Daily Archives: June 15, 2009

Who comes up short?

Over at River Avenue Blues, Joseph Pawlikowski considers what roster moves the Yanks will make once Brian Bruney rejoins the team.

I had the day off last Friday and had to run an errand at B&H Photo. It was an overcast, muggy morning and I was overdressed and soon sweating. With time to kill before a lunch date, I strolled up the north side of 34th street when I was done at B&H, walking east, listening to an old song talking about “Tonya, Tamika, Sharon, Karen, Tina, Stacy, Julie…Tracy” when I thought I recognized somebody. I stopped, and back-peddled, removed my earphones, and sure enough, there was Adam Reid from America’s Test Kitchen.

For those of you who don’t know, America’s Test Kitchen is the PBS show that sprung from the minds of Cook’s Illustrated. Chris Kimball and his crew are the sabermetricians of everyday cooking. Their approach is to empirically test and re-test recipes until they arrive at a practical and approachable solution for the typical American home cook. They also test equipment and products as well.

They’ve been a huge success. I can’t recall anything that I’ve ever made from them that wasn’t good.

Adam Reid handles the equipment rating and he’s the most cheerful personality of the bunch. Turns out he’s just as friendly in person. When I saw him, Reid, who also writes for The Boston Globe, was waiting for a bus back to Boston. He had been in town to do a spot on The Today Show promoting his new book, Thoroughly Modern Milkshakes. 

Now, how can that book not be awesome? I chatted with Reid for a couple of minutes before his bus began to board. I left him feeling better about the day and with a sudden craving for a milkshake, a “guggle-muggle” as my grandmother like to call them.

Took the train uptown, and still with time to burn, got out at 72nd street and decided to casually walk up Broadway. I had the headphones back on as I crossed Broadway and 78th street and saw what looked like Abe Vigoda on the east side of the block. Is Abe Vigoda still alive? I thought. Only one way to find out, so I removed one earphone and yelled out, “Hey, Mr. Vigoda.” And the old man, bent, wearing a beige cardigan, raised his right arm, cane in hand, nodded at me and continued walking down the block.

Adam Reid, Abe Vigoda, and then a few minutes later, one of the Zabar brothers, I’m not sure which one.

Rub-a-dub-dub.

Today’s news is powered by a vintage performance from the incomparable Dave Brubeck Quartet, appearing tonight at the 92nd Street Y in Manhattan:

• Today, Will Carroll is offering a conversation with Tommy John, and the doctor responsible for saving John’s career, and thereafter the careers of numerous pitchers, Dr. Frank Jobe.
• Also at Baseball Prospectus, they examine the mortal nature of Mariano Rivera (article from last Friday):

The number in his performance so far this season that immediately jumps out is his home-run rate, which sits at 1.8 HR/9. You may think this is easily explained by his new digs, as Yankee Stadium II hasn’t exactly been on friendly terms with pitchers these past two months, but that’s not the case: Mo has three home runs allowed at home in 16 2/3 innings, and a pair on the road in about half as much work. Four of his five homers allowed have come on fly balls, though he isn’t giving up anymore of those than he usually does. Another source of worry is his BABIP, which sits at a career-high .336. It’s not necessarily the fault of the Yankees‘ defense—they are right around the league average in Defensive Efficiency. The problem might be better found in Rivera’s liner rate, which sits at 25.4 percent, nearly a double-digit increase over his career rate, and much higher than anything we have seen from him since this data was first recorded back in 2002. This also means that his ground-ball rate is at its lowest since that time, which isn’t what you want to see when the ball is leaving the yard this often.

Additional homers and plenty of line drives means that Rivera is throwing pitches that the opposition can hit, whether with his famous cutter or pitches identified as vanilla fastballs. Using published velocity data going back to 2002 up through 2008, courtesy of Fangraphs, Rivera has averaged at least 93 miles per hour on pitches described as pure fastballs and, at its lowest, 92.8 mph on those classified as cutters. However slender the real distinction between the two pitches may be, this year Rivera is at 91.6 and 91.2 mph; while it’s tough to pin an exact run value on that missing velocity, the drop does hint that those extra liners and home runs aren’t from mere luck. This also puts some context behind his falling infield fly rate, which went from last year’s impressive 24.5 percent down to his current 14.3; while many pitchers would love to get that many popups, for Rivera it contributes to why his HR/FB rate has jumped from 7.5 to nearly 24 percent.

Rivera is also throwing fewer first-pitch strikes; while 59.6 percent is still above the average, it’s below his career rate and his recent work by a few percentage points. He’s also generating fewer swings and misses—16 percent overall, and just 14 percent when he’s behind in the count. That’s a significant drop from the past two seasons, when he made opponents swing and miss on nearly one-quarter of his pitches, and even more than that while behind the hitter.

