The Yanks gun for the sweep in Baltimore as Andy Pettitte returns.
Fresh direct for the Lo Hud Yankee Oven:
Brett Gardner LF
Derek Jeter SS
Lance Berkman 1B
Robinson Cano 2B
Nick Swisher DH
Jorge Posada C
Curtis Granderson CF
Austin Kearns RF
Ramiro Pena 3B
A week of Rays and Sox ahead…
Let’s Go Yan-Kees!
Andy Pettitte pitched for the Trenton Thunder last night and the reports are good.
Yankee pitching coach Dave Eiland, who always looks irritated, in an old-school, tough guy way, has been working with AJ Burnett on a change-up.
From John Harper in the Daily News:
Eiland chuckled after the game when asked about needing to sell Burnett on the changeup, and insisted it was more about getting him to throw it with the right mechanics and timing so that it sinks late and hard.
“When he throws it right, like he did tonight,” said Eiland, “it’s almost like a splitter – it’s a great pitch. It all starts with his fastball command, with getting out over the rubber and releasing the ball out in front of him.
“When he doesn’t do that, when his arm drags, he doesn’t have command of the fastball, and when he throws the changeup it’s just a flat fader. Tonight he was out in front and on time with everything. He only threw four changeups, but on three of them he got outs with it.”
Hey, makes sense to me. Meanwhile, Andy Pettitte threw again yesterday with good results. And Alex Rodriguez is coming along too, although he’s cautious not to push-it. Javier Vazquez is back in the rotation for now and he’ll start Saturday. Finally, our man Cliff Corcoran was at the Stadium last night. Dig what he saw and heard.
Mark Feinsand on Andy Pettitte:
Team trainer Gene Monahan told Pettitte to throw at the same 75% strength he did on Friday, but once Pettitte felt comfortable enough with his leg, he turned it up for his final 20 pitches.
“I heated it up pretty good,” Pettitte said. “I went out there planning on kind of being nice and easy like I did the other day, and it ended up being a little more intensity – and it felt really good. Just another good step in the right direction.”
Pettitte is slated to throw another bullpen session either tomorrow or Wednesday, after which he’ll likely throw a simulated game or live batting practice. There is no firm timetable for his return, but Pettitte estimated that without any further setbacks, he could be back in the rotation by mid-September.
“It just depends on what they want me to do, if they make me throw a couple batting practices and a simulated game,” Pettitte said. “I think the quickest I could get ready would probably be about two weeks or so.”
“That sounds about right,” Joe Girardi said. “As long as we don’t have any setbacks, that’s realistic.”
[Photo Credit: via The New Yorker]
Andy Pettitte is scheduled to throw another bullpen session today. According to the intrepid Mark Feinsand in the Daily News:
Friday, Joe Girardi will trek out to the bullpen to watch Pettitte test his groin with a 20-25 pitch throwing session, one that could play a huge role in the Yankees’ stretch drive.
“I think we’re all curious to see how he’s going to do,” Girardi said. “I think there’s anxiety on Andy’s part and on everybody’s part. I think it will be a good indicator. Every time that he’s tried to really push off, he’s felt a little tug. If he’s able to really push off (Friday), that would tell me that he’s healed.”
The alternative is the worst-case scenario for the Yankees. If things go well for Pettitte, it would put him on course for a mid-September return, giving him about three weeks to get himself ready for the postseason. If Pettitte still can’t push off the mound at full strength Friday, even the eternally optimistic Girardi admits it would be grim news.
“That would be a pretty big setback,” Girardi said.
The Yanks without Pettitte will be Big CC and praying for a whole lot of the Score Truck.
Andy Pettitte won his 200th game as a Yankee Friday night, and it came in the midst of what just might be the finest season in the 38-year-old’s 16-year career. After allowing just two earned runs on four hits and a walk in 7 1/3 innings, Pettitte improved to 8-1 on the season with a 2.46 ERA, keeping him right behind the Rays David Price in the Cy Young hunt. Pettitte has posted an ERA below 3.00 just twice in his career. In 1997, as a 25-year-old, he went 18-7 with a 2.88 ERA, and in 2005 as part of the pennant-winning Astros impressive rotation along with Roger Clemens and Roy Oswalt, he went 17-9 with a 2.39. If Pettitte keeps up his current pace, he’ll go 21-3, that 21st win being the 250th of his career.
It’s difficult to believe that Pettitte will get through the entire season without some sort of lull, but it’s nearly mid-June and Pettitte historically pitches better in the second half of the season than in the first. After 12 starts this season, Pettitte has had just one dud, that coming at home on May 20 against the Rays, when he gave up seven runs (six earned) in five innings thanks in part to three home runs. He has allowed a total of just four home runs in his other 11 starts, none of them coming Friday night.
