Freddy G is back. Here’s hoping the Yanks win tonight to earn a split with the O’s and head off to Boston in a good mood.
No Jeter, no Rodriguez.
Brett Gardner LF
Curtis Granderson CF
Mark Teixeira 1B
Robinson Cano 2B
Nick Swisher RF
Jorge Posada DH
Eric Chavez 3B
Russell Martin C
Eduardo Nunez SS
Let’s Go Yank-ees!
[Photo Credit: One of my favorites, Joel Zimmer]
The Road to Philly
By John Schulian
I know how I ended up in Philadelphia: I drove.
What I don’t know is why I ended up in Philadelphia.
The Daily News, home of one of the truly great sports sections of the last half of the Twentieth Century, already had three stellar columnists, Ray Didinger, Stan Hochman, and Mark Whicker. Bill Conlin was covering baseball with idiosyncratic fervor, conducting a running feud with the Phillies, delivering history lessons in his game stories, and flirting with scatology every chance he got. Long before I hit town, he set the standard for blue wordplay by quoting Dusty Baker, who had dropped a fly ball, as saying, “I had the motor faker right in my glove.” The quote only lasted one edition, but Conlin was the one guy in all of sportswriting capable of getting away with even that much.
None of the other beat writers came close to him in terms of sheer outrageousness, but each was an intrepid digger: Phil Jasner on the 76ers, Jay Greenberg on the Flyers, Paul Domowitch and the young Rich Hoffman (not long out of Penn) on pro football, Elmer Smith on boxing, and the inimitable Dick (Hoops) Weiss on college basketball. These guys were passionate about what they did. And smart. And aggressive. And competitive. I realize that the Boston Globe was regarded as the gold standard for sports sections back then-–and I know what a joy it was for me to read the Globe–but I still think the Daily News gave it a run for its money.
The Daily News certainly didn’t need me to do that. Even with a hole in its lineup after Tom Cushman, who was so solid on boxing, college sports, and track and field, left for San Diego, the paper still had all the talent–and all the egos–it needed. The Daily News hired me anyway.
No matter how good a sports columnist I was, I was hardly a marketable commodity after my inelegant departure from the Sun-Times. It was pretty much what I expected. There are more than a few newspaper editors who love to have a reason to think they have the upper hand on the talent. In my case, they could go tsk-tsk and say I was a troublemaker or that I was out of control. On the other hand, there was the reaction my blow-up got from Pete Dexter, who was a city columnist at the Philadelphia Daily News and whom I had yet to meet. Pete told our mutual friend Rob Fleder, a world-class magazine editor, “I don’t know Schulian and I don’t know exactly what happened, but I know he was right.” Which, of course, earned Pete a place in my personal hall of fame.
But guys like Pete don’t run newspapers. Guys unlike him do. And the hell of it was, I couldn’t argue with them, even though I’d been provoked and maybe set up. I was wrung out. Getting fired and divorced in a four-month span was all I could handle. I didn’t write a word for the first two months after I left the Sun-Times. I just rode my bike and ate pizza and watched the Cubs on TV. As if to spite me, they almost had a great season, but their muscle memory finally kicked in and they fell apart in the playoffs.
I didn’t put words on paper again until Eliot Kaplan, GQ’s managing editor, called because Vic Ziegel, may he rest in peace, told him I was massively available. Eliot was looking for someone to profile Mike Royko and I convinced him that I was his man. In the course of conversation, Eliot told me he’d read me when he was a kid. It wasn’t exactly what I was hoping to hear, but the truth was, he really was a kid. He couldn’t have been more than 26 or 27 when he became Art Cooper’s right-hand man at GQ. As for Royko, he couldn’t have been a more cooperative subject, right down to musing forlornly about the death of his first wife and dancing with the woman who would become his second wife on the sidewalk outside the Billy Goat Tavern.
Just like that, I was a made man at GQ, which was becoming a home for first-rate writing and reportage instead of pretty boys in clothes guaranteed to get their asses kicked. I wrote for the magazine whenever I could for the next 20 years, until Art got forced out. He died not long afterward, while having lunch at the Four Seasons. The man had style.