[My take: Nice to see some reasonably hard data behind what we’ve perceived with our eyes.]

• Still going with Baseball Prospectus, some minutia:

The Yankees did not lead at any time in four straight games against the Red Sox, on May 4-5 and on Tuesday and Wednesday, only the fourth time that has happened in the 107-year history of the series, and the first time since 1974.

• Brian Bruney will NOT be on Francisco Rodriguez’s holiday card list:

The friction between the players stems from Bruney’s unsolicited comments about Rodriguez on Saturday. Bruney said that he did not like the way the animated Rodriguez acts on the mound and called Rodriguez “embarrassing.”

When Rodriguez was informed of Bruney’s comments on Saturday, he blasted him and challenged Bruney to speak to him face to face.

“Don’t be sending a message to the media,” Rodriguez said. “I don’t even know who that guy is, somewhere in Double-A and not even pitching one full season. He’s always been on the D.L. That’s all I really know right now. He’d better keep his mouth shut and do his job, and not worry about somebody else.”

(more…)

The Yankees should have lost to the Mets on Friday night and did lose to them on Saturday afternoon. With Johan Santana taking the mound for the Metropolitans Sunday against A.J. Burnett, who kicked off the Yankees’ sweep at the hands of the Red Sox with a stinker in Boston on Tuesday, things looked bleak.

Even after the Yankees put up a four-spot on Santana in the bottom of the second, things continued to teeter as Burnett opened the top of the third by loading the bases. With the bags juiced and none out, Burnett started out 2-0 on Mets’ leadoff hitter Alex Cora, but battled back to 2-2 then got a very generous call on what looked to be a sufficiently checked swing by Cora for strike three. Burnett then struck out rookie Fernando Martinez on four pitches, exposing the phenom’s inexperience with a curve that Martinez missed by several feet for strike three. Carlos Beltran then creamed an 0-1 fastball, but hit it directly at Derek Jeter, who squeezed it for the third out, preserving the Yankees’ 4-0 lead.

Then came the bottom of the fourth. Nick Swisher led off with a walk. Hideki Matsui, DHing over Jorge Posada because of strong career numbers against Santana, drilled fastball into the right-field box seats for a two-run homer that made it 6-0. Melky Cabrera huslted a ball cut off in the right field gap into a double. Francisco Cervelli, catching Burnett to try to get him back on track, beat out an infield single when first baseman Dan Murphy ranged too far to his right, cutting off a grounder that should have gone to the second baseman, then lobbed the ball underhand to Santana preventing him from beating Cervelli to the bag. Derek Jeter reached on another infield single that tipped off Cora’s glove in the shortstop hole, plating Melky and making it 7-0.

At that point Jerry Manuel took Santana out of the game . . .

. . . in the fourth inning . . .

. . . with no one out . . .

. . . and the Mets trailing 7-0.

With Brian Stokes on in relief, the Yankees just kept on hitting. Johnny Damon doubled into the left field corner. Mark Teixeira reached on yet another infield single when Stokes slipped making a play to the third base side of the mound. Alex Rodriguez hit into a near triple-play when Damon made a bad read on Alex’s sinking liner to Cora, but beat out the throw at first, thus allowing Robinson Cano to come to the plate and deliver a rain-maker of a two-run homer. Swisher walked for the second time in the inning. Matsui walked on four pitches. Both scored on Cabrera’s second double of the inning, though Melky finally brought the inning to a close by trying to stretch the hit into a triple.

When the dust cleared, the Yankees were up 13-0 and Santana had allowed a career-high nine earned runs in just three official innings of work. After the game, Santana claimed he just couldn’t find his rhythm and that the Yankees agressiveness at the plate helped keep him off balance. Never mind that the average Yankee batter saw 5.4 pitches in Santana’s 38-pitch second inning, that Santana threw less than 60 percent of his pitches for strikes, or that Santana’s fastball was sitting around 90 miles per hour and toping out at 91.

Whatever the reason, the game was over by the time Santana came out. A.J. Burnett shut the Mets down for seven innings, striking out eight. David Robertson struck out two men in a perfect, 12-pitch eighth, and Phil Hughes struck out two more in a scoreless ninth. Meanwhile, the Yankee subs added two runs in the seventh (Angel Berroa was hit by a pitch, Damon walked, Brett Gardner walked, Ramiro Peña reached on still another infield single plating Berroa, and Cano plated Damon with a sac fly of Ken Takahashi) to set the final score at 15-0.

Just like that, the Yankees won the series in perhaps the most improbable manner possible. They’ll spend Monday taking it easy (Burnett implied that he’ll take his kids to the zoo), then welcome the worst team in baseball, the 16-45 Nationals, for a three-game set starting on Tuesday.

Crisis averted.