Pettitte has had just two other non-quality starts. One of them missed by a single run (six innings, four runs against the White Sox on April 30), the other missed by a single inning (five innings, one run against the Orioles his next time out). Those were the two starts during which he reported discomfort in his elbow. His next turn was skipped. He then held the Twins scoreless for six innings on May 15 before suffering that one dud against the Rays his next time out. In his four starts since then, he has pitched a minimum of seven innings and allowed a maximum of two earned runs each time out producing this combined line:
30 IP, 21 H, 8 R, 7 ER, 3 HR, 4 BB, 23 K, 3-0, 2.10 ERA, 0.83 WHIP, 5.75 K/BB
To put it another way, in 12 starts, Pettitte has allowed more than two earned runs just twice, lasted fewer than six innings just once (that on account of his elbow, not his performance), and the Yankees have lost just two of games that he started, one of them by a 3-2 score in extra innings.
As for Friday night’s game, Pettitte locked horns in a pitching duel with former Phillies righty Brett Myers. Both had a bad inning early, then settled down and pitched through the seventh in a swift game that took a season-low two hours and 19 minutes.
The Yankees limped into this series, but it hasn’t mattered much; if the Twins didn’t have bad luck against the Yankees, they wouldn’t have no luck at all. Minnesota lost two one-run games in the space of an evening – the second half of last night’s suspended Scoreless Wonder, which ended up a 1-0 Yanks win thanks to Derek Jeter’s solo home run (and lead-preserving nifty defensive play), and then tonight’s 3-2 duel, which saw Andy Pettitte prevail over Francisco Liriano. Mariano Rivera saved both games, and if he didn’t quite radiate moonbeams and rose petals and ride off the field on a pegasus like he normally does, it was at least a step in the right direction.
I figured on the bullpen being a minefield today (as just getting through nine innings has proved plenty tough enough for those guys recently), but David Robertson, Joba Chamberlain, and Mo staggered through to the end of the first game unscathed, and Andy Pettitte gave everyone a break tonight by throwing 72 of his 94 pitches for strikes — “attack-tastic,” as my friend put it — powering through eight relatively smooth innings with a little help from his good friend the DP grounder. Safe to say he’s showing no ill effects from his recent elbow issue (…well, safe to say, but I’m knocking on wood anyway, just in case). He hit a few speed bumps: in the first inning, when my guy Denard Span doubled, stole third, and was delivered to home plate by Joe Mauer; and in the seventh, with Delmon Young’s RBI double. Beyond that, though Pettitte allowed eight hits, he walked no one, struck out four, and was generally able to keep his anguished, muttered self-criticism on the mound to a minimum. When he induced Joe Mauer to hit into the Twins’ third DP of the night and end the eighth inning, his fist pump was downright Joba-esque.
With the Yankees still staging their community theater adaptation of Waiting For Godot, starring Mark Teixeira’s offense (“We are all born mad. Some remain so”), they patched together a few runs from the bottom of the lineup. In the fourth Francisco Cervelli went all speed-demon on the Twins, beat out a potential double play throw, and scored from first on Kevin “Strong Island” Russo’s double; Russo himself scored in the seventh inning when Brett Gardner tripled. (“Let us do something, while we have the chance! It is not every day that we are needed. But at this place, at this moment of time, all mankind is us, whether we like it or not. Let us make the most of it, before it is too late!”).
Each team had two runs and eight hits when Nick Swisher came to the plate in the top of the ninth to face Jon Rauch and his neck tattoos. The third pitch of the at-bat was a ripe fastball, and we can only hope its violent death was quick and painless, as Swisher absolutely creamed it. It soared over the right field wall and gave them a 3-2 lead that they held onto, thanks to a much more Mariano-like Rivera appearance than we saw in the first game. Take a deep breath, the Yankees won another series.
The Yankees began the week in Washington D.C., where on Monday they stood on risers like members of a high school chorus as President Obama addressed team personnel and then exchanged pleasantries with each individual member of the organization. They closed the week with President Obama’s Chicago White Sox visiting them in the Bronx.
Following the long 10-game road trip, despite the Yankees winning the last two games, they started off shaky and couldn’t get into a flow. Carlos Quentin’s line-drive double off Andy Pettitte in the top of the first was the last straw. That initial part of the opening frame Friday night was atypical for Pettitte, as far as this season is concerned anyway. Pettitte had allowed just four runs over his first four starts. Three of those four runs came in the third inning, usually the beginning of the second cycle through the lineup. Yet here he was having yielded three runs and four hits to an anemic White Sox offense that stood 11th in the American League in runs scored (88 total through 22 games).
Cue the coaching visit. Whatever was said resonated with Pettitte, because subsequently struck out Mark Teahen and Jayson Nix, and the Yankee offense got two runs back in the bottom half to provide a pseudo-bailout. Pettitte had trouble with that top third of the ChiSox order again and didn’t really settle down until he got Paul Konerko, whose three-run home run in the first did the initial damage, to fly out to end the second.