Looking back, I wonder if I should have lobbied for a three-story deal with GQ that would have allowed me to stay in Chicago. John Walsh, when he was running Inside Sports, told me he thought I was a natural magazine writer, and he may have been right. Magazine work certainly was a better fit for the way I approached writing than a four-times-a-week column was. The column chewed me up, and yet, when the Daily News called, I threw myself back in the meat grinder. It was partly because I was afraid let go of the identity a column gave me and partly because I was infatuated with the history of the sports section that Larry Merchant had built for glory 20 years earlier.
I saw myself joining a parade in which George Kiseda, Sandy Grady, and Jack McKinney had marched. Merchant had made them the Daily News’ pioneers in trenchant reporting, salty prose, and raucous laughter. Stan Hochman, who was there at the beginning with them, once told me about the old warehouse the paper had called home when it was known as the “Dirty News” for its emphasis on crime and cheesecake. The building wasn’t air conditioned, and one sweltering summer day, with huge floor fans shoving hot air around the newsroom, some genius got it in his head to open the windows. The fans proceeded to blow every piece of paper that wasn’t weighted down out the windows and to hell and gone.
I should have been smart enough to realize there was no recapturing those days or the spirit that infused the Merchant era. Instead, I acted according to Faulkner’s theory that the past is never really past. Faulkner didn’t play in Philly, though, and soon enough I was a man out of time, out of place.
Here’s a nice little essay by Geoff Dyer:
Maybe it’s because I’m a Londoner living in an overcrowded city on a tiny island where courts are in short supply, but I love seeing tennis courts: from a plane as it descends (there never seem to be any on the way up) or from speeding trains and cars. This is a purely aesthetic — i.e., pointless — pleasure, but if I am out walking or cycling, this fondness for court-spotting has obvious practical advantages. Over time, in London, I have discovered every public court within a playable distance of home.
…It is in America that you encounter true abundance, both public and private. Descending in a plane over California — or North Carolina or Texas — it seems that tennis courts are more potent than swimming pools as symbols of freedom from the realm of necessity. Which raises the question: What profiteth a man if he gains a world of free courts yet lacks a partner? For life is not just a search for tennis courts; it is also a search for someone to play with.
[Photo Credit: Roosevelt Islander]
This is one of my favorite weeks in New York, the last week of summer. The town is quiet, but this morning it was especially still. It was also cool too, a distinct hint of autumn in the air. It was a relief to hear the chugging sounds of the subway. Back in business.
[Photo Credit: Herve Bertrand]
Ivan Nova stumbled around during the first couple of innings on Sunday night. The O’s led 2-0 when Curtis Granderson hit a three-run homer but Nova gave it right back. Then he righted himself and got stronger as the game progressed. The game was tied at three in the sixth inning when the Yanks hit back-to-back-to-back home runs–Cano, Swisher, Jones. Grandy hit another homer in the seventh and now leads the American league in both home runs and RBI. Not bad for a skinny kid.
The O’s had a beating coming to them. Nice to see the Yanks deliver it with a flourish. Yeah, there were some nervous moments in the eighth when the O’s loaded the bases with nobody out, but then David Robertson struck out the side, dropping the hammer for the third strike on Vlad, Mark Reynolds and Ryan Adams. And Shazam, Yankee fans went to bed heppy kets.
Final Score: Yanks 8, O’s 3.
The Yanks turn to Nova to stop their two-game skid.
Derek Jeter SS
Curtis Granderson CF
Mark Teixeira 1B
Robinson Cano 2B
Nick Swisher RF
Andruw Jones DH
Russell Martin C
Eduardo Nunez 3B
Brett Gardner LF
No excuses, win a “w,” please.
Let’s Go Yank-ees!
It was all lined-up. The Yanks drove Zach Britton’s pitch count up while Bartolo Colon kept his down. Britton threw 120 pitches over seven innings but he had the Yankee hitters off-balance with soft stuff away and a cut fastball inside. They didn’t get a runner past second base. Colon blinked first, giving up a double and a single in the seventh inning, and the Orioles had a 1-0 lead.
The game moved along briskly. In the bottom of the eighth, a couple of bloop hits put runners on the corners with nobody out for the Orioles. The game in the balance. A ground ball back to Colon, who checked the runner at third, then threw to second for the force. Then a strikeout, three pitches, caught-looking. But J.J. Hardy lined a single through the left side–fastball up–and Colon’s day was over.
In the 9th, the Yanks sent up Curtis Granderson, Mark Teixeira and Alex Rodriguez against Kevin Gregg. Granderson struck out on a full count fastball. Teixeira hit an 0-2 pitch off the first base bag, good for a single. The fans chanted, “Let’s Go O’s.” Rodriguez hit into a 6-4-3 double play and—thud.
