Before the 2009 post season, Alex Rodriguez was frequently vilified for his alleged inability to get a hit when it really mattered. Following a historic clutch performance that October, which included three game tying homeruns in the seventh inning or later, many of the skeptics were quieted. Since then, however, some of the doubters have gradually started to re-emerge, with many emboldened by Arod’s extended slump earlier this season.

The debate over Arod’s “clutchability” has involved a countless number of hours over the last eight years, so perhaps it’s time to settle the issue once and for all? Off the bat, let’s circle back to Win Probability Added (WPA), and see what that metric says about Arod’s context-based contribution to victory.

Note: Data as of May 31, 2011.
Source: Baseball-reference.com

Since Arod joined the team in 2004, he has easily been the Yankees’ most productive player in terms of WPA. In fact, his total of 25.6 wins added is not only greater than the next two closest Yankees combined, but also fifth best among all major leaguers. So, if Arod really has been a failure in the clutch, his production in low leverage situations would have to be off the charts.

Because there isn’t one statistic* that can help us settle the debate, we have no choice but to take a closer look at every HR and RBI Arod has accumulated as a Yankee.

*There is a WPA-based stat called “clutch”, but it is a relative metric that essentially penalizes a player for performing well in lower leverage situations. Therefore, it isn’t useful for our purposes (click here for a more detailed explanation of “clutch”).

Arod’s HR and RBI Breakdown, 2004-2011

Note: Data as of May 31, 2011. Outer circle displays RBIs; inner circle displays HRs. Colors get lighter as score differential increases.
Source: Baseball-reference.com

The donut chart above helps to dispel that myth that Arod does most of his damage “when the team has a 10-run lead” (he only has six home runs when the Yankees have been ahead or behind by 10 runs).  In fact, almost 50% of his HRs and RBIs have come with the score either tied or within one run, rates that are not only above the team average during Arod’s tenure, but either in line with or better than a selection of comps from the recent dynasty era.

Note: Data as of May 31, 2011.
Source: Baseball-reference.com

A tie game in the first inning isn’t quite the same as a knotted score in the ninth, so another way we can break down Arod’s performance is by leverage. Based on this comparison, Rodriguez once again compares favorably to both the team average during his time in pinstripes as well as our select group of Yankees’ standouts.

Leverage-Based Performance, Team and Select Players, 2004-2011

Note: Data as of May 31, 2011
Source: Baseball-reference.com

Leverage can be an abstract concept, so perhaps the misconception about Arod stems from a lack of high profile moments? Once again, however, that theory fails when confronted by facts. Since 2004, the Yankees’ have hit 58 homeruns in the ninth inning or later that either tied the game or gave the team a lead/walk off. Of that total, Arod has accounted for 15, or over one-quarter. Not only is that twice as many as Jason Giambi’s seven over the same span, but it’s also the fourth highest amount in franchise history since 1950. What’s more, the Yankees have hit 20 such home runs in their post season history and Arod has two of them (both occurring in 2009).

Clutch HRs/Hits in the Ninth Inning or Later, Since 1950

Note: Data as of May 31, 2011. Includes all HRs/hits that either tied the game or gave the Yankees a lead/walkoff.
Source: Baseball-reference.com

Over the last eight years, so many great Yankee moments have been punctuated by Alex Rodriguez. However, because of the expectations inspired by both his immense talent and enormous contract, the myth about Arod’s inability to hit in clutch will likely persist. Although the debate can be grating, it really doesn’t matter anyway. Those with a firmer grasp of reality know full well just how potent Rodriguez has been in pinstripes. Everyone else is just clutching at straws.

The Yanks scored early again today. In the first, Alex Rodriguez doubled home Derek Jeter, and in the fourth, Nick Swisher hit a three-run home run into the left field bleachers. That after he attempted to bunt on the first two pitches.

After the game, Swisher told reporters, “I thought I was told to lay one down. So finally after it got to 2-0 and the pitching coach came out I went over to (Pena) and said, ‘Hey man, what do you want me to do right here?’ He said, ‘I want you to let it loose.’ So I did.”