Pettitte threw 42 pitches over the first two innings and dug the Yankees a bit of a hole. In this way, it was a typical Andy Pettitte start — more than a hit per inning, four runs allowed, the offense having to score at least four or five runs to muster a victory. He didn’t run into any more snags until the fifth, when that same bunch of batters — Gordon Beckham, Alex Rios, Konerko and Quentin — staged a threat, which Pettitte deftly dodged.
Those are moments where as an observer you can say, “This could be a turning point.” It didn’t look that way when Freddy Garcia made quick work of Curtis Granderson and Francisco Cervelli, but when Brett Gardner singled and stole second to pass the baton to Derek Jeter, there was stirring. The stirring came to a boil when Jeter launched a curveball into the left-field seats to tie the game at 4-4.
“I was just looking for a good pitch to hit,” Jeter told Kim Jones on YES. “I haven’t been swinging at a lot of strikes lately, so I tried to bear down, and I got a good pitch that was up.”
Jeter got a pitch that was up again in the 7th against Matt Thornton, with runners on first and second. This time it was a 95-mile-per-hour fastball that Jeter inside-outed past a diving Jayson Nix into the right-field corner. Cervelli, who reached on an HBP, and Gardner, who gutted out a single before scored on the triple.
The two runs gave way to the formula: Damaso Marte for LOOGY duty and Joba to close out the 8th, then Mariano Rivera throwing straight cheese to retire the side in order in the ninth.
The 6-4 win gave the Yankees their first April with at least 15 wins since 2003, when they went 20-6. It also kept Andy Pettitte unbeaten in April for the first time in his career.
It was the kind of game we’ve gotten spoiled with over the last five or few years: fall behind early, come back in the middle innings, hold it down late. It’s the kind of win a President can appreciate. Then again, maybe not. He roots for the White Sox.
Saturday…in the Park.
Nick Swisher is the kind of player who shouldn’t be left to his own devices. After driving home Robinson Cano in the second inning with a double, Swisher came to bat in the fourth after Alex Rodriguez (dhing for the day) and Cano started the inning with base hits. So Swisher laid down a sacrifice bunt, taking the bat out of his and Curtis Granderson’s hands. The sacrifice worked, then the Angels walked Granderson to load the bases for Ramiro Pena and Frankie Cervelli. Pena, who played third and made a terrific diving catch, whiffed but Cervelli bailed Swisher out of a trip to the doghouse with a little single to left, scoring two runs.
Derek Jeter followed with a well-struck RBI single to center and the Yanks had a 4-0 lead, more than enough for Andy Pettitte as the Yanks cruised to a 7-1 win.
There was no hangover from Friday night’s contentious game. Pettitte was in control. His line: 8 innings, 6 hits, 1 run, 8 strikeouts and 0 walks. Leave it to Torii Hunter to have the line of the day when he told reporters:
“I’ve never seen Pettitte pitch this well,” Hunter said. “He looked poised. He looked like the Andy Pettitte of old, when he was young.”
…”The last two times Pettitte pitched against us, that’s about as good as we’ve seen him,” [Manager, Mike] Scioscia said. “He’s taken a sip from the Fountain of Youth or something. He really pitched well.”
(L.A. Times)
Damaso Marte pitched a scoreless ninth. Brett Gardner stayed hot with three more hits and Cano had four hits and scored three runs. The slumping Mark Teixeira had one hit and Nick Johnson had the day off due to a cranky back.
The Yanks have a chance to win the series later this afternoon when Javy Vazquez takes the mound.
[Photo Credit: Stephen Dunn/Getty Images]
And so it was that at the Winter Meetings, Brian Cashman satisfied two of his major offseason priorities: settling the left field/center field question by acquiring Curtis Granderson in the three-team, seven-player swap with the Tigers and Diamondbacks. On the surface, it looks like the Tigers win this trade in a landslide, getting two young lefty relievers, a hard-throwing righty starter, and a major-league ready outfielder all while shedding $25.75 million in salary over the next three seasons.
The coverage was fairly bland, as it can tend to be when hammering out details of a trade. There were subtle nuances, though. For example, the Post, in my surfing, was the only outlet to cite that the Diamondbacks entered the fray a few weeks ago when Cashman balked at not including Joba Chamberlain or Phil Hughes in the deal for Granderson (maybe this gives a hint regarding their 2010 status?). ESPN claimed Buster Olney broke the story. How do we know? Jon Heyman tweeted the components of the deal yesterday, and Alex Belth dutifully posted them here.
A couple of items and intimations that appeared everywhere:
The best game Andy Pettitte ever pitched in his life was Game 5 of the 1996 World Series. In that game, which began with the Yankees and Braves tied at two games a piece in the Series, Pettitte out-dueled John Smoltz for 8 1/3 shutout innings. Pettitte wasn’t perfect in that game. He only struck out four, walked three, two of whom then stole second on him, and gave up five hits, but while Smoltz allowed just one unearned run, Pettitte didn’t allow a runner to third base until the ninth inning and yielded to John Wetteland with one out in the ninth having thrown just 96 pitches. Wetteland got the last two outs to seal the 1-0 win and send the Yankees home for what would prove to be a triumphant Game 6.