O’s 2, Yanks Zip. First place, slipping away.
It was a long night in New York. The storm wasn’t as bad as predicted, at least not here on the high ground of the Bronx, but the constant news coverage and the anticipation was exhausting. It was a relief to watch baseball, to see the Yankees play, but the results were less than satisfying, despite Colon’s performance. The Yanks have now lost four of their last five, against the A’s and O’s.
Summertimes Blues, indeed.
[Picture by Cloni]
The Yanks and O’s will play two today. Here’s the lineup for Game One:
Derek Jeter DH
Curtis Granderson CF
Mark Teixeira 1B
Alex Rodriguez 3B
Robinson Cano 2B
Nick Swisher RF
Andruw Jones LF
Eduardo Nunez SS
Francisco Cervelli C
Let’s Go Yank-ees!
[Photo Credit: Joel Zimmer]
No games today. Just storm watch. We got batteries, life jackets, water, an ark. We should be good to go.
Hope everyone stays safe.
[Photo Credit: Craig Robinson]
Imagine you’re sitting at home watching the game as you put your feet up on the couch to get ready for a relaxing, if stormy, weekend. You have high hopes because you don’t think things could go worse for A.J. Burnett than his last outing, and you know this is an important game — no one wants to lose even a single game to the lowly Orioles. But things go bad quickly. You smirk at the screen as Burnett muddles through the first inning, then implodes in the second. He pitches the entire inning, but it’s a disaster: groundout, homer, double, double, double, double, homer, E-1, 6-4-3 DP. When the inning finally ends the Yankees are down 6-0, and a loss seems inevitable.
You pick up the remote in disgust and are just about to call your wife to watch Project Runway, when you remember something. Doesn’t this seem an awful lot like yesterday? Didn’t you feel disloyal when you gave up on the Yankees when they were down 7-1? Didn’t you miss 21 runs and the beauty of Jorge Posada playing second base all because you lost faith?
You can’t let that happen again. So you put the remote down and get ready to watch the rest of the game. Seven innings later, you realize you made the wrong decision two days in a row. You remember yesterday’s bile as tasting good compared to what you’re feeling now.
After falling into that 6-0 hole on Friday night in Baltimore, the Yankees didn’t show quite the fight that they had on Thursday afternoon against the A’s. There was a home run from Posada in the fifth, cutting the lead to 7-1 (sound familiar?), but Burnett coughed up two more runs in the bottom half, then a two-out error by Robinson Canó in the sixth led to a three-run home run by Matt Wieters, and the Yanks were down by eleven.
Alex Rodríguez snapped the second-longest home run drought of his career when he went deep in the seventh, Swisher continued his hot hitting with a two-run homer later in the inning, and they tacked on another run in the seventh, but that did nothing more than change the final score. Orioles 12, Yankees 5.
It’s never fun when the Yankees lose, but there is obviously a much bigger concern here. Here’s a hint: it starts with A.J. and it ends with Burnett. His overall record right now sits at 9-11 with a 5.31 ERA, but if you want to know how bad he’s really been, read on. But be warned — what follows is not for the faint of heart.
We know what quality starts are, but Burnett’s season thus far has been measured by blow-up starts. Friday was his fifth outing where he allowed more runs than innings pitched. His last quality start was on June 29th against Milwaukee. Here’s his line since then:
56.1 IP/47 ER/70 H/27 BB/52 K/7.51 ERA/1.72 WHIP
On the surface, those are some pretty bad numbers, but they look even worse when you realize that they came against mediocre competition at best. Over those ten starts Burnett has faced Cleveland, Tampa Bay (twice), Oakland, Baltimore (twice), Chicago, Anaheim, Kansas City, and Minnesota. Those eight teams have a combined record of 491-550.
So we can agree that Burnett’s been bad for the past two months, but when we narrow our focus to August, it gets worse still. In his last five starts he looks like this:
22.2 IP/30 ER/44 H/9 BB/17 K/11.91 ERA/2.34 WHIP
Believe it or not, it gets comically worse. His last three starts have come against the three worst teams in the league. Many pitchers would be padding their stats against competition like this, but Burnett has actually gone in the opposite direction:
12.1 IP/19 ER/24 H/6 BB/8 K/13.87 ERA/2.43 WHIP
After Burnett’s last start, I used this space to defend him — or, more accurately, I attacked those in the media who attacked him. Now I’m here to tell you that the time has come for the Yankees to do something. Scranton is calling.
[Photo Credit: Patrick Smith/AP]
The Yanks start a series in Baltimore tonight. They are scheduled to play five games in the next four days. I say they get a couple in, maybe three.
Here’s the line-up:
Derek Jeter SS
Curtis Granderson CF
Mark Teixeira 1B
Alex Rodriguez 3B
Robinson Cano 2B
Nick Swisher RF
Jorge Posada DH
Russell Martin C
Brett Gardner LF
We’ll be around this weekend. Who knows what this weather will bring. The subways will stop running tomorrow afternoon as the city prepares for the worst. If you don’t see any updates it’s because we’ve lost power temporarily. Hopefully, it won’t come to that, although the wife did buy an ark today at Costco just in case.
Never mind Mother Nature:
Let’s Go Yank-ees!
[Photo Credit: Lewis W. Hine]
[Picture by my man Nynex]
It’s funny how the fortunes of just one game can completely change the complexion and tenor of a column. With the Yankees trailing the A’s, 7-1, on Thursday and seemingly on the verge of being swept by a second-division club, I was ready to lay the hammer down on the team for an inexcusable letdown after a productive road trip. Six innings later, the Yankees had outscored Oakland by a 21-2 margin, set a record by hitting three grand slams in one game, and put the finishing touches on a 22-9 thrashing of the supposedly pitching-rich A’s. So much for a column ripping the Yankees’ effort or performance.
Instead, it’s nothing but praise for a Yankee team that showed some grit this week by trying to stage three consecutive comebacks against the A’s. Two of the comebacks fell short, but the third represented one of the greatest in-game turnarounds in franchise history. A game like the Thursday matinee can do wonders for a team’s confidence–not to mention some individual batting lines. With three hits, Derek Jeter lifted his season average to .299 and his on-base percentage to .360, as he continues to quiet his critics. Curtis Granderson’s grand slam pushed his RBI total over the century mark, giving him 100-plus RBIs and 100 runs scored, and strengthening his argument for the MVP. With a 5-for-5 performance, Russell Martin raised his average to .243, the first time that he has touched the .240s since the spring. And even Eduardo Nunez joined the party with three hits, lifting his batting average to .280 while also turning in an errorless performance at shortstop.
The Yankees won’t score 22 runs in any of their games with Baltimore this weekend, but they should be relaxed and ready to do more damage against one of the American League’s weaker pitching staffs. I have a feeling they may need to score more than a few runs in support of A.J. Burnett, who is scheduled to pitch the Friday night opener. It could be Burnett’s final start of the season, especially if he blows up the way he did against the Twins last weekend…
***
The Yankees put in a waiver claim for Carlos Pena this week, yet another indication that they are not satisfied with either Jorge Posada or Eric Chavez as the left-handed hitting DH. But don’t expect Pena to be fitted for pinstripes any time soon; the Cubs pulled back the 33-year-old Pena because they’re not willing to give him up for merely the waiver price. The Cubs would want something tangible in a trade, but the Yankees have little interest in giving up even one legitimate prospect for the former Tiger and Ray. In fact, the Cubs and Yankees did not even discuss a trade involving Pena after the waiver claim, an indication that the teams felt there was no middle ground from which to work.
Could Pena have helped the Yankees? With his 23 home runs and 74 walks, Pena would have added to the Yankees’ game plan of power and patience, and certainly would have been an upgrade over Posada. On the downside, Pena’s average is in the .220s, he strikes out a ton, and he would have offered no long-term help, given his age and his current one-year contract. He’s clearly not the player he was during his peak with Tampa Bay from 2007 to 2009. If the Yankees could have added him on a waiver claim, I would have been all for it, but the notion of giving up even a single prospect for an aging Pena does not strike me as the best of ideas.
In the meantime, the Yankees will continue to scan the waiver wires, and will put in claims for any left-handed hitting DH’s (Hideki Matsui?) or legitimate starting pitchers that might become available. The August 31st deadline is less than a week away. Stay tuned…
When Bill James updated his Historical Baseball Abstract with Winshares in 2001, he felt comfortable about the offensive components but still was uneasy about defense. It’s very difficult to measure defensive skill and defensive value, and to make matters worse, skill and value are not necessarily related.
