult of baseball” brought my attention to this outstanding video analysis by the MLB Network’s Dan Plesac.
According to Plesac, Wang’s balance is all off. When he lifts his left leg to deliver the ball, he’s not lifting the leg nearly as high as he had a year ago, he’s bent at the waist, whereas last year he was standing straight up, and his hands are both lower and farther away from his body. There’s been a lot of talk about Wang not getting on top of his pitches, particularly his signature sinker, thus leaving them up in the zone. Plesac’s analysis shows why that might be the case.
Plesac then takes that a step further and suggests that because Wang is putting all of his weight on the right foot he broke last June when he lifts his left leg, his poor posture in that position could be a sign that the foot isn’t fully healed. I’m not sure I’d go that far, but it could be a bad habit he picked up during his rehab process borne out of a fear of placing too much stress on the foot. If that’s the case, the root of the mechanical flaw is mental, which is another theory that’s been bandied about of late.
Whatever the problem is, the Yankees need to fix it, either by fixing Wang or removing him from the rotation. The Yanks are 7-3 in games Wang hasn’t started, which is a great start, particularly given the injuries to Alex Rodriguez and Xavier Nady (and to a far lesser degree Mark Teixeira), poor performance from Hideki Matsui and Cody Ransom, and the erratic performances of the middle relievers.
Most of us have stories about how we lost a prized autographed ball or how our mother threw away our baseball card collection. When I was nine, a family friend who worked at NBC gave me an official 1980 World Series ball signed by Bryant Gumbel, who was working sports at the time. A few years later, my brother, exacting revenge for something that undoubtedly deserved it, played with the ball in the mud, and it was forever spoiled.
Rich Lederer managed to ruin a ball signed on the sweet spot by both Ted Williams and Mickey Mantle. Here’s how he did it.
The Coen brothers wrote the role of Walter Sobchack in The Big Lebowski with John Goodman in mind. In fact, they would have filmed Lebowski before Fargo, but Goodman’s schedule was already booked. Before he arrived on the Lebowski set, I asked a veteran crew member what he was like.
“Do you remember the part he played in Barton Fink? That’s pretty much him.”
A million laughs one moment, dark and brooding the next. The few times I saw him work, Goodman was very hard on himself. He was not a particularly gracious man, at least not to a young guy like myself (though he was charming around women). Which doesn’t explain anything about him, of course. That’s not so unique. But I was disappointed in his performance, thought it was uneven, especially because it was written for him, and because he’s often so good.
Mr. Goodman will forever be associated with Dan Conner, the working stiff he played so memorably on “Roseanne,” giving the part not just size and humor but also an edge of melancholy. Mr. Goodman now looks back fondly on the “Roseanne” years, but for a while, he said, he felt trapped in the show.
“I resented it at the time,” he said. “It’s one of those arrogant things that happen to you when you don’t realize the breaks you’re catching.” He added: “I don’t feel this way anymore, but for a couple of years I put myself above the material. I hate saying it, but it’s true, and I’m ashamed of it.”
A friend of mine who knows his Beckett told me last week that Goodman was the stand-out in this production. This article made me root for him.
Mr. Goodman said: “Right now I’d rather be here than anywhere. I’d rather be here, trying to find the goddamn part, and I hope I never do find it, because I don’t want to slide into complacency. What would I do then? Start cockfights in my dressing room?”
The soft-spoken 29-year-old from Taiwan said he has compared video of his performances from this season to last year, when was 8-2 with a 4.07 ERA in 15 starts before injuring his right foot June 15, and doesn’t see a difference.
“Everything is the same as last season,” Wang said. “Nothing’s wrong. Just keep working.”
But Girardi also watched video with his staff and thinks there are several things Wang can work on.
“We looked at his hands, height of his leg kick, where his head is — if it’s out of line — the angle of his arm. We looked at everything.” Girardi said. “We had some healthy stuff that we saw. We understand that we need to make some adjustments.”
[My take: Since the Yanks don’t have a “long man”, would they want to (could they afford to) move Wang into that slot for a little while, rather than sending him to Triple-A?]
Not-so-fun fact: Chien-Ming Wang is only the second starting pitcher since 1954 to give up seven or more earned runs in each of his first three starts in a season.
From our friends over at Was Watching (with an assist from the Hit Tracker website), it appears the new Stadium is more conducive to homers:
I created this by using actual prints from the new stadium, and by using high resolution satellite photos for the old stadium. You may have heard that the dimensions at the new park are the same as the old park, but that is not strictly true. In certain spots the distances are the same or similar, but there are significant differences in the fence line. As you can see in the diagram, most of right field is shorter in the new park, by as much as 9 feet, but more typically by 4-5 feet (the blue dotted lines in the corners are scale markings that are 4 feet apart.) In center field, the new park is actually a bit deeper, and in left field, the parks are very similar. From some analysis I’ve done on home runs, these differences would tend to increase home runs overall, and particularly in middle-to-lower power hitters.
The fence distances are not the only difference: in a few places, the fence is shorter (particularly the right field corner). A typical conversion factor for fence height to distance is that lowering a fence by 1 foot is roughly equal to moving it 0.84 feet closer to home plate. So, with the right field fence being a couple feet shorter in the new park, this is like moving it in a foot and a half or so. Minor, but I thought I’d mention it.
Buster Olney has noticed the homer-happy wind patterns at the Stadium:
“With the way the wind has been the last couple of days, right field is a joke,” one official said. “I would say at least three or four home runs in this series would be routine outs in nearly every park.” . . .
The new Yankee Stadium is just across the street from the old park, but it’s not aligned quite the same way as the old Yankee Stadium. In the late-afternoon shadows in the old park, the sun was in the eyes of the left fielder. Now the sun sets into the eyes of the center field and right fielder. Whether or not that’s a factor is not known, and it’s also possible that the number of home runs hit is directly related to the poor pitching of the likes of Chien-Ming Wang.
But already there have been a number of fly balls that seemed to be routine outs, before almost leaping out of the park. Mark Teixeira lifted a pop to right field off the end of his bat in the first inning Saturday, and players on both teams appeared to be completely surprised when it carried over the wall.
Even if the Yankees wanted to make an adjustment, there is nothing they could do structurally to alter the park this season. They would have to petition for a change going into the next offseason, before doing any reconstruction.