Game 5 of the 1996 World Series stands as the pinnacle of my baseball fandom, and it remains the pinnacle of Andy Pettitte’s career, but for six-plus innings last night, Pettitte looked like he was about to reach a new peak.
Andy Pettitte had everything working last night. He was throwing in, out, up, down, using all of his pitches, locating perfectly, and dropping some devastating curveballs into the strike zone. While the Yankees eked out a pair of runs against Orioles starter Jeremy Guthrie on a Nick Swisher homer in the third and doubles by Robinson Cano and Swisher in the fifth, Pettitte was busy retiring the first 20 men he faced.
With one out in the sixth, Matt Wieters hit a slow chopper in on the grass toward third base. Jerry Hairston Jr., giving Alex Rodriguez a day off at third base, charged, barehanded, and fired to first in what was really the only difficult play that needed to be made behind Pettitte all night. Ty Wigginton hit a grounder directly to Derek Jeter on the next pitch for the third out. After six innings, Pettitte had thrown 66 pitches, struck out six, and not once gone to three balls on a batter.
Every so often a pitcher will take a no-hitter or perfect game into the middle innings despite not looking any sharper than usual. A.J. Burnett had a game like that earlier this year. Sergio Mitre had one just a few days ago. Monday night, Andy Pettitte looked like a pitcher throwing a perfect game. He looked like David Cone pitching to the Expos, but instead of Cone’s characteristic improvisation, Pettitte was methodical, precise, and seemingly effortless.
The first two batters of the seventh inning flew out to Swisher in right field on 2-2 counts. Swisher took a wrong step on one of the two flies, but recovered and struggled to contain his relieved grin as he threw the ball back into the infield. Adam Jones, who had just missed a home run foul down the left field line earlier in the game, took ball one from Pettitte, then hit a routine grounder directly at Hairston, the previous inning’s defensive hero.
Hairston booted it.
After the game Hairston’s teammates told him and the media that the ball took a funny hop, but Hairston was honest. It was a routine grounder and he just plain missed it. The ball hit off the heal of his glove and trickled through his legs for an error that erased Pettitte’s perfect game. It was the second time this season that I’ve seen a perfect game come to an end on an error. The first was Jose Uribe’s eighth-inning error in Jonathan Sanchez’s no-hitter against the Padres on July 10. Sanchez finished the game without a hit or a walk, the only blemish being Uribe’s error.
As difficult as it might be to swallow losing a perfect game to a fielding error, the most impressive thing Sanchez did in that game, particularly given his reputation for being over-excitable and folding after bad breaks, was to gather himself and complete the no-hitter. Monday night, Pettitte tried to do the same, but Nick Markakis put a good swing on a fastball up and away and lined it inside the left-field line for a single. That didn’t make Hairston feel better, but it made him less infamous.
With the Yankees still up just 2-0, Pettitte had lost a perfect game and a no-hitter in the course of four pitches and now had the tying runs on base. He then went to his first (and only) three-ball count of the night, going full on Nolan Reimold, but got another grounder right at Jeter to strand both runners.
With Guthrie out of the game in favor of veteran lefty Mark Hendrickson, and Pettitte’s balancing act off their minds, the Yankees put up three insurance runs in the top of the eighth. Pettitte gave up a lead-off homer to Melvin Mora in the bottom of the eighth, scuttling the shutout as well, but struck out the next two men and got one more groundout for good measure on his 104th pitch, leaving the ninth for the bullpen after eight innings, no walks, just two hits, and eight strikeouts.
Brian Bruney’s first three pitches were balls as he walked Brian Roberts to start the ninth. A one-out single followed, prompting Joe Girardi to bring Mariano Rivera in to finish the job, extending the major league record held by Rivera and Pettitte for most games saved by a single pitcher for a single teammate. Pettitte also moved past Lefty Gomez into sole possession of third place on the Yankees’ all-time wins list.
After the game, Pettitte found Hairston in the locker room with his head down and went over to cheer his teammate up. “You took the pressure off me,” he told Hairston. “Besides, if I hadn’t thrown one already, I wasn’t going to. I didn’t want to pitch nine innings anyway.”
In defeating the Texas Rangers last week at the Stadium, Andy Pettitte reached a significant Yankee milestone: tying Hall of Famer Lefty Gomez on the franchise’s all-time wins list. There’s something odd about Pettitte and Gomez having identical totals of 189 wins in pinstripes. These two left-handers couldn’t be any different in terms of personality and persona. Pettitte, outside of his dalliance with HGH, has led a pretty straight-laced life in New York. Gomez was anything but straight-laced. In fact, he may have been the most offbeat Yankee of all-time.