It proved to be enough as the Bombers leave Oakland with a three-game-sweep of the A’s. A.J. Burnett allowed a first inning home run, a two-run shot to Josh Willingham, but didn’t have any trouble with the A’s after that. Joba Chamberlain put two men on in the eighth, but then speared a line drive off the bat of Conor Jackson and turned a double play to end the inning.

Final Score: Yanks 4, A’s 2.

No complaints here as the Red Sox lost again to the White Sox in Boston.

Smiles all round, especially from Swisher, who had this to say to Kim Jones:

“I feel great. I feel like myself again. My personality is back. You know, I’m out of that dark place. So, either way my teammates have been amazing for me, my family and everybody. It’s been a wonderful trip so far. You learn a lot about yourself when you’re in those times. So for myself, I just wanna keep going out there, keep battling, and keep picking up those wins because everyone loves winning.”

Amen to that.

[Photo Credit: Ben Margot/AP and roly]

It is raining in Oakland. Let’s hope the Yanks and A’s get the game in.

We’ll be root, root, rootin’ for the road grays:

Let’s Go Yank-ees!

[Photograph by Eugenia Kyriakopoulou]

I went to school in the Bay Area from 1987 to 1991, just an hour or so away from what was then called Alameda County Coliseum. I always did my best to convince someone to make the trip across the Bay with me whenever the Yankees came to town, and even in the first few years after I graduated and returned to Southern California, I had enough college friends — even one who was a Yankee fan — who had remained up there to justify weekend road trips up north whenever the Yankees came out west.

The problem, of course, was that the during the late 80s, when the Yankees were at least above average, they always performed miserably on the west coast; in the 90s they were just plain awful. The A’s, meanwhile, were world-beaters, a team of superlatives from top to bottom. Their manager was hailed on the cover of Sports Illustrated as The Mastermind, and the closer he created revolutionized the game. Their right fielder wasn’t yet outing steroid cheats or allowing fly balls to bounce off of his head and over fences; he was simply the most prodigious talent in the game.

The results of these match-ups were predictably one-sided, but no one could ever have predicted how one-sided they actually were. In 1990, for example, the Yankees dropped all 12 games to the A’s and were outscored 62-12. A quick look at that 1990 roster reveals a team of injured stars, false prospects, failed free agents, and sideshows. Don Mattingly was there, but the back troubles had started by then, and Donnie Baseball only made it into 102 games and hit a paltry .256. Dave Winfield was old and injured and only managed sixty-seven plate appearances. Kevin Maas and Hensley “Bam Bam” Meulens were top prospects, but neither would amount to anything. Steve Sax, Jesse Barfield, and Mel Hall all made in the neighborhood of a million dollars, but none of the three earned his keep. For entertainment value, though, there was Deion Sanders and his .158 batting average, as well as the voodoo antics of Pascual Pérez. It’s no surprise that that ragtag group finished dead last.

The starting catcher most nights that season was Bob Geren, the current A’s manager, and you couldn’t blame him on Tuesday night if he thought back to that 1990 team as he sat in the Oakland dugout and wondered how he came to be on both wrong sides of the same rivalry, first as a Yankee back then, and then twenty years later as the skipper of the Athletics. Over the last three seasons Geren’s A’s have been 4-21 against the Bombers, and things aren’t getting any better for them in 2011.

If Monday afternoon was about Bartolo Colón, Tuesday night was all about the Score Truck. Mr. Almost 3000 started things out with an infield single, and Curtis Granderson opened up the scoring by launching a home run deep into the right field stands for a 2-0 Yankee lead before the seats were warm. (Granderson’s line on the night, by the way, was pretty impressive: 3 for 5, HR, 4 RBIs, 2 R, SB)

Jeter reached base again in the third inning, this time on a Mark Ellis error, and Alex Rodríguez came up with that rarest Yankee hit this year, the two-out RBI, as he grounded a single up the middle to push the lead to 3-0. Not to be outdone, Granderson came up with a two-out hit of his own in the next inning, this one coming with the bases loaded and scoring two. In the fifth, Robinson Canó laced a no-doubter over the big wall in right field, scoring two more and giving the Yankees a 7-1 lead.