In researching the odd statistical variance between Bill Buckner and Steve Garvey, he hit upon a key element of defense which makes it difficult to quantify: discretion. Specifically he noticed that Buckner, who carried a weak defensive reputation racked up a ton of assists while Garvey, who owned four Gold Gloves, did not.
In the real world, this was a trivial distinction; all it really indicates is the preference of each player in making a certain play. Baseball players are taught from a young age that, when a ground ball is hit to the first baseman, it is the pitcher’s responsibility to cover first base. Buckner, in part because he had constant pain in his legs, was fanatic about insisting that pitchers do this. I can still see him in my mind’s eye, standing five feet from first base, fielding a slow-hit grounder with the glove on his right hand, pointing vigorously to the bag with his left hand, saying “Your play. Get over there. Cover the bag.” … If a pitcher failed to cover first, Buckner would immediately go to the mound and tell him about it.
Garvey, on the other hand, was paranoid about making unnecessary throws, and strongly preferred to make the play himself if he could. As Garvey saw it, why risk the throw when you can make the play yourself? In part, he saw it this way, no doubt, because he couldn’t throw; he was a fine first baseman, but he had no arm.
…Thus if you use assists by a first baseman to represent “range,” you will reach the conclusion that Buckner was a much better defensive first baseman than Garvey. … The problem with this is, it’s just not true. Buckner was not an outstanding first baseman, and Garvey was not a poor defensive first baseman. A hundred and twenty extra assists per season doesn’t really have any value to the team in this case, because it doesn’t refelct anything other than a choice.
For most of my high-school career, I played in left field next to a speedy center fielder and behind pitchers that often over powered their competition. I played more shallow and towards the line than a typical left fielder would play. I wasn’t fast, but I made good reads and got good jumps. The centerfielder had a better arm than I did, so if we converged on a ball with men on base, I let him make the catch. His skill-set in center let me get to foul balls and turn bloop singles into outs. I may not have made as many plays as I would have as an individual playing a more conventional depth, but as a team, we probably made more plays.
We’ve come a long way since 2001 with the defensive statistics. FanGraphs uses UZR and there’s Dewan’s Fielding Bible’s +/- system plus tons of other stuff is evolving all the time. Not to mention proprietary information hoarded by some, if not all, of the clubs. These systems are dogged and incredibly detailed. The most widely employed use the best information available to divide the field into buckets and to describe the kinds of balls hit into those buckets, and then to assign credits and debits for the plays that are made or not made. It’s a little dizzying, but if you want to read about all the hard work this entails, and how well-thought out the systems are, check here, here and here.
Imagine you’re sitting at work tracking the game on your computer as you file this report or the other. You have high hopes because Phil Hughes looked so good during his last outing, and you know this is an important game — no one wants to be swept by the Oakland A’s. But things go bad quickly. You smirk at the screen as Hughes gives up a run in the first and another in the second, then implodes in the third. He only manages two outs in that frame before giving way to Cory Wade. When the inning finally ends the Yankees are down 7-1, and a sweep seems inevitable. You close your browser in disgust and snarl at your co-workers for the rest of the afternoon.
You’re still burning inside, choking on your own bile and grinding your teeth into dust as you leave work. You’re so distracted that you run smack into me as I’m tumbling out of a nearby sports bar, happy as a clam. You curse my ignorance under your breath, but then you stop dead in your tracks, doubting what you think you just heard me say: “I can’t believe they won that game!” You shout after me, begging for an explanation, and this is what I tell you…
Rich Harden was pretty much in control for the first few innings, but then things started to get away from him in the fourth. Russell Martin launched a home run to right, and even though the Yankees were still down by five runs, there was a sense that seven runs wouldn’t be enough for Oakland on this afternoon.
Derek Jeter (whose average would climb to .300 for a minute towards the end of the game) opened the fifth inning with a hard single to center, then Curtis Granderson followed with a walk. After Mark Teixeira struck out, Alex Rodríguez singled to load the bases for Robinson Canó. Was there any one of us who wasn’t thinking about a grand slam? When you’re wondering if your team can back into a game, there’s a tendency to slice large leads by imaginary grand slams, but it doesn’t usually happen that way. I don’t know whether or not that was in Canó’s mind, but he turned on an inside pitch from Harden and popped it into the right field stands. Suddenly it was 7-6 A’s, but it felt more like the Yankees were ahead than behind. A few minutes later Harden was lifted in favor of Craig Breslow, and the Yankees would load the bases again — this would be a recurring theme — but they wouldn’t score again that inning.
In the sixth inning, they left the A’s behind. Curtis Granderson was hit by a pitch, Alex Rodríguez drew a walk, and after those two advanced on a wild pitch, Nick Swisher was walked intentionally to load the bases for Martin — who hit a grand slam.
Things looked comfortable at 10-7, but it would get more comfortable in the seventh, which looked like this: walk, walk, walk, sac fly, walk (pitching change), single, ground out, walk, walk, single, walk, line out. It was just your standard six-run, two-hit inning, and the game was out of reach. Yankees 16, A’s 7.
But wait, there’s more. In the eighth the Yankees would bat around for the fourth inning in a row. By the time Granderson came up with two outs in the inning and the bases loaded — again — I started to feel sorry for the A’s, and certainly for pitcher Bruce Billings. I wasn’t wondering if Granderson would hit another grand slam, I was actually kind of expecting it. Afterall, how could the Grandy Man not hit a grand slam on Grand Slam Day?
So when he launched a fly ball high and deep to right center field, I wasn’t surprised. It was the team’s third grand slam of the day, something that had never been done before, and the Yankees were up 21-7. The A’s would actually bring in their closer, Brian Fuentes, to face Andruw Jones. Jones christened him by blasting his own homer to deep left.
And just in case things weren’t crazy enough, Jorge Posada was inserted to play second base in the top of the ninth. He even fielded a grounder, looked the runner back to third even though there were two outs, and took a professional crow hop before firing a throw to first baseman… Nick Swisher. Swisher somehow corralled the throw as he tumbled to the ground, and the game was over. Crazy enough for you?
So in case you missed it, in case you gave up early and your day was ruined, I’m here to tell you that everything is okay. Yankees 22, A’s 9.
A quick look at some of the damage:
It’s dark and raining in New York. This might be a tough one to get in.
If they play, we’ll be rootin’:
Let’s Go Yank-ees.
Update: The start of the game is delayed. Check this out for fun while we wait.
[Photo Credit: Joel Zimmer]
Entering this week’s series against the Athletics, the Yankees had a dominating 26-5 record against Oakland since 2008. Perhaps that’s why it seemed inevitable that the Bronx Bombers would rally to win each of the first two games. At least that’s how it must have felt to the Athletics. However, in both games, the comeback fell short, which gave Oakland consecutive wins against the Yankees for the first time since July 1, 2007.
The Yankees’ lack of late game heroics against the Athletics echoes a season long trend. Despite having the American League’s second best record and compiling statistics that rank among franchise highs in several categories, one area in which the Yankees have come up short (in some cases, as on Tuesday night, literally by inches) is in games played close and late. Under those conditions, the team’s current OPS+ of 107 would rank near the bottom since 1996, and lag, in some cases significantly, every championship season during that time period.
Yankees’ OPS+ in Close & Late vs. Winning Percentage When Tied or Trailing in the 7th Inning or Later
Source: baseball-reference.com
Because of the small samples involved, it’s hard to draw a meaningful conclusion about the future from this one split. However, looking back, we can probably conclude that the Yankees failure to produce late in games has cost them a few comeback victories. In fact, the team’s current winning percentage of .204 when tied or trailing entering the seventh inning is one of the lowest since 1996. When you consider that the Yankees’ bullpen leads the league in ERA and WAR (and important factor because offense alone demonstrates only a slight correlation to winning percentage in this split), the onus seems to fall squarely on the relative lack of late-game offensive production.
Yankees’ Walk-off Victories, Since 1950
Source: baseball-reference.com
Regardless of the implications of the Yankees’ muted offensive levels in close and late situations, whether looking forward or back, the team’s inability to finish off comebacks has robbed the season of one important element: the fun and excitement of the walk-off victory. To this point, the Yankees have left the opposition on the field in only three games, which pales in comparison to the 15 walk-offs recorded just two years ago. Although dramatic victories are not a pre-requisite for winning championships, they do provide enjoyable highlights over a long 162-game schedule. After all, anything that has Yankees’ fans clamoring to see A.J. Burnett must be pretty special.