As the southpaw pitching ace for the Yankees of the 1930s, Vernon “Lefty” Gomez stood in contrast to several of his reserved and businesslike teammates. Unlike Joe DiMaggio and Lou Gehrig, the native Californian had an outgoing nature, with a priceless comic touch. Gomez even did the unthinkable in needling Joe D., who was usually spared from the normal clubhouse ribbing. Somewhat surprisingly, DiMaggio allowed Gomez to include him in the razzing, in part because he considered the eccentric left-hander to be genuinely funny.
Outside of baseball, the entertainment world took notice of Gomez’ personality. After the 1931 World Series, he was invited to join vaudeville for a three-week run. Unfortunately, his act didn’t pass muster, but Gomez didn’t allow failure to dampen his sense of humor. “I lasted three weeks,” Gomez told a reporter, “but the audiences didn’t.”
Throughout his career, Gomez produced a litany of classical quotations for both his teammates and the media. Gomez once proclaimed that he had come up with a new invention. “It’s a revolving bowl for tired goldfish.” Much like Mark “the Bird” Fidrych of a later generation, Gomez claimed that he often conversed with the baseball. “I talked to the ball a lot of times in my career,” Gomez contended. “‘I yelled, ‘Go foul, Go foul!’” And then there was his philosophy with regard to relief pitching. “A lot of things run through your head when you’re going in to relieve in a tight spot. One of them was, ‘Should I spike myself?’”
Tall and gangly, Gomez could be as clumsy as he was zany, especially when in the uncomfortable territory of the batter’s box. Always a poor hitter, Gomez at least tried to act the part of an accomplished slugger. During one at-bat, he adjusted his cap, tugged at his uniform, and then attempted to knock the mud from his spikes with his bat. Instead, he whacked his ankle with the bat, putting himself in the hospital for three days.
Gomez’ behavior could be as bizarre as his words. Pitching in the second game of the 1936 World Series, Gomez held up play because of his preoccupation in watching a plane fly overhead. Seething Yankee manager Joe McCarthy, who demanded professionalism from his players at all times, could only watch in stunned amazement from the dugout. When Gomez returned to the dugout after retiring the side, McCarthy berated his star pitcher. Gomez quickly defended himself. “Listen, Joe, I’ve never seen a pitcher lose a game by not throwing the ball.”
On at least one other occasion, Gomez felt that holding onto the ball was clearly the best strategy. Throughout his career, Gomez struggled in matchups against Hall of Fame slugger Jimmie Foxx. During one at-bat against Foxx, Gomez shook off every sign called by catcher Bill Dickey. Visiting the mound, Dickey asked Gomez what pitch he wanted to throw to Foxx. “Nothing,” Gomez said to his batterymate. “Let’s just stall around and maybe he’ll get mad and go away.” Gomez eventually did make a pitch to Foxx, who promptly swatted the Gomez offering over the outfield fence.
Unlike some star pitchers who act as prima donnas, Gomez displayed little ego. He liked to poke fun at himself, all part of his effort to pick up some laughs. He also understood his limitations—and when it was time to leave the game. Shortly after his retirement from pitching, Gomez applied for a job with the Wilson sporting goods company. The employment application included a space that asked why he had left his previous job. Gomez answered the question with brutal honesty. “I couldn’t get the side out.”
For most of his career, though, Gomez did well in getting the side out. His major league accomplishments, almost all of them coming with the Yankees, earned him election to the Hall of Fame in 1972. That honor will probably escape Andy Pettitte, but at the very least he’ll be able to say he matched Gomez in the win column.
Bruce Markusen writes “Cooperstown Confidential” for The Hardball Times.
The Yankees scored two in the top of the first against Sidney Ponson yesterday afternoon, and Andy Pettitte made those runs hold up with seven stellar innings in which he allowed just one run on three hits and a walk as the Yankees beat the Royals 4-1 in Kansas City’s home opener.
Pettitte’s was the best performance by a Yankee starting pitcher this season and underlined the strength of this year’s team: starting pitching depth. There’s not a man in the Yankees’ rotation that you wouldn’t want to have on the mound on any given day (yes, even A.J. Burnett, my complaints about him stem largely from his injury history and his contract, in other words the possibility of having him not on the mound but still on the books). The Yankees opened the season by having their top two starters, CC Sabathia and Chien-Ming Wang, get lit up, but Burnett and Pettitte brought them right back to even in the blink of an eye. Sabathia takes his second turn tomorrow, then Joba Chamberlain gets his first on Sunday, then back around again. If those five starters can stay healthy (admittedly a huge “if”), the Yankees will have a very realistic expectation of winning every game they play. They’ll still lose about 60 of them, but it won’t be because they were outmatched on the mound. That’s a tremendous advantage for a ballclub, in terms of strength and strategy as well as confidence.