Meanwhile, starter Freddy García was holding the Athletics at bay with his usual buffet of fastballs, curves, and changeups. He struggled a bit in the middle innings, giving up a run in the third, barely slithering out of a bases-loaded jam in the fourth, and surrendering a two-run homer (David DeJesus) in the fifth, but he settled down to skate through the sixth and seventh innings and eventually earn the win. If you had told me in March that the Yankees would be depending hugely on both Colón and García, I’d have thought you were crazy; now I can’t imagine where this team would be without them.

Aside from all this, there were a few interesting notes that should be mentioned.

• Jeter picked up two base hits, bringing his total to 2,983.
• Granderson’s first-inning homer off Brett Anderson was his 9th off a lefty, tops in baseball.
• The Yankees stole four bases in a game for the second day in a row.
• One of those steals came from Mark Teixeira, who stole home. I could explain exactly how this happened, but I think it’s more fun to leave you imagining that he pranced down the line like Jackie Robinson, bobbing and weaving, feinting and flinching, staring at Brad Ziegler and daring him to step off the rubber before finally putting his head down and breaking for the plate, sliding in in a cloud of dust with spikes high, barely beating the throw. Yeah, that’s how it happened.

All of that added up to a 10-3 Score Truck win. We’ve seen two of the young Oakland phenom pitchers and roughed ’em but good, but we’ve got another one coming tomorrow. Wouldn’t a sweep be nice?

[Photo Credit: Ezra Shaw/Getty Images]

Yanks-A’s, Oakland again with a tough pitcher and for us another late game, but here at the Banter, it’s more of the same:

Let’s Go Yank-ees!

What to do with the struggling Ivan Nova? Over at PB, Jay Jaffe examines the options:

While Phil Hughes remains at least a month away from returning — he’s scheduled to throw live batting practice soon, though some would argue that’s exactly what he did during his three ugly starts — the Yankees do have other options should they turn away from Nova. Hector Noesi has been impressive in three relief outings, throwing 9.1 innings while allowing just one run. His 5/4 K/BB ratio isn’t anything impressive (particularly given an 11/9 K/BB ratio in the minors), but he’s shown a proclivity for pounding the strike zone for the bulk of his minor league career; his K/BB ratio on the farm is a stellar 5.1. One of his major league walks was intentional, and particularly during his four-inning major league debut during that epic in Baltimore, the kid — who’s all of two weeks younger than Nova, by the way — has shown some moxie with runners on base. According to Texas Leaguers, he’s thrown six different pitches: four-seam fastball (48.1 percent), slider (24.0 percent), curve (10.1 percent), changeup (7.0 percent), two-seam fastball (7.0 percent), and cutter (3.9 percent). While there may be some classification crossover amid these admittedly small samples, he’s clearly not afraid to use multiple offspeed offerings. Furthermore, he’s getting swinging strikes about three times as often (12.8 percent) as Nova.

Also looming in the organization is Carlos Silva, who has compiled a 22/6 K/BB ratio and a 2.13 ERA in 25.1 innings over five minor league starts, most recently at Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre. He has an opt-out clause in mid-June if he’s not promoted, and it doesn’t take a crystal ball to imagine that with another solid start from him, and another rough outing from Nova, the Yankees might take a peek before they risk losing him. The chances of the team catching lightning in a bottle with another corpulent castoff aren’t all that high, but Silva hasn’t drawn reports of looking completely washed up as Kevin Millwood did during his slog through the hinterlands.

Bobby Richardson might not have made it in today’s game. To be more specific, he might not have been able to start for most teams at second base. He was a reliable and rangy defender with hands of silk at the keystone, but as a .260 hitter who drew few walks and hit with little power, he probably wouldn’t have carried the offensive standard of today’s game. Of course, that should do little to diminish his complementary role on those great Yankee teams of the early 1960s.

Emerging as a 19-year-old rookie, the handsome Richardson made his big league debut in 1955. He was hardly an overnight success. He didn’t hit much over his first four seasons and had to settle for a role as a part-time player and utility infielder, while spending time on the minor league shuttle to Triple-A Denver. When Casey Stengel played him at second base, it was usually in a platoon with veteran infielder Jerry Lumpe. In many ways, Richardson seemed out of place on a Yankee team filled with hard hitters and big drinkers. Richardson’s clean living and deep religious beliefs prompted a famed remark from his manager, Casey Stengel. “Look at him. He don’t drink, he don’t smoke, he don’t chew, he don’t stay out too late, and he still don’t hit .250!”

