Daily Archives: July 21, 2009

There’s been a lot of eye rolling and hand wringing about the fact that Sergio Mitre has been chosen to take the injured Chien-Ming Wang’s start against the Orioles tonight. I’ve seen Sidney Ponson’s name tossed about as a comparison, a short-cut for the sort of proven major league failure the Yankees  should no longer need to resort to given the depth of pitching in their system and the presence of two quality starting pitchers in their bullpen in Phil Hughes and Alfredo Aceves. I would, of course, much prefer to see the Yankees stretch Hughes back out should Wang’s current DL stay project to be a long one, but with regards to Ponson, I’m here to say that Mitre is not that.

Sidney Ponson had posted a below average ERA in 235 major league starts before joining the Yankees for the first time in 2006 and arrived in the Bronx in July 2006 having just posted a 5.24 ERA in 13 starts for the Cardinals during the first half of the season. Mitre, by comparison, has made just 52 major league starts and just once made more than nine in a single season. He has not thrown a major league pitch since 2007 due to Tommy John surgery and was just 26 in that, his only full season as a major league starter. Mitre’s career line in the majors is certainly unimpressive (5.36 ERA, 1.54 WHIP, 5.4 K/9), but he was rushed to the majors in just his third professional season at age 22, jerked between the majors, minors, rotation, and bullpen in each of his three seasons with the Cubs, and came down with shoulder problems in May of his first season with the Marlins in 2006. Given all of that, I’m tempted to just toss out those first four partial major league seasons in which Mitre went 5-15 with a 6.01 ERA in 25 starts and 26 relief appearances.

Instead, I look at what Mitre did with a healthy arm and a rotation spot in the first half of the 2007 season under manager Joe Girardi. In 16 starts (not counting one aborted start in which he tore a blister during the first inning), Mitre posted a 2.82 ERA, 1.25 WHIP, and a 3.1 K/9. Ten of those outings were quality starts and two others were scoreless but cut short by a tight hamstring. Mitre’s season fell apart in late July due to the elbow problems that led to his Tommy John surgery and wiped out his 2008 season.

As you can see, Mitre’s problems have had far more to do with health than effectiveness. That’s a red flag when a team throws $80-million, five-year contracts at a pitcher, but when the pitcher in question comes in on a make-good minor league deal, health concerns don’t concern me as there’s nothing there but upside. Mitre will make a pro-rated portion of a $1.25 million salary while in the majors this year, well worth the gamble that he can recapture the effectiveness he had in the first half of 2007.

Like the pitcher he replaces, Mitre is a groundballer, which makes him well-suited to the Yankees’ homer-happy new ballpark. In his minor league rehab work this year, Mitre has induced roughly three groundouts for every fly out, a rate comparable to Wang’s at his peak. Mitre has also shown tremendous control, walking just seven men in nine starts or 1.16 per nine innings, a rate that recalls another ex-Cub Tommy John rehab project that worked out well for the Yankees, Jon Lieber. In those first 16 starts in 2007, Mitre’s walk rate was 1.76, compared to 3.7 in his first four partial major league seasons, another indication that the Mitre we see tonight is more likely to be the early 2007 model. Six of Mitre’s seven starts for Triple-A Scranton have been quality starts, and his work for Scranton has yielded a 2.40 ERA, 1.00 WHIP, and 7.00 K/BB.

It’s entirely possible that Mitre will pull a Kei Igawa upon returning to the major leagues, but given that Triple-A performance and his decided lack of a meaningfully poor major league history, I think he deserves at least this one chance to prove he won’t. Unlike with Ponson, the Yankees won’t know what they have in Mitre unless they give him a chance to show them.

That said, if the pain Wang felt in his shoulder during his throwing session yesterday does indeed indicate a longer-than-anticipated DL stay and Mitre is anything less than excellent tonight, the Yankees should immediately begin stretching Hughes back out as a long-term solution to the hole in their rotation.

Mitre’s opposition tonight will be another ex-Cub, lefty Rich Hill. Hill had an excellent season in the Cubs’ rotation in 2007, but lost the strikezone last year, pitching his way off the team and out of the organization. Picked up by the Orioles in February, Hill has been wildly erratic for Baltimore this season, swinging from seven shutout innings with seven strikeouts against the Mariners on June 1 to three runs on a hit, four walks, and a hit batter and a first-inning hook his next time out. Anything within that range is possible tonight.

It’s better to be lucky than good. It’s an old saying. The first time I heard it was from Tommy Lasorda in 1988 when the Dodgers beat the heavily favored Mets and then the A’s to become World Champs.

I’ll go one further–it’s better to be lucky and good. The Yankees have won three straight games by the score of 2-1. Andy Pettitte, not wanting to be the odd man out, picked up where Joba Chamberlain and CC Sabathia left off, and threw a fine game last night.

Sure, there has been some luck–how did Jose Molina manage to keep that snow-coned ball in his mitt last night?–and if they’d been losing games 3-2 we’d be moaning about the lack of hitting. But they’ve been winning and so we are heppy kets for the moment.

Win it all, or else. That’s the philosophy in the Bronx. Championship or mud. Sometimes it is difficult to appreciate what you’ve got when you live by this motto. Sure, the World Serious is the thing. It has to be. But the Yankees give us more pleasure than disappointment, no matter how much more pleasure we demand from them. (At these prices, they had better win.)  