Since 1950, the Yankees have had 441 walk-off victories prompted by outcomes ranging from home runs to reaching base on an error (the following pie chart, and what better way to display walk-off data, provides a break down). Just over half have come in the bottom of the ninth, with the rest occurring in extra innings, including one walk-off as late as the 20th frame: Horace Clark’s game winning single against the Red Sox’ Jose Santiago on August 29, 1967. Speaking of the Red Sox, the Yankees have left their rival on the field 57 times, more than any other opponent.
Yankees’ Walk-offs Since 1950, by Event and Opponent (click to enlarge)
Source: baseball-reference.com
Although the terminology wasn’t around at the time, no Yankee has authored more walk-offs than Mickey Mantle, who had 16 game-ending events. Among the current crop of Bronx Bombers, Jorge Posada, Derek Jeter, and Alex Rodriguez also rank in the top-10.
Tippy Martinez remains the Yankees’ most frequent walk-off victim, having surrendered five game-ending hits to the Bronx Bombers, including, most notably, Bobby Murcer’s two run double that cinched victory in the Thurman Munson tribute game. Of particular interest to current Yankees’ fans, Red Sox closer Jonathan Papelbon ranks among the large group of pitchers who have surrendered three Yankees’ walk-offs. Provided he remains in the American League for most of his career, Papelbon could eventually claim the victim’s mantle from Martinez.
Yankees Most Common Walk-off Heroes and Victims, Since 1950
Source: baseball-reference.com
Complaining about the lack of walk-offs from a team with a .600 winning percentage probably won’t sit too well with other teams’ fans, but those who follow the Yankees have grown accustomed to having their pie and eating it too. Besides, even though winning is fun in its own right, doing so in dramatic fashion makes it that much more memorable.
I can still vividly recall Don Mattingly’s game winning home run against Ron Davis on May 13, 1985 as if it happened yesterday. And, I am sure fans of every team can do the same. How about you?
As Jayson Stark points out, the Braves have tapped into an extraordinary vein of bullpen dominance with Jonny Venters setting up Craig Kimbrel. They’ve held hitters to absurdly low averages and only allowed two home runs between them. Respectively, their ERAs are 1.10 and 1.70.
The Yankees have a pretty impressive duo themselves, in Mariano Rivera and David Robertson. But Girardi has only used those guys for 100.1 innings while the Braves have called on their tandem for 137.1 innings. That divide scuttles any comparison.
Jason Stark notes that Kimbrel and Venters are possibly the best we’ve ever seen since the advent of current bullpen dogma. But he doesn’t consider Mariano Rivera and John Wetteland in 1996. Admittedly, their rate stats don’t come close to Venters and Kimbrel, but the Yankees got 171.1 innings from their tag-team (thanks to heavy lifting – 107.2 – from Mo).
They didn’t stop there. Rivera and Wetteland spun another 26.2 innings in the postseason, allowed only four runs (1.35 ERA) and won the World Series. Wetteland was named World Series MVP. They toiled in a league which scored 5.36 runs per game. The 2011 Braves play in a league which socres 4.16 runs per game.
The Braves guys have a month and a half to go and could approach the innings total of Rivera and Wetteland. If they do that and maintain their statistical dominance, they’ve passed the Ol’ 96ers. But if Fredi González eases back on their usage or if they cough up some leads, I think you could at least make a good argument that the Yankees were as impressive covering more innings in a much harsher environment.
Looking at it another way, Rivera and Wetteland put up a combined 8.3 bWAR and 5.7 fWAR in the 1996 regular season. Kimbrel and Venters are at 6.7 and 5.0 and counting. The Yankee hurlers combined for 9.658 WPA plus another 2.841 WPA during the title run. The Braves guys have only accumulated 7.6 WPA thus far. They have some work left to do.
I’m sure there were other duos that deserve inclusion. Wagner and Dotel combined for 172.3 stellar innings in 2002. Can you think of any others?
It also makes you wonder what Mo and Robertson could do if Girardi took off the leash? Mariano may be too old to give much more than he is giving now, but Robertson surely has gas in the tank. Would another ten innings for Rivera and another twenty from Robertson wreck their rates or put them in the conversation with Kimbrel and Venters?
For Yankee fans though, as long as Rivera and Roberston are strong in October, the title of best duo in the same bullpen can go to Atlanta.
Statistics from Baseball-Reference and FanGraphs