It was not until 1959 that he started to hit better and finally took hold of the second base job, essentially succeeding Gil McDougald at the position. Richardson played well enough to earn a berth on the All-Star team, hit a tidy .301, and fielded everything hit in his direction. Unfortunately, after making appearances as a bit player in the 1957 and ‘58 World Series, Richardson was denied a more meaningful role in that fall’s World Series; the ‘59 Yankees finished 79-75, a disappointing and distant third in the American League pennant race.

In 1960, Richardson’s hitting fell off to .252, as he reached base barely 30 per cent of the time. Although he looked like a leadoff hitter, he didn’t play like one. Frankly, the Yankees would have been better served leading off with either Tony Kubek, who had a slightly better on-base percentage and far more power, or Hector Lopez, who reached base 36 per cent of the time. Fortunately, the Yankees did not need a ton of offense from Richardson because the rest of their lineup was so potent.

In reality, Richardson always led with his glove. He had the perfect physique for a second baseman. At five-foot-nine and 175 pounds, Richardson was built strong and low to the ground, making him an immoveable object on takeout slides at second base. He worked extremely well with Kubek, his shortstop partner and his best friend on the team. Richardson’s rock-solid defensive play more than satisfied the Yankee brass, which recognized the subtle role that his fielding played in helping the team regain the pennant after a one-year absence.

(more…)

Our good pal Ray Robinson has a piece on Lou Gehrig in the Times:

Lou Gehrig, Columbia’s most eminent sports figure, died June 2, 1941. The next day, I received my bachelor’s degree from the university.

I became a Gehrig enthusiast from the day I saw him play for the first time when I was 9. In the haziness of my memory of that long-ago afternoon, Gehrig did little with his bat. In fact, I paid more attention to Babe Ruth, his Yankees teammate, mincing around the bases after a home run. Yet it was Gehrig, the shy, unassuming first baseman, whom I ultimately preferred over the Rabelaisian Ruth as a boyhood hero.

As I took the Broadway trolley up to the Columbia campus on the morning of June 3, 1941, I felt a mix of sadness over Gehrig’s death and pleasure at getting my degree. Although he retired in 1939, I didn’t know Gehrig had been wasting away from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, the incurable disease now named for him. He died 17 days before his 38th birthday.

Ray’s biography of Lou Gehrig is a must for any serious baseball fan.

Welp, nobody could have predicted the performance Bartolo Colon has given the Yankees so far this season. But as much as the team’s success seems to ride on Alex Rodriguez, I’ve felt all along that this is Mark Teixeira’s time to shine. Robinson Cano had a great season last year but this should be Teixeira’s team. He started off with a bang in April, then cooled some, although his OBP remained high. Now, he’s hot again, and hit another long home run today as the Yanks jumped to a 3-0 first inning lead which proved to be more than enough against Oakland’s hapless offense.

Colon threw a shut out–dig it, a shut out–the game moved quickly, and Yankee fans were happy.

Final Score: Yanks 5, A’s 0.

And here’s the dinner I had on my cousin’s roof this evening:

The Yanks begin a three-game series in Oakland today. Three tough pitchers…Cliff has the preview.

We kick back and cheer:

Let’s Go Yank-ees!

Nick Swisher hit a solo home run in the second inning to give the Yankees a 1-0 lead over the Mariners this afternoon in Seattle. The following inning, the Yanks put the first two runners on but Mark Teixeira and Alex Rodriguez both grounded out and another potential rally looked to be dead. But Robbie Cano singled home a run and a few batters later, Andruw Jones hit a double with the bases loaded. Exhale. With the big fella C.C. Sabathia on the hill the Yanks never looked back and cruised to a 6-1 win.

It was a stress-free afternoon for Yankee fans after the Jones double, a welcome tonic after the previous two nights. Eduardo Nunez provided the comic relief when he belly flopped into third, a crash landing if you’ve ever seen one, on his first triple of the year, and David “Fangraphs” Cone was again a pleasure to listen to along with Ken Singleton.

Yup, it was a tasty game all round.