It sure took them long enough, but the Yankees finally came to terms with Andy Pettitte yesterday, re-signing the veteran lefty to a one-year deal with a base salary of $5.5 million and incentives that could make the deal worth as much as $12 million. With that, the Yankees have the final piece of their 2009 rotation in place. Here’s a quick look at the Yankees’ projected starting five along with my thoroughly un-scientific innings and ERA projections for each pitcher:
| Pitcher | Proj. IP | Proj. ERA |
|---|---|---|
| CC Sabathia (L) | 230 | 3.20 |
| Chien-Ming Wang | 200 | 4.00 |
| A.J. Burnett | 170 | 4.40 |
| Andy Pettitte (L) | 215 | 4.20 |
| Joba Chamberlain | 160 | 2.90 |
Quibble with those projections however you want, but consider what they add up to: 975 innings of a 3.73 ERA. Last year the collected Yankee starters–that is every pitcher who started for the team all year, not just the top five–combined for just 898 1/3 innings and a 4.58 ERA. Meanwhile, team that got the best performance out of it’s starting pitchers in 2008 was the Toronto Blue Jays, whose starters combined for 1,012 2/3 innings of a 3.72 ERA. Given that, the Yankees could have the best rotation in baseball even with that underwhelming performance from A.J. Burnett, average performances from Pettitte and Wang, and the limit placed on Chamberlain’s innings total. The catch is that their two top rivals for baseball’s best rotation are the Rays (with David Price taking over for Edwin Jackson) and Red Sox.
Note that I expect Chamberlain, not Pettitte, to be the Yankees’ fifth starter because of the limit the Yankees will need to place on his innings. Chamberlain threw 100 1/3 innings last year. Tom Verducci’s Rule of 30 would suggest a cap of 130 innings this year, but I expect the Yankees’ cap to be around 150 frames, and for Chamberlain to surpass that slighly due to a solid performance. The one remaining flaw in Chamberlain’s game is an inefficiency stemming from his being both a strikeout pitcher and one who walked 3.5 men per nine innings last year. That inneficiency will likely limit him to an average of six innings per start (which is exactly what he averaged in the nine starts prior to his shoulder injury last year). At that rate, he could make 26 starts this year and still have thrown just 156 innings. If the Yankees keep him in the fifth spot and use the odd off-day to skip his turn, he should come in right on target.
Meanwhile, with Pettitte having now rounded out the rotation, Phil Hughes and Alfredo Aceves become replacement starters rather than potential fifth-starters. That’s good news for the Yankees as there’s a decent chance that at least one of the pitchers in the chart above will wind up throwing as many as 100 innings less than I’ve projected for him due to injury. Aceves is a classic sixth starter, a crafty, junkballing righty who relies heavily on his defense and staying one pitch ahead of the hitter. In scout speak, Aceves has great pitchability, but not much stuff. He’s not far removed from the pitcher he’s replacing in the organization, Darrell Rasner, and is thus better suited as a replacement than one of the organization’s top five starters.
Hughes, of course, is still a top prospect, but even before Pettitte signed, I felt that Hughes needed to start the year in Triple-A and spend a couple of months just getting his legs under him and his confidence up so that he could return to the majors with some momentum rather than start the year trying once again to prove he deserved to break camp with the big club. Remember, Hughes has made just two major league starts since last April, and while he was excellent in the second of those two, essentially beating A.J. Burnett head-to-head (though Jose Veras wound up with the win), it came in late September against a long-since eliminated Blue Jays team. Hughes developed a strong cut fastball while rehabbing his broken rib last year and pitched well, if inconsistently, in the Arizona Fall League. With Pettitte in place, Phil can now build on those two developments at Triple-A in the hope of becoming a mid-season injury replacement (I didn’t write “for Burnett,” but I thought it) and forcing Joe Girardi to make a tough decision in the second half. Remember, Hughes won’t be 23 until last June. He still has plenty of time to make the transition from Triple-A to the majors.
While I’m on the topic, I might as well address Ian Kennedy. I don’t think Kennedy, who is a year and a half Hughes’ senior, was ever going to be in the picture for the big league rotation this spring. He did enough to discourage Girardi and the team last year that he wasn’t even brought back as a September call-up. Kennedy needs to spend the year at Scranton letting his pitching do the talking and hoping for a chance to make his case for the 2010 rotation in September. The good news on Kennedy is that he supposedly found a new way to throw his curve after working with Scranton pitching coach Rafael Chaves last year and dominated the Puerto Rican winter league with the pitch. Kennedy’s big problem last year was his refusal/inability to use his curve in his major league stints, making him a very hittable two-pitch fastball/changeup pitcher without much heat on his heater and a resulting tendency to shy away from contact. If the improvement in his curve proves sustainable, he may well revive his prospect status, making the A.J. Burnett contract all the more regrettable for expensively clogging up the rotation.