They are tied for first place now. There is still a long way to go.  We haven’t hit the dog days yet. The latest set-back for Chien-Ming Wang presents a problem. But they are playing well and right now, the breaks are going there way. Time to stop, take it in, and appreciate what we’ve got. There is no guarantee that it’s gunna last.

But after seeing Godzilla hit a game-winning homer last night I bet there are a lot of fans around the country cursing, Damn Yankees.

Today’s news is powered by Grand Funk Railroad, circa 1971:

• Hal Steinbrenner . . . foresees greatness:

“I think we’ve got a championship-caliber team,” he said. “I absolutely believe that we have the team that can win the championship.”

Making his first extensive public comments about the New York Yankees since Opening Day, the new controlling owner praised his players, manager Joe Girardi and general manager Brian Cashman. And, already, he’s looking ahead to Aug. 6-9, when the Boston Red Sox come to Yankee Stadium.

“That four-game series is going to be a big one,” he said. “But the guys believe they can beat anybody, and that has not changed, and that’s an important thing.”

. . . “We expect to win every year. We’ve said that. We always say that,” he said. “Our job is to field a championship-caliber team every year, and that’s what we strive to do. So, Joe knows who he’s working for.”

“I’m seeing some looseness this year in the players, I’m seeing some, you know, some emotion, and that’s a great thing,” Steinbrenner said. “We’ve managed to limit the injuries — we’re doing a little bit better than last year in that area. And I just think there’s a lot of motivation. I think these guys are pumped, and I think they’re showing it. We’re firing on all cylinders at times and struggling a little bit at other times in certain areas. But overall, pretty happy.”

• Mike Mussina is staying retired.
• Wang banged up again:

(Chien Ming) Wang’s biceps felt tender when he played catch before Monday night’s game against Baltimore and won’t attempt to throw again until Friday.

“It’s not exactly the news that I wanted,” Joe Girardi said. “It’s not what you want to hear because we were hoping that two weeks’ rest is enough for him to get on a throwing program.”

. . . “We’re going to give him a few more days and some more strengthening before he goes back out,” Girardi said. “I think anything you’re dealing with cuff issues or shoulder tendinitis or whatever you want to describe it as, I mean, there’s concern. And whatever he’s able to do, we would love to have. But I think any time someone is injured and you’re not sure when they’re exactly going to be back, you can’t really count on them in a sense.”

(more…)

Maybe I should be wondering where the usually stellar Yankee offense has been the last few days, but I think instead I’ll just enjoy the relief that comes whenever the new Stadium hosts tight, low-scoring games. The Yankees beat the Orioles 2-1 tonight, thanks to an old-school performance from Andy Pettitte and some pretty defense and, okay, yes, two home runs to right.

It feels like it’s been a long time since I’ve been able to write that Andy Pettitte pitched really well – not “didn’t have his best stuff but kept them in the game” or “made a few big mistakes but was able to limit the damage,” but was just plain good. He was tonight, though, pitching into the eighth inning with six strikeouts and two walks; he allowed six hits but also induced two double plays. Run-wise he allowed a first-inning home run to Nick Markakis and that was all.

Meanwhile Orioles rookie David Hernandez, after a tiring and rocky beginning, soon got into a groove of his own. The Yankees scored in the second on an Eric “All or Nothing” Hinske solo shot that tied the game (Hinske’s fourth of the season for New York, out of five total hits), but he was the last Yank to cross home plate for quite a while.

So it was a good thing that the Yankees helped themselves on defense tonight, making a few really excellent/lucky plays. Robinson Cano apparently deked out poor Cesar Izturis not once but twice, and also saved the day when a grounder bounced off the heel of Mark Teixeira’s glove, snatching it out of midair and tossing to Pettitte just ahead of the runner (“the old 3-4-1…”).

The most impressive fielding came in the eighth, though, after Pettitte left the game in Phil Coke’s hands with two runners on and one out. First Nick Markakis hit a shrill liner to Teixeira, who fired it back to Molina, who managed to tag out the runner at the plate – a lightning-fast play all around. I wasn’t expecting it and I doubt the runner, poor Cesar Izturis, was either (it was just not his game). Then Brian Roberts tried to score on a wild pitch, but Molina, moving faster than a Molina is built to move, got the ball back to Phil Coke in time for him to awkwardly lunge and tag out Brian Roberts, who missed the plate – saving the run and ending the inning.

With one out in the bottom of the ninth, Hideki Matsui, who has been largely overshadowed this season, apparently decided he wanted a little more attention and whacked a 2-2 Jim Johnson fastball into the right field bleachers. This was no New Stadium cheapie either, but a big no-doubt blast. Cue the helmet-tossing and the jumping around and the grinning and the whipped-cream pie.

The Red Sox lost tonight, and so the Yankees are now clutching their very own piece of first place. Tomorrow Sergio Mitre will try to defend it… and I was going to make a couple cracks about that because, well, you know. But Cliff seems to think that he might not actually be so bad, and Cliff is usually right, so I’ll hold off on the Mitre-mocking.

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When Worlds Collide: the most recent headline on my FiveThirtyEight.com RSS feed reads: “Teixeira Says Culture Wars Ending, GOP Needs New Playbook.” I don’t know what initially confused me more, the idea that Mark Teixeiria of all people would suddenly start talking political strategy, or that FiveThirtyEight would quote him as an authority. Of course it turns out the post is actually referring to a demographics expert named Ruy Teixeira, but that was sure a baffling ten seconds.