Speaking of just desserts, the wife and I went to L’Artusi, a terrific Italian place in the west village last night. Here are the flix.

crisp potatoes

sweet peas in little pockets

The spread

Snap Peas with Chilies

Orecchiette with sausage and tomatoes

A Happy Wife

Here's that dessert again, olive oil cake with raisin marmellata, vin santo, creme fraiche mousse

Mmm, Mmm, good.

Okay, so the Yanks blew two games they could have won and it hoits. It hoits I tells ya.

But today, they’ve got their ace on the mound so fug what you hoid, time for a Score Truck beatdown.

Enjoy the barbecue, keep cool, and…

Let’s Go Yank-ees!

[Picture by my uncle Herve, sent fresh direct from Belgium]

First of all, I apologize for the title. There are few things that irritate me more than when someone says, “Hey, I’ll see you tomorrow…” and then checks his watch, notices that it’s a minute or two after midnight, and corrects himself. “Actually, I’ll see you later today!” Unless it’s New Year’s Eve, can we all just agree that the next day starts when you wake up… the next day? So if you’re waking up the next day and wondering how the Yanks made out in Seattle, you might want to head back to bed. It didn’t end well.

The part you probably saw — a struggling Felix Hernández giving up a solo home run to Robinson Canó in the second and a two-run blast to Mark Teixeira in the third — started out well. Even Ivan Nova looked good, inducing one ground ball after another as he cruised through the first three innings allowing just a single run, and even that run came home on a ground out.

But things soured for Nova in the fourth. Franklin Gutiérrez led off the inning with a hard ground ball that spun off the heel of Derek Jeter’s glove. (The play was initially (and properly) ruled an error on Jeter, but that decision was apparently changed at some point, as it’s recorded in the box score as a hit for Gutiérrez.) Adam Kennedy followed that with a double to push Gutiérrez to third, and Miguel Olivo bounced a ball over the fence in right center for a ground-rule double and a 2-1 Seattle lead. Nova then tightened the screws on his own fingers as he wild-pitched Olivo to third before allowing him to score on a Brendan Ryan single up the middle.

That was it for Nova, and for a good long time, that was it for the Seattle offense. Hector Noesi, David Robertson, Joba Chamberlain, Boone Logan, and Luis Ayala marched in and out of the game over the next 7.1 innings and gave up almost nothing. Here’s their line: 7.1 IP, 5 H, 0 R, 7 K, 1 BB. Impressive stuff.

The problem, of course, is that there wasn’t too much going on with the Yankee bats during all this time. They managed to climb back in the game with two out in the seventh when Jeter walked and Curtis Granderson lofted a ball to deep right center. Ichiro was tracking the ball all the way and looked poised to make one of his Spider-Man catches, climbing the wall to pick the ball out of the stands, but something curious happened just as he leapt — the ball hit the wall, probably two or three feet below the top. With Ichiro’s arms and legs flailing it was difficult to track the ball, but it bounded off of the wall far enough to allow Jeter to score as Granderson raced around the bases for a triple. With King Felix struggling with an elevated pitch count, it seemed like the Yankees might have an opportunity to grab a lead. When he walked Teixeira on five pitches, the stage was set for Alex Rodríguez to do something special, but it wasn’t meant to be. A-Rod struck out to end the inning.

After that, there was a whole lot of nothing from both sides. The Mariners managed a single off Robertson and a walk from Joba in the eighth, but couldn’t cash it in. The Yankees got consecutive singles from A-Rod and Canó in the tenth, but Russell Martin popped out end that threat. The only interesting thing, really, was the steady stream of knucklehead fans who kept running out on the field throughout the game, one of whom chose to do so without clothes.

All of which brings us to the twelfth inning. In case you’ve forgotten how great Mariano Rivera is, here’s the proof. By at least one measure — ERA+ — he is the greatest pitcher of all time by a considerable margin, but for some reason he seems to struggle in non-save situations, and he struggled on Saturday night. He certainly wasn’t hit hard, but he was hit. After dispatching Chone Figgins for the first out in the inning, Rivera allowed Justin Smoak to reach on a looping liner that a charging Brett Gardner wasn’t quite able to snare. Jack Cust did hit the ball hard, doubling down the left field line to put the winning run on third with one out. Manager Joe Girardi then consulted with Rivera and it was decided that Gutiérrez would be walked intentionally to face Kennedy. Much was made of what a tough match-up this was for Kennedy and how a double play was a strong possibility, but it didn’t work out that way. Kennedy was able to find a cutter that found just a little bit too much of the plate. Had it cut deeper into him, it likely would’ve dribbled out towards second for a double play. Had it cut a bit less, it would’ve hung up long enough for Granderson to race under it for the second out. But it cut neither too much nor too little, and Kennedy was able to bloop it out into very short center field, and the game was over. Mariners 5, Yankees 4.