Still, taking the short-term view, it’s hard to complain about the Yankees’ top five starters entering the season. The Yankees haven’t had an Opening Day rotation this strong since they were making annual trips to the World Series. They’ve paid a lot for the priviledge, but it just might pay off.
My latest for SI.com looks at the Braves’ new rotation in the wake of the Derek Lowe and Kenshin Kawakami signings, including a scouting report on the 33-year-old Japanese import. Toward the end, I summarize the remaining free agent market for starting pitchers in two paragraphs:
After [Oliver] Perez and [Ben] Sheets, there’s only a handful of veterans that could be considered remotely reliable signings. That group includes Andy Pettitte, who continues to play chicken with the Yankees over a one-year deal, Paul Byrd, Randy Wolf, whose name frequently surfaces as a back-up option, Braden Looper and Jon Garland. Of those five, however, only Looper posted an ERA better than league average last year.
Beyond that group there’s a series of bad bets, be it on aging stars who’d be better off retiring (Tom Glavine, Pedro Martinez, Curt Schilling, Kenny Rogers, Orlando Hernandez), the perpetually injured (Jason Jennings, Mark Mulder, Bartolo Colon), roster fillers (Livan Hernandez, Sidney Ponson, Josh Fogg, Josh Towers) or assorted castoffs who will be lucky to land a non-roster invitation to camp (Steve Trachsel, Jeff Weaver, Kip Wells, Mark Redman, Matt Belisle, Esteban Loaiza, Kris Benson).
I realize now I left Odalis Perez and Jon Lieber out of the list of roster fillers and failed to find a place for Freddy Garcia. Nonetheless, that’s about it. In fact, you can cross Prior off the list, as he’s landed back with the Padres on a minor league deal. So, do you think the dearth of alternatives gives Pettitte any leverage over the Yanks? Should they peel off and sign Ben Sheets or Braden Looper before they’re forced to overpay for one of the next five or turn to one of the bad bets? Or should they walk away now and let Alfredo Aceves, Phil Hughes, and company fight it out over the fifth spot in the rotation?
The Angels entered this series with a chance to clinch the AL West and have closer Francisco Rodriguez tie or even break Bobby Thigpen’s single-season saves record, but they exchanged blowouts with the Yankees in the first two games, forcing Rodriguez, stuck at 55 saves to Thigpen’s 57, to wait to make history against some other team. Meanwhile the second-place Rangers failed to help the Angels out last night, and it’s only with a Rangers loss that the Angels could clinch with a win today. The Rangers’ game in Seattle starts more than an hour after today’s afternoon tilt in Anaheim, so even if the Angels do clinch today, they’ll likely be back in their clubhouse when it happens, sparing the Yankees the indignity of watching another team celebrate.
Andy Pettitte, who is now officially in line to start the final game at Yankee Stadium two turns from now, takes the hill for the Bombers. Pete Abe has a story on Pettitte today that blames Andy’s recent struggles on the disruption of his usual off-season conditioning caused by his inclusion in the Mitchell Report:
The workout regime that he believes has been the base of his success was not abandoned. But Pettitte did not put in the amount of time he usually does.
“There were times I didn’t want to leave the house, much less go work out and focus on baseball,” he said last night before the Yankees played the Angels.
Pettitte tried to catch up in spring training, scheduling early-morning workouts and pestering teammates to join him and provide a push. For a while, it appeared to work. Pettitte was 12-7 with a 3.76 ERA through his first 22 starts. Pettitte’s history suggested that he would only improve as he season went on.
He has struggled instead. He is 1-5 with a 6.57 ERA over his last eight starts, putting 82 runners on base via hit or walk over 49 1/3 innings. Opponents have hit .325 against him.
“I was very happy with the first half I put together, then I won my first two starts after the break and I thought, ‘Here we go.’ Personally, it’s been frustrating,” he said.
Though he doesn’t come right out and say it, Pettitte strongly suggested to Abraham that he wants to return to the Yankees next year both to pitch in the new Stadium, and because he believes he can recover his form of a year ago by avoiding any other interruptions to his offseason program. If he does, he stands a very good chance of moving past Lefty Gomez into third place on the franchise’s all-time wins list. Gomez isn’t quite Babe Ruth, but I’d be all for bringing Andy back next year given the struggles of the team’s pitching prospects this season.
In other news, Ivan Rodriguez and Torii Hunter will both serve two-game suspensions starting this afternoon as punishment for their dust-up on Monday night.
The Yankees needed to sweep their current series against the Red Sox, so their having lost the first game by the convincing score of 7-3 takes a lot of the excitement out of the remaining two games. Heading into last night’s game, the Yankees were counting on Andy Pettitte to come through in what may prove to have been the Yankees’ biggest game of the year. He didn’t:
“It’s extremely frustrating. I hate it. I didn’t get it done. I didn’t get it done tonight. I wish I could say I felt terrible, but I felt pretty decent. I got out of synch in the first inning and walked a couple of guys, but after that I felt that I was able to throw my all pitches pretty much where I wanted to. I couldn’t get anybody out, though.”
Johnny Damon staked Pettitte to an early 1-0 lead when he led off the bottom of the first by wrapping a solo homer around the foul pole in right field. Pettitte, who worked around those two two-out walks in the first, got two quick outs in the top of the second, but then the last two men in the Boston order reached on slow rollers up the third base line and Jacoby Ellsbury plated one of them with a single to left to tie the game.
The Yankees answered right back with a run in the bottom of the inning on two-out singles by Hideki Matsui, Robinson Cano, and Jose Molina, but Pettitte gave that run and one more back in the top of the third on doubles by David Ortiz and Kevin Youkilis and a single by Jason Bay. It was still 3-2 Sox in the top of the fifth when Jason Bay singled back up the middle off Pettitte to spark a two-out rally.
“I had two outs and was hoping to have a 1-2-3 inning and then the inning turned into a horrible inning. Just frustrating. I felt like it was a pretty good pitch on the outside corner to [Bay]. I think he got into a count [2-2] where I had to throw a little bit more over the plate than I wanted to out there. I thought I threw a good back-door curveball to the next kid [Jed Lowrie] and he hit it, ground ball [single] in between second and third, and then, again, I thought I threw a good changeup in a good count [1-2] to [Jeff] Bailey, and he just rolled it right down the line on the bag. It’s frustrating. I gave up those three runs early. I broke out my changeup in the fourth, and I was throwing it for strikes when I wanted to. It was a game where I thought that as soon as I started throwing that for strikes the way I was, the way I was locating my fastball, it was a game I could carry into the seventh inning or so and hold them to three right there, but obviously it didn’t work out like that. I just, I didn’t get the job done.”
In between Lowrie’s single and Bailey’s infield hit, Coco Crisp singled Bay home to make it 4-3. Bailey’s hit would have been a two-run double, but it ricocheted off the third base bag to Alex Rodriguez, who quickly fired it across the diamond to Jason Giambi, but Bailey beat the throw and Crisp, who had stolen second, never hesitated and scored anyway to make it a two-run infield hit aided by Giambi mistakenly thinking Bailey had been ruled out and thus not throwing home.
That sequence of events made it 6-2 Sox and bounced Pettitte with two out in the fifth. Damon added a second solo homer off Wakefield in the bottom of the inning, but Brian Bruney gave that run back in the top of the sixth on a Jason Bay sac fly after walkking the bases loaded.
From there things got ugly, though the 7-3 score would remain unchanged. The Yankees loaded the bases with one out in the seventh against Manny Delcarmen, bringing Alex Rodriguez to the plate as the tying run against Justin Masterson. Rodriguez took a fastball down the middle at the knees, then took and ill-advised hack at a slider down and in and ground into an inning-ending double play, bringing out the boos for the first time this season.
The Yankees got the first two men on in the eighth against Masterson, but Hideki Okajima came on for an eight-pitch battle with Matsui that ended in curveball that dove across the zone for called strike three. Okajima then got Cano to pop out on a full-count, and Jonathan Papelbon came on to retire Ivan Rodriguez on one pitch. An error by Lowrie in the bottom of the ninth simply allowed Rodriguez to come to the plate to make the last out with a runner on base.
On the night, Rodriguez went 0-for-5 with two strikeouts, two double plays, and an error in the field, and left seven runners on base. He fell on his sword after the game:
“It was an awful night. For me personally, it was a long night, pretty much screwed it up anyway you can screw it up. . . . My team expects me to get big hits and make plays, and tonight I didn’t do that. Johnny, Jeet, and Bobby worked great at-bats all night [combined 6 for 11 with two walks] and I just killed the rally . . . . No one’s more frustrated than me. Everyone’s desperate for wins. A night like tonight, I was booing myself. . . . We’ve always said you want to get a good pitch to hit and put an A swing. On that double play [in the seventh], it wasn’t a good pitch to hit, and it wasn’t an A swing. . . . Today we sucked. I sucked. I played terrible, and they hit balls all over the place down at the corner at third base, and I left men all over the field. . . . tonight you can put it on me.”
I’d actually put it on Pettitte, if I had to point a finger, but Rodriguez was his accomplice. With that in mind, I found this post-game comment from Johnny Damon interesting:
“[Alex is] out there busting his butt. He still works harder than all of us in here. He had that off night and that’s unfortunate. This was a night when we needed to get something and unfortunately, we couldn’t get anything from him. He expects to be the greatest player ever, and unfortunately on a day-by-day basis that doesn’t really translate at times. It’s tough to be the best player on the field every single day. He expects to be, and unfortunately tonight he wasn’t.”
The Yankees weren’t a playoff team last night, either.