All of that’s fairly depressing, but now let me kick you with some stats while you’re down. In games in which he issues an intentional walk, Mariano’s career ERA is 7.61. In road games this year, he is 0-1 with three blown saves, and a 7.50 ERA; opponents are hitting .423. (He’s yet to blow a save or allow a run at home.)

Don’t worry, though. I predict nine innings from CC on Sunday and an appearance by the Score Truck.  Everything will be fine.

[Photo Credit: Elaine Thompson/AP]

Nah, he’s still the King right this minute, ain’t he?

The Yanks send Ivan Nova up against Felix Hernandez tonight in Seattle. Meanwhile, Verlander goes against Beckett up in Boston.

Should be good…

We’ll be rooting: Let’s Go Yank-ees!

[Picture by Ant Skelton]

On a night where the Yanks had a 3-0 lead against a hot young pitcher, A.J. Burnett could not give the team any length. Burnett gave up two runs but went only five innings. The Mariners scored two more in the sixth against Luis Ayala and that was enough. Eduardo Nunez was picked off of second base in the eighth inning, the Yankees’ best chance to tie the game.

A dispiriting late night loss, 4-3. What’s worse is that Felix Hernandez goes for the Mariner’s tonight.

Drag.

[Photo Credit: Ted S Warren/AP, drawing by Rich Lee]

Yanks out in Seattle tonight to face Ichiro and the M’s.

Cliff has the preview; we stay up late and root:

Let’s Go Yank-ees!

[Photo by Manny Pencils via Flip Flop Fly Ball]

From Jeffrey Toobin’s excellent Fred Wilpon profile in the current issue of The New Yorker:

Fred Wilpon and Saul Katz were in their conference room, in Rockefeller Center, talking baseball, continuing a conversation that has gone on for about fifty years. The subject was Mariano Rivera, the Yankees’ great closer, who owes his success to a single pitch, the cut fastball.

“One pitch,” Wilpon said.

“I don’t get that,” Katz replied.

“What do you mean?” Wilpon answered. “You can’t hit that pitch.”

“But they know it’s coming.”

“Still can’t hit it.”

“I don’t get it.”

Wilpon took out a baseball—there is often one within reach—and demonstrated how Rivera grips the ball. (“I don’t claim to know everything about baseball,” Wilpon said to me at one point. “But I do know pitching.”) Wilpon demonstrated how the ball rolled off Rivera’s fingers. “It can break either way,” he said.

“Still don’t get it,” Katz replied.

The beauty part is that it doesn’t make any practical sense. It’s a beautiful mystery, another reminder that sports are closer to art than science.

Thanks to RI Yank, we were hipped to a piece of analysis by David Pinto the other day:

Mariano uses one pitch, a cut fastball thrown between 90 and 94 miles per hour. There’s nothing soft, no off speed pitch to fool the batters. The cutter does it well all by itself.

Rivera induces swings. Batters swung at 49.4 percent of his pitches, which puts him in the 94th percentile among all pitchers in the majors in that time. Look at what they are swinging at, however. Batters swing at 38% of the pitches that should be called balls. That is the 100th percentile, the best in the majors. Rivera gets batters to see balls as strikes, and swing at them. In general, batters tend to get worse results when they swing at balls.

That’s not the only effect of the cutter, however. Of the pitches batters take, 36.1% of them are strikes. That may not seem like much, but the major league average is 31.8%, and Rivera’s number ranks in the 95th percentile. Not only is Mariano great at getting batters to swing at balls, he’s almost as good at getting them to take strikes.

And he does it all with one pitch.

Rivera’s one pitch is a daydream fantasy about sustained pleasure. There will never be another one like him. Not only because of the results but because how he gets them.

How many times when you were growing up did your parents tell you not to eat too much ice cream? You’ll spoil your appetite, or maybe even get sick, they warned. After all, too much of even a good thing can be bad, they reasoned. Did you believe them? Neither did I.

Apparently, home runs are baseball’s version of ice cream because the conventional wisdom of late has suggested that hitting too many is a bad thing. From broadcasters to beat writers to even the players who knock them out of the park, a common lament about the Yankees’ offense has been it relies too heavily upon the home run. According to those “in the know”, more runs would be scored in the Bronx if the Yankees did less bombing and more bunting, or something along those lines. Although such a philosophy seems inherently illogical, many around the game still espouse it, so let examine the main arguments more closely.

The easiest way to test whether too many home runs can be a drag on run production is to determine the correlation between the two statistics. Over the last decade, the Yankees have exhibited a mild, but meaningful positive link between homers and runs, while all of baseball has experienced an even stronger relationship between balls leaving the park and runners crossing the plate. Of course, every statistician will tell you that correlation doesn’t mean causation, but at the very least, there is good reason to suspect that home runs inflate, not depress, the amount of runs scored.

Correlation Between Runs and HRs, Yankees and MLB, 2001-2010

Note: R is the correlation coefficient, which ranges from -1 to +1. A score of 0 implies no relationship, while scores approaching each parameter imply an increasingly meaningful direct (positive) or inverse (negative) relationship.
Source: Baseball-reference.com

To be fair, most people who would prefer to see the Yankees score via small ball or timely base hits fret more about the percentage of runs scored via the homer than the actual number of home runs. According to the theory, scoring a disproportionate number of runs with muscle leads to an overreliance on the home run, which furthers results in an unsustainable offensive approach. Once again, we can test this argument by determining the relationship between total runs scored and the percentage of tallies plated by the homer.

Percentage of Runs Scored Via the HR, Yankees and MLB, 2001-2011

Source: Baseball-reference.com

As you can see from the chart above, the percentage of runs scoring on a home run in baseball has steadily decreased over the past decade. However, the Yankees’ rate has seemed to fluctuate without any noticeable relationship to runs scored. In fact, the year the Yankees scored their highest run total in this span was also when they recorded the lowest percentage of runs scored via the home run. Because of this randomness, we can’t definitively determine a link between total runs scored and those coming on homer, at least not for the Yankees. Using aggregate team data for all of baseball, however, reveals a strong positive correlation between total runs scored and the number crossing the plate via the homerun. Why doesn’t this relationship hold for the Bronx Bombers? Perhaps that’s a post for another day.

Correlation Between Total Runs and Runs via the HR, MLB, 2001-2011

Source: Baseball-reference.com

Correlation Between Yankees’ Run Total Relative to MLB and Runs Scored via the HR, 2001-2011

Source: Baseball-reference.com

Based on the data presented above, there really is no reason to believe that too many home runs are hampering the Yankees’ offense. But, what about the often repeated argument that even if an overabundance of homers doesn’t limit run production in the regular season, it will eventually catch up to the Yankees when they face better pitching in the playoffs? Is it really more difficult to score runs with a home run when facing an elite pitcher? If so, the Yankees might be better off trying to manufacturing runs so they’ll be better prepared to win in October.

Percentage of Runs Allowed on Homers by Ace Pitchers, 2010

Source: Baseball-reference.com

The list above is composed of each league’s 10 best pitchers in 2010 (based on WAR) along with the percentage of runs they allowed via the home run. From Josh Johnson at 17.6% to Johan Santana at 46.3%, there is a wide range of rates, suggesting that ace pitchers are not unanimously averse to being touched up by a long ball. In fact, the accumulated totals of the top-10 in each league are pretty much in line with each respective league average.

We’ve shown that home runs and runs scored via homers have a positive correlation to total offensive production. In addition, evidence from 2010 suggests that ace pitchers are not immune to being scored upon via the long ball. In other words, there really is no such thing as too much of a good thing, at least when it comes to home runs. Nonetheless, no analysis, regardless of how thorough, is likely to dispel what has become a very popular misconception. So, instead of trying to convert the remaining holdouts, I say let them eat cake…and save the ice cream for the rest of us.

Should Andruw Jones get more playing time in light of Nick Swisher’s poor performance? Kevin Kernan says “Yes” in the Post.

Oh, and here’s more Mo: