Wednesday, May 22, 2013
Yankees.com: Kuroda hit hard in more ways than one vs. O’s
BALTIMORE—Right-hander Hiroki Kuroda was hit hard and forced to leave early with a bruised right calf and the Yankees never recovered, suffering a 6-3 defeat to the Orioles on Wednesday at Camden Yards.
Kuroda was charged with five runs in two-plus innings after being struck by a Manny Machado liner in the second. He recovered to finish the frame and began the third, but manager Joe Girardi lifted him after he surrendered two hits.
Rookie reliever Preston Claiborne then gave up a three-run homer to Matt Wieters, the first runs Claiborne has allowed in his brief Major League career.
Kuroda, who had been the Yankees’ most effective starter going into the evening, also served up homers to Nick Markakis and Chris Davis—Davis’ American League-leading 14th—among the eight hits he allowed.
The offense did not assemble much of an attack against Orioles starter Jason Hammel, who held the Yankees to two runs and six hits over 6 2/3 innings.
Annoying way to end an annoying series, but it sounds like Kuroda’s injury is not serious so that’s good.
Sunday, May 12, 2013
Yankees.com: Yankees roll to fifth straight win, sweep Royals
KANSAS CITY—Robinson Cano and Vernon Wells hit back-to-back homers, and Hiroki Kuroda pitched into the eighth inning as the Yankees won their fifth straight contest on Sunday, defeating the Royals, 4-2, at Kauffman Stadium.
Kuroda picked up his third victory in his last four outings, and Cano and Wells teamed for the damage against Royals starter Ervin Santana, who permitted four runs in 6 1/3 innings.
Cano blasted a two-run shot over the right-field bullpen—using a pink Mother’s Day bat—in the third inning, his team-leading 10th of the season, and Wells followed with his ninth home run.
Wells tacked on a fifth-inning RBI single to support Kuroda, who limited Kansas City to two runs in his effort as the Yankees completed the three-game sweep.
I didn’t get to see any of the games in this series but yay sweep.
Tuesday, May 7, 2013
Yankees.com: Kuroda’s one mistake at Colorado one too many
DENVER—Yankees manager Joe Girardi played for the Rockies in 1995, the year Coors Field opened. Before Tuesday night’s 2-0 loss, he recalled an abundance of 11-10 games that have become far less frequent since a humidor was installed in 2002.
Girardi cited the Rockies’ 3.86 ERA at home entering Tuesday—virtually identical to their 3.88 road ERA—as proof that Coors Field now plays differently. Hours later, Girardi had hard proof as the Rockies took the series opener.
The humidor notwithstanding, a taut pitchers’ duel is still a rarity here. But Hiroki Kuroda and Rockies left-hander Jorge De La Rosa matched zeros in a steady rain that was hard at times until Carlos Gonzalez hit a two-run homer in the sixth.
Kuroda, who worked seven innings, had allowed two homers in 36 innings through his first six starts of the season. He yielded two hits and had retired nine straight batters before Josh Rutledge singled with two outs in the sixth. Gonzalez followed with his seventh home run, driving Kuroda’s 3-2 fastball into the Rockies’ bullpen in right-center. Michael Cuddyer and Todd Helton followed with singles, but Nolan Arenado lined out to right to end the inning.
This game could have gone 18 innings and the Yankees would not have scored. The lineup’s weakness is really exposed without Travis Hafner in there, but luckily there are only 5 more stupid National League games left on this trip.
Tuesday, April 30, 2013
Yankees.com: Wobbly early, Kuroda settles to stymie Astros
NEW YORK—The box score doesn’t tell the whole story for Hiroki Kuroda, who seemed to be in danger in each of the first three innings, then figured out a way to cruise for the rest of his night.
The veteran right-hander may have flailed early as he searched for the command of his stuff, but he finished with seven scoreless innings of four-hit ball to help the Yankees defeat the Astros, 7-4, on Tuesday at Yankee Stadium.
The Astros had their chances early but stranded seven men against Kuroda through the first three innings, which required 67 pitches. Kuroda righted himself with a six-pitch fourth inning and finished with a season-high eight strikeouts in a 108-pitch effort, walking four.
Travis Hafner drove in two of the Yankees’ four runs against Astros starter Phil Humber, who permitted nine hits in a 94-pitch outing that featured four wild pitches as well as two walks and two strikeouts.
Hafner drove home Brett Gardner with a first-inning RBI single, a sinking liner to left field that Brandon Barnes trapped on a dive, then knocked in Ichiro Suzuki with a run-scoring hit up the middle in the third inning. Hafner’s third and final RBI single came in the bottom of the eighth.
Kuroda looked awful over the first three innings but settled down nicely and it was nice to see Ichiro and Nun-E showing some signs of life. With Curtis Granderson working his way back, Ichiro may be playing for his job.
Thursday, April 25, 2013
Yankees.com: Yanks knock three homers to make winner of Kuroda
NEW YORK—Robinson Cano belted a three-run homer, Vernon Wells and Francisco Cervelli also cleared the fences, and the Yankees outslugged the Blue Jays, 5-3, on Thursday at Yankee Stadium.
The trio of blasts came off Toronto starter Mark Buehrle in support of right-hander Hiroki Kuroda, who settled in after a shaky beginning to complete six innings and log his third victory of the season.
Edwin Encarnacion opened the scoring with a two-run homer off Kuroda in the first inning, and Brett Lawrie slugged a solo shot in the second to put the Jays up by three runs. Kuroda adjusted and held the Blue Jays to a total of six hits, walking one and striking out three.
Wells hit the first homer off Buehrle, going deep to center field in the second inning, and Cano gave New York the lead when he homered to right field with Jayson Nix and Brett Gardner onboard in the third.
Cervelli completed the power display by homering to left field in the fourth off Buehrle, who permitted seven hits in 5 1/3 innings. The lefty walked none and struck out three, taking his first loss in a Toronto uniform.
Kuroda was due for a clunker but he recovered nicely from the first two innings to keep the game close enough for Cano to do his thing and the bullpen was stellar to get through the last three. I thought Mo looked the best he’s looked so far this year. His command was great and his velocity seems to be improving.
Wells continues to defy expectations, and while I thought Francisco Cervelli had a chance to hit well enough for a catcher, he’s been much better than that. We shouldn’t expect either to last, but that doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy it while it’s happening.
I know this team still stinks, but they’re kind of fun to watch.
Monday, April 15, 2013
2013 Yankees bWAR through April 14
| Player | WAR |
| Francisco Cervelli | 0.9 |
| Vernon Wells | 0.8 |
| Andy Pettitte | 0.8 |
| Robinson Cano | 0.6 |
| CC Sabathia | 0.6 |
| Travis Hafner | 0.4 |
| Kevin Youkilis | 0.4 |
| Hiroki Kuroda | 0.4 |
| Brett Gardner | 0.3 |
| Adam Warren | 0.2 |
| Lyle Overbay | 0.1 |
| David Phelps | 0.1 |
| Mariano Rivera | 0.1 |
| David Robertson | 0.1 |
| Brennan Boesch | 0.0 |
| Chris Stewart | 0.0 |
| Eduardo Nunez | -0.1 |
| Joba Chamberlain | -0.1 |
| Boone Logan | -0.1 |
| Ivan Nova | -0.1 |
| Ben Francisco | -0.2 |
| Jayson Nix | -0.2 |
| Ichiro Suzuki | -0.2 |
| Shawn Kelley | -0.2 |
| Cody Eppley | -0.3 |
| Phil Hughes | -0.4 |
| Position Player Total | 2.8 |
| Pitching Total | 1.1 |
| Team Total | 3.9 |
A replacement level team would win something like 4 out of 11 games, so the Yankees should be about 7-4 or 8-3 according to this.
Sunday, April 14, 2013
Yankees.com: Masterful Kuroda gets help from Gardner’s bat
NEW YORK—Hiroki Kuroda sailed through nine scoreless innings in a masterful performance, leading the Yankees to a 3-0 victory over the Orioles on Sunday evening at Yankee Stadium.
Brett Gardner clanged a two-run homer off the right-field foul pole to provide the biggest blast of the night and help the Yankees take the rubber game of the three-game set with the Orioles and secure their fifth victory in six games.
Kuroda erased any lingering concerns about the right finger he bruised in his first start of the season, as he was in command all night, scattering five hits and not permitting an Oriole to touch second base until the ninth.
Outstanding game by Kuroda tonight. And kudos to Joe Girardi for letting him finish it off despite having the greatest closer of all time waiting in the wings in what was a save situation.
Monday, April 8, 2013
Yankees.com: Cano, Pronk help Yanks break out in Cleveland
CLEVELAND—Robinson Cano homered twice and Travis Hafner celebrated his return to Progressive Field by homering and driving in four runs as the Yankees spoiled the Indians’ home opener with an 11-6 victory on Monday.
Cano blasted out of a 3-for-23 slump with his first extra-base hits of the year, doubling and homering off Ubaldo Jimenez and going deep again off Matt Albers in the sixth in his 11th career multihomer game.
The Yankees took a quick lead in the top of the first on Hafner’s welcome-back blast, a three-run homer that cleared the center-field fence and marked the slugger’s 100th career homer at Progressive Field.
Yankees right-hander Hiroki Kuroda overcame a shaky opening inning to complete 5 1/3 frames, holding Cleveland to just the three runs it scored against him in the first, when Jason Kipnis, Michael Brantley and Mark Reynolds drove in runs to tie the game.
In walking four, Kuroda never seemed particularly sharp, and he appeared to be affected by the bruised right middle finger that knocked him out of his first start of the season. Still, he held the Tribe to five hits and struck out six in a 111-pitch outing, retiring seven of the last eight batters he faced.
It was ugly, but it’s a win. I do have to say that so far the middle of the bullpen has not distinguished itself and that’s something that will bear watching going forward.
Wednesday, April 3, 2013
Yankees.com: Injury-plagued Yankees fall to Red Sox
NEW YORK—The last thing the injury-plagued Yankees need right now is another scare, but that was what they received when starter Hiroki Kuroda was forced to exit in the second inning after taking a line drive off his pitching hand.
The team announced that Kuroda suffered a bruised right middle finger, with further examinations to come. The Yankees never recovered from the early blow, suffering a 7-4 loss to the Red Sox on Wednesday at Yankee Stadium.
With Kuroda heading for X-rays, reliever Cody Eppley was charged with four runs in 1 1/3 innings of work before Adam Warren restored order, limiting Boston to a run over 5 1/3 innings of long relief.
This game was basically lost when Joe Girardi allowed Eppley to face three lefty hitters, each of whom singled. I don’t know that the Yankees would have won if Warren started the third, but they sure weren’t going to win after that top of the third. I suppose if you’re looking at getting six innings from your bullpen trying to get through one with Eppley made some sense. He probably should have been pulled after Victorino’s single, but he wasn’t.
Let’s hope Andy Pettitte can throw a shutout tomorrow.
Monday, April 1, 2013
Lohud: Rapada DFA as Yankees set Opening Day roster
To open a spot on the Yankees 40-man roster, lefty Clay Rapada has been designated for assignment. The move clears the way for Lyle Overbay to make the Opening Day roster. Here’s the roster.
Unless Rapada’s injury is more serious than the Yankees have let on, I really don’t get keeping Cody Eppley over him. Rapada’s a player who has a very limited role, but he’s really good at it. Eppley’s role is similar, but he’s not as good at it and there’s less of a need for it.
Chad Jennings runs through the 25 man roster and here it is.
ROTATION
52 CC Sabathia
18 Hiroki Kuroda
46 Andy Pettitte
47 Ivan Nova
41 David PhelpsBULLPEN
42 Mariano Rivera
30 Dave Robertson
62 Joba Chamberlain
48 Boone Logan
27 Shawn Kelley
38 Cody Eppley
43 Adam WarrenCATCHERS
29 Francisco Cervelli
19 Chris StewartINFIELDERS
55 Lyle Overbay
24 Robinson Cano
36 Kevin Youkilis
26 Eduardo Nunez
17 Jayson Nix
33 Travis HafnerOUTFIELDERS
11 Brett Gardner
31 Ichiro Suzuki
12 Vernon Wells
45 Ben Francisco
22 Brennan Boesch15-DAY DISABLED LIST
65 Phil Hughes
2 Derek Jeter
25 Mark Teixeira
14 Curtis Granderson60-DAY DISABLED LIST
71 Cesar Cabral
35 Michael Pineda
13 Alex Rodriguez
That doesn’t look like a division-winner to me.
Monday, March 25, 2013
Looking Ahead to 2013 - CC Sabathia and Hiroki Kuroda
All due respect to Vernon Wells, we’ve got a week until Opening Day and I still have a pitching staff, team and league to project (and of course pie charts) so it’s time to move on.
In the interest of time, I’m doubling up on the pitchers and I’m not going to bother with their 2012 projections compared to their actuals.
For the first time in his Yankee career, CC Sabathia missed some starts. In fact, he wound up on the disabled list twice. Once for a groin strain in June and then again in August due to elbow soreness. He returned from the second stint and finished out the season, highlighted by a dominant nine innings to beat Baltimore in the clinching game of the ALDS, but he followed that with a brutal start against Detroit in the ALCS and after the season got arthroscopic surgery on his elbow to remove a bone spur.
Sabathia’s velocity was down by about 1.5 mph from 2011. His BB rate and K rate actually both improved from 2011 to 2012, but he gave up more homers. I don’t know if the bone spur affected his velocity, but let’s hope he can get some of that back.
For the first time in his Yankee career, Sabathia was not the Yankees’ most valuable pitcher. Hiroki Kuroda ended up being the most valuable pitcher and second most valuable player on the team. Kuroda made a seamless transition to the better league and into a disgraceful bandbox, putting up a career best ERA+ in a career-high 219.2 innings. Over his first nine starts it seemed like he was going to be unable to do that as he put up a 4.56 ERA over 53 innings with 20 walks and 34 strikeouts while allowing 10 homers. After that he was sublime, finishing up with a 2.92 ERA over his last 166.1 innings while walking 31, striking out 133 and allowing 15 homers.
What do the projections expect this season?
2013 Projections - Sabathia
| Projection | IP | H | R | ER | HR | BB | HBP | SO | RA | ERA | FIP | WAR |
| cairo | 210 | 206 | 90 | 79 | 21 | 54 | 7 | 186 | 3.83 | 3.37 | 3.42 | 4.5 |
| davenport | 210.3 | 206 | 92 | 90 | 24 | 53 | 7 | 192 | 3.94 | 3.85 | 3.56 | 4.2 |
| marcel | 184 | 174 | 78 | 69 | 18 | 49 | 6 | 172 | 3.82 | 3.38 | 3.35 | 4.0 |
| oliver | 221 | 205 | 92 | 81 | 17 | 55 | 7 | 209 | 3.73 | 3.30 | 3.00 | 5.0 |
| steamer | 219 | 206 | 97 | 86 | 19 | 57 | 7 | 190 | 4.00 | 3.53 | 3.32 | 4.3 |
| zips | 202.3 | 193 | 87 | 81 | 20 | 52 | 3 | 184 | 3.87 | 3.60 | 3.33 | 4.2 |
| average | 208 | 198 | 89 | 81 | 20 | 53 | 6 | 189 | 3.86 | 3.51 | 3.33 | 4.4 |
| 2012 | 200 | 184 | 89 | 75 | 22 | 44 | 8 | 197 | 4.01 | 3.38 | 3.29 | 3.9 |
RA: Runs allowed (earned + unearned) per nine innings
FIP: Fielding-independent pitching
WAR: Wins above replacement (using RA)
Sabathia’s average projection is expecting him to be about a half-win better in 2013.
2013 Projections - Kuroda
| Projection | IP | H | R | ER | HR | BB | HBP | SO | RA | ERA | FIP | WAR |
| cairo | 184 | 185 | 85 | 78 | 22 | 45 | 6 | 136 | 4.17 | 3.78 | 3.93 | 3.2 |
| davenport | 193.3 | 195 | 88 | 87 | 25 | 48 | 6 | 156 | 4.10 | 4.05 | 3.96 | 3.5 |
| marcel | 190 | 185 | 80 | 74 | 22 | 50 | 6 | 149 | 3.78 | 3.50 | 3.87 | 4.2 |
| oliver | 204 | 198 | 92 | 85 | 21 | 52 | 6 | 158 | 4.05 | 3.75 | 3.70 | 3.8 |
| steamer | 197 | 201 | 96 | 89 | 20 | 53 | 6 | 138 | 4.40 | 4.07 | 3.87 | 3.0 |
| zips | 186 | 192 | 94 | 88 | 26 | 45 | 3 | 136 | 4.55 | 4.26 | 4.18 | 2.5 |
| average | 193 | 193 | 89 | 83 | 23 | 49 | 6 | 145 | 4.17 | 3.90 | 3.91 | 3.4 |
| 2012 | 219.2 | 205 | 86 | 81 | 25 | 51 | 8 | 167 | 3.53 | 3.33 | 3.82 | 5.4 |
The projections are expecting a big drop with Kuroda this year. His peripherals in 2012 indicate that he may have been a bit lucky but he’s got a career ERA of 3.42 vs. a career FIP of 3.62 and a career BABIP against of .282 (vs. around .304 for league average) so he may have some skill there. Anyway, Kuroda seems to be a unique pitcher. No starter from Japan’s NPB has been able to translate as well as he has in his career, and the fact that he’s done it from ages 33-37 makes it even more impressive.
CAIRO Percentile Forecasts - Sabathia
| Percentile | IP | H | R | ER | HR | BB | HBP | SO | RA | ERA | FIP | WAR |
| 80% | 231 | 211 | 88 | 77 | 18 | 51 | 5 | 220 | 3.43 | 2.99 | 2.87 | 6.0 |
| 65% | 221 | 209 | 89 | 78 | 19 | 53 | 6 | 203 | 3.63 | 3.18 | 3.14 | 5.2 |
| Baseline | 210 | 206 | 90 | 79 | 21 | 54 | 7 | 186 | 3.83 | 3.37 | 3.42 | 4.5 |
| 35% | 168 | 171 | 75 | 67 | 18 | 46 | 7 | 144 | 4.04 | 3.56 | 3.70 | 3.2 |
| 20% | 126 | 132 | 59 | 53 | 15 | 37 | 6 | 104 | 4.24 | 3.75 | 3.97 | 2.1 |
I’m optimistic that CC will be in that 65% area with the removal of the bone spur.
CAIRO Percentile Forecasts - Kuroda
| Percentile | IP | H | R | ER | HR | BB | HBP | SO | RA | ERA | FIP | WAR |
| 80% | 221 | 206 | 91 | 82 | 20 | 46 | 4 | 177 | 3.72 | 3.35 | 3.33 | 5.0 |
| 65% | 203 | 196 | 89 | 80 | 21 | 46 | 5 | 156 | 3.94 | 3.57 | 3.63 | 4.1 |
| Baseline | 184 | 185 | 85 | 78 | 22 | 45 | 6 | 136 | 4.17 | 3.78 | 3.93 | 3.2 |
| 35% | 148 | 154 | 72 | 66 | 19 | 39 | 6 | 104 | 4.39 | 4.00 | 4.24 | 2.2 |
| 20% | 111 | 119 | 57 | 52 | 16 | 31 | 5 | 74 | 4.62 | 4.21 | 4.54 | 1.4 |
I don’t think Kuroda can repeat 2012. I do think he can beat the baseline projection though.
Starting pitching is probably the deepest area on the Yankees, but these are the two key guys. I think Andy Pettitte can approximate Kuroda on a rate basis, but he hasn’t thrown a full season since 2009. If CC can return to something approximating his 2011 form and Kuroda doesn’t lose much from 2012, the Yankees will be able to lose quite a few 1-0 games instead of 2-0 games.
Saturday, December 15, 2012
NY Times: Youkilis, 33, Adds Youth to Yankees’ Acquisitions
Remarkably, Youkilis becomes the Yankees’ youngest major signing of the off-season, joining Mariano Rivera (43), Andy Pettitte (40) and Hiroki Kuroda (37).
The appeal to the Yankees with older players is short-term contracts that do not limit what the Yankees can do in 2014, the year they are aiming to be under the $189 million luxury tax threshold. For the older players, even a former Red Sox fan favorite like Youkilis, the appeal is the chance to play for a contending team.
Hey Cliff Lee, see, the Yankees aren’t old.
Friday, December 14, 2012
NYDN: Ichiro Suzuki and Yankees are closing in on two-year contract to keep veteran in Bronx
It’s not much of a surprise that Ichiro Suzuki is going to be returning to the Yankees in 2013.
But 2014, too?
The Yankees and Ichiro were closing in on a two-year contract worth between $12 million-$13 million, a deal that will keep the veteran outfielder in pinstripes through his 41st birthday.
I’m having a tough time reconciling the fact that the Yankees are willing to go two years on Ichiro while targeting a payroll of $189M in 2014. Ichiro would probably project to be worth about the two wins over two seasons he needs to be to make the contract reasonable, but if you can’t produce a one win player for less than $6M what the hell are you doing?
Ichiro may have some impact in revenue and marketing beyond his on-the-field value as he moves towards 3000 MLB hits, but it’s highly unlikely he gets there by the end of 2014. So it’s tough to justify the contract in that regard.
This means that the Yankees have $6M less to play with in 2014 for a team that’s likely to have a lot of holes. They have to replace/re-sign some combination of Mariano Rivera/Phil Hughes/Hiroki Kuroda/Andy Pettitte/Curtis Granderson/Kevin Youkilis/Robinson Cano or they’re likely looking at a 70-75 win team.
Can they do that? Time will tell.
Friday, November 30, 2012
NY Times: Martin Leaves the Yankees for the Pirates
Russell Martin’s two-year tenure with the Yankees ended Thursday when he agreed to a two-year, $17 million deal with the Pittsburgh Pirates, leaving the Yankees without a No. 1 catcher.
“I had a great time in New York,” Martin said by phone from Montreal, his hometown. “It was probably the best baseball experience of my life. But this is the business, and it was time to move on.”
It seems to me the Yankees could have matched this deal and I’m not sure why they didn’t. If it would have taken three years to keep Martin I’d have felt better about letting him walk, but at 2 years and $17M he only has to be worth about 3 wins over two years to be worth it.
We got spoiled by the elite offense that Jorge Posada provided for years as a catcher that makes it a bit harder to appreciate Martin I think. No, he’s not a great hitter, but neither are the majority of catchers in baseball and there’s pretty some evidence that Martin’s defense makes him even more valuable than his basic stats indicate.
I think this confirms that getting to the target of a $189M payroll in 2014 may be the Yankees #1 focus right now, and that’s going to make it a bit harder to build a super team for 2013. Of course, you don’t need a super team to win a World Series, but it helps.
I’m not sure where the Yankees will go from here. I’d be surprised if the starting catcher on Opening Day is on the roster right now. Here’s the list of free agent catchers and how CAIRO would project them as Yankees.
| Last | First | Age | Pos | Tm | Lg | PA | AB | H | 2B | 3B | HR | BB | SO | GDP | avg | obp | slg | wOBA | BR | BR/650 | BRAR | oWAR |
| Napoli | Mike | 32 | C | NYA | AL | 394 | 342 | 86 | 16 | 1 | 22 | 44 | 98 | 9 | .250 | .344 | .493 | .360 | 55 | 91 | 29 | 2.9 |
| Pierzynski | A.J. | 37 | C | NYA | AL | 458 | 424 | 114 | 20 | 2 | 12 | 22 | 53 | 12 | .270 | .309 | .412 | .313 | 49 | 69 | 18 | 1.8 |
| Blanco | Henry | 42 | C | NYA | AL | 168 | 152 | 36 | 7 | 0 | 6 | 14 | 35 | 3 | .234 | .298 | .396 | .304 | 17 | 67 | 6 | 0.6 |
| Shoppach | Kelly | 33 | C | NYA | AL | 287 | 251 | 54 | 10 | 1 | 11 | 23 | 90 | 4 | .214 | .299 | .387 | .303 | 29 | 66 | 10 | 1.0 |
| Snyder | Chris | 32 | C | NYA | AL | 237 | 202 | 43 | 7 | 0 | 8 | 30 | 57 | 5 | .213 | .319 | .366 | .308 | 24 | 65 | 8 | 0.8 |
| Barajas | Rod | 38 | C | NYA | AL | 315 | 286 | 64 | 11 | 0 | 12 | 19 | 60 | 5 | .225 | .280 | .391 | .291 | 30 | 62 | 9 | 0.9 |
| Olivo | Miguel | 35 | C | NYA | AL | 436 | 410 | 95 | 18 | 1 | 18 | 20 | 120 | 8 | .231 | .265 | .415 | .290 | 41 | 62 | 13 | 1.3 |
| Schneider | Brian | 37 | C | NYA | AL | 160 | 143 | 31 | 6 | 0 | 3 | 13 | 30 | 4 | .219 | .291 | .335 | .281 | 13 | 54 | 3 | 0.3 |
| Treanor | Matt | 37 | C | NYA | AL | 183 | 157 | 33 | 5 | 1 | 3 | 20 | 36 | 3 | .211 | .304 | .312 | .282 | 15 | 52 | 3 | 0.3 |
| Nickeas | Mike | 30 | C | NYA | AL | 267 | 239 | 54 | 11 | 0 | 4 | 24 | 49 | 6 | .224 | .298 | .315 | .279 | 21 | 52 | 4 | 0.4 |
| Paulino | Carlos | 24 | C | NYA | AL | 305 | 287 | 62 | 14 | 1 | 4 | 14 | 58 | 7 | .215 | .257 | .310 | .252 | 20 | 42 | -1 | -0.1 |
BR: Linear weights batting runs
BR/650: BR pro-rated to 650 PA
BRAR: BR above replacement level, adjusted for position
oWAR: Offensive wins above replacement (BRAR divided by 10, although maybe it should be more like 9.5 now)
Not a particularly inspired bunch.
Napoli’s almost certainly not an option, and I’m guessing Pierzynski will want(and get) two years. So he’s not an option either. I don’t even know if Henry Blanco is still playing and I’m not sure why CAIRO thinks so highly of a 42 year old catcher, although I guess it probably has to do with him being utilized in a way that plays to his strengths which makes his rate stats better. He’s not a starter anyway. Actually, almost none of these guys are except for Pierzynski and Olivo.
So maybe someone like Olivo, Shoppach, Barajas or Snyder will be on their radar, with an eye on anyone who may get non-tendered.
I don’t know that it’s a huge deal. I ran some projections last night that have the Yankees as around an 89 win team right now. Considering they were an 80 win team if they had done nothing and have since re-signed Hiroki Kuroda (4.8 wins), Andy Pettitte (2.8 wins) and Mariano Rivera (1.0 win without leverage, maybe 1.5 with) that seems about right. They can probably add a win or two in RF if they can’t upgrade catcher. I’m also assuming Michael Pineda won’t pitch this year, so if by some miracle he’s able to contribute in the second half that could add a win or two.
For whatever it’s worth at this early stage(ie, not a whole hell of a lot), I’ve got Toronto at around 88 wins assuming relatively good health from Jose Bautista, Jose Reyes and Josh Johnson but between Bautista’s wrist, Reyes’s hamstrings on turf and Josh Johnson’s injury history that may be somewhat optimistic. The Rays are at around 86 wins but they can add a bat and get to 90 wins pretty easily by upgrading 1B or the OF (or both). The Orioles are in the 77 win range, and Boston’s bringing up the rear as they should be at about 74 wins. Of course those teams aren’t done with their offseasons yet so all of this is subject to change.
Tuesday, November 20, 2012
CBS Sports: Yankees sign Hiroki Kuroda to 1-year, $15 million deal
Hiroki Kuroda will stay in New York, agreeing to a one-year deal, CBSSports.com Insider Jon Heyman confirms.
The deal is worth $15 million. ESPN’s Buster Olney reports it also includes less than $1 million in incentives.
Kuroda, 37, was 16-11 with a 3.32 ERA last season in his first year with the Yankees. In five big-league seasons with the Yankees and Dodgers, he’s 57-57 with a 3.42 ERA.
This is probably the most crucial move the Yankees could have made while maintaining their goal of a $189M payroll in 2014. Hopefully this spurs Andy Pettitte into deciding to come back as well.
CAIRO isn’t expecting a repeat of 2012, but it still sees him being worth more than four wins in 2013 and that’s probably worth $20-25M.
Friday, November 16, 2012
TGS LA: Dodgers may have an edge for Hiroki Kuroda
There might be a reason why the Los Angeles Angels have reportedly gotten involved in trying to sign free agent pitcher Hiroki Kuroda.
Previously, teams have been under the impression that Kuroda would either re-sign with the New York Yankees or return to his native Japan to finish his career. But Kuroda has told friends that his first preference is to pitch in Southern California, where his two daughters are attending elementary school.
Kind of tough to compete with family reasons. Not bringing Kuroda back is likely to have about as big of an impact on the Yankees plans as their failure to sign Cliff Lee a couple of years ago. Let’s hope that this time they have an actual Plan B.
Monday, November 12, 2012
CBS Sports: Heyman: Yankees have faith they can keep Mo, Kuroda and Pettitte
The Yankees have faith they can make deals with pitchers Mariano Rivera, Hiroki Kuroda and Andy Pettitte—surely more faith than they can do a deal with Rafael Soriano at the moment.
The Yankees expect to try to work something out with Rivera in the coming week, especially now that Soriano has rejected the $13.3-million qualifying offer. The club’s hope is to get Rivera done at a bit of a pay cut from his $15-million 2012 salary, as he is 43 and coming back from a knee injury.
The Yankees seem to have a fair amount of hope, too, that Kuroda will stay with them on a one-year deal, especially if he desides to stay in the states. The team sees Japan as its major competition, not the Red Sox or even nouveau riche Dodgers, who are among the interested teams in the majors. The Yankees would enhance the $13.3-million offer Kuroda rejected a bit if it meant keeping Kuroda, who is said to have enjoyed his year with the Yankees and is very willing to do a one-year deal.
I can’t imagine the Yankees would even be considering re-signing Soriano but I suppose Boras’s mouthpiece needs to leave the possibility open. To me, Kuroda is the key to the offseason. They don’t have to commit to him past 2013 and CAIRO thinks he’s the best available free agent starting pitcher for 2013, even better than Zack Greinke. There’s pretty much no other way the Yankees can add four wins without either trading something of value or going beyond 2013 for a contract.
Friday, November 9, 2012
MLB Daily Dish: Bourn, Upton, Soriano, Swisher to reject qualifying offers
Of the eight players that still have qualifying offers on the table, outfielders Michael Bourn, B.J. Upton and Nick Swisher, as well as reliever Rafael Soriano, are expected to decline their offers and take their chances on receiving multi-year offers on the open market, according to various sources.
I was worried that Soriano would accept but was reasonably certain Swisher would not. We’ll know later today if Hiroki Kuroda accepts his, which I’m hoping for. So the Yankees get two compensation picks, which they’ll surely use on players that will end up not doing anything.
Friday, October 19, 2012
2012 Yankees Final Postseason Stats
| Player | PA | AB | R | H | 2B | 3B | HR | RBI | BB | SO | GDP | SB | CS | WPA | RE24 | aLI | avg | obp | slg |
| Raul Ibanez | 26 | 22 | 3 | 7 | 1 | 0 | 3 | 5 | 4 | 6 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1.19 | 3.4 | 12 | .318 | .423 | .773 |
| Eduardo Nunez | 11 | 11 | 3 | 3 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | -0.04 | 0.8 | 5.14 | .273 | .273 | .818 |
| Ichiro Suzuki | 43 | 40 | 3 | 11 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 5 | 2 | 5 | 0 | 1 | 1 | -0.33 | 0.4 | 11.7 | .275 | .310 | .400 |
| Derek Jeter | 30 | 27 | 4 | 9 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 2 | 10 | 0 | 0 | 0 | -0.11 | 0.2 | 8.7 | .333 | .379 | .444 |
| Jayson Nix | 9 | 8 | 0 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | -0.12 | -0.2 | 4.77 | .250 | .333 | .375 |
| Mark Teixeira | 40 | 32 | 2 | 9 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 8 | 3 | 1 | 1 | 0 | -0.03 | -0.5 | 11.3 | .281 | .425 | .313 |
| Brett Gardner | 8 | 8 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 0 | -0.10 | -1.3 | 4.21 | .000 | .000 | .000 |
| Russell Martin | 34 | 31 | 3 | 5 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 5 | 0 | 0 | 0 | -0.27 | -2.5 | 11.4 | .161 | .235 | .290 |
| Eric Chavez | 16 | 16 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 8 | 0 | 0 | 0 | -0.44 | -2.9 | 6.46 | .000 | .000 | .000 |
| Curtis Granderson | 33 | 30 | 1 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 16 | 0 | 2 | 0 | -0.64 | -4.3 | 11.6 | .100 | .182 | .200 |
| Robinson Cano | 41 | 40 | 1 | 3 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 4 | 1 | 6 | 1 | 0 | 0 | -0.72 | -4.7 | 11.4 | .075 | .098 | .125 |
| Nick Swisher | 34 | 30 | 0 | 5 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 3 | 10 | 2 | 0 | 0 | -0.85 | -4.8 | 10 | .167 | .235 | .233 |
| Alex Rodriguez | 27 | 25 | 1 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 12 | 1 | 0 | 0 | -0.92 | -7 | 9.19 | .120 | .185 | .120 |
| Total | 352 | 320 | 21 | 60 | 12 | 2 | 7 | 22 | 29 | 83 | 5 | 7 | 2 | -3.38 | -23 | 118 | .188 | .254 | .303 |
| Player | IP | H | R | ER | BB | SO | HR | RA | ERA | FIP | WPA | RE24 |
| Hiroki Kuroda | 16 | 10 | 5 | 5 | 1 | 14 | 2 | 2.81 | 2.81 | 3.49 | 0.422 | 4.959 |
| David Robertson | 6.3 | 3 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 7 | 1 | 1.42 | 1.42 | 2.89 | 0.578 | 2.771 |
| Phil Hughes | 9.7 | 7 | 2 | 2 | 6 | 9 | 2 | 1.86 | 1.86 | 5.74 | 0.252 | 2.624 |
| Rafael Soriano | 4.3 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 2.13 | 0.567 | 2.146 |
| Cody Eppley | 3.7 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 4 | 0 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 1.69 | 0.048 | 1.928 |
| CC Sabathia | 21 | 23 | 9 | 8 | 5 | 19 | 2 | 3.80 | 3.38 | 3.19 | 0.587 | 1.551 |
| Andy Pettitte | 14 | 14 | 5 | 5 | 4 | 10 | 0 | 3.29 | 3.29 | 2.46 | 0.018 | 1.491 |
| Clay Rapada | 1.7 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 5.45 | 0.063 | 1.431 |
| Boone Logan | 3.7 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 1.96 | -0.028 | 0.747 |
| Joba Chamberlain | 2.3 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 2.19 | 0.005 | -0.189 |
| Derek Lowe | 2 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 13.51 | 13.51 | 15.06 | -0.028 | -1.061 |
| David Phelps | 3.3 | 7 | 4 | 3 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 10.80 | 8.10 | 2.75 | -0.601 | -2.495 |
| Total | 88 | 80 | 29 | 27 | 20 | 72 | 9 | 2.97 | 2.76 | 3.49 | 1.883 | 15.903 |
WPA: Win Probability Added. Given average teams, this is the change in probability
caused by this player during games A change of +/- 1 would indicate one win added or lost.
RE24: Base-Out Runs Added -Given the bases occupied/out situation, how many runs did the player add in the resulting play. Compared to average, so 0 is average, and above 0 is better than average
WPA and RE24 give us a better idea of how the players’ performances contributed to the team’s bottom line. Both are affected by opportunity, so that should be factored in when looking at these numbers. For pitchers there’s also the impact of the defense behind them so that should also be accounted for.
I tend to like RE24 more than WPA since it doesn’t overrate timing. Here’s how the team ranked from best to worst.
| Player | RE24 |
| Hiroki Kuroda | 4.959 |
| Raul Ibanez | 3.363 |
| David Robertson | 2.771 |
| Phil Hughes | 2.624 |
| Rafael Soriano | 2.146 |
| Cody Eppley | 1.928 |
| CC Sabathia | 1.551 |
| Andy Pettitte | 1.491 |
| Clay Rapada | 1.431 |
| Eduardo Nunez | 0.821 |
| Boone Logan | 0.747 |
| Ichiro Suzuki | 0.44 |
| Derek Jeter | 0.17 |
| Joba Chamberlain | -0.19 |
| Jayson Nix | -0.25 |
| Mark Teixeira | -0.46 |
| Derek Lowe | -1.06 |
| Brett Gardner | -1.32 |
| David Phelps | -2.5 |
| Russell Martin | -2.5 |
| Eric Chavez | -2.89 |
| Curtis Granderson | -4.25 |
| Robinson Cano | -4.73 |
| Nick Swisher | -4.77 |
| Alex Rodriguez | -7.03 |
I realize a lot of people are annoyed with Alex Rodriguez being scapegoated, but the fact is no one on the Yankees hurt the team more this postseason. It doesn’t mean he’s horrible or unclutch or whatever. It’s just what happened.
But really, there’s plenty of blame to go around on the position player side. The pitching was very good, but not good enough to overcome the giant morass of awful that the team got from Russell Martin, Eric Chavez, Curtis Granderson, Robinson Cano, Nick Swisher and Rodriguez.
We’ll see a different Yankee team in 2013. I don’t know if they’ll be better, but they’ll be different. Maybe not a whole lot different, but they’ve got some flexibility and options.
Thursday, October 18, 2012
Yankees.com: Motown meltdown: Yanks eliminated in ALCS
DETROIT—The Yankees’ ice cold autumn will now give way to an uncertain winter, as their season concluded on Thursday with an 8-1 loss to the Tigers in Game 4 of the American League Championship Series at Comerica Park.
CC Sabathia was rocked for six runs in 3 2/3 innings and the Yankees were held hitless into the sixth inning by Max Scherzer, as Detroit locked up the AL pennant and will advance to the World Series against either the Cardinals or Giants.
New York was swept for the first time in 36 consecutive postseason appearances; the last one came in 1980, when the Royals wiped out the Yankees in a best-of-five ALCS that led to the dismissal of manager Dick Howser.
The positions of manager Joe Girardi and general manager Brian Cashman appear to be secure, but hitting coach Kevin Long will be asked to answer for an anemic offense that hung zeros on the scoreboard in 36 of 39 innings during the ALCS.
It’s hard to win a series when you don’t lead in a single inning in any of the games. Detroit was probably the better team heading into this series, and they sure looked like it.
It was a frustrating end to a frustrating series. It shouldn’t feel like a frustrating season because of that, although I’m sure we’ll be treated to some crap from Randy Levine about how the season was a failure.
We’ll have months to think about where they go from here. The Yankees have some decisions to make on some players, and some players have decisions to make on whether or not they want to return. I’m sure we won’t see Nick Swisher in pinstripes again. I was certain we’d see Curtis Granderson back with his option picked up next year but I’m now thinking there’s a chance we won’t. The whole Alex Rodriguez situation will dictate a lot of what the team decides to do. I’m guessing Rafael Soriano will opt out, but that’s less of a concern than getting the offense shored up and stabilizing the rotation based on what happens with Hiroki Kuroda and Andy Pettitte.
Anyway, we have months to think about that.
Monday, October 15, 2012
The Task Ahead
I am trying to assess just how deep of a hole the Yankees are now in so I figured out the win probabilities for the remaining games in the ALCS should it go seven games. I’ve assumed Game 7 would have CC Sabathia on three days rest. Here are the pitching matchups and win probabilities for each of the theoretical remaining games.
| Date | ALCS | Det | NY | Yankee Win Probability |
| 16-Oct | Game 3 | Justin Verlander | Phil Hughes | 34.2% |
| 17-Oct | Game 4 | Max Scherzer | CC Sabathia | 51.1% |
| 18-Oct | Game 5 | Doug Fister | Andy Pettitte | 44.3% |
| 20-Oct | Game 6 | Anibal Sanchez | Hiroki Kuroda | 53.1% |
| 21-Oct | Game 7 | Justin Verlander | CC Sabathia | 44.9% |
In order to win this series, the Yankees have to win four of the five remaining games. Here are the ways to achieve that with various remaining permutations of the series based on the per game win probability:
Win Games 3/4/5/6: .0411
Win Games 3/4/5/7: .034761
Win Games 3/4/6/7: .041667
Win Games 3/5/6/7: .036122
Win Games 4/5/6/7: .053972
Total: 20.8%
At this point the Yankees’ overall odds of winning this series are around 20.8%. Should they lose tomorrow that drops to 5.4%. If by some miracle they win, their chances to win the series jump up pretty significantly.
Win Games 4/5/6: .120204
Win Games 4/5/7: .101641
Win Games 4/6/7: .1213832
Win Games 5/6/7: .10562
Total: 44.9%
Can Phil Hughes beat Justin Verlander? It’s not very likely, but it could happen. Hughes has pitched reasonably well against Detroit over the last three seasons (3.56 ERA, 4.02 FIP). He’s been particularly good in his two starts at Detroit (16 IP, 1 R, 4 BB, 16 K). On the other side, the Yankees have actually hit reasonably well against Justin Verlander over the same period (3.57 ERA, 3.94 FIP). That’s not just a DNYS artifact either as he’s pitched against them four times in Comerica Park(27 IP, 30 H, 10 R, 13 BB, 30 K).
The Yankees can win tomorrow’s game. But not unless their offense does something it hasn’t done so far this series(and most of the postseason) and shows up.
You know Suzyn…
Sunday, October 14, 2012
Yankees.com: Kuroda fans 11, but offense held in check
NEW YORK—Hiroki Kuroda came back on short rest for the first time in his career and found the energy to provide an 11-strikeout effort, but it was the Yankees’ hitters who once again appeared fatigued in Game 2 of the American League Championship Series.
Anibal Sanchez limited New York to just three hits over seven scoreless innings, taking advantage of widespread brownouts through the Yankees’ batting order as the Tigers posted a 3-0 victory on Sunday, claiming a 2-0 lead in the series.
With the ALCS moving on to Detroit, the Yankees are now challenged to win at least twice at Comerica Park to ensure that Sunday’s nine innings did not comprise the final game played this year at Yankee Stadium.
You couldn’t have asked for more from Kuroda than the Yankees got. He was perfect through five innings and pitched into the eighth despite being on short rest, but as soon as the Tigers scored you got the sense the game was over. The Yankee offense was abysmal today, not even going through the charade of threatening but not scoring.
And now they head to Detroit to face the best pitcher in baseball and hope for a miracle if they don’t want to be down 3-0 in this series by Tuesday night.
Saturday, October 13, 2012
2012 ALCS Preview - Tigers vs. Yankees
It took the Yankees and Tigers the full five games for both teams to advance past the ALDS, but here they are. The problem for both teams is that they had to use their aces in the fifth game, which means they can’t start the ALCS with Justin Verlander or CC Sabathia.
The Tigers as presently constituted are better than the 88 win team in the AL Central that they were this year, at least if you believe the projections. Here’s how their offense projects over a seven game series using Oliver from the Hardball Times.
| Order | Player | Pos | PA | avg/obp/slg | woba | Outs | BR |
| 1 | Austin Jackson | CF | 31 | .279/.343/.421 | .335 | 20 | 3.9 |
| 2 | Omar Infante | 2B | 31 | .286/.315/.409 | .314 | 21 | 3.5 |
| 3 | Miguel Cabrera | 3B | 31 | .334/.415/.604 | .432 | 19 | 6.0 |
| 4 | Prince Fielder | 1B | 31 | .298/.405/.517 | .400 | 19 | 5.2 |
| 5 | Delmon Young | DH | 31 | .279/.311/.443 | .324 | 22 | 3.7 |
| 6 | Jhonny Peralta | SS | 31 | .263/.320/.413 | .320 | 22 | 3.6 |
| 7 | Andy Dirks | LF | 31 | .279/.323/.448 | .333 | 21 | 3.9 |
| 8 | Avisail Garcia | RF | 20 | .252/.279/.375 | .285 | 15 | 1.8 |
| 9 | Alex Avila | C | 25 | .260/.352/.410 | .338 | 16 | 3.1 |
| Bench | Gerald Laird | C | 7 | .244/.304/.360 | .295 | 5 | 0.7 |
| Bench | Ramon Santiago | IF | 4 | .254/.313/.351 | .295 | 3 | 0.4 |
| Bench | Danny Worth | IF | 1 | .239/.305/.357 | .294 | 1 | 0.1 |
| Bench | Don Kelly | UT | 0 | .242/.296/.376 | .295 | 0 | 0.0 |
| Bench | Quintin Berry | OF | 8 | .239/.312/.320 | .287 | 5 | 0.8 |
| Bench | Brennan Boesch | OF | 0 | .263/.317/.419 | .322 | 0 | 0.0 |
| Bench | Bryan Holaday | C | 0 | .223/.274/.331 | .267 | 0 | 0.0 |
| Total | 282 | 189 | 36.6 |
wOBA: Weighted on base average
BR: Linear weights batting runs
The Tigers obviously have the two best hitters in this series in Miguel Cabrera and Prince Fielder. The rest of the lineup is not quite as impressive. They’ve been platooning Alex Avila and Gerald Laird at catcher and Avisail Garcia and Quintin Berry in he OF, so I’ve assumed they’ll continue doing that. Defense was an issue for them for most of the year, but adding Omar Infante and getting Brennan Boesch out of the lineup seems to have helped them there quite a bit, and with Justin Verlander and Max Scherzer striking out everyone it’s probably not going to be a big problem in three of the games at least.
If we give them 27 outs per game they project to score an estimated 36.6 runs over 7 games.
Here’s how their pitching looks.
| Player | Role | IP | H | R | ER | HR | BB | K | ERA |
| Doug Fister | SP1 | 13 | 13 | 5 | 5 | 1 | 3 | 9 | 3.46 |
| Anibal Sanchez | SP2 | 12 | 12 | 6 | 5 | 1 | 4 | 10 | 4.09 |
| Justin Verlander | SP3 | 14 | 11 | 5 | 4 | 1 | 4 | 14 | 2.89 |
| Max Scherzer | SP4 | 6 | 6 | 3 | 3 | 1 | 2 | 6 | 4.02 |
| Rick Porcello | SP5 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 4.56 |
| Jose Valverde | CL | 4 | 4 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 2 | 3 | 3.70 |
| Joaquin Benoit | SU | 4 | 3 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 5 | 3.10 |
| Phil Coke | SU | 2 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 4.03 |
| Octavio Dotel | MR | 3 | 3 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 3 | 3.35 |
| Al Alburquerque | MR | 2 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 4.43 |
| Drew Smyly | MR | 3 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 3 | 4.30 |
| Darin Downs | MR | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 4.55 |
| Luis Marte | LR | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 4.31 |
| Brayan Villarreal | LR | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 4.72 |
| Total | 63 | 58 | 27 | 25 | 6 | 18 | 57 | 3.58 |
The Tigers have Doug Fister, Anibal Sanchez, Justin Verlander and Max Scherzer lined up to pitch the first four games. In theory that would mean Fister, Sanchez and Verlande would pitch games 5-7, but since those games won’t be played it doesn’t matter. The rotation is strong, with only Anibal Sanchez projecting worse than any of the starters the Orioles threw at the Yankees and he’s only .03 runs per nine worse than Jason Hammel and Wei-Yin Chen’s projections. If the Yankees had trouble with Baltimore’s starters, they’re really going to have trouble with Detroit’s.
They’ve had some issues with their closer, who projects worse than Joaquin Benoit and Octavio Dotel so it’ll be interesting to see if Jim Leyland sticks with him if he struggles in his first appearance or two. Our old friend Phil Coke is their main lefty out of the pen, although Drew Smyly provides depth there as well. You can futz around with how I assigned the bullpen innings but if you don’t they project to allow 27 runs in this series.
36.6 runs scored and 25 runs allowed equals a team that would win about 63.8% of their games, or 103.3 over a 162 game season.
How does that compare to the Yankees? Let’s see. First, the position players.
| Order | Player | Pos | PA | avg/obp/slg | woba | Outs | BR |
| 1 | Derek Jeter | SS | 31 | .299/.353/.405 | .337 | 21 | 3.8 |
| 2 | Ichiro Suzuki | LF | 31 | .289/.324/.385 | .313 | 21 | 3.5 |
| 3 | Alex Rodriguez | 3B | 25 | .271/.348/.462 | .352 | 17 | 3.5 |
| 4 | Robinson Cano | 2B | 31 | .304/.361/.530 | .381 | 20 | 4.9 |
| 5 | Mark Teixeira | 1B | 31 | .256/.346/.489 | .359 | 20 | 4.5 |
| 6 | Nick Swisher | RF | 30 | .267/.357/.463 | .357 | 20 | 4.2 |
| 7 | Curtis Granderson | CF | 30 | .249/.337/.509 | .360 | 20 | 4.5 |
| 8 | Raul Ibanez | DH | 29 | .256/.319/.454 | .334 | 20 | 3.7 |
| 9 | Russell Martin | C | 29 | .232/.323/.389 | .317 | 20 | 3.2 |
| Bench | Eric Chavez | 3B | 8 | .264/.321/.431 | .327 | 6 | 1.0 |
| Bench | Brett Gardner | OF | 0 | .266/.360/.391 | .337 | 0 | 0.0 |
| Bench | Eduardo Nunez | IF | 3 | .254/.294/.346 | .283 | 2 | 0.3 |
| Bench | Chris Stewart | C | 0 | .230/.289/.318 | .272 | 0 | 0.0 |
| Bench | Jayson Nix | IF | 3 | .216/.273/.356 | .276 | 2 | 0.3 |
| Bench | Chris Dickerson | OF | 0 | .252/.332/.384 | .319 | 0 | 0.0 |
| Bench | Andruw Jones | OF | 0 | .232/.327/.456 | .340 | 0 | 0.0 |
| Total | 281 | 189 | 37.4 |
I’m kind of hoping that Alex Rodriguez will be back in the lineup for good but I’ve given some of his PA to Eric Chavez in case. With Detroit’s rotation all right-handed, the Shockmaster™ should be mostly full-time. We may see Nun-E and Nixy a few times so I threw them a few PA as well. With these assumptions they’d project to score a bit less than one run more than the Tigers over seven games. Of course, they’ll have to hit a lot better than they hit in the ALDS to even sniff that number.
The pitching is a mess. By blowing Game 4, the Yankees lost the option to start CC in Game 1. The good news is they have Andy Pettitte fully rested to start Game 1. Unfortunately, they have no one else from the ALDS rotation who can start on full rest in Game 2. They could try Hiroki Kuroda on three days rest but he’s never started on three days rest and I don’t think they’ll go that route. My guess is they’ll use David Phelps with Derek Lowe caddying him in Game 2 and hope for the best, then bring back CC on three days rest to match up against Verlander in Game 3. That would set him up to pitch in the theoretical Game 7 that won’t happen since Detroit’s going to sweep but let’s let our imaginations run wild.
So my guess at the rotation is something like: Andy Pettitte, David Phelps, CC Sabathia, Hiroki Kuroda, Phil Hughes, Andy Pettitte, CC Sabathia.
The order could change. Pettitte would have four days rest before Game 5 so he could start that one. I’m more concerned about how the innings get allocated than the order for this so let’s press on.
| Player | Role | IP | H | R | ER | HR | BB | K | ERA |
| Andy Pettitte | SP1 | 12 | 11 | 5 | 5 | 1 | 3 | 10 | 3.58 |
| Hiroki Kuroda | SP2 | 6 | 6 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 5 | 3.67 |
| CC Sabathia | SP3 | 13 | 12 | 5 | 5 | 1 | 3 | 12 | 3.44 |
| Phil Hughes | SP4 | 5 | 5 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 4 | 4.22 |
| David Phelps | SP5 | 5 | 5 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 2 | 4 | 4.06 |
| Rafael Soriano | CL | 4 | 3 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 4 | 3.41 |
| David Robertson | SU | 5 | 4 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 2 | 6 | 3.46 |
| Boone Logan | SU | 3 | 3 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 3 | 3.99 |
| Joba Chamberlain | MR | 3 | 3 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 3 | 4.14 |
| Clay Rapada | MR | 2 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 3.62 |
| Derek Lowe | MR | 5 | 6 | 3 | 3 | 0 | 2 | 3 | 4.64 |
| Cody Eppley | MR | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 4.15 |
| Freddy Garcia | LR | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 4.74 |
| Ivan Nova | LR | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 4.60 |
| Total | 63 | 60 | 28 | 26 | 7 | 20 | 56 | 3.76 |
Because of the mess that is the rotation I gave Derek Lowe more innings than I’d typically give a long reliever and the worst projected pitcher on the staff. It shouldn’t make a huge difference on the bottom line though.
Based on this playing time the Yankees figure to allow around 28 runs, which makes them a roughly 62.7%/101.6 win team.
Detroit has a slight edge at .638 vs. .621. Having home field advantage gives the Yankees about a .006 boost, so you’ve got something like a .633 team playing a .624 team. Given that, here’s what my playoff simulator says for this series.
Yankees: 49.7%
Tigers: 50.3%
The Tigers are slight favorites, but it’s basically a tossup. It’d be nice for the Yankees to avenge the last two times Detroit knocked them out of the playoffs, but I’m not betting on that happening.
Wednesday, October 10, 2012
Yankees.com: The Shockmaster™ Shocks the World
NEW YORK—Raul Ibanez stepped in for Alex Rodriguez and delivered a game-tying ninth-inning home run, then slammed the game-winner in the 12th inning as the Yankees stunned the Orioles with a 3-2 victory in Game 3 of the American League Division Series on Wednesday night.
Manager Joe Girardi’s bold call to lift Rodriguez, his slumping $29 million slugger, in favor of Ibanez against O’s closer Jim Johnson will prove to be the main talking point as the Yankees batted away a sluggish evening to claim a 2-1 lead in the best-of-five ALDS.
Sunday, October 7, 2012
2012 ALDS Preview - Orioles vs. Yankees
After battling down to the wire, the Yankees were able to stave off the Orioles to win the AL East by two games. Their reward for that is to play the Orioles on the road for two games to start the ALDS.
All season long, we’ve heard/read/said that the Orioles were not for real, that they were lucky and that they were due to crash at any point. That was mainly a function of a run differential that was negative for almost the entire season as well as seemingly unsustainable records in both one run games (29-9) and extra inning games (16-2). In general, teams approach about .500 in those games although having a strong bullpen can help a team win a higher percentage of close games and that’s something the Orioles have had all season.
None of what the 2012 Orioles got lucky with matters right now. The only thing that matters is how good the 25 man roster they will have for the ALDS is, and how it may match up against the Yankees. Because of that, I’m going to look at projections for the Orioles and Yankees which will account for their performances this year as well as in recent prior seasons. This will account for the fact that some players may have over/under performed expectations and are possibly better or worse than their 2012 numbers, but more importantly it will account for the fact that the rosters and playing time distributions in a five game series are a lot different than they are in a 162 game season and simply comparing two teams’ over 2012 Pythagenpat records is the height of laziness when it comes to statistical analysis. Well that or using FIP for pitcher WAR. But I digress.
For the projections, I’m using Oliver from the Hardball Times. They’ve been updated as of last week and include 2012 MLEs for players that spent time in the minors so I feel they are the most complete version of forecasts available right now.
So, as I mentioned, it’s all about rosters and playing time. Based on what is out there, here is my rough guess at those two things. First up, the Orioles’ lineup and bench.
| Team | BAL | projection | oliver | ||||
| Order | Player | Pos | PA | avg/obp/slg | woba | Outs | BR |
| 1 | Nate McLouth | LF | 22 | .238/.325/.388 | .317 | 15 | 2.5 |
| 2 | J.J. Hardy | SS | 22 | .255/.297/.428 | .312 | 16 | 2.5 |
| 3 | Chris Davis | RF | 21 | .278/.331/.494 | .354 | 14 | 3.0 |
| 4 | Adam Jones | CF | 21 | .289/.330/.485 | .350 | 14 | 2.9 |
| 5 | Matt Wieters | C | 21 | .256/.325/.428 | .329 | 15 | 2.5 |
| 6 | Jim Thome | DH | 15 | .276/.379/.558 | .400 | 10 | 2.6 |
| 7 | Mark Reynolds | 1B | 21 | .229/.335/.481 | .352 | 14 | 2.9 |
| 8 | Manny Machado | 3B | 21 | .249/.300/.393 | .303 | 15 | 2.2 |
| 9 | Ryan Flaherty | 2B | 12 | .247/.298/.400 | .304 | 9 | 1.3 |
| Bench | Luis Exposito | C | 0 | .232/.289/.360 | .287 | 0 | 0.0 |
| Bench | Taylor Teagarden | C | 0 | .202/.273/.337 | .272 | 0 | 0.0 |
| Bench | Omar Quintanilla | IF | 1 | .247/.304/.386 | .302 | 1 | 0.1 |
| Bench | Robert Andino | UT | 8 | .243/.297/.351 | .288 | 6 | 0.7 |
| Bench | Lew Ford | OF | 8 | .273/.330/.460 | .342 | 6 | 1.1 |
| Bench | Xavier Avery | OF | 1 | .233/.292/.328 | .276 | 1 | 0.1 |
| Bench | Endy Chavez | OF | 2 | .258/.295/.359 | .287 | 1 | 0.2 |
| Total | 196 | 135 | 24.5 |
wOBA: Weighted on base average
BR: Linear weights batting runs
The idea here is to try and allocate PA over a 5 games series. So basically it was a case of adding PA until the team got to 135 outs (27 outs times 5 games). That includes double plays and obviously there may be games where teams don’t need to bat for 27 outs (home wins) but as long as the scale is the same for both teams it doesn’t matter.
The Yankees will be throwing lefties CC Sabathia and Andy Pettitte in the first two games and if there was a game 5 it’d probably be CC again so that might impact some of the PAs for the lefties. So I gave some DH PA to Lew Ford instead of Jim Thome and some 2B PA to Robert Andino instead of Ryan Flaherty. For the most part I don’t expect the other bench guys to play much.
Basically this estimates that the Orioles would score about 24.5 runs in an average five game series using this allocation of playing time.
And here’s what the Yankees lineup and bench should like.
| Team | NYA | projection | oliver | ||||
| Order | Player | Pos | PA | avg/obp/slg | woba | Outs | BR |
| 1 | Derek Jeter | SS | 21 | .299/.353/.405 | .337 | 14 | 2.6 |
| 2 | Ichiro Suzuki | LF | 21 | .289/.324/.385 | .313 | 14 | 2.4 |
| 3 | Alex Rodriguez | 3B | 21 | .271/.348/.462 | .352 | 14 | 2.9 |
| 4 | Robinson Cano | 2B | 21 | .304/.361/.530 | .381 | 14 | 3.4 |
| 5 | Mark Teixeira | 1B | 21 | .256/.346/.489 | .359 | 14 | 3.0 |
| 6 | Nick Swisher | RF | 21 | .267/.357/.463 | .357 | 14 | 3.0 |
| 7 | Curtis Granderson | CF | 21 | .249/.337/.509 | .360 | 14 | 3.1 |
| 8 | Raul Ibanez | DH | 13 | .256/.319/.454 | .334 | 9 | 1.7 |
| 9 | Russell Martin | C | 20 | .232/.323/.389 | .317 | 14 | 2.2 |
| Bench | Eric Chavez | 3B | 10 | .264/.321/.431 | .327 | 7 | 1.2 |
| Bench | Eduardo Nunez | DH | 8 | .254/.294/.346 | .283 | 6 | 0.7 |
| Bench | Jayson Nix | IF | 3 | .216/.273/.356 | .276 | 2 | 0.3 |
| Bench | Chris Stewart | C | 0 | .230/.289/.318 | .272 | 0 | 0.0 |
| Bench | Brett Gardner | OF | 0 | .266/.360/.391 | .337 | 0 | 0.0 |
| Bench | Andruw Jones | OF | 0 | .232/.327/.456 | .340 | 0 | 0.0 |
| Bench | Chris Dickerson | IF | 0 | .252/.332/.384 | .319 | 0 | 0.0 |
| Total | 201 | 135 | 26.4 |
Yes, I know Andruw Jones and Chris Dickerson are not on the roster. They are just place holders. Anyway, the only spot I see some finagling of playing time is DH with some combination of Raul Ibanez, Eduardo Nunez, Alex Rodriguez and Eric Chavez. I threw Jayson Nix three PA for the hell of it as well.
So the Yankees have a very slight offensive edge here, 26.4 runs to 24.5 runs.
How about the pitching? Here’s my stab at the Orioles first.
| Player | Role | IP | H | R | ER | HR | BB | K | ERA |
| Jason Hammel | SP1 | 7 | 7 | 3 | 3 | 1 | 2 | 6 | 4.06 |
| Wei-Yin Chen | SP2 | 6 | 6 | 3 | 3 | 1 | 2 | 4 | 4.06 |
| Miguel Gonzalez | SP3 | 5 | 5 | 3 | 3 | 1 | 2 | 4 | 4.78 |
| Chris Tillman | SP4 | 5 | 6 | 3 | 3 | 1 | 2 | 4 | 5.22 |
| Joe Saunders | SP5 | 5 | 6 | 3 | 3 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4.52 |
| Jim Johnson | CL | 3 | 3 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 3.48 |
| Pedro Strop | SU | 3 | 3 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 3 | 4.12 |
| Luis Ayala | SU | 3 | 3 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 4.04 |
| Darren O’Day | MR | 4 | 4 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 4 | 3.56 |
| Brian Matusz | MR | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 5.09 |
| Jake Arrieta | MR | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 4.82 |
| Troy Patton | MR | 2 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 3.97 |
| Tommy Hunter | LR | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 4.85 |
| Zach Britton | LR | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 4.44 |
| Total | 45 | 46 | 23 | 21 | 6 | 15 | 34 | 4.28 |
Apparently the Orioles will be using Jason hammel, Wei-Yin Chen and Miguel Gonzalez in the first three games. It’s expected that Chris Tillman would pitch the fourth game if necessary although it could also be Zach Britton or Joe Saunders. So a lot of this could be impacted by how that plays out.
Although Hammel is on tab to pitch the opener which should make him available for Game 5 if needed, he hasn’t been healthy in the second half so I restricted him to one start and gave a start to Joe Saunders. Because Oliver doesn’t like most of the O’s starting pitchers after Hammel and Chen and I think it may be underselling them a bit I limited them to five innings and gave more innings to the bullpen where they have better projected performers.
The big question for Baltimore is whether Gonzalez and Tillman are closer to the 3.25 and 2.93 ERAs they posted in the regular season or to their 4.78 and 5.22 projected ERAs. It’s the difference of two runs in this scenario. That may not seem like much, but it’s the equivalent of a swing of about six wins in a five game series but I’ll get into that in more detail shortly.
Same crap for the Yankees.
| Player | Role | IP | H | R | ER | HR | BB | K | ERA |
| CC Sabathia | SP1 | 14 | 13 | 6 | 5 | 1 | 4 | 13 | 3.44 |
| Andy Pettitte | SP2 | 6 | 6 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 2 | 5 | 3.58 |
| Hiroki Kuroda | SP3 | 6 | 6 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 5 | 3.67 |
| Phil Hughes | SP4 | 5 | 5 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 4 | 4.22 |
| Ivan Nova | SP5 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 4.60 |
| Rafael Soriano | CL | 3 | 3 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 3 | 3.41 |
| David Robertson | SU | 3 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 4 | 3.46 |
| Boone Logan | SU | 2 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 3.99 |
| David Phelps | MR | 2 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 4.06 |
| Joba Chamberlain | MR | 2 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 4.14 |
| Clay Rapada | MR | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 3.62 |
| Cody Eppley | MR | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 4.15 |
| Derek Lowe | LR | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 4.64 |
| Cory Wade | LR | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 4.21 |
| Total | 45 | 42 | 20 | 18 | 5 | 14 | 41 | 3.68 |
The Yankees should be in very good shape if the CC Sabathia we saw in his last three starts is the CC Sabathia we see this postseason. His velocity still hasn’t been overly impressive to me and the fact that he pitched well against an awful Blue Jays team and an even worse Red Sox team isn’t overly impressive to me either. But let’s hope for the best.
So we’re looking at a Yankee pitching staff that projects to allow around 20 runs vs. a Baltimore staff that projects to allow 23. Running the offensive and pitching numbers through Pythagenpat looks like this.
| Team | BAL | NYA |
| RS | 24.5 | 26.4 |
| RA | 23.1 | 19.9 |
| pyth | .528 | .631 |
| p162 | 85.5 | 102.2 |
| w% | 39.7% | 60.3% |
If you instead think that Gonzalez and Tillman are the guys they were in 2012 it looks like this.
| Team | BAL | NYA |
| RS | 24.5 | 26.4 |
| RA | 21.0 | 19.9 |
| pyth | .572 | .631 |
| p162 | 92.7 | 102.2 |
| w% | 44.1% | 55.9% |
That seems a bit closer to reality for me. The Yankees should be favorites to win this series, but not overwhelmingly so.
Thursday, October 4, 2012
Building the 2012 Yankee Postseason Roster
With the Yankees’ playoff position locked in, it’s time for the always fun postseason roster thread. For the postseason this year I’m going to be using the Oliver forecast from the Hardball Times because I haven’t had a chance to run MLEs yet for CAIRO. I think they’re pretty solid projections, plus they aren’t designed to make the Yankees look better which should help us be a bit more realistic about their chances.
Here are the projections for everyone on the active roster as of yesterday, starting with the position players.
| Player | Age | Pos | Tm | Lg | PA | H | 2B | 3B | HR | SB | CS | BB | SO | GDP | avg | obp | slg | wOBA | v LHP | v RHP |
| Francisco Cervelli | 26 | C | NYA | AL | 433 | 90 | 15 | 2 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 33 | 84 | 12 | .238 | .311 | .316 | .286 | .298 | .281 |
| Russell Martin | 29 | C | NYA | AL | 474 | 96 | 17 | 0 | 16 | 6 | 2 | 51 | 79 | 14 | .231 | .322 | .388 | .316 | .336 | .309 |
| Chris Stewart | 30 | C | NYA | AL | 166 | 34 | 7 | 0 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 12 | 23 | 3 | .230 | .292 | .326 | .277 | .290 | .271 |
| Robinson Cano | 29 | 2B | NYA | AL | 684 | 189 | 42 | 4 | 30 | 5 | 2 | 50 | 88 | 20 | .305 | .362 | .531 | .382 | .358 | .394 |
| Eric Chavez | 34 | 3B | NYA | AL | 305 | 73 | 14 | 1 | 10 | 0 | 0 | 24 | 60 | 8 | .266 | .322 | .431 | .327 | .290 | .341 |
| Derek Jeter | 38 | SS | NYA | AL | 722 | 196 | 30 | 2 | 12 | 14 | 4 | 52 | 95 | 18 | .300 | .354 | .405 | .337 | .362 | .329 |
| Casey McGehee | 29 | 1B | NYA | AL | 383 | 87 | 18 | 1 | 11 | 1 | 1 | 29 | 64 | 10 | .249 | .306 | .396 | .307 | .319 | .302 |
| Jayson Nix | 29 | 3B | NYA | AL | 245 | 48 | 11 | 1 | 6 | 4 | 2 | 15 | 63 | 5 | .218 | .275 | .361 | .279 | .293 | .271 |
| Eduardo Nunez | 25 | 3B | NYA | AL | 306 | 72 | 12 | 1 | 4 | 15 | 5 | 17 | 41 | 7 | .255 | .294 | .348 | .284 | .290 | .280 |
| Alex Rodriguez | 37 | 3B | NYA | AL | 494 | 118 | 21 | 1 | 20 | 7 | 2 | 48 | 95 | 11 | .272 | .349 | .466 | .354 | .361 | .352 |
| Mark Teixeira | 32 | 1B | NYA | AL | 543 | 120 | 26 | 1 | 27 | 2 | 1 | 59 | 86 | 10 | .256 | .346 | .484 | .357 | .368 | .352 |
| Chris Dickerson | 30 | LF | NYA | AL | 346 | 76 | 15 | 2 | 7 | 14 | 4 | 37 | 92 | 4 | .251 | .333 | .390 | .321 | .297 | .325 |
| Brett Gardner | 28 | LF | NYA | AL | 75 | 17 | 3 | 1 | 1 | 5 | 2 | 9 | 13 | 1 | .267 | .355 | .377 | .329 | .312 | .335 |
| Curtis Granderson | 31 | CF | NYA | AL | 673 | 145 | 22 | 6 | 39 | 16 | 6 | 75 | 169 | 7 | .248 | .336 | .509 | .359 | .317 | .375 |
| Raul Ibanez | 40 | LF | NYA | AL | 423 | 98 | 21 | 2 | 17 | 3 | 1 | 35 | 68 | 11 | .255 | .317 | .458 | .334 | .308 | .343 |
| Andruw Jones | 35 | RF | NYA | AL | 278 | 56 | 10 | 1 | 14 | 2 | 1 | 31 | 67 | 5 | .234 | .328 | .456 | .340 | .354 | .334 |
| Melky Mesa | 25 | CF | NYA | AL | 504 | 107 | 21 | 4 | 19 | 14 | 6 | 31 | 150 | 6 | .232 | .288 | .416 | .305 | .320 | .290 |
| Ichiro Suzuki | 38 | RF | NYA | AL | 648 | 176 | 26 | 4 | 8 | 33 | 7 | 32 | 65 | 9 | .290 | .324 | .382 | .312 | .307 | .314 |
| Nick Swisher | 31 | RF | NYA | AL | 608 | 140 | 32 | 1 | 23 | 2 | 1 | 72 | 129 | 12 | .267 | .357 | .461 | .357 | .368 | .352 |
wOBA: Weighted on-base average
v LHP: Regressed projected wOBA vs LHP
v RHP: Regressed projected wOBA vs RHP
Oliver doesn’t project platoon splits, so I’m using CAIRO’s projected platoon split ratios to calculate the wOBA platoon splits for everyone.
Obviously you start with the locks, which is the primary starting lineup of:
Derek Jeter, SS
Ichiro Suzuki, LF
Alex Rodriguez, 3B
Robinson Cano, 2B
Nick Swisher, RF
Mark Teixeira, 1B
Curtis Granderson, CF
Raul Ibanez, DH
Russell Martin, C
Then you have some locks for the bench.
Eric Chavez, 3B
Chris Stewart, C
Eduardo Nunez, IF
There’s room for more on the bench, but it depends on the composition of the pitching staff, so here are those projections.
| Player | Age | IP | H | ER | HR | BB | K | ERA | FIP |
| David Aardsma | 30 | 7 | 8 | 5 | 1 | 4 | 6 | 5.86 | 5.06 |
| Joba Chamberlain | 26 | 31.1 | 31 | 14 | 4 | 10 | 28 | 4.14 | 4.04 |
| Cody Eppley | 26 | 52.6 | 50 | 24 | 5 | 24 | 46 | 4.15 | 4.06 |
| Freddy Garcia | 35 | 112 | 122 | 59 | 17 | 35 | 77 | 4.74 | 4.74 |
| Phil Hughes | 26 | 179 | 179 | 84 | 28 | 52 | 151 | 4.22 | 4.42 |
| Hiroki Kuroda | 37 | 212 | 202 | 86 | 25 | 51 | 169 | 3.67 | 3.86 |
| Boone Logan | 27 | 54.6 | 50 | 24 | 5 | 23 | 57 | 3.99 | 3.57 |
| Derek Lowe | 39 | 149 | 171 | 77 | 14 | 52 | 89 | 4.64 | 4.27 |
| Ivan Nova | 25 | 177 | 189 | 90 | 23 | 61 | 130 | 4.60 | 4.46 |
| Andy Pettitte | 40 | 93 | 89 | 37 | 9 | 26 | 76 | 3.58 | 3.66 |
| David Phelps | 25 | 114 | 113 | 51 | 14 | 38 | 93 | 4.06 | 4.17 |
| Clay Rapada | 31 | 38.3 | 33 | 15 | 3 | 16 | 35 | 3.62 | 3.64 |
| David Robertson | 27 | 58.7 | 48 | 23 | 4 | 26 | 74 | 3.46 | 2.89 |
| CC Sabathia | 32 | 200 | 186 | 76 | 19 | 52 | 185 | 3.44 | 3.36 |
| Rafael Soriano | 32 | 65.5 | 57 | 25 | 7 | 22 | 63 | 3.41 | 3.67 |
| Cory Wade | 29 | 70.8 | 73 | 33 | 11 | 18 | 54 | 4.21 | 4.46 |
| Adam Warren | 24 | 157 | 179 | 89 | 21 | 59 | 97 | 5.09 | 4.83 |
FIP: Fielding-independent pitching
Again, we start with the locks, which are:
CC Sabathia
Hiroki Kuroda
Andy Pettitte
Phil Hughes
Rafael Soriano
David Robertson
Boone Logan
Joba Chamberlain
David Phelps
So we’ve got 12 position player locks and 9 pitcher locks. So who should the remaining 4 spots go to?
Here are the projected wOBA of the six remaining candidates from the position player side (I’m assuming Jayson Nix is out) in descending order.
| Player | Pos | wOBA | v LHP | v RHP |
| Andruw Jones | RF | .340 | .354 | .334 |
| Brett Gardner | LF | .329 | .312 | .335 |
| Chris Dickerson | LF | .321 | .297 | .325 |
| Casey McGehee | 1B | .307 | .319 | .302 |
| Melky Mesa | CF | .305 | .320 | .290 |
| Francisco Cervelli | C | .286 | .298 | .281 |
I’m guessing quite a few of us would quibble with Andruw Jones’s projection. But he does have the ability to pop one out and I’m guessing that’ll be enough to get him onto the roster. I’m guessing the Yankees will want to take at least 11 pitchers. That leaves two spots for bench players, one of which will go to Brett Gardner. Since Dickerson and Gardner have similar skill sets, that probably leaves the last spot to Casey McGehee since he can at least play 1st and 3rd.
Here are the projections for the remaining pitchers sorted by ERA in ascending order.
| Player | ERA | FIP |
| Clay Rapada | 3.62 | 3.64 |
| Cody Eppley | 4.15 | 4.06 |
| Cory Wade | 4.21 | 4.46 |
| Ivan Nova | 4.60 | 4.46 |
| Derek Lowe | 4.64 | 4.27 |
| Freddy Garcia | 4.74 | 4.74 |
| Adam Warren | 5.09 | 4.83 |
| David Aardsma | 5.86 | 5.06 |
If they go with 11 pitchers, then I’d assume the last two will be Clay Rapada and Cody Eppley. But they may decide to punt McGehee and add another long man, which would probably be Ivan Nova or Derek Lowe. Lowe seems to have moved to the front of the pack for the spot, although I don’t see the sense in carrying 12 pitchers for a five man series.
So my postseason roster would look like this.
Catchers (2)
Martin
Stewart
Infielders(6)
Cano
Jeter
Nunez
Rodriguez
Teixeira
Chavez
McGehee
Outfielders(6)
Gardner
Granderson
Ibanez
Jones
Swisher
Suzuki
Starting Pitchers(4)
Sabathia
Kuroda
Pettitte
Hughes
Relief Pitchers(7)
Soriano
Robertson
Logan
Chamberlain
Phelps
Rapada
Eppley
But I’m guessing they’ll put Lowe on instead of McGehee which isn’t a big deal.
I forgot the Shockmaster™ so scratch Lowe and McGehee. Then, the next question to ask will be, how good is that team? I’ll tell you in the next day or two.
Wednesday, October 3, 2012
Yankees.com: Cano notches six RBIs as Yanks win AL East
NEW YORK—The Yankees exchanged hugs and shook hands as they celebrated reaching their season’s first major goal on Wednesday, securing their reign as American League East champions on the final day of the regular season.
New York stands alone with the top spot in the division for the 13th time since 1996, taking advantage of the control of its destiny to wrap its 162-game campaign with a 14-2 victory over the Red Sox at Yankee Stadium.
As the Yankees, who own the best record in the AL at 95-67, plan to host a fourth straight year of postseason baseball at their newest home, they will wait to travel and face the winner of Friday’s one-game AL Wild Card playoff between the Orioles and Rangers.
The Yankees heard a standing ovation to acknowledge the clinching of a division title as Alex Rodriguez was batting in the seventh inning, with the Rays’ 4-1 victory over the Orioles at Tropicana Field posted as a final, but that outcome seemed a formality with a rout well under way in the Bronx.
Robinson Cano homered twice and tied a career high with six RBIs, while Curtis Granderson also blasted a pair of homers, including a three-run blast that helped the Yankees spoil what could have been Daisuke Matsuzaka’s final start in a Red Sox uniform.
I’ve had a love/hate relationship with this team all year. The injuries to Mariano Rivera, Brett Gardner and everyone else were tough to deal with. The post All Star break struggles were tough to deal with. Seeing them fail with runners in scoring position every single time was tough to deal with. Seeing a ten game lead dwindle away to nothing was tough to deal with.
But a night like tonight makes it all worth it. We’ll have to see how the story unfolds from here, but I think given the number of wins they lost to the DL this team has accomplished quite a bit already. If you would have told me they’d end up as the #1 seed in the AL on September 4 when they were in a dead heat with Baltimore and four games behind Texas I’d have said you were insane.
We should try and appreciate that tonight.
It’s also easy to forget how well this team played for a large chunk of the season. That gave them the cushion they needed to stave off a furious Baltimore run. I thought the season was over when Mo went down, but the Rafael Soriano signing that I deplored ended up working out far better than I could have ever imagined, even if it hurt the hell out of my knees.
It was kind of fitting that Hiroki Kuroda pitched the clincher, because he’s been the best Yankee starter all year and really exceeded all my expectations as well. He’s scuffled a bit in September but was solid tonight and should slot in nicely behind CC Sabathia in the postseason rotation.
So, Sunday huh?
Monday, October 1, 2012
Reuters: Rangers, Orioles, Yankees make postseason
(Reuters) - Texas closer Joe Nathan’s critical save helped the Texas Rangers clinch a playoff spot with an 8-7 victory over the Los Angeles Angels that also secured postseason berths for the Baltimore Orioles and New York Yankees on Sunday.
Nathan blew a chance for a save in the opening game of a doubleheader with the Angels, allowing two runs in the ninth in a 5-4 defeat, but he nailed down the ninth in the nightcap to launch Texas back into the postseason.
The two-time American League champions (93-66) gained at least a wild-card berth with the victory, which put them two games ahead of Oakland in the American League West with three to play in the regular season.
Baltimore and New York, who both won on Sunday to remain deadlocked in the American League East, also secured at least a wild-card spot thanks to the Rangers’ triumph.
At least this saves me typing “if by some miracle the Yankees make the postseason” for a few days.
The way this season has unfolded leaves a lot of uncertainty about who the Yankees will be playing and where they’ll be playing.
They could still end up as the #1 seed and have home field advantage through the ALCS if they win one more game than Texas. That’d give both teams the same record, but since the Yankees won the season series vs. the Rangers they’d get the tiebreaker.
Obviously if they win one more game than Baltimore they win the AL East outright. Whichever team wins the AL East will be the #2 seed at the very minimum since Detroit can’t win more than 89 games. If the Yanks and O’s end up tied then they’ll have to play a one game playoff game for the division title. Whomever wins that game will get Detroit in the ALDS and whomever loses that game will get to play the second wild card team in a one game play-in, which looks like it’ll most likely be Oakland but could also end up being Tampa Bay or the Angels.
You could see a scenario where the Yankees tie Baltimore, then lose the division playoff game then have to play the second wild card team just to get into the ALDS. So in theory the Yankees would have to get through two elimination games just to get into the ALDS. If you assume they’d used CC Sabathia and Hiroki Kuroda in those games, which may not work given the way the rotation is currently configured, you’re looking at an ALDS rotation of Andy Pettitte, Phil Hughes and ??? in the first three games if by some miracle the Yankees make the ALDS.
Wait, I thought I didn’t have to say if by some miracle anymore?
I think Texas is the best team in baseball, but I don’t necessarily think they’re the scariest opponent the Yankees may face. They lead the AL in runs scored and have a solid defense and their pitching from top to bottom is strong, but they don’t necessarily have a true dominant #1 starter. That being said, Yu Darvish has the stuff to pitch like one in any given game and Matt Harrison has had a great year even if he’s pitching a bit over his head. Ryan Dempster’s ERA hasn’t been great for Texas but his peripherals are actually pretty strong so he is another arm that could give teams fits.
The Tigers have clinched a tie for their division and should be able to set up their rotation to have Justin Verlander going twice in the ALDS, and they’ve obviously got a killer 3-4 in their lineup. But their defense makes the Yankee defense look like Tampa Bay’s.
Oakland seems like a possible tough matchup because they can run a bunch of good pitchers at you and have a few guys who have the power to change a game on one swing. They’re rated as one of the top five defenses in the league by UZR although DRS says they’re closer to average.
Baltimore seems like the weakest possible team out of all of the viable postseason teams, but that doesn’t make them a bad team. Since August 4 they’ve got a Pythagenpat winning percentage of .654 which is equivalent to a 106 win team. You can’t completely ignore their early season performance, but you can understand that they’ve changed the composition of their roster significantly enough that it shouldn’t have much bearing in assessing how good they might be right now.
The Rays and Angels face long odds of qualifying for the postseason, but if they get in it’ll be no treat facing either team given their rotations and some of their front-line position players.
The next three days should be exciting.
Friday, September 28, 2012
Yankee and Oriole Win Probabilities over the Rest of 2012
I’ve become really pessimistic about the Yankees’ chances of winning the division, so I’m hoping that if I look at the rest of the schedule rationally I’ll feel a bit better about things.
I did revised CAIRO projections for Baltimore, Boston, Tampa Bay, Toronto and the Yankees and here is what they say.
Projected runs scored per game:
NY: 4.8
TB: 4.5
BOS: 4.3
BAL: 4.1
TOR: 3.8
Using these offensive numbers with the revised pitching projections for the scheduled starters(for six innings) and the average 2012 relief ERA for each team for three innings for the six remaining games gives us this.
| Opponent | Baltimore | xW | Opponent | Yankees | xW |
| Cook | Tillman | 0.58 | Jenkins | Kuroda | 0.53 |
| Doubront | Johnson | 0.45 | Romero | Pettitte | 0.73 |
| Stewart | Chen | 0.65 | Alvarez | Hughes | 0.60 |
| Cobb | Saunders | 0.42 | Buchholz | Sabathia | 0.45 |
| Shields | Gonzalez | 0.54 | Lester | Nova | 0.38 |
| Hellickson | Tillman | 0.33 | Matsuzaka | Kuroda | 0.55 |
| 2.96 | 3.24 |
xW: Expected win probability for the Orioles and Yankees using Bill James’s log5 methodology
So there you go. The Yankees should win the AL East by 1.28 games. Nothing to worry about.
Sunday, September 23, 2012
Yankees.com: Kuroda off his game as Yanks drop series finale
NEW YORK—The mood in the Yankees’ clubhouse after this 5-4 loss on Sunday was light-hearted and jovial, with laughter drowning out the clicking of camera phones. Music blasted through the sound system, a rarity even after wins, as rookies dressed in “Star Wars” costumes and left Yankee Stadium to the movie’s theme song, departing for a seven-game road trip with 10 games to play and a one-game lead in the American League East on the Orioles, even after dropping their series finale against Oakland.
There was no finger pointing, either, although there were plenty of complaints from the home dugout during the three-hour, 45-minute game.
Twice Yankees lingered at home plate, letting home-plate umpire Mike Estabrook know they were upset with his strike zone. And manager Joe Girardi bounded up the dugout stairs in the second inning to speak to first-base umpire Larry Vanover, who called Josh Donaldson safe on a play at first base that many of the 43,867 at Yankee Stadium disagreed with.
The Yankees blew a shot at increasing their AL East lead, but at least they remained in sole possession of first place. Now they head to Minnesota for a three game series they probably need to sweep since Baltimore will be hosting the injury-ravaged Blue Jays for four games.
Kuroda’s now had six straight starts where he’s given up at least three runs or more and has an ERA of 4.91 and FIP of 4.40 over that stretch. Hopefully it’s just a bump in the road and he’ll get better over his last two starts of the year.
The A’s are a good team, so taking two out of three should be viewed as mostly positive. Yesterday’s comeback win takes some of the sting off losing today’s eminently winnable game.
Wednesday, September 5, 2012
How To Blow a 10 Game Lead in 47 Days
| Player | PA | AB | R | H | 2B | 3B | HR | RBI | BB | HBP | K | SB | CS | GDP | avg | obp | slg | br |
| Derek Jeter | 196 | 183 | 32 | 60 | 9 | 0 | 7 | 19 | 9 | 3 | 21 | 1 | 2 | 6 | .328 | .369 | .492 | 29 |
| Robinson Cano | 183 | 166 | 19 | 44 | 10 | 0 | 8 | 18 | 13 | 4 | 25 | 2 | 0 | 8 | .265 | .333 | .470 | 25 |
| Curtis Granderson | 170 | 152 | 18 | 29 | 5 | 0 | 9 | 27 | 13 | 2 | 56 | 2 | 0 | 1 | .191 | .259 | .401 | 17 |
| Nick Swisher | 162 | 143 | 23 | 41 | 8 | 0 | 7 | 25 | 18 | 1 | 43 | 1 | 1 | 2 | .287 | .370 | .490 | 25 |
| Ichiro Suzuki | 139 | 132 | 9 | 36 | 6 | 1 | 3 | 14 | 3 | 2 | 15 | 4 | 3 | 1 | .273 | .299 | .402 | 14 |
| Russell Martin | 136 | 122 | 13 | 28 | 3 | 0 | 5 | 14 | 12 | 1 | 22 | 4 | 0 | 4 | .230 | .304 | .377 | 14 |
| Mark Teixeira | 135 | 117 | 11 | 30 | 5 | 0 | 4 | 18 | 11 | 2 | 28 | 0 | 0 | 1 | .256 | .319 | .402 | 15 |
| Raul Ibanez | 116 | 104 | 15 | 21 | 3 | 2 | 3 | 13 | 11 | 1 | 27 | 0 | 0 | 2 | .202 | .284 | .356 | 10 |
| Eric Chavez | 110 | 99 | 12 | 29 | 2 | 0 | 5 | 13 | 9 | 1 | 21 | 0 | 0 | 4 | .293 | .355 | .465 | 15 |
| Andruw Jones | 82 | 72 | 7 | 9 | 3 | 0 | 1 | 5 | 8 | 1 | 21 | 0 | 0 | 1 | .125 | .220 | .208 | 3 |
| Jayson Nix | 78 | 68 | 11 | 18 | 5 | 0 | 1 | 9 | 6 | 1 | 20 | 2 | 0 | 1 | .265 | .333 | .382 | 9 |
| Casey McGehee | 47 | 43 | 7 | 8 | 3 | 0 | 1 | 6 | 3 | 0 | 9 | 0 | 0 | 3 | .186 | .234 | .326 | 3 |
| Chris Stewart | 40 | 36 | 5 | 8 | 3 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 4 | 1 | 0 | 0 | .222 | .263 | .389 | 4 |
| Alex Rodriguez | 34 | 31 | 5 | 11 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 5 | 1 | 0 | 1 | .355 | .412 | .516 | 6 |
| Chris Dickerson | 8 | 7 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 1 | .286 | .375 | .714 | 2 |
| Steve Pearce | 8 | 7 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | .143 | .250 | .143 | 0 |
| DeWayne Wise | 7 | 7 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | .143 | .143 | .143 | 0 |
| Ramiro Pena | 4 | 4 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | .250 | .250 | .250 | 0 |
| Eduardo Nunez | 3 | 3 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | .333 | .333 | .333 | 0 |
| Total | 1658 | 1496 | 193 | 378 | 67 | 3 | 57 | 188 | 122 | 20 | 323 | 20 | 6 | 36 | .253 | .315 | .416 | 191 |
br: Linear weights batting runs
| Player | G | GS | W | L | IP | H | R | ER | HR | BB | K | HBP | BK | WP | RA | ERA | FIP |
| Freddy Garcia | 9 | 9 | 3 | 4 | 51 | 52 | 28 | 28 | 10 | 17 | 47 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 4.94 | 4.94 | 4.81 |
| Ivan Nova | 7 | 7 | 1 | 3 | 41 | 51 | 32 | 32 | 5 | 15 | 36 | 4 | 1 | 1 | 7.02 | 7.02 | 4.27 |
| David Phelps | 11 | 4 | 2 | 1 | 33 1/3 | 24 | 12 | 12 | 5 | 10 | 34 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 3.24 | 3.24 | 4.04 |
| Clay Rapada | 20 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 9 2/3 | 10 | 4 | 4 | 1 | 3 | 9 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 3.72 | 3.72 | 3.46 |
| Hiroki Kuroda | 8 | 8 | 3 | 3 | 61 | 45 | 15 | 15 | 5 | 7 | 41 | 3 | 0 | 1 | 2.21 | 2.21 | 3.26 |
| Phil Hughes | 9 | 9 | 4 | 5 | 55 | 56 | 29 | 25 | 12 | 13 | 40 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 4.75 | 4.09 | 5.20 |
| CC Sabathia | 7 | 7 | 3 | 1 | 50 | 46 | 26 | 21 | 8 | 8 | 50 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 4.68 | 3.78 | 3.73 |
| David Robertson | 21 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 20 2/3 | 18 | 5 | 5 | 1 | 4 | 19 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 2.18 | 2.18 | 2.57 |
| Rafael Soriano | 17 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 17 2/3 | 14 | 6 | 6 | 2 | 2 | 19 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 3.06 | 3.06 | 2.88 |
| Boone Logan | 18 | 0 | 2 | 2 | 13 2/3 | 11 | 6 | 6 | 1 | 7 | 16 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 3.95 | 3.95 | 3.20 |
| Cody Eppley | 16 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 13 1/3 | 18 | 8 | 7 | 0 | 4 | 11 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 5.40 | 4.73 | 2.30 |
| Derek Lowe | 8 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 9 1/3 | 17 | 7 | 6 | 2 | 2 | 8 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 6.75 | 5.79 | 4.76 |
| Joba Chamberlain | 10 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 8 2/3 | 17 | 9 | 9 | 2 | 5 | 7 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 9.35 | 9.35 | 6.86 |
| Ryota Igarashi | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 13.50 | 13.50 | 3.55 |
| Cory Wade | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 2/3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 3.05 |
| Chad Qualls | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2/3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 7.55 |
| Justin Thomas | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1/3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.00 | 0.00 | -2.95 |
| Total | 166 | 44 | 19 | 25 | 389 | 382 | 190 | 179 | 54 | 99 | 339 | 17 | 4 | 8 | 4.40 | 4.14 | 4.01 |
FIP: Fielding-independent pitching
The interesting thing on the offensive side is the fact that the Yankees’ seeming lack of clutch ability doesn’t really show up if you compare their linear weights batting runs to their actual runs scored. They haven’t done a bad job of converting their hits and walks to runs, they just haven’t done a good job of getting hits and walks.
I knew Curtis Granderson has been pretty bad for most of the second half, but I didn’t realize it was quite that bad. Missing Mark Teixeira hasn’t helped of late, but a .256/.319/.402 line from a 1B who plays half his games in DNYS isn’t exactly something that’s going to make a big difference. Teixeira’s probably better than that, but over the last 25-30 games of the season it wouldn’t surprise to see him do no better than that or even worse.
I won’t get into all of the team’s splits over the past 47 days, but here’s a link from David Pinto’s Day by Day database so you can see them for yourselves. Some highlights:
The team is hitting .234/.288/.400 when trailing. That wouldn’t be an issue if they didn’t trail in every game.
The team has gotten a sparkling line of .210/.283/.338 from left field
They’ve hit .222/.296/.369 vs. LHP. Luckily they won’t face LHP in every single game over the rest of the year, only maybe half of them.
They’re hitting .175/.259/.283 so far in September. It’s like they switched to bizarro National League rules where only the pitchers hit.
The gap between the pitching staff’s FIP and ERA is about 6 runs, so they haven’t been the victims of exceedingly bad luck in terms of BABIP either. Hiroki Kuroda is really the only starting pitcher doing well, and as we all know they’re effectively down to a two man bullpen, maybe two and a half if you give Boone Logan partial credit. Maybe Cory Wade can re-discover whatever it was that made him effective during the first half of his Yankee tenure, and maybe a healthy and effective Ivan Nova can push David Phelps back into the bullpen and they can beef it up a bit.
Again, I won’t get into all of the pitching staff’s splits but you can see them at this link.
A team that scores 193 runs and allows 190 should be about a .507 team, so I suppose you could point to the Yankees’ record in close games as the primary culprit for their fall from grace. They’ve gone 19-25 over the past 47 days instead of their Pythagenpat expected record of 22-22.
All is not lost of course. The Yankees are still tied for first place. If you remove the “contributions” of Ryota Igarishi, Derek Lowe, Casey McGehee and DeWayne Wise from their overall stats they’ve played more like a .513 team. I’m not sure why Lowe is still on the roster, and I’m hoping he never throws another pitch in pinstripes.
Here is a random and not necessarily meaningful split of the team’s record in games that a player has appeared in. The obvious takeaway from that is that since they’re 13-4 in games that Rafael Soriano has pitched in he should pitch every day. Another “fun” stat? The Yankees are 1-7 in games that Derek Lowe and Alex Rodriguez have appeared in since July 19. I can’t wait for the MSM to latch onto that last one.
Since the Rays and Orioles play each other six more times this season, the Yankees have a chance to gain some ground on at least one of them. Of course, they can’t do that if they don’t start winning freaking games.
Saturday, September 1, 2012
NY Times: Giving the Yankees Reason for Pause
A few starts ago, Hiroki Kuroda threw a seven-inning shutout in a rain-shortened victory over the Toronto Blue Jays. The win, on July 18, increased the Yankees’ lead in the American League East to a whopping 10 games. The margin has been slashed to two, in part, by a rash of injuries and inconsistent performances.
If the Orioles had not caught the Yankees’ distracted attention, they surely did after a 6-1 win at Yankee Stadium on Friday night. It was the Orioles who acted like a first-place team with years of playoff experience.
OK, this isn’t funny anymore.
| Date | 7/18/2012 | |||||
| TM | W | L | Div | WC1 | WC2 | PS% |
| Yankees | 98 | 64 | 86.5% | 6.6% | 3.1% | 96.2% |
| Rays | 86 | 76 | 8.4% | 21.1% | 18.1% | 47.6% |
| Red Sox | 83 | 79 | 3.2% | 8.0% | 10.8% | 22.0% |
| Orioles | 79 | 83 | 1.4% | 2.8% | 5.6% | 9.8% |
| Blue Jays | 77 | 85 | 0.5% | 1.8% | 3.4% | 5.6% |
| Date | 9/1/2012 | |||||
| TM | W | L | Div | WC1 | WC2 | PS% |
| Yankees | 93 | 69 | 77.9% | 6.9% | 6.2% | 91.0% |
| Rays | 87 | 75 | 13.7% | 12.3% | 22.4% | 48.4% |
| Orioles | 86 | 76 | 8.4% | 10.4% | 18.2% | 37.1% |
| Red Sox | 76 | 86 | 0.0% | - | - | - |
| Blue Jays | 75 | 87 | 0.0% | - | - | - |
Friday, August 31, 2012
NJ.com: Carig: Yankees face Orioles in crucial series with first place in sight for Baltimore
However, sometimes numbers fail to project reality, and the status quo is rendered meaningless. Which is why as the Orioles arrive today for a three-game series, the Yankees find themselves faced with an unsettling reality.
Their lead in the American League East — which once stood at a seemingly insurmountable 10 games — has been whittled down to just three.
Inconceivable as it may have seemed just a month ago, an Orioles sweep this weekend would give them a share of first place with the Yankees, who have spent the last several weeks leaking oil.
The Orioles are really pissing Pythagoras off. The Yankees can help soothe him by winning two or three of the games in this series. Your pitching match ups for this series:
Friday, August 31
Miguel Gonzalez, RHP (5-3, 3.66 ERA) vs. Hiroki Kuroda, RHP (12-9, 2.98 ERA)
Saturday, September 1
Wei-Yin Chen, LHP (12-7, 3.78 ERA) vs. Freddy Garcia, RHP (7-5, 4.90 ERA)
Sunday, September 2
To Be Announced Chris Tillman, RHP (7-2, 3.26 ERA) vs. David Phelps, RHP (3-4, 2.96 ERA)
Not digging that Saturday match up much, and to be announced is never an easy pitcher to face so tonight’s game seems pretty freaking important. Plus winning tonight would guarantee that the Yankees would still be in first place on Monday, and that would be cool.
Update The postseason odds implications of this series are below.
| Now | W | L | RS | RA | Div | WC1 | WC2 | PS% |
| Yankees | 93 | 69 | 794 | 674 | 87.5% | 5.5% | 4.2% | 97.1% |
| Rays | 88 | 74 | 695 | 607 | 9.4% | 23.5% | 27.1% | 60.0% |
| Orioles | 86 | 76 | 689 | 754 | 3.1% | 6.8% | 14.0% | 24.0% |
| Red Sox | 77 | 85 | 801 | 760 | 0.0% | - | - | - |
| Blue Jays | 74 | 88 | 745 | 777 | 0.0% | - | - | - |
| Orioles 3 - 0 | W | L | RS | RA | Div | WC1 | WC2 | PS% |
| Yankees | 91 | 71 | 794 | 674 | 70.5% | 10.6% | 7.4% | 88.4% |
| Rays | 88 | 74 | 695 | 607 | 15.6% | 16.4% | 21.5% | 53.4% |
| Orioles | 88 | 74 | 689 | 754 | 13.9% | 13.8% | 21.7% | 49.3% |
| Red Sox | 77 | 85 | 801 | 760 | 0.0% | - | - | - |
| Blue Jays | 74 | 88 | 745 | 777 | 0.0% | - | - | - |
| Orioles 2 -1 | W | L | RS | RA | Div | WC1 | WC2 | PS% |
| Yankees | 92 | 70 | 794 | 674 | 81.7% | 8.4% | 4.5% | 94.6% |
| Rays | 88 | 74 | 695 | 607 | 12.8% | 18.4% | 24.8% | 55.9% |
| Orioles | 87 | 75 | 689 | 754 | 5.5% | 11.9% | 18.6% | 36.0% |
| Red Sox | 77 | 85 | 801 | 760 | 0.0% | - | 0.0% | 0.0% |
| Blue Jays | 74 | 88 | 745 | 777 | 0.0% | - | - | - |
| Yankees 2-1 | W | L | RS | RA | Div | WC1 | WC2 | PS% |
| Yankees | 93 | 69 | 794 | 674 | 88.4% | 5.6% | 3.0% | 96.9% |
| Rays | 88 | 74 | 695 | 607 | 10.4% | 22.7% | 27.5% | 60.6% |
| Orioles | 86 | 76 | 689 | 754 | 1.2% | 7.8% | 14.2% | 23.3% |
| Red Sox | 77 | 85 | 801 | 760 | 0.0% | - | - | - |
| Blue Jays | 74 | 88 | 745 | 777 | 0.0% | - | - | - |
| Yankees 3-0 | W | L | RS | RA | Div | WC1 | WC2 | PS% |
| Yankees | 94 | 68 | 794 | 674 | 92.9% | 4.4% | 2.0% | 99.3% |
| Rays | 88 | 74 | 695 | 607 | 6.2% | 24.1% | 29.8% | 60.1% |
| Orioles | 85 | 77 | 689 | 754 | 0.8% | 5.9% | 12.1% | 18.9% |
| Red Sox | 77 | 85 | 801 | 760 | 0.0% | - | 0.1% | 0.1% |
| Blue Jays | 74 | 88 | 745 | 777 | 0.0% | - | - | - |
W: Projected final 2011 wins
L: Projected final 2011 losses
RS: Projected final 2011 runs scored
RA: Projected final 2011 runs allowed
Div: Division win percentage
WC1: Wild card win percentage
WC2: Wild card win percentage
PS: Postseason percentage (Div + WC1 + WC2)
Sunday, August 19, 2012
Yankees.com: Kuroda coasts to 12th win on Ichiro’s homers
NEW YORK—Hiroki Kuroda turned in yet another stellar outing and Ichiro Suzuki homered twice as the Yankees defeated the Red Sox, 4-1, on Sunday at Yankee Stadium.
Running his scoreless-innings streak to 16 2/3 before Adrian Gonzalez’s homer ended the run, Kuroda continued his stretch as arguably the Yankees’ most effective starter in recent months, piling up zeros into the seventh.
Undaunted, Kuroda finished with eight innings of one-run ball, logging his second victory in as many starts while limiting Boston to just four hits—three of them singles. The right-hander walked none and struck out four.
Kuroda was once again excellent, and is now sporting an ERA of 2.96. He’s pitching like a number one starter.
Ichiro’s now hitting .322/.344/.506 in 92 PA as a Yankee. I was doubtful he had much left but hopefully he can keep getting on base at a similar clip, even if the power is a fluke.
I’m pretty happy with how this series went. The starters all pitched well and the offense did well in two of the three games.
Wednesday, August 15, 2012
MLB.com: Though under the radar, Kuroda overachieving
NEW YORK—In retrospect, it should have been obvious. Hiroki Kuroda is practically built to pitch in the American League, and even in the American League East.
He’s big and he’s durable. He’s calm and in command on the mound. He throws strikes with four pitches. He gets left-handers out, along with righties. He has plenty of stuff, even if he doesn’t light up the radar gun in the mid-90s. And he’s seen the big stage on numerous occasions.
So while many Yankees fans derided or dismissed the addition of another National League pitcher this winter, and relegated Kuroda to the back of a big-name starting five, the truth all along was that general manager Brian Cashman had made a tremendously shrewd acquisition. The fact that Kuroda signed a one-year deal at a relatively reasonable $10 million was just a bonus.
When I looked at Kuroda’s projections for 2012 I figured he would end up as the Yankees’ third or fourth starter this year. That was mostly based on his baseline 4.01 CAIRO projected ERA and average 4.08 projected ERA. It was also partially based on my misguided notion that one or both of Phil Hughes and Ivan Nova would take a step forward this year.
The NL->AL transition is usually worth about 0.50 runs per nine innings, so you figured that even if Kuroda pitched to his career level of a 3.45 ERA he’d be closer to a 4.00 ERA in 2012. His strikeout rate has dipped a bit as you’d expect since he’s lost the advantage of throwing to pitchers instead of competent big league hitters but everything else has been remarkably stable from his time with the Dodgers. His HR/FB rate is a bit higher than last year (11.5% vs. 11.3%) but that’s to be expected.
Kuroda’s 80% CAIRO forecast called for an ERA of 3.57 and he’s even blowing that away.
FIP and xFIP think his ERA overstates his effectiveness by about .6 runs (3.71 FIP and 3.69 xFIP), but Kuroda has always had a BABIP (batting average on balls in play) against a bit lower than league average. We don’t know if that’s skill because the sample size for ascertaining the ability to suppress BABIP against takes thousands of BIP. But it’s at least some evidence that he may possess said skill.
I know CC Sabathia is CC Sabathia, but Kuroda’s been the Yankees’ best starter this year and I don’t think it’s all that close.
And yes, I realize by writing this I’ve doomed him to a collapse. Sorry.
Update: For the hell of it, some selective end point stuff.
| Dates | g | ip | bf | h | r | er | hr | bb | hbp | so | ra | era | fip | xfip |
| 04/07/12-05/21/12 | 9 | 53.3 | 233 | 59 | 30 | 27 | 10 | 20 | 1 | 34 | 5.06 | 4.56 | 5.42 | 4.35 |
| 05/27/12-08/14/12 | 15 | 105.7 | 410 | 86 | 28 | 27 | 6 | 18 | 5 | 87 | 2.38 | 2.30 | 2.82 | 3.16 |
| Dates | bb/bf | k/bf | babip | ld% | gb% | fb% | iffb% | hr/fb% | swing% | contact% | FBv |
| 04/07/12-05/21/12 | 9.0% | 14.6% | .287 | 21.0% | 48.6% | 28.2% | 2.2% | 19.6% | 30.0% | 81.6% | 91.2 |
| 05/27/12-08/14/12 | 5.6% | 21.2% | .267 | 16.3% | 51.3% | 28.8% | 3.6% | 6.8% | 47.1% | 83.0% | 91.7 |
fip: Fielding-independent pitching
xfip: Expected fielding-independent pitching
bb/bf: walks and hbp per batters faced
k/bf: strikeouts per batters faced
babip: Batting average on balls in play against
ld%: Percentage of batted balls that were line drives
gb%: Percentage of batted balls that were ground balls
fb%: Percentage of batted balls that were fly balls
iffb%: Percentage of batted balls that were infield flies
FBv: Average fastball velocity
swing%: Percentage of pitches swung at
contact%: Percentage of swings that made contact
Tuesday, August 14, 2012
Yankees.com: Swisher makes Kuroda’s two-hitter stand up
NEW YORK—Hiroki Kuroda had turned in solid work in his previous three starts, but a lack of run support left him without a winning decision.
On Tuesday, Kuroda again did all he could to get back in the win column, and this time, his Yankees teammates would support him. Nick Swisher and Mark Teixiera hit back-to-back home runs in the seventh inning, sending the Yankees to a 3-0 win over the Rangers and giving Kuroda his first win since July 29.
For six innings, it looked like Kuroda might have a date with history. The right-hander went the distance, surrendering just two hits, ad he carried a no-hitter into the seventh. Rangers shortstop Elvis Andrus broke up Kuroda’s no-hit bid with an infield single to lead off the seventh.
Andrus advanced to third base on a sacrifice fly and a wild pitch, but Kuroda shut the door on the Rangers’ lone threat of the night.
Kuroda was brilliant tonight. I think this was the best game a Yankee starter has thrown all year, particularly when you consider the opponent(Texas) and the venue (DNYS, where infield flies become homers).
All is not well in Yankee-land though. Once again they struggled to score runs for Kuroda. In fact, if you take away the two homers they hit in the 7th this game is probably still going on, so I’m not sure it should even be counted as a win. This may work in the regular season, but forget abut winning in the postseason using that strategy.
But hey, it worked tonight.
Thursday, July 26, 2012
July 2012 West Coast Road Trip Stats
| Player | Games | PA | AB | R | H | 2B | 3B | HR | RBI | BB | HBP | K | SB | CS | GDP | AVG | OBP | SLG | BR |
| Alex Rodriguez | 6 | 26 | 23 | 4 | 9 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 4 | 1 | 0 | 1 | .391 | .462 | .609 | 5.6 |
| Mark Teixeira | 7 | 29 | 26 | 2 | 9 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 4 | 2 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | .346 | .414 | .423 | 4.3 |
| Curtis Granderson | 7 | 32 | 28 | 3 | 6 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 12 | 2 | 0 | 0 | .214 | .250 | .429 | 3.6 |
| Robinson Cano | 7 | 31 | 30 | 3 | 9 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 2 | .300 | .323 | .433 | 3.6 |
| Derek Jeter | 7 | 27 | 25 | 4 | 8 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 1 | .320 | .370 | .440 | 3.6 |
| Russell Martin | 6 | 17 | 16 | 1 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 3 | 1 | 0 | 1 | .188 | .235 | .375 | 1.5 |
| Nick Swisher | 2 | 7 | 7 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | .286 | .286 | .714 | 1.4 |
| Ichiro Suzuki | 3 | 13 | 12 | 0 | 3 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | .250 | .308 | .333 | 1.1 |
| Eric Chavez | 6 | 20 | 17 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 0 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | .118 | .250 | .118 | 0.4 |
| Jayson Nix | 5 | 8 | 8 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | .125 | .125 | .250 | 0.2 |
| Raul Ibanez | 7 | 25 | 24 | 0 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 7 | 0 | 0 | 1 | .167 | .200 | .167 | 0.1 |
| Chris Stewart | 3 | 10 | 9 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | .111 | .200 | .111 | 0.0 |
| DeWayne Wise | 2 | 7 | 7 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | .143 | .143 | .143 | -0.1 |
| Andruw Jones | 6 | 15 | 15 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 10 | 0 | 0 | 1 | .067 | .067 | .067 | -1.0 |
| 74 | 267 | 247 | 21 | 59 | 7 | 0 | 7 | 21 | 13 | 5 | 58 | 5 | 1 | 7 | .239 | .288 | .352 | 24.1 |
| Player | Games | GS | W | L | IP | H | R | ER | HR | BB | K | HBP | RA | ERA | FIP |
| David Phelps | 3 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 5.3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 9 | 0 | 0.00 | 0.00 | -0.38 |
| David Robertson | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 4.0 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 7 | 0 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.25 |
| Boone Logan | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.7 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 9.00 |
| Chad Qualls | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | —- | —- | —- |
| Hiroki Kuroda | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 7.0 | 3 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 9 | 0 | 1.29 | 1.29 | 0.86 |
| Rafael Soriano | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 3.0 | 3 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 4 | 0 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 4.67 |
| Clay Rapada | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2.0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 4.50 | 4.50 | 2.50 |
| Phil Hughes | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 7.7 | 4 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 6 | 0 | 2.35 | 2.35 | 5.61 |
| Cody Eppley | 3 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0.7 | 5 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 27.00 | 27.00 | 3.00 |
| CC Sabathia | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 7.0 | 6 | 3 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 6 | 0 | 3.86 | 3.86 | 5.43 |
| Ivan Nova | 2 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 11.7 | 11 | 4 | 4 | 0 | 7 | 11 | 0 | 3.09 | 3.09 | 2.91 |
| Freddy Garcia | 2 | 2 | 0 | 2 | 13.0 | 14 | 7 | 7 | 2 | 2 | 14 | 0 | 4.85 | 4.85 | 3.31 |
| 28 | 7 | 2 | 5 | 62.0 | 49 | 21 | 21 | 7 | 18 | 69 | 0 | 3.05 | 3.05 | 3.11 |
Runners in supposed scoring position splits
| Player | PA | AB | Hits | 2B | 3B | HR | RBI | BB | IBB | HBP | K | SH | SF | GDP | AVG | OBP | SLG | OPS |
| Nick Swisher | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1.000 | 1.000 | 1.000 | 2.000 |
| Alex Rodriguez | 6 | 4 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | .500 | .667 | .750 | 1.417 |
| Jayson Nix | 3 | 3 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | .333 | .333 | .667 | 1.000 |
| Mark Teixeira | 10 | 7 | 3 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 4 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 | .429 | .400 | .571 | .971 |
| Robinson Cano | 9 | 8 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | .250 | .333 | .250 | .583 |
| Russell Martin | 4 | 4 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | .250 | .250 | .250 | .500 |
| Raul Ibanez | 9 | 9 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | .222 | .222 | .222 | .444 |
| Derek Jeter | 5 | 5 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | .200 | .200 | .200 | .400 |
| Curtis Granderson | 5 | 5 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | .200 | .200 | .200 | .400 |
| Eric Chavez | 5 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | .000 | .400 | .000 | .400 |
| Andruw Jones | 8 | 8 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 1 | .125 | .125 | .125 | .250 |
| Ichiro Suzuki | 2 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | .000 | .000 | .000 | .000 |
| Chris Stewart | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | .000 | .000 | .000 | .000 |
| Total | 68 | 60 | 15 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 14 | 5 | 3 | 1 | 14 | 0 | 2 | 3 | .250 | .309 | .300 | .609 |
I think the most frustrating part of this trip is that the Yankees scored 21 runs (should have scored 24 according to BR/linear weights batting runs) and allowed 21 runs and went 2-5.
Monday, July 23, 2012
Yankees.com: Kuroda’s gem helps Yankees win Ichiro’s debut
SEATTLE—Ichiro Suzuki doffed his batting helmet and bowed before entering the batter’s box for the first time as a New York Yankee, having switched clubhouses at Safeco Field hours before first pitch.
Ichiro singled and quickly stole a base, but the former Mariners icon played just a supplementary role on Monday, helping his new club defeat his old one, 4-1, in the opener of a three-game series.
Hiroki Kuroda (10-7) hurled seven strong innings of one-run ball as the Yankees snapped their four-game losing streak, having made headlines earlier in the day by acquiring the 38-year-old Ichiro from Seattle for two pitchers and cash considerations.
Even before tonight, Kuroda has almost certainly been the most valuable pitcher on the Yankees and he added to that value tonight. I really underestimated how well he’d make the transition to the superior league. I really like watching him pitch.
Wednesday, July 18, 2012
Yankees.com: Yanks earn sweep with rain-shortened shutout
NEW YORK—The Yankees flashed their brand of impressive thunder before Mother Nature decided to take the stage for her own show on Wednesday. That seems to be just about the only thing capable of cooling off their red-hot bats.
Mark Teixeira’s two-run homer highlighted a four-run first inning and Hiroki Kuroda hurled seven superb innings as the Yankees notched contributions up and down the lineup, posting a rain-shortened 6-0 victory over the Blue Jays at Yankee Stadium.
That was a nice way to head into the upcoming West Coast swing. Teixeira’s season line (now at .255/.341/.506) is starting to look pretty good.
Wednesday, July 11, 2012
2012 Yankee Starting Pitcher Projections vs. Actuals at the All Star Break
Although they didn’t stat the season off all that well, the Yankees’ starting pitchers have been probably the biggest contributors to their place in the standings over the last two months. Here’s a look at how they’ve performed vs. their projections so far.
We start with CC Sabathia.
| Projection | IP | H | R | ER | HR | BB | SO | RA | ERA | FIP | RAR | WAR |
| cairo | 107 | 103 | 42 | 39 | 9 | 30 | 95 | 3.57 | 3.24 | 3.23 | 26 | 2.6 |
| davenport | 107 | 98 | 46 | 45 | 9 | 31 | 88 | 3.86 | 3.81 | 3.44 | 22 | 2.2 |
| marcel | 107 | 100 | 42 | 38 | 8 | 31 | 94 | 3.55 | 3.24 | 3.24 | 26 | 2.6 |
| oliver | 107 | 103 | 46 | 42 | 8 | 29 | 90 | 3.88 | 3.54 | 3.24 | 22 | 2.2 |
| pecota | 107 | 101 | 42 | 38 | 9 | 26 | 96 | 3.52 | 3.21 | 3.16 | 27 | 2.7 |
| steamer | 107 | 100 | 47 | 43 | 10 | 33 | 96 | 3.96 | 3.61 | 3.49 | 21 | 2.1 |
| zips | 107 | 104 | 45 | 42 | 9 | 31 | 93 | 3.80 | 3.55 | 3.36 | 23 | 2.3 |
| average | 107 | 101 | 44 | 41 | 9 | 30 | 93 | 3.73 | 3.46 | 3.31 | 24 | 2.4 |
| 2012 | 107 | 107 | 50 | 41 | 10 | 29 | 105 | 4.21 | 3.45 | 3.15 | 18 | 1.8 |
| diff | 6 | 6 | 0 | 1 | -1 | 12 | 0.47 | -0.01 | -0.16 | -6 | -0.6 |
Sabathia’s allowed six more hits and runs than he projected to, despite being pretty close to his projected HR and walk rates and with 12 more strike outs than projected. While his velocity is down somewhat from his average velocity in 2011, it’s not down as much if you compare it to his first half velocity in 2011. He tends to throw harder and pitch better as the year moves on, and I don’t see any reason to think that won’t happen again this year.
RA: Runs allowed per nine innings
FIP: Fielding-independent pitching
RAR: Runs above replacement level (using RA adjusted for park)
WAR: Wins above replacement level (RAR divided by 10)
diff: Difference between 2012 and average projection
The projections expected a rough transition for Hiroki Kuroda, but he’s defied them so far.
| Projection | IP | H | R | ER | HR | BB | SO | RA | ERA | FIP | RAR | WAR |
| cairo | 108 | 115 | 55 | 48 | 13 | 27 | 76 | 4.57 | 4.01 | 3.92 | 14 | 1.4 |
| davenport | 108 | 110 | 57 | 56 | 12 | 26 | 69 | 4.73 | 4.67 | 3.99 | 12 | 1.2 |
| marcel | 108 | 105 | 47 | 41 | 11 | 29 | 84 | 3.89 | 3.44 | 3.69 | 22 | 2.2 |
| oliver | 108 | 108 | 51 | 45 | 12 | 26 | 81 | 4.25 | 3.76 | 3.73 | 18 | 1.8 |
| pecota | 108 | 115 | 58 | 51 | 13 | 28 | 74 | 4.79 | 4.24 | 4.09 | 11 | 1.1 |
| steamer | 108 | 111 | 56 | 50 | 12 | 26 | 75 | 4.67 | 4.13 | 3.92 | 13 | 1.3 |
| zips | 108 | 116 | 55 | 52 | 15 | 28 | 77 | 4.62 | 4.33 | 4.28 | 14 | 1.4 |
| average | 108 | 111 | 54 | 49 | 13 | 27 | 77 | 4.50 | 4.08 | 3.95 | 15 | 1.5 |
| 2012 | 108 | 104 | 46 | 42 | 13 | 32 | 83 | 3.83 | 3.50 | 4.00 | 23 | 2.3 |
| diff | -7 | -8 | -7 | 0 | 5 | 6 | -0.67 | -0.58 | 0.05 | 8 | 0.8 |
Kuroda’s given up fewer hits and runs than he projected to, although his HR rate is spot on and he’s walked a few more hitters than expected. He’s also struck out a few more and has been close to a win better than expected so far this year. He’s probably not going to be as effective over the second half as he’s been so far, but he should still be solid.
For me, the most pleasant development on the 2012 Yankees has been Ivan Nova, and this table will show why.
| Projection | IP | H | R | ER | HR | BB | SO | RA | ERA | FIP | RAR | WAR |
| cairo | 110 | 115 | 60 | 55 | 12 | 44 | 68 | 4.93 | 4.50 | 4.52 | 10 | 1.0 |
| davenport | 110 | 109 | 52 | 51 | 11 | 42 | 66 | 4.24 | 4.17 | 4.33 | 18 | 1.8 |
| marcel | 110 | 105 | 50 | 45 | 9 | 37 | 75 | 4.06 | 3.69 | 3.85 | 21 | 2.1 |
| oliver | 110 | 115 | 58 | 53 | 10 | 41 | 67 | 4.74 | 4.30 | 4.23 | 12 | 1.2 |
| pecota | 110 | 125 | 68 | 61 | 13 | 44 | 63 | 5.53 | 5.03 | 4.64 | 3 | 0.3 |
| steamer | 110 | 116 | 62 | 56 | 10 | 45 | 68 | 5.08 | 4.61 | 4.27 | 8 | 0.8 |
| zips | 110 | 116 | 58 | 54 | 12 | 37 | 69 | 4.74 | 4.44 | 4.33 | 12 | 1.2 |
| average | 110 | 115 | 58 | 54 | 11 | 41 | 68 | 4.76 | 4.39 | 4.31 | 12 | 1.2 |
| 2012 | 110 | 119 | 53 | 48 | 17 | 33 | 100 | 4.34 | 3.93 | 4.25 | 17 | 1.7 |
| diff | 4 | -5 | -6 | 6 | -8 | 32 | -0.43 | -0.47 | -0.05 | 5 | 0.5 |
The two most important numbers here IMO are that he’s walking fewer hitters than he projected to and striking out a lot more hitters than he projected to. Those two numbers stabilize much more quickly than any others, so we have pretty good evidence that Nova’s moved from decent back of the rotation starter to someone who can pitch in the middle of the rotation, and I’m not sure he’s done improving. His HR rate has hurt his overall effectiveness and will probably be an issue as long as he calls DNYS home, but if he can get that down a bit more he may be the second best starter on the Yankees by the end of the year. Then again, he probably was last year too.
An ugly April has Phil Hughes’s numbers looking a bit underwhelming, but he’s been much better since then.
| Projection | IP | H | R | ER | HR | BB | SO | RA | ERA | FIP | RAR | WAR |
| cairo | 99 | 102 | 51 | 49 | 13 | 34 | 77 | 4.63 | 4.49 | 4.26 | 12 | 1.2 |
| davenport | 99 | 97 | 50 | 49 | 12 | 30 | 73 | 4.53 | 4.47 | 4.09 | 13 | 1.3 |
| marcel | 99 | 94 | 48 | 47 | 12 | 33 | 81 | 4.37 | 4.28 | 3.96 | 15 | 1.5 |
| oliver | 99 | 99 | 45 | 44 | 12 | 33 | 79 | 4.11 | 4.03 | 4.02 | 18 | 1.8 |
| pecota | 99 | 95 | 43 | 42 | 12 | 34 | 87 | 3.92 | 3.84 | 3.89 | 20 | 2.0 |
| steamer | 99 | 99 | 48 | 47 | 14 | 34 | 76 | 4.40 | 4.31 | 4.45 | 15 | 1.5 |
| zips | 99 | 102 | 57 | 53 | 15 | 36 | 77 | 5.21 | 4.84 | 4.55 | 6 | 0.6 |
| average | 99 | 98 | 49 | 48 | 13 | 33 | 79 | 4.45 | 4.32 | 4.18 | 14 | 1.4 |
| 2012 | 99 | 107 | 54 | 48 | 19 | 23 | 92 | 4.91 | 4.36 | 4.42 | 9 | 0.9 |
| diff | 9 | 5 | 0 | 6 | -10 | 13 | 0.45 | 0.04 | 0.25 | -5 | -0.5 |
Hughes is a bit behind his projected value, but like Nova he’s shown an improved walk rate and strikeout rate. Also like Nova his HR rate has been an issue. But I think we have to be happy with how he’s pitched over the last two months.
I only had three projections for Andy Pettitte (CAIRO, Marcel, and Steamer) but here is how he’s done so far.
| Projection | IP | H | R | ER | HR | BB | SO | RA | ERA | FIP | RAR | WAR |
| cairo | 58 | 61 | 28 | 26 | 6 | 19 | 42 | 4.33 | 4.01 | 4.00 | 9 | 0.9 |
| marcel | 58 | 58 | 27 | 25 | 6 | 21 | 44 | 4.19 | 3.82 | 4.07 | 10 | 1.0 |
| steamer | 58 | 55 | 25 | 23 | 5 | 17 | 54 | 3.92 | 3.57 | 3.34 | 12 | 1.2 |
| average | 58 | 58 | 27 | 25 | 6 | 19 | 47 | 4.14 | 3.82 | 3.80 | 10 | 1.0 |
| 2012 | 58 | 49 | 23 | 21 | 7 | 15 | 59 | 3.56 | 3.25 | 3.31 | 14 | 1.4 |
| diff | -9 | -4 | -4 | 1 | -4 | 12 | -0.58 | -0.57 | -0.49 | 4 | 0.4 |
Pettitte’s been better than projected in just about every way, and let’s hope that continues when he gets back in September.
Sample size means I’m going to skip over Freddy Garcia, David Phelps and Adam Warren for now. But I’ll look at Garcia and Phelps as part of the bullpen.
Friday, July 6, 2012
NY Times: Yankees’ Kuroda Was Molded by Pain in Japan
“Many players would faint in practice,” Kuroda said with the assistance of his interpreter, Kenji Nimura. “I did go to the river and drink. It was not the cleanest river, either. I would like to believe it was clean, but it was not a beautiful river.
“In order to play,” he added, “you had to survive. We were trained to build an immune system so that we could survive and play.”
Although never considered a top prospect, particularly by his high school and college coaches, Kuroda has come to be one of the most successful Japanese-born pitchers in baseball. His career earned run average of 3.41 is the lowest of any Japanese pitcher with more than 12 major league starts, and that includes the more-heralded Hideo Nomo, Daisuke Matsuzaka and Yu Darvish.
Here’s a very interesting article about Hiroki Kuroda’s road to MLB (h/t to rilkefan). As the article mentions, no Japanese starting pitcher has been as effective in MLB as Kuroda has been so far. Let’s hope it continues tonight.
The Postseason Implications of this series with Boston
The second half of the Yankees’ 2012 MLB schedule gets kicked off with four excruciating games against Boston. As I’ve mentioned before, 16 of the Yankees final 81 games are against Boston, which means there’s a fair amount of potential volatility in both teams’ chances of taking the division and/or one of the wild cards. The Yankees have built up a healthy 7.5 game lead on Boston, but the gap between them according to their Pythagorean records is only 1.5 games (the Yankees are at 47-34 and Boston’s at 46-36). That doesn’t matter for the games that have been played so far, but it should be part of the consideration when thinking about what both teams will do going forward.
This chart shows the postseason probabilities for the AL East as of this morning, as well as with the four potential outcomes of this four game set. I’ve removed the uncertainty from the simulation since we’re focusing more on the deltas based on the series outcomes, which is why the odds of this morning differ slightly from yesterday’s post. Adding in the uncertainty should reduce the top teams’ chances slightly and increase the lower teams’ chances slightly to account for things we can’t necessarily predict.
| Now | W | L | RS | RA | Div | WC1 | WC2 | PS% |
| Yankees | 95 | 67 | 803 | 682 | 87.9% | 5.6% | 3.4% | 96.8% |
| Red Sox | 85 | 77 | 821 | 724 | 7.5% | 15.3% | 21.7% | 44.5% |
| Rays | 84 | 78 | 718 | 676 | 2.8% | 11.1% | 18.5% | 32.4% |
| Blue Jays | 81 | 81 | 793 | 771 | 1.5% | 3.9% | 10.8% | 16.2% |
| Orioles | 78 | 84 | 700 | 782 | 0.3% | 0.8% | 3.6% | 4.7% |
| Red Sox Sweep | W | L | RS | RA | Div | WC1 | WC2 | PS% |
| Yankees | 93 | 69 | 803 | 682 | 77.3% | 10.7% | 8.0% | 96.0% |
| Red Sox | 87 | 75 | 821 | 724 | 16.7% | 20.4% | 23.1% | 60.2% |
| Rays | 84 | 78 | 718 | 676 | 4.3% | 10.4% | 15.0% | 29.6% |
| Blue Jays | 81 | 81 | 793 | 771 | 1.4% | 3.5% | 7.8% | 12.6% |
| Orioles | 78 | 84 | 700 | 782 | 0.4% | 1.2% | 3.5% | 5.0% |
| Red Sox 3-1 | W | L | RS | RA | Div | WC1 | WC2 | PS% |
| Yankees | 94 | 68 | 803 | 682 | 83.1% | 7.3% | 5.1% | 95.5% |
| Red Sox | 86 | 76 | 821 | 724 | 11.6% | 17.2% | 23.3% | 52.1% |
| Rays | 84 | 78 | 718 | 676 | 3.4% | 11.8% | 17.6% | 32.8% |
| Blue Jays | 81 | 81 | 793 | 771 | 1.5% | 3.8% | 9.2% | 14.4% |
| Orioles | 78 | 84 | 700 | 782 | 0.4% | 1.1% | 4.2% | 5.7% |
| Split | W | L | RS | RA | Div | WC1 | WC2 | PS% |
| Yankees | 95 | 67 | 803 | 682 | 88.4% | 4.5% | 4.0% | 96.9% |
| Red Sox | 85 | 77 | 821 | 724 | 6.6% | 16.4% | 22.6% | 45.6% |
| Rays | 84 | 78 | 718 | 676 | 3.6% | 12.5% | 19.1% | 35.3% |
| Blue Jays | 81 | 81 | 793 | 771 | 1.4% | 4.7% | 9.5% | 15.6% |
| Orioles | 78 | 84 | 700 | 782 | 0.1% | 1.7% | 3.3% | 5.0% |
| Yankees 3-1 | W | L | RS | RA | Div | WC1 | WC2 | PS% |
| Yankees | 96 | 66 | 803 | 682 | 93.0% | 3.2% | 2.1% | 98.3% |
| Red Sox | 84 | 78 | 821 | 724 | 2.8% | 14.9% | 20.0% | 37.7% |
| Rays | 84 | 78 | 718 | 676 | 2.5% | 11.9% | 19.5% | 33.9% |
| Blue Jays | 81 | 81 | 793 | 771 | 1.3% | 5.8% | 9.2% | 16.3% |
| Orioles | 79 | 83 | 700 | 782 | 0.3% | 1.3% | 4.5% | 6.1% |
| Yankees Sweep | W | L | RS | RA | Div | WC1 | WC2 | PS% |
| Yankees | 97 | 65 | 803 | 682 | 95.4% | 2.7% | 0.9% | 99.0% |
| Rays | 84 | 78 | 718 | 676 | 2.2% | 15.9% | 19.8% | 37.8% |
| Red Sox | 83 | 79 | 821 | 724 | 1.4% | 11.0% | 17.1% | 29.4% |
| Blue Jays | 81 | 81 | 793 | 771 | 1.0% | 4.3% | 11.5% | 16.8% |
| Orioles | 78 | 84 | 700 | 782 | 0.1% | 2.0% | 3.7% | 5.8% |
Even a Red Sox sweep still leaves the Yankees as clear favorites in the AL East, although it reduces their odds by over 10%. If the Yankees and Red Sox are equally good, it’s tough to see Boston making up what would still be a four game deficit over 76 games. But a Red Sox sweep would stink.
Red Sox 3-1 knocks the Yankees’ division title chances down by about 5%.
The most likely scenario, a split of the four games improves the Yankees’ odds slightly, because the runway for Boston gets a little shorter.
Yankees 3-1 increases their odds by about 6%, and a Yankee sweep pushes them up by about 8%.
Boston’s still missing Jacoby Ellsbury, Clay Buchholz and will be without Dustin Pedroia who’s heading to the DL, which means they’re not at full strength for this series. Of course, the Yankees are missing arguably their two best starters in CC Sabathia and Andy Pettitte, as well as Brett Gardner so they’re not exactly at full strength either. Here are the pitching matchups.
Friday, July 6, 7:10 PM ET
Hiroki Kuroda vs. Josh Beckett
Saturday, July 7, 12:35 PM ET
Phil Hughes vs. Franklin Morales
Saturday, July 7, 7:15 PM ET
Freddy Garcia vs. Felix Doubront
Sunday, July 8, 8:05 PM ET
Ivan Nova vs. Jon Lester
Friday’s game seems like the key one to me. Hiroki Kuroda’s been pitching pretty well of late, but the offense he’s faced haven’t exactly been juggernauts. The Yankees have been a bit better vs. RHP(.258/.336/.457) than LHP(264/.330/.447) this year, plus it’d be nice to see them smack Josh Beckett around after the way he stifled them last year (4-0 in 5 starts, 34 IP, 10 BB, 5 HBP, 38 K, 1.85 ERA). Seriously, the horse’s ass had 5 HBP in 34 innings vs. the Yankees and 4 HBP in 159 innings vs. everyone else.
I really don’t like the pitching matchups on Saturday. Sunday seems like a tossup. I think Nova can pitch pretty well, but I don’t know how the Yankees will do against Lester.
I’d be happy with a split I think.
Monday, June 25, 2012
Yankees.com: No slowing Cano as Yankees thump Tribe
NEW YORK—The Yankees slugged three home runs, including back-to-back blasts by Robinson Cano and Nick Swisher, winning their third straight game with a 7-1 drubbing of the Indians on Monday.
Cano drilled a two-run double and homered for the sixth time in his last eight games, just hours after learning he had moved into position for a starting nod at second base on the American League All-Star team for the July 10 Midsummer Classic in Kansas City.
...
The offensive eruption from the Yankees, who own the Majors’ most homers with 115 through 71 games, produced a breezy night for Hiroki Kuroda, who worked seven-plus innings and picked up his seventh victory.Kuroda entered the eighth with a shutout and held the Indians to just five hits—including a double by former Yankee Johnny Damon—in the right-hander’s first career start against the Tribe.
That’s a nice way to start off a series.
Trivia Question of the Day
What do R.A. Dickey, David Price, Cole Hamels, Matt Harrison, Lance Lynn, Wade Miley, Madison Bumgarner, Yu Darvish, Matt Cain, Ivan Nova, Gio Gonzalez, Stephen Strasburg, Chris Capuano, CC Sabathia, Johnny Cueto, Chris Sale, Clay Buchholz, A.J. Burnett, Zack Greinke, Ricky Romero, Jason Hammel, Tommy Hanson, Felix Doubront, C.J. Wilson, Justin Verlander, Player, Jered Weaver, Wei-Yin Chen, James Shields, Phil Hughes, Ubaldo Jimenez, Derek Lowe, Tommy Milone, Brandon Morrow, Jason Vargas, Jake Peavy, Jake Westbrook, Bartolo Colon, Jerome Williams, Yovani Gallardo, Robbie Ross, James McDonald, Bruce Chen, Colby Lewis, Kyle Lohse, Wandy Rodriguez, Trevor Cahill, Hiroki Kuroda, Brandon McCarthy, Ryan Vogelsong, Max Scherzer, Player, Adam Wainwright, Mark Buehrle, Scott Diamond, Lucas Harrell, Ricky Nolasco, J.A. Happ, Joe Blanton, Ted Lilly, Gavin Floyd, Homer Bailey, Shaun Marcum, Brian Matusz, Jonathon Niese, Bud Norris, Drew Hutchison, Aaron Harang, Dan Haren, Brandon Beachy, Ian Kennedy, Daniel Bard, Joe Smith, Johan Santana, Clayton Kershaw, Jeff Samardzija, Tim Hudson, Player, Barry Zito, Dillon Gee, Mat Latos, Derek Holland, Felix Hernandez, Clayton Richard, Jeremy Hellickson, Justin Masterson, Kyle Drabek, Jon Lester, Paul Maholm, Kameron Loe, Edwin Jackson, Kenley Jansen, Christian Friedrich, Josh Johnson, Jeanmar Gomez, Brad Lincoln, Luke Hochevar, Carlos Zambrano, Nick Blackburn, Rick Porcello, Steve Cishek, Roy Halladay, Ervin Santana, Player, Pedro Strop, Chad Billingsley, Erik Bedard, Josh Beckett, Edinson Volquez, Tony Watson, Jose Arredondo, Tim Collins, Darren O’Day, Matt Moore, Ross Detwiler, Joe Saunders, Aroldis Chapman, Brad Ziegler, Randall Delgado, Jose Veras, Tommy Hunter, Jason Marquis, Brayan Villarreal, Cristhian Martinez, Logan Ondrusek, Kevin Millwood, Ryan Webb, Philip Humber, Vin Mazzaro, Player, Vance Worley, Jamey Wright, Daniel Hudson, Jonny Venters, Jose Valverde, Josh Tomlin, Jarrod Parker, Felipe Paulino, Vinnie Pestano, Javier Lopez, Wilton Lopez, Jason Motte, Jon Rauch, Matt Reynolds, Anibal Sanchez, Craig Stammen, Nate Jones, Cory Luebke, Jordan Zimmermann, Mike Minor, Andy Pettitte, Tom Wilhelmsen, Andrew Cashner, Charlie Furbush, Blake Beavan, Player, Matt Belisle, Ronald Belisario, Kevin Correia, Chad Durbin, Jeff Gray, Rex Brothers, Neftali Feliz, Alex Cobb, Jaime Garcia, Jeremy Guthrie, Bronson Arroyo, Henderson Alvarez, Matt Garza, Joel Hanrahan, Ryan Dempster, John Danks, Clay Hensley, Jake Arrieta, Carl Pavano, Luis Perez, Jose Quintana, Ramon Ramirez, Clay Rapada, Garrett Richards, Juan Nicasio, Player, Ryan Cook, Carlos Villanueva, Jeff Niemann, Jamie Moyer, Jesse Crain, Jim Miller, Charlie Morton, Darren Oliver, Francisco Cordero, Patrick Corbin, Jonathan Papelbon, Hector Noesi, Rafael Soriano, Fernando Rodney, Duane Below, Heath Bell, Antonio Bastardo, Anthony Bass, Jordan Walden, P.J. Walters, Chien-Ming Wang, Collin Balester, Alex White, Scott Atchison, Randy Wolf, Player, Raul Valdes, Matt Thornton, Josh Roenicke, Sergio Romo, Tyson Ross, James Russell, Luis Ayala, Shawn Camp, Tim Byrdak, Alex Burnett, Craig Breslow, Drew Smyly, Jeff Suppan, Matt Albers, Jose Mijares, Josh Lindblom, Mike Leake, Jared Hughes, Tom Gorzelanny, Brian Fuentes, Ryan Mattheus, Boone Logan, Brandon Gomes, Kevin Gregg, Jason Isringhausen, Player, Danny Duffy, Luis Mendoza, Michael Fiers, Kyle Kendrick, Rafael Dolis, Greg Holland, Jake McGee, Javy Guerra, Sam LeCure, Tim Lincecum, Zach Stewart, Jared Burton, Jerry Blevins, Huston Street, Travis Blackley, Eric Stults, Casey Janssen, Anthony Swarzak, Luke Gregerson, Dallas Keuchel, Will Smith, Chad Gaudin, Matt Capps, Jonathan Sanchez, Brian Bruney, Player, Jonathan Broxton, Hector Santiago, Bryan Shaw, Doug Fister, Mitchell Boggs, Andrew Carignan, Yoshinori Tateyama, Joe Kelly, Burke Badenhop, Randy Wells, LaTroy Hawkins, David Phelps, Jeremy Hefner, John Axford, Livan Hernandez, J.P. Howell, Travis Wood, J.J. Hoover, Chris Young, Mike Adams, Nick Hagadone, Grant Balfour, Rafael Betancourt, Jairo Asencio, Shawn Kelley, Player, Joaquin Benoit, Jair Jurrjens, Jason Grilli, Jim Johnson, Justin Grimm, Wade Davis, Miguel Batista, Dan Jennings, Hisashi Iwakuma, Manny Acosta, Miles Mikolas, Eric O’Flaherty, Alexi Ogando, Ross Ohlendorf, Victor Marte, Sean Marshall, Roy Oswalt, Adam Ottavino, Vicente Padilla, Carlos Marmol, Scott Feldman, Bobby Parnell, Troy Patton, Matt Maloney, Brian Duensing, Player, Casey Crosby, Jake Diekman, Andrew Miller, Cole De Vries, Kris Medlen, Steve Delabar, Franklin Morales, Chris Davis, Sean Doolittle, Zach McAllister, Chris Narveson, Octavio Dotel, Scott Downs, Juan Cruz, Rich Hill, Aaron Cook, Vinnie Chulk, Addison Reed, Tyler Chatwood, Brett Cecil, Mariano Rivera, Fernando Rodriguez, Henry Rodriguez, Bobby Cassevah, Freddy Garcia, Player, Francisco Liriano, Rhiner Cruz, David Carpenter, Santiago Casilla, Ernesto Frieri, Cesar Ramos, Jordan Lyles, Rafael Perez, Glen Perkins, Ryan Perry, Jose Contreras, Phil Coke, Todd Coffey, Lucas Luetge, Tyler Clippard, Stephen Pryor, J.J. Putz, Chad Qualls, Frank Francisco and Marc Rzepczynski all have in common?
Wednesday, June 13, 2012
Yankees.com: Grandy’s homer fuels Yanks’ sweep at Atlanta
ATLANTA—The Yankees concluded a three-game sweep of the Braves on Wednesday night with a 3-2 victory in front of a sellout crowd of 48,938 at what amounted to Yankee Stadium South: Turner Field.
Hiroki Kuroda pitched six innings of two-run, nine-hit ball for the win, evening his record to 5-5, and Curtis Granderson provided the big blow—a two-run homer in the sixth off Tim Hudson that offset a two-run blast the previous half-inning by Brian McCann.
It was a pretty tense game, with almost every swing having the potential to change the outcome, but the Yankees’ pitchers were able to work their way out of the trouble they put themselves in just about every time to hold on for the win. Every time McCann came up I was expecting a HR, but thankfully it only happened once.
Yay sweep!
Tuesday, June 12, 2012
NYDN: Yankees’ Hiroki Kuroda and Andy Pettitte won’t miss turn as they escape injury jam
Kuroda said though an interpreter that he still felt “a little bit of tightness” in his ankle area, but nothing that would prevent him from pitching.
Pettitte, who took a one-hopper off his left hand on Sunday, kept the hand wrapped during the team’s flight to Atlanta and overnight, keeping any swelling to a minimum.
“If it was a line drive, it probably would have been a lot worse,” Pettitte said. “I wasn’t too concerned about it last night; I knew it wasn’t broke, so I knew it was just a bruise and that I would be able to make my next start.”
You mean broken, right Andy?
In other injury news, David Robertson could rejoin the Yankees’ bullpen this weekend. The pen’s been solid without their top two relievers. Since Robertson went out on May 11 the bullpen’s thrown 59 innings and allowed 56 hits, 23 R, 20 ER, 5 HR, 21 BB and 55 K for an RA of 3.51, ERA of 3.05 and FIP of 3.31, but it’ll be nice to get Robertson back.
Thursday, June 7, 2012
Lucky 13
After losing 6-0 to Kansas City at home on May 21, the Yankees dropped to 21-21 and looked like they were heading for an ugly and disappointing season. Since then, they’ve won 10 of 13 games to move to 31-24 and trail first place Baltimore by one half game for the AL East lead. How have they done it?
They’ve done it by being about 30 runs above average overall, which breaks down like this.
| Player | RAA |
| Mark Teixeira | 5.6 |
| Hiroki Kuroda | 5.3 |
| Robinson Cano | 3.9 |
| Andy Pettitte | 3.3 |
| Rafael Soriano | 2.7 |
| Alex Rodriguez | 2.4 |
| Curtis Granderson | 1.9 |
| Russell Martin | 1.9 |
| CC Sabathia | 1.8 |
| Ivan Nova | 1.5 |
| Boone Logan | 1.1 |
| Andruw Jones | 1.0 |
| Freddy Garcia | 0.8 |
| Nick Swisher | 0.6 |
| Jayson Nix | 0.6 |
| Clay Rapada | 0.5 |
| Cory Wade | 0.3 |
| David Phelps | 0.1 |
| Eric Chavez | -0.2 |
| Phil Hughes | -0.2 |
| Cody Eppley | -0.7 |
| Chris Stewart | -1.2 |
| Derek Jeter | -1.2 |
| Raul Ibanez | -2.0 |
| Total | 29.6 |
No park or position-adjusting or defense in these numbers. It’s just comparing linear weights batting runs for hitters vs. league average and runs saved compared to league average RA for pitchers (not adjusted for starters vs. relievers).
Tuesday, May 22, 2012
What if the Yankees Had Performed at an Average Rate with Runners on Base?
With all the harping on the Yankees’ performance with runners in scoring position of late, I wondered how many more wins they’d have if they had just performed at an average rate in all base/out situations and weren’t so unclutch.
If we replace the Yankees actual runs scored in each game with the linear weights batting runs instead, they’d be 22-20 instead of 21-21. The only game they lost that they would have won was 4/24/2012 vs. Texas, the game where Yu Darvish out-dueled Hiroki Kuroda..
So no, this team really hasn’t been that unlucky. They just haven’t played very well.
Monday, April 30, 2012
Yankees.com: Efficient Kuroda helps own cause to top O’s
NEW YORK—Hiroki Kuroda turned in a stellar seven-inning effort and Eric Chavez slugged a two-run homer, as the Yankees defeated the Orioles, 2-1, on Monday at Yankee Stadium.
The Yankees received a strong starting performance for a second straight day, as Kuroda followed up CC Sabathia’s winning effort with a gem of his own, permitting just one run on four hits and saving the lead with his own defensive play at home plate.
Kuroda looked like he had nothing over the first two innings as seemingly every ball was hit hard, but he settled down nicely to give the Yankees seven innings of one-run ball. His final play of the game was probably the most important one. The Orioles had the tying run on third and the go-ahead run on second with two outs in the seventh when a pitch got away from Russell Martin. It rolled into foul territory but not all that far and the Orioles gambled by sending the runner but Martin was able to retrieve the ball and flip it to Kuroda who beat the runner to the plate and applied the tag to the end the inning. The Orioles could not muster anything against David Robertson or Mariano Rivera over the final two innings and the Yankees had a nice win in a rare briskly played pitcher’s duel.
I’m enjoying watching Kuroda pitch so far and hope he can keep it going. I’d take a 3.69 ERA from him over the rest of the year.
I was not particularly enamored with the Eric Chavez re-signing, but so far he’s been great. I don’t know if he’ll stay healthy or keep it up all year, but he’s probably already been worth his salary.
Friday, April 27, 2012
NYDN: Cashman avoids bad press, fan outrage over Montero trade for injured Pineda
When it came to legit Cashman pitching blunders, whether it be A.J. Burnett, Kei Igawa, Carl Pavano or Jeff Weaver, the GM didn’t exactly skate, but his relationship with certain reporters, and the respect many others have for him, softened what could have been severe body blows.
Only now it will be fascinating to watch how Cashman’s relationship with the media evolves going forward. By normal Yankees standards, the pitching is in shambles, filled with inconsistent arms after CC Sabathia and Ivan Nova take their turns in the rotation.
I’m bringing back the complaint thread. If you don’t like them, don’t read this.
The impact of the Pineda injury is huge. If the Yankees were looking at Pineda as a 3-4 win player, it probably would have helped them move towards the $189 payroll in 2014 that they’ve been eyeing. Not having him for 2012, and possibly never having him, should possibly change the organization’s plans. I don’t know if it will, but let’s think about it logically.
- Say the Yankees were a 95 win team with Pineda, and that losing him makes them a 93 win team (assuming they get better than replacement level pitching from his replacement(s))
- In 2013, with just about every key player on the team likely to be worse since they’re past the age of the typical player’s peak, what would they be then? An 88 win team?
-Now subtract Mo, Hiroki Kuroda, Nick Swisher and Russell Martin from that. Say that’s 10 wins. So now what, 78 wins?
-They have $120M committed to 2013, without including arbitration salaries for Brett Gardner, Phil Hughes, Boone Logan, Joba Chamberlain and David Robertson. Giving them a 20% raise bumps the payroll commitment to about $135M or so.
-Assume that 90 wins is the target to qualify for the second wild card in most seasons. So the Yankees need to add about 12 wins for $54M to get to 90 wins in 2013, and that really just puts them on the periphery of the wild card race.
You probably can’t buy 12 wins for $54M on the free agent market due to what’s available and how it fits your roster as well as with competition from other teams. The better free agents are probably not going to want to settle for one year contracts and anything longer than that impacts the 2014 payroll.
Maybe they can replace Pineda’s wins with someone from the farm, although at this point it sure doesn’t seem like Dellin Betances or Manny Banuelos are ready and the other arms behind them are either too far away or don’t project to be much more than back-end guys. They don’t have the position player prospects to replace the hole in RF, at least not for 2013. They could use a rotating DH to fill the hole there, but then that necessitates having a backup player or two that you’re comfortable playing in the field every day. I don’t know if Eduardo Nunez is that guy given his defensive issues and the uncertainty of his offense. Martin’s not making much of a case to be retained, but the falloff from him to some combination of Francisco Cervelli, Austin Romine or Chris Stewart is probably still significant.
Because of that, the only way I can see the Yankees being competitive in 2013 is going over the $189M payroll target. If they’re not going to do that, I’d suggest rebuilding, but they don’t have anyone trade-able that would help reduce their payroll. Is anyone really going to take Rodriguez or Mark Teixeira off their hands?
As of now the Yankees only have $75M commited to the 2014 payroll. However, that number only includes CC Sabathia, Rodriguez, Teixeira and a $3M Derek Jeter buyout. They’d still have arbitration rights to Gardner, Robertson, Pineda, Ivan Nova, Nunez, Cervelli, Stewart and Ramiro Pena. How many games would that team win?
I understand the benefit to getting under the salary cap limit, but if the trade-off is a crappy team that will draw fewer fans and make less revenue it may not be worth it.
Wednesday, April 25, 2012
2012 MLB Starting Pitching Through April 24
| Team | IP | TBF | RA | ERA | FIP | xFIP | BB/BF | K/BF |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nationals | 104.7 | 401 | 2.15 | 1.72 | 2.03 | 2.85 | 5.5% | 24.2% |
| Cardinals | 112.0 | 439 | 2.73 | 2.57 | 3.06 | 3.42 | 5.7% | 17.8% |
| Rangers | 120.7 | 497 | 2.83 | 2.76 | 3.25 | 3.90 | 7.6% | 19.1% |
| Pirates | 86.7 | 354 | 3.01 | 2.8 | 3.10 | 3.86 | 7.3% | 14.7% |
| Phillies | 117.3 | 473 | 3.14 | 2.84 | 3.17 | 3.20 | 5.3% | 20.1% |
| White Sox | 110.7 | 442 | 3.17 | 3.09 | 3.42 | 3.63 | 7.9% | 23.8% |
| Athletics | 122.0 | 495 | 3.32 | 2.95 | 3.63 | 4.19 | 6.1% | 13.3% |
| Marlins | 100.3 | 414 | 3.50 | 3.41 | 3.30 | 3.51 | 6.5% | 18.4% |
| Giants | 107.7 | 439 | 3.59 | 3.51 | 3.66 | 3.80 | 6.8% | 19.6% |
| Dodgers | 104.7 | 435 | 3.61 | 3.01 | 3.63 | 3.80 | 9.4% | 21.8% |
| Rays | 107.3 | 453 | 3.77 | 3.44 | 4.16 | 4.31 | 9.9% | 16.1% |
| Blue Jays | 109.7 | 443 | 4.02 | 3.78 | 5.45 | 4.32 | 9.3% | 13.5% |
| Tigers | 95.3 | 406 | 4.25 | 3.87 | 3.29 | 3.43 | 6.2% | 21.4% |
| Reds | 106.0 | 448 | 4.42 | 3.99 | 3.92 | 4.23 | 6.5% | 14.3% |
| Angels | 106.0 | 440 | 4.50 | 4.33 | 4.24 | 3.40 | 5.9% | 20.2% |
| Mariners | 107.7 | 454 | 4.51 | 4.43 | 3.62 | 3.88 | 5.9% | 18.3% |
| Mets | 96.3 | 418 | 4.58 | 3.92 | 3.62 | 3.25 | 7.7% | 20.8% |
| Indians | 84.0 | 367 | 4.61 | 4.18 | 4.19 | 4.31 | 9.0% | 13.9% |
| Astros | 108.3 | 466 | 4.65 | 4.24 | 4.14 | 4.02 | 8.2% | 16.7% |
| Diamondbacks | 108.0 | 456 | 4.75 | 4.33 | 4.17 | 3.68 | 7.5% | 18.4% |
| Cubs | 106.0 | 455 | 4.75 | 4.25 | 3.42 | 3.63 | 8.8% | 21.8% |
| Braves | 101.7 | 430 | 4.78 | 4.16 | 3.80 | 3.99 | 9.1% | 19.3% |
| Brewers | 102.7 | 441 | 4.91 | 4.82 | 3.91 | 3.60 | 7.0% | 21.8% |
| Padres | 104.0 | 445 | 4.93 | 4.15 | 3.92 | 3.85 | 11.0% | 19.8% |
| Orioles | 100.3 | 433 | 5.02 | 4.22 | 4.33 | 4.15 | 9.5% | 18.7% |
| Royals | 88.0 | 386 | 5.32 | 4.81 | 4.11 | 4.49 | 11.7% | 16.8% |
| Rockies | 88.3 | 390 | 5.40 | 4.89 | 4.96 | 4.83 | 9.5% | 12.6% |
| Red Sox | 94.3 | 413 | 5.72 | 5.63 | 4.92 | 4.22 | 9.9% | 17.9% |
| Yankees | 96.3 | 427 | 6.17 | 5.51 | 4.35 | 3.44 | 6.1% | 21.1% |
| Twins | 95.0 | 423 | 7.01 | 6.73 | 5.50 | 4.38 | 6.9% | 13.0% |
FIP: Fielding-independent pitching
xFIP: Expected fielding-independent pitching
Twins pitching vs. the Yankees: 2-2, 6.09 RA
Twins pitching vs. the rest of the league: 3-11, 5.88 RA
Remember how the Yankees’ starting pitching was supposed to be a strength? Now they’re hoping a 40 year old who hasn’t pitched in a year can ride in and save the day.
CC should be fine. I think Nova’s a good bet for continued success thanks to the big improvement in his peripherals. Whether that makes him a 2 or a 3 I don’t know, but it’s probably safer to think he’s a 3. Kuroda will also be ok I think, but I don’t think he’s a 2 in the AL. It’d be nice if Phil Hughes wasn’t awful, because with Michael Pineda looking less and less likely to pitch this year Andy Pettitte could in theory fill one hole between Hughes and Freddy Garcia, but he can’t fill two. My guess is Garcia’s start on Saturday will be his last for this turn in the rotation.
Despite what they’ve shown to date I’d bet a reasonable amount of money the Yankees will not remain the second worst starting rotation in MLB by the end of the year. I think they have a chance to crack the top 20.
Tuesday, April 24, 2012
Yankees.com: With 10 Ks, Darvish breezes past Yanks
ARLINGTON—Right-hander Yu Darvish was electric across 8 1/3 innings, leading the Rangers to a 2-0 victory over the Yankees at Rangers Ballpark on Tuesday night.
Darvish, helped by a couple of outstanding plays by shortstop Elvis Andrus, outpitched Yankees starter Hiroki Kuroda in only the seventh game in Major League history to be started by two Japanese-born pitchers.
Darvish was really good, and Kuroda was good as well. I can’t wait to read all the awful ‘Yu’ puns in the NY fish wraps tomorrow.
Friday, April 20, 2012
Crashing the Party
I decided to make use of my field pass during Yankees' batting practice on Friday afternoon. I figured that I should make the most of it before somebody wised up and revoked it.
Trying to remain as incognito as possible, I snapped off a few pictures using my phone (hence the poor picture quality). Click on any of them to enlarge.
I took this shot just as the Red Sox were finishing up their BP - all the Yankees were still in the dugout getting ready to come out and stretch.
Papelbon is right, Mo has a great smile.
CHB asked asked A-Rod about his favorite Fenway moments. I believe A-Rod mentioned his first major league game in July of 1994.
One of the funnier moments I witnessed was when Nick Swisher came into the dugout before taking BP. Russell Martin was just about to sit down with a reporter from a Canadian news outlet, and Swisher started yelling out, "French time? Time for French!?"
Another interesting thing I caught was Swisher talking to Ibanez about the difference between Yankee Stadium's short porch and the wall in left at Fenway. He said something about how if you get jammed at Yankee Stadium, you won't be able to muscle it out; but you can get jammed and still go deep over the monster. Or maybe it was the other way around. The funny thing was that it almost looked like he got jammed in his first plate appearance on Friday and he actually took it the other way for a HR over the monster.
Kuroda sitting down for an interview with Japanese TV. I only caught one word: Ichiro.
Every time I get an assignment for a Yankee game, I hope to see Mariano Rivera take the mound. So when Cody Eppley came in with a four run lead in the bottom of the ninth, I was a bit disconcerted. However, it only took one single off the bat of Jarrod Saltalamacchia for Girardi to make the inevitable call to the bullpen, and I once again got to see my absolute favorite player in action. Two strike outs and a ground out was all the Red Sox could muster against the greatest closer in baseball history, and the Yankees took the first game of the season series 6-2.
Happy Birthday Fenway.
Friday, April 13, 2012
Yankees.com: Superb Kuroda leads Yanks in Bronx opener
NEW YORK—Hiroki Kuroda worked eight-plus stellar innings in his Yankee Stadium debut and Nick Swisher cleared the bases with a three-run double as the Yankees defeated the Angels, 5-0, on Friday in their home opener.
Alex Rodriguez and Curtis Granderson also homered in the victory for New York, as the Bombers won for the 14th time in their last 15 home openers, including three of four at the new ballpark. Rodriguez’s fourth-inning homer was the 630th of his career, tying him with Ken Griffey Jr. for fifth on the all-time list.
I only got to see bits and pieces but I look forward to watching the replay of Kuroda’s performance. Pretty much the home opener you’d draw up on paper if you could. A great starting pitcher performance, Swisher putting the team up 3-0 in the first inning., Rodriguez going 3 for 4 with a SB and showing that perhaps there’s still some life left in him, and most importantly a win.
If we revisit this, the Yankees have now gotten their record back to where it should have been after seven games. According to log5 the Yankees would have been 3.82 - 3.18 at this point, and they’re 4-3. Yay.
Friday, April 6, 2012
Looking Ahead To 2012 - Team Wrap Up
Opening Day is here, which means we can forget about projections and start complaining about games that count.
We’ve looked at the projections for most of the key players on the Yankees Opening Day roster, with apologies to Chris Stewart.
Russell Martin
Mark Teixeira
Robinson Cano
Derek Jeter
Alex Rodriguez
Eduardo Nun-E-z
The Speedy Brett Gardner
Curtis Granderson
Nick Swisher
Andruw Jones and Jesus Montero Raul Ibanez
CC Sabathia
Hiroki Kuroda
Phil Hughes
Michael Pineda
Ivan Nova and Freddy Garcia
$36M and a lost draft pick
David Robertson
Booooone Logan and Clay Rapada
Cory Wade and David Phelps
Mariano F’ing Rivera
So now I try to assemble that into a team projection. I’ll show the depth charts I used for the 2012 MLB Projection Blowout with CAIRO.
| order | player | position | pa | outs | avg/obp/slg | woba | br | def |
| 1 | Derek Jeter | SS | 575 | 392 | .286/.345/.384 | .325 | 69 | -7 |
| 2 | Curtis Granderson | CF | 625 | 421 | .263/.351/.502 | .366 | 98 | 0 |
| 3 | Mark Teixeira | 1B | 675 | 447 | .263/.359/.493 | .368 | 105 | 4 |
| 4 | Robinson Cano | 2B | 675 | 460 | .303/.352/.504 | .368 | 105 | 0 |
| 5 | Alex Rodriguez | 3B | 450 | 300 | .273/.363/.474 | .365 | 68 | 0 |
| 6 | Nick Swisher | RF | 625 | 418 | .259/.356/.455 | .354 | 90 | 4 |
| 7 | Raul Ibanez | DH | 400 | 279 | .266/.329/.458 | .340 | 55 | 0 |
| 8 | Russell Martin | C | 500 | 346 | .253/.347/.383 | .329 | 60 | 0 |
| 9 | Brett Gardner | LF | 600 | 410 | .262/.347/.371 | .324 | 76 | 16 |
| Starters | 5125 | 3473 | .271/.351/.449 | .350 | 726 | 18 | ||
| bench | player | position | pa | outs | avg/obp/slg | woba | br | def |
| Eduardo Nunez | IF | 375 | 271 | .262/.315/.392 | .310 | 44 | -6 | |
| Andruw Jones | OF | 275 | 194 | .221/.318/.413 | .321 | 34 | 0 | |
| Eric Chavez | 3B | 250 | 182 | .240/.296/.356 | .288 | 24 | 0 | |
| Chris Stewart | C | 100 | 72 | .228/.299/.328 | .283 | 9 | 0 | |
| Francisco Cervelli | C | 100 | 70 | .264/.328/.373 | .312 | 11 | 0 | |
| Ramiro Pena | IF | 50 | 37 | .240/.290/.340 | .280 | 5 | 0 | |
| Brandon Laird | 1B/3B | 40 | 29 | .247/.292/.407 | .304 | 4 | 0 | |
| Chris Dickerson | OF | 0 | 0 | .243/.321/.369 | .308 | 0 | 0 | |
| Jack Cust | DH | 0 | 0 | .243/.362/.420 | .349 | 0 | 0 | |
| Russell Branyan | DH | 0 | 0 | .240/.330/.458 | .341 | 0 | 0 | |
| Dewayne Wise | OF | 0 | 0 | .243/.286/.406 | .298 | 0 | 0 | |
| David Adams | 2B | 0 | 0 | .244/.311/.377 | .305 | 0 | 0 | |
| Bench | 1190 | 855 | .244/.309/.381 | .304 | 131 | -6 | ||
| Team | 6315 | 4328 | .266/.343/.436 | .341 | 857 | 12 |
woba: Weighted on-base average
br: Linear weights batting runs
def: Estimated runs saved compared to average using an average of zone rating, DRS, UZR and Totalzone
The biggest area of concern for the position players is probably Alex Rodriguez’s health. A weighted average of his past four years puts him at 459 PA. I’m also not particularly optimistic that Raul Ibanez can hit that projected line, although as half of a platoon it’s more feasible. To a lesser extent the team’s overall health is probably a concern, although in my mind it’s not a huge one. Losing Curtis Granderson or Robinson Cano for an extensive period of time wouldn’t be good since they’re probably the two most valuable position players on the team right now, but you can say that for any team losing one or both of their top two position players.
Regarding Chris Stewart vs. Francisco Cervelli, it’s a clear offensive downgrade. The question is how defense changes things. If we use Cervelli’s 2011 playing time as an estimate for the 2012 backup catchers, you’re looking at something like 137 PA. Let’s round that up to 200 PA in case Russell Martin misses some more time than expected.
200 PA of Cervelli projects to be worth 22 runs. For Stewart, 200 PA projects to be worth about 18 runs. As far as defense, I’m going to ignore pitch framing and blocking and just compare the difference between them in SB/CS. In their careers, that looks like this:
| player | inn | sb | cs | sba | cs% |
| Cervelli | 1295 | 93 | 23 | 116 | 19.8% |
| Stewart | 590 | 44 | 28 | 72 | 38.9% |
Runners may not run as frequently against Stewart if teams have more respect for his arm than they do for Cervelli’s, although runners have attempted 0.12 steals per inning vs. Stewart compared to 0.09 steals per innings vs. Cervelli in their respective careers. I’ll split the difference, which means 42 stolen base attempts over 400 innings. Using the linear weights values for SB/CS gives us this.
| player | inn | sb | cs | sba | cs% | rv |
| Cervelli | 400 | 34 | 8 | 42 | 19.8% | 4 |
| Stewart | 400 | 26 | 16 | 42 | 38.9% | -1 |
rv: linear weights run value of SB/CS.
A positive run value means more runs for the team stealing bases, so the difference between Stewart and Cervelli there effectively nullifies Cervelli’s offensive edge. Whether other factors of catcher defense change things beyond that, I have no idea.
Back to the rest of the team, the Yankees actually project to score more runs than any other team in baseball according to the aggregate projections I ran, although CAIRO sees them about nine runs behind Boston. They may be able to pick up a few more runs if they swap out Ibanez for Russell Branyan and/or Jack Cust at some point.
Most of the defense projects as average, aside from Derek Jeter, Mark Teixeira, Nick Swisher, Brett Gardner and Nun-E. Overall they project about 12 runs better than average.
Of course, 90% of the game is pitching, so how’s that look?
| Role | Player | IP | H | R | ER | HR | BB | SO | RA | ERA | FIP |
| SP1 | CC Sabathia | 220 | 220 | 91 | 82 | 19 | 64 | 203 | 3.57 | 3.24 | 3.23 |
| SP2 | Hiroki Kuroda | 190 | 190 | 91 | 80 | 21 | 44 | 126 | 4.57 | 4.01 | 3.92 |
| SP3 | Michael Pineda | 150 | 150 | 82 | 76 | 21 | 53 | 157 | 4.37 | 4.06 | 3.79 |
| SP4 | Ivan Nova | 150 | 150 | 78 | 72 | 16 | 57 | 89 | 4.93 | 4.50 | 4.52 |
| SP5 | Phil Hughes | 150 | 150 | 75 | 73 | 19 | 50 | 114 | 4.63 | 4.49 | 4.26 |
| SP6 | Andy Pettitte | 110 | 110 | 51 | 47 | 11 | 35 | 76 | 4.33 | 4.01 | 4.00 |
| SP7 | Freddy Garcia | 40 | 40 | 18 | 17 | 4 | 11 | 23 | 4.55 | 4.28 | 4.28 |
| SP8 | Manny Banuelos | 20 | 20 | 12 | 11 | 3 | 10 | 12 | 6.20 | 5.72 | 5.43 |
| SP9 | Dellin Betances | 20 | 20 | 13 | 12 | 3 | 12 | 13 | 6.51 | 6.02 | 5.75 |
| SP10 | Adam Warren | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 5.41 | 5.00 | 4.72 |
| Starters | Total | 1050 | 1050 | 510 | 469 | 117 | 335 | 813 | 4.38 | 4.02 | 3.98 |
| Role | Player | IP | H | R | ER | HR | BB | SO | RA | ERA | FIP |
| CL | Mariano Rivera | 65 | 65 | 25 | 23 | 5 | 16 | 77 | 2.63 | 2.46 | 2.71 |
| SU | David Robertson | 70 | 70 | 28 | 26 | 5 | 43 | 109 | 2.96 | 2.77 | 2.84 |
| SU | Rafael Soriano | 60 | 60 | 31 | 29 | 8 | 26 | 69 | 3.82 | 3.60 | 3.64 |
| MR | Boone Logan | 50 | 50 | 23 | 20 | 5 | 19 | 46 | 4.29 | 3.76 | 3.71 |
| MR | Cory Wade | 40 | 40 | 20 | 18 | 6 | 10 | 28 | 4.44 | 4.08 | 4.31 |
| MR | Clay Rapada | 50 | 50 | 26 | 24 | 5 | 23 | 39 | 4.63 | 4.35 | 4.25 |
| LR | David Phelps | 50 | 50 | 26 | 24 | 6 | 14 | 24 | 5.58 | 5.16 | 4.88 |
| LR | D.J. Mitchell | 23 | 23 | 13 | 12 | 3 | 10 | 10 | 5.99 | 5.54 | 5.26 |
| Relievers | Total | 408 | 408 | 191 | 177 | 43 | 161 | 403 | 4.21 | 3.90 | 3.75 |
| Team | Total | 1458 | 1458 | 701 | 646 | 160 | 496 | 1216 | 4.33 | 3.99 | 3.91 |
Assigning innings to the staff was a bit trickier this year. The Yankees have a whole bunch of guys who could pitch in the middle/back of the rotation and injuries/circumstances may have a greater say in that than merit. There’s not a ton of difference in the projections of starters 2-7, although it’s probably fair to wonder how accurate projecting Andy Pettitte will be after a year off. But really, you can juggle the innings around between Pettitte, Hiroki Kuroda, Michael Pineda, Ivan Nova, Phil Hughes and Freddy Garcia and probably not see a big difference. CC Sabathia is really the one starter the Yankees can’t afford to lose for any appreciable amount of time.
As far as the pen, it looked better before Joba Chamberlain got hurt. There’s still probably not an end-game you’d take over Mariano Rivera/David Robertson, and for all the crap I spew about the Soriano signing he should be solid, but an injury to either Mo or Robertson suddenly makes it look a bit thin. David Aardsma may be able to pitch at some point, but that’s uncertain.
So, adding this up, this is what CAIRO says.
| RS | 848 |
| Def | 12 |
| RA | 701 |
| wpct | .598 |
| p162 | 97 |
848 runs scored and 701 runs allowed plus 12 runs saved compared to average puts the Yankees at a Pythagenpat winning percentage of .598, which is equivalent to a 97 win team. CAIRO projected them at 96 in the projection blowout, which is probably a strength of schedule thing.
The other projections I ran say:
Marcel: 92
Oliver: 94
PECOTA: 95
ZiPS: 95
Average: 94
Clay Davenport has them at 93, the official version of Oliver has them at 96 and the official version of PECOTA has them at 94 wins.
I am fairly certain about one thing in baseball this year. The best team in the American League will be the best team in baseball. I’m not quite as certain that the Yankees are that team. They project to be, but Texas has represented the AL in the last two World Series (shamefully, but still…) and if Yu Darvish is a front-line MLB starting pitcher(I think he is), it’s not a stretch to see them as the best team in the league. If the Angels stop dicking around with Vernon Wells and put Mike Trout in their outfield they also have a chance to be the best team in the league, plus they’ll sweep the Yankees in the regular season even if they’re not. Detroit’s defense looks like a problem to me, and while they should score plenty of runs, I have a hard time seeing them as being better than all three of the Rangers, Angels, and Yankees. Of course, we also have the two chief rivals in the AL East to worry about. It wouldn’t take much in the way of good fortune for Boston/Tampa Bay or bad fortune for the Yankees to drop the Yanks into third place.
Still, it’s hard to envision a scenario where the Yankees fail to qualify for the postseason. I suppose losing any of CC Sabathia, Robinson Cano or Curtis Granderson for an extended period of time would be one such scenario.
According to the average team projections I ran their probability of winning at least the second wild card at 82.5%, which is the highest in baseball and 7% ahead of Texas who rank second. CAIRO likes the Yankees even more than that at 83.5%, but that ranks second to Texas’s 84.1%. On average, it took 92 wins to win the first AL wild card and 89 wins to get the second one, but these are the Yankees. Division or bust! Wild cards are for losers!
Since rilkefan asked about how these projections have fared in the past, I did a quick little chart. This compares the average of however many projections I ran that year to what the Yankees actually did.
| Year | Projected | Actual | Difference |
| 2005 | 94 | 95 | 1 |
| 2006 | 90 | 97 | 7 |
| 2007 | 95 | 94 | -1 |
| 2008 | 95 | 89 | -6 |
| 2009 | 96 | 103 | 7 |
| 2010 | 96 | 95 | -1 |
| 2011 | 92 | 97 | 5 |
| average | 94 | 95.7 | 1.7 |
| rms | 4.8 |
So the Yankees have been a bit less than two wins better than projected on average since I began running these in 2005. The methodology has changed, I think for the better, but it’s still limited. But I’m pretty comfortable the Yankees will be one of the best teams in baseball. That’s really all you can ask for as a fan when the season starts, right?
Yay Opening Day!
Monday, April 2, 2012
Looking Ahead to 2012 - Ivan Nova and Freddy Garcia
Ivan Nova
Time to double up on these with Opening Day fast approaching. I’m hoping to have my projected standings up tomorrow, so today we’ll round out the rest of the opening day rotation by looking at Ivan Nova and Freddy Garcia.
After a decent showing in his 2010 MLB debut, albeit one with shaky peripherals, Ivan Nova earned a spot in the Yankee rotation to start 2011. Nova’s main calling card as a prospect was his fastball velocity, but until 2009 he hadn’t really shown the type of performance you’d like to see in a pitching prospect.
Because of that track record, his projections heading into the season weren’t pretty.
| projecton | G | IP | H | R | ER | HR | BB | SO | RA | ERA | FIP | RSAR | WAR | BABIP |
| cairo | 22 | 116 | 130 | 72 | 67 | 15 | 49 | 72 | 5.59 | 5.20 | 5.04 | 5 | 0.5 | .303 |
| marcel | 17 | 71 | 69 | 35 | 32 | 7 | 26 | 52 | 4.44 | 4.06 | 4.20 | 12 | 1.2 | .287 |
| oliver | 37 | 155 | 170 | 90 | 82 | 18 | 69 | 97 | 5.24 | 4.79 | 4.80 | 13 | 1.3 | .302 |
| pecota | 20 | 119 | 136 | 75 | 69 | 15 | 53 | 66 | 5.68 | 5.23 | 5.19 | 4 | 0.4 | .303 |
| zips | 28 | 150 | 170 | 94 | 88 | 19 | 69 | 88 | 5.65 | 5.29 | 5.18 | 5 | 0.5 | .304 |
| average* | 25 | 122 | 135 | 73 | 68 | 15 | 53 | 75 | 5.40 | 4.99 | 4.97 | 8 | 0.8 | .301 |
| 2010 | 33 | 187 | 179 | 72 | 67 | 14 | 65 | 141 | 3.47 | 3.22 | 3.74 | 52 | 5.2 | .291 |
| 2011 | 27 | 159 | 155 | 70 | 64 | 13 | 57 | 95 | 3.96 | 3.62 | 4.14 | 35 | 3.5 | .279 |
RA/ERA: Runs/Earned runs allowed per nine innings
FIP: Fielding-independent pitching
RSAR: Runs saved above a replacement level pitcher(park and role-adjusted, using RA)
WAR: Wins above replacement level (RSAR divided by 10)
BABIP: Batting average on balls in play
The 2010 line includes his minor league performance so ignore that RSAR/WAR. As you can see Nova exceeded just about every projection in 2011.
2011
So was Nova lucky? Probably a bit, but we do have some evidence of genuine development. For the majority of pitchers, their effectiveness ties directly into their command of the strike zone. It’s the reason Mariano Rivera has been the best closer of all time, for example. You can look at the percentage of batters a pitcher walks and strikes out (and or their K/BB ratio) as a proxy for strike zone command. But don’t just take my word for it.
The fear with Nova, and the primary reason he didn’t get much respect among more statistically inclined analysts was that he had walked about 7.7% of the batters he’d faced in the minors while striking out 16.8%, a K/BB ratio of 2.19. You can be a useful pitcher in MLB with a K/BB ratio like that in MLB, but translating that from the minors doesn’t give you much of a margin of error.
In 2011, Nova walked 8.1% of the batters he faced and struck out 13.9%. His K/BB ratio of 1.72 was less than stellar, and although he had a decent FIP of 4.01 it was buoyed by a lower than average HR/FB rate, a particularly impressive achievement in DNYS.
That’s not to say it’s all doom and gloom for Nova. Even his xFIP, which corrects for HR/FB rate, was a more than respectable 4.16, which is fine for a middle of the rotation guy. In addition to that, if we go a little deeper into his numbers we can find evidence of the aforementioned genuine development. In this case it’s in his splits through May 28, and his splits afterwards. Why that date? That’s the date his slider appeared to become another weapon.
| dates | ip | bf | h | hr | bb | k | ra | era | fip | xfip |
| 4/4-5/28 | 54 | 246 | 62 | 4 | 24 | 27 | 5.50 | 4.67 | 4.37 | 4.96 |
| 6/3-9/25 | 105 | 431 | 93 | 9 | 33 | 68 | 3.17 | 3.09 | 3.83 | 4.01 |
| Dates | fb% | gb% | ld% | bb/bf | k/bf | babip | hr/fb |
| 4/4-5/28 | 28.4% | 54.2% | 17.4% | 9.8% | 11.0% | .312 | 7.4% |
| 6/3-9/25 | 29.3% | 51.5% | 19.1% | 7.7% | 15.8% | .267 | 9.5% |
bf: batters faced
fip: Fielding independent pitching
xfip: Expected fip (uses league average hr/fb rate instead of actual hr)
fb% Percentage of batted balls that were fly balls
gb% Percentage of batted balls that were ground balls
ld% Percentage of batted balls that were line drives
bb/bf: walks per batters faced
k/bf: strikeouts per batters faced
babip: batting average on balls in play
Nova’s ERA/RA was still a bit better than you’d expect from his peripherals post-slider, but they support the notion that Nova can be a capable starting pitcher in MLB. We always want to be cautious about drawing large meaning from small samples, but changes in walk rate and strikeout rate stabilize more quickly than changes in most other stats, for both pitchers and hitters.
So what about 2012?
2012 Projections
| Projection | IP | H | R | ER | HR | BB | SO | RA | ERA | FIP | RAR | WAR |
| cairo | 129 | 135 | 71 | 65 | 15 | 52 | 80 | 4.93 | 4.50 | 4.52 | 17 | 1.7 |
| davenport | 132 | 131 | 62 | 61 | 13 | 50 | 79 | 4.24 | 4.17 | 4.33 | 27 | 2.7 |
| marcel | 144 | 138 | 65 | 59 | 12 | 49 | 98 | 4.06 | 3.69 | 3.85 | 27 | 2.7 |
| oliver | 170 | 178 | 89 | 81 | 16 | 63 | 103 | 4.74 | 4.30 | 4.23 | 21 | 2.1 |
| pecota | 156 | 177 | 96 | 87 | 18 | 62 | 90 | 5.53 | 5.03 | 4.64 | 8 | 0.8 |
| steamer | 165 | 174 | 93 | 85 | 15 | 68 | 102 | 5.08 | 4.61 | 4.27 | 12 | 1.2 |
| zips | 178 | 189 | 94 | 88 | 20 | 60 | 111 | 4.74 | 4.44 | 4.33 | 20 | 2.0 |
| average | 153 | 160 | 81 | 75 | 15 | 58 | 95 | 4.76 | 4.39 | 4.31 | 19 | 1.9 |
| 2011 | 165 | 163 | 74 | 68 | 13 | 57 | 98 | 4.03 | 3.71 | 3.98 | 35 | 3.5 |
RA: Runs allowed per nine innings
FIP: Fielding-independent pitching
RAR: Runs above replacement level (using RA adjusted for park)
WAR: Wins above replacement level (RAR divided by 10)
For more information on the projections above you can look at the first post in this series.
I’ve included his 2011 and the league average as frames of reference. League average is based on role (starters vs. relievers), and is not adjusted for park so unlike with hitters mentally adjust that up a bit.
The consensus now is that Nova can be a bit better than league average, particularly if you give him a full starter’s workload. That’s a big step up from his projections entering last year and that’s probably a solid #3 in an average MLB rotation, at a cost-controlled salary. I think his 16-4 record in 2011 may lead the MSM and some fans to overrate him, but that’s not his fault. You’d have to imagine the Yankees hope to see him more like a #5 should they get a healthy and effective Phil Hughes and Michael Pineda this year, but I don’t really like the odds of both of those things happening right now.
CAIRO Percentile Forecasts
| % | IP | H | R | ER | HR | BB | SO | RA | ERA | FIP | RAR | WAR |
| 80% | 194 | 186 | 94 | 85 | 16 | 67 | 133 | 4.34 | 3.94 | 3.84 | 38 | 3.8 |
| 65% | 168 | 168 | 87 | 79 | 16 | 62 | 110 | 4.64 | 4.22 | 4.18 | 27 | 2.7 |
| Baseline | 129 | 135 | 71 | 65 | 15 | 52 | 80 | 4.93 | 4.50 | 4.51 | 17 | 1.7 |
| 35% | 103 | 113 | 60 | 55 | 13 | 44 | 60 | 5.22 | 4.78 | 4.84 | 10 | 1.0 |
| 20% | 90 | 103 | 55 | 51 | 13 | 41 | 50 | 5.52 | 5.06 | 5.17 | 6 | 0.6 |
CAIRO is actually less sanguine on Nova than the average projection, but that 65% forecast is probably about what you’d expect if he were to repeat his 2011 with a bit less of the good fortune in HR/FB rate and BABIP.
I’d probably be more worried about Nova’s 6.86 spring training ERA if he hadn’t walked one hitter and struck out 14 of them. But since he has, I’m not. He may end up out of the rotation if everyone is healthy and effective this year, but that never really happens.
Freddy Garcia
I have to admit I expected nothing out of either Freddy Garcia or Bartolo Colon last year. At this point it seems like Garcia is superfluous, but at the time he was signed the Yankee rotation was CC Sabathia, A.J. Burnett, Ivan Nova and 2011 Phil Hughes. That the Yankees subsequently added three pitchers who are probably better options for the rotation than Garcia isn’t his fault, and I’ve seen no evidence that he hasn’t acted professionally even though his short and long-term role on the Yankees has been in doubt. With Michael Pineda out with tendinitis and Andy Pettitte working his way back from retirement, Garcia will open the year in the rotation.
2010 & 2011 Projections
| projecton | G | IP | H | R | ER | HR | BB | SO | RA | ERA | FIP | RSAR | WAR | BABIP |
| cairo | 31 | 31 | 32 | 17 | 16 | 4 | 11 | 22 | 4.94 | 4.65 | 4.62 | 2 | 0.2 | .292 |
| marcel | 25 | 144 | 152 | 76 | 72 | 18 | 44 | 91 | 4.75 | 4.50 | 4.54 | 12 | 1.2 | .291 |
| oliver | 18 | 101 | 111 | 63 | 60 | 15 | 29 | 62 | 5.64 | 5.35 | 4.76 | -2 | -0.2 | .294 |
| pecota | 20 | 109 | 119 | 63 | 58 | 17 | 33 | 68 | 5.23 | 4.81 | 4.97 | 3 | 0.3 | .291 |
| zips | 15 | 82 | 90 | 47 | 44 | 12 | 23 | 51 | 5.16 | 4.83 | 4.77 | 3 | 0.3 | .295 |
| average* | 22 | 93 | 101 | 53 | 50 | 13 | 28 | 59 | 5.14 | 4.82 | 4.75 | 4 | 0.4 | .292 |
| 2010 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | #DIV/0! | #### | ###### | ##### | ##### | ##### |
| 2011 | 25 | 141 | 146 | 63 | 59 | 16 | 44 | 93 | 4.03 | 3.77 | 4.29 | 23 | 2.3 | .292 |
RA/ERA: Runs/Earned runs allowed per nine innings
FIP: Fielding-independent pitching
RSAR: Runs saved above a replacement level pitcher(park and role-adjusted, using RA)
WAR: Wins above replacement level (RSAR divided by 10)
BABIP: Batting average on balls in play
I guess the most amazing thing is going from not pitching at all in 2010 to giving the team 141 strong innings. His FIP is probably a better indicator of how effective Garcia actually was, but he certainly blew away every projection.
2011
Garcia doesn’t throw had anymore. He came up throwing in the mid-90s but injuries have him sitting around 87 mph with his fastball, which has forced him to become more reliant on his secondary stuff. In some ways he was like a less-effective Mike Mussina circa 2008. Garcia increased his use of his split finger fastball last year, including one that was used in a physics lecture in Australia about how to curve a baseball. He had a higher than typical percentage of runners left on base and like Nova allowed a few less HRs per fly ball than an average pitcher. Throw in another year of aging and it’s probably a safe bet he won’t be quite as effective as last year, but here’s what the projections say.
2012 Projections
| Projection | IP | H | R | ER | HR | BB | SO | RA | ERA | FIP | RAR | WAR |
| cairo | 102 | 112 | 51 | 48 | 12 | 30 | 64 | 4.55 | 4.28 | 4.28 | 17 | 1.7 |
| davenport | 56 | 60 | 32 | 31 | 8 | 17 | 31 | 5.12 | 4.96 | 4.73 | 6 | 0.6 |
| marcel | 149 | 156 | 72 | 67 | 17 | 46 | 97 | 4.36 | 4.06 | 4.19 | 23 | 2.3 |
| oliver | 136 | 150 | 73 | 68 | 16 | 39 | 79 | 4.84 | 4.50 | 4.31 | 14 | 1.4 |
| pecota | 126 | 140 | 72 | 67 | 17 | 37 | 83 | 5.13 | 4.78 | 4.40 | 7 | 0.7 |
| steamer | 113 | 121 | 61 | 57 | 15 | 30 | 69 | 4.88 | 4.54 | 4.41 | 11 | 1.1 |
| zips | 128 | 143 | 74 | 69 | 18 | 40 | 75 | 5.20 | 4.85 | 4.64 | 8 | 0.8 |
| average | 116 | 126 | 63 | 59 | 15 | 34 | 71 | 4.87 | 4.57 | 4.42 | 12 | 1.2 |
| 2011 | 146 | 152 | 63 | 59 | 16 | 45 | 96 | 3.88 | 3.63 | 4.09 | 23 | 2.3 |
| LgAvg | 146 | 148 | 75 | 68 | 17 | 46 | 107 | 4.60 | 4.21 | 4.21 |
Not surprising that Garcia’s expected to drop across the board, although Davenport, PECOTA and ZiPS are expecting a major fall off. Still, as the ostensible seventh starter on the team you could do worse.
CAIRO Percentile Forecasts
| % | IP | H | R | ER | HR | BB | SO | RA | ERA | FIP | RAR | WAR |
| 80% | 152 | 152 | 66 | 62 | 13 | 36 | 108 | 3.91 | 3.66 | 3.55 | 37 | 3.7 |
| 65% | 132 | 138 | 62 | 58 | 14 | 35 | 88 | 4.23 | 3.97 | 3.93 | 27 | 2.7 |
| Baseline | 102 | 112 | 51 | 48 | 12 | 30 | 64 | 4.55 | 4.28 | 4.30 | 17 | 1.7 |
| 35% | 81 | 94 | 44 | 41 | 11 | 26 | 48 | 4.86 | 4.59 | 4.67 | 11 | 1.1 |
| 20% | 71 | 86 | 41 | 39 | 11 | 24 | 39 | 5.18 | 4.89 | 5.03 | 7 | 0.7 |
I think in this case the 35% forecast is probably closer to how Garcia will perform and how often he’ll pitch. There’s a lot of uncertainty with Andy Pettitte and Michael Pineda that could end up with the Yankees needing him more often than that though, and I’m not sure counting on a full season out of Phil Hughes is wise yet. Garcia could still be expendable if the Yankees feel his innings can be mostly replaced by some combination of Adam Warren, David Phelps, D.J. Mitchell, Dellin Betances or Manny Banuelos, but they probably have some time to determine that.
The Yankees’ postseason hopes if they should make it by some miracle may not be affected all that much by Nova and Garcia. You’d have to think the postseason rotation would contain some combination of CC Sabathia, Hiroki Kuroda, Phil Hughes, Michael Pineda and/or Andy Pettitte. But you do have to get there first, and Nova and Garcia can be big parts of that.
Wednesday, March 21, 2012
Looking Ahead to 2012 - Hiroki Kuroda
The Yankees tried to trade for Hiroki Kuroda last season, but he invoked his no-trade clause and wound up staying with the Dodgers all year. He became a free agent after the season at which point the Yankees snapped him up.
One thing I find interesting about Kuroda is that he was able to maintain more effectiveness than the average Japanese starter upon the transition to MLB. For comparison’s sake, here are three stat lines. The first is the average of his last three years in Japan, the second line is what that three-year average would have translated like to MLB if Kuroda would have done what the average Japanese starter had done (using the same adjustments that I made in this post about Yu Darvish), and the last is his actual MLB average performance.
| Projection | IP | H | R | ER | HR | BB | SO | RA | ERA | FIP |
| Kuroda - Japan | 175 | 160 | 62 | 56 | 15 | 32 | 131 | 3.17 | 2.89 | 3.13 |
| Kuroda - Translated | 175 | 189 | 92 | 84 | 22 | 39 | 107 | 4.76 | 4.34 | 4.07 |
| Kuroda - MLB | 175 | 167 | 77 | 67 | 16 | 41 | 131 | 3.97 | 3.45 | 3.39 |
Kuroda has been able to make a much better transition than the typical Japanese league starter, primarily by maintaining his HR rate and strikeout rate. I think it helps that Kuroda has better than average stuff (a fastball that averages about 92 mph) in addition to a cutter, sinker, splitter, slider and curve. His raw numbers in MLB are boosted by his park and league with the Dodgers and will probably suffer a bit as he moves to the Yankees, but he still looks like a guy who’ll be solid part of one of the deepest rotations in baseball.
2011
Kuroda had the best ERA of his MLB career in 2011 (3.07), but it came with the worst FIP (3.78). In his career he’s been able to suppress BABIP slightly (.282 vs. .304 league average) which is why his career ERA (3.45) is a bit better than his career FIP(3.55).
2012 Projections
| Projection | IP | H | R | ER | HR | BB | SO | RA | ERA | FIP | RAR | WAR |
| cairo | 182 | 194 | 93 | 81 | 21 | 45 | 129 | 4.57 | 4.01 | 3.92 | 31 | 3.1 |
| davenport | 150 | 153 | 79 | 78 | 17 | 36 | 96 | 4.73 | 4.67 | 3.99 | 23 | 2.3 |
| marcel | 181 | 175 | 78 | 69 | 19 | 48 | 141 | 3.89 | 3.44 | 3.69 | 37 | 3.7 |
| oliver | 182 | 182 | 86 | 76 | 20 | 44 | 137 | 4.25 | 3.76 | 3.73 | 34 | 3.4 |
| pecota | 186 | 198 | 99 | 88 | 23 | 48 | 128 | 4.79 | 4.24 | 4.09 | 27 | 2.7 |
| steamer | 184 | 188 | 95 | 84 | 21 | 45 | 127 | 4.67 | 4.13 | 3.92 | 22 | 2.2 |
| zips | 156 | 168 | 80 | 75 | 22 | 40 | 111 | 4.62 | 4.33 | 4.28 | 20 | 2.0 |
| average | 174 | 180 | 87 | 79 | 21 | 44 | 124 | 4.50 | 4.08 | 3.95 | 28 | 2.8 |
| 2011 | 202 | 196 | 77 | 69 | 24 | 49 | 161 | 3.43 | 3.07 | 3.75 | 56 | 5.6 |
| LgAvg | 202 | 204 | 103 | 94 | 23 | 64 | 148 | 4.60 | 4.21 | 4.21 |
RA: Runs allowed per nine innings
FIP: Fielding-independent pitching
RAR: Runs above replacement level (using RA adjusted for park)
WAR: Wins above replacement level (RAR divided by 10)
For more information on the projections above you can look at the first post in this series.
I’ve included his 2011 and the league average as frames of reference. League average is based on role (starters vs. relievers), and is not adjusted for park so unlike with hitters mentally adjust that down a bit. In the specific case of Kuroda, comparing his performance to the 2011 AL average isn’t particularly meaningful, but I left it in anyway.
Marcel doesn’t adjust for league, so it’s overrating Kuroda a bit. Other than that there’s a bit of a range in the projections, with Oliver and CAIRO at the more positive end and with ZiPS and Steamer a bit less sanguine. It’s worth noting that even the worst projection of 2.0 WAR makes Kuroda effectively worth his contract.
CAIRO Percentile Forecasts
| % | IP | H | R | ER | HR | BB | SO | RA | ERA | FIP | RAR | WAR |
| 80% | 201 | 198 | 91 | 80 | 18 | 42 | 154 | 4.10 | 3.57 | 3.30 | 44 | 4.4 |
| 65% | 191 | 196 | 92 | 81 | 20 | 44 | 141 | 4.33 | 3.79 | 3.57 | 37 | 3.7 |
| Baseline | 182 | 194 | 93 | 81 | 21 | 45 | 129 | 4.57 | 4.01 | 3.85 | 31 | 3.1 |
| 35% | 164 | 181 | 88 | 77 | 21 | 44 | 111 | 4.81 | 4.24 | 4.12 | 23 | 2.3 |
| 20% | 146 | 166 | 82 | 72 | 21 | 42 | 94 | 5.05 | 4.46 | 4.39 | 17 | 1.7 |
Kuroda’s not young, and I do think the league switch will be a tough one for him at times, so the baseline is about the upper end of what I’m expecting. I don’t see him being much worse than the 35% forecast though, and that’s still not an awful one.
In an ideal world, or at least in my convoluted ideal world, Kuroda will be the Yankees’ third or fourth starter this year. It’s not unreasonable to hope that one or two of Michael Pineda, Ivan Nova or Phil Hughes outpitches him even while he remains reasonably effective. I suppose Andy Pettitte could also end up ahead of him at some point.
Even if that doesn’t happen, you could do worse than having Kuroda as your #2 starter in a postseason series.
Monday, March 19, 2012
Looking Ahead to 2012 - CC Sabathia
I haven’t gone through the rest of the bench but I’m going to wait until we have an idea of who will be on it on Opening Day. So it’s time to move on to the pitching projections. We’ll start with the ace of the staff, CC Sabathia.
2011
Sabathia had his best season as a Yankee in 2011. He put up an ERA+ of 147 which was better than his 137 and 136 marks in 2009 and 2010 respectively. Despite that, his season felt a bit disappointing because of how it finished. The turning point appears to have been his July 26 start against Seattle. Sabathia was dominating the Mariners through six innings. He had retired all 18 batters he faced and struck out 11 of them. There was a short rain delay, and CC returned to the mound to strike out Ichiro!
Unfortunately, Brendan Ryan then singled to break up the perfecto. CC struck out the next two hitters to finish off the seventh but he walked the first three hitters to start the eighth. He managed to get out of it with allowing just one run and some kid named Rivera closed it out.
So why do I think that game was some kind of turning point?
| dates | ip | bf | h | hr | bb | k | ra | era | fip | xfip |
| 3/31-7/26 | 169 | 686 | 143 | 6 | 45 | 156 | 2.93 | 2.56 | 2.48 | 3.37 |
| 8/1-9/21 | 61 | 269 | 80 | 9 | 14 | 68 | 4.40 | 4.26 | 3.45 | 2.70 |
| Dates | fb% | gb% | ld% | bb/bf | k/bf | babip | hr/fb |
| 3/31-7/26 | 30.4% | 48.2% | 21.4% | 6.6% | 22.7% | .293 | 4.2% |
| 8/1-9/21 | 28.4% | 43.8% | 27.8% | 5.2% | 25.3% | .425 | 18.0% |
bf: batters faced
fip: Fielding independent pitching
xfip: Expected fip (uses league average hr/fb rate instead of actual hr)
fb% Percentage of batted balls that were fly balls
gb% Percentage of batted balls that were ground balls
ld% Percentage of batted balls that were line drives
bb/bf: walks per batters faced
k/bf: strikeouts per batters faced
babip: batting average on balls in play
I don’t like to attribute all babip fluctuations to luck, but the truth is Sabathia’s peripherals were arguably better over the last two months of the season. It just didn’t translate to his results.
In ALDS Game 1 vs. Detroit CC looked overpowering, better than Justin Verlander, but then the rains came again and he was out after two innings. He took the hill again for Game 3 but wasn’t good, and he made a final appearance in relief in Game 5 and gave up the run that ended up being the difference in the series.
CC had an opt-out in his contract after the season and there was some legitimate concern that he’d opt out, but the Yankees were able to keep him in the fold by adding a year to his contract at a salary that bumped him back up to being the highest-paid pitcher in baseball. Given the overall body of work over his first three seasons I don’t think many Yankee fans are upset about having him around for another year.
2012 Projections
Sabathia’s the clear #1 starter on the Yankees, and probably their most valuable player right now. Here are his projections for 2012.
| Projection | IP | H | R | ER | HR | BB | SO | RA | ERA | FIP | RAR | WAR |
| cairo | 227 | 218 | 90 | 82 | 19 | 64 | 201 | 3.57 | 3.24 | 3.23 | 63 | 6.3 |
| davenport | 210 | 192 | 90 | 89 | 18 | 60 | 172 | 3.86 | 3.81 | 3.44 | 52 | 5.2 |
| marcel | 203 | 189 | 80 | 73 | 16 | 59 | 179 | 3.55 | 3.24 | 3.24 | 50 | 5.0 |
| oliver | 233 | 225 | 101 | 92 | 18 | 64 | 197 | 3.88 | 3.54 | 3.24 | 49 | 4.9 |
| pecota | 217 | 204 | 85 | 77 | 19 | 52 | 195 | 3.52 | 3.21 | 3.16 | 57 | 5.7 |
| steamer | 219 | 205 | 96 | 88 | 21 | 68 | 196 | 3.96 | 3.61 | 3.49 | 44 | 4.4 |
| zips | 218 | 211 | 92 | 86 | 19 | 63 | 189 | 3.80 | 3.55 | 3.36 | 47 | 4.7 |
| average | 218 | 206 | 90 | 84 | 19 | 61 | 190 | 3.73 | 3.46 | 3.31 | 52 | 5.2 |
| 2011 | 237 | 230 | 87 | 79 | 17 | 61 | 230 | 3.30 | 3.00 | 2.85 | 66 | 6.6 |
| LgAvg | 237 | 239 | 121 | 111 | 27 | 75 | 174 | 4.60 | 4.21 | 4.21 |
RA: Runs allowed per nine innings
FIP: Fielding-independent pitching
RAR: Runs above replacement level (using RA adjusted for park)
WAR: Wins above replacement level (RAR divided by 10)
I’ve included his 2011 and the league average as frames of reference. League average is based on role (starters vs. relievers), and is not adjusted for park so unlike with hitters mentally adjust that down a bit.
For pitchers, I’m using the following projections.
CAIRO, my own projection system.
Clay Davenport, formerly of Baseball Prospectus’s projections
An unofficial version of Tangotiger’s Marcel, which were run using code provided by Jeff Sackmann.
Oliver, from the Hardball Times Forecasts.
PECOTA from Baseball Prospectus.
ZiPS, courtesy of Dan Szymborski at Baseball Think Factory.
A new addition for the pitchers is Steamer. The hitter projections weren’t ready when I started this so I didn’t include them, but according to this article Steamer was the only thing that prevented CAIRO from being the best pitching projection system last year. Steamer is similar to Marcel, but incorporates velocity data as well and it seemed to help it leap to the top of the 2011 projections.
There appears to be two distinct sets of projections here.
CAIRO/Marcel/PECOTA: 3.54 RA, 3.23 ERA, 3.21 FIP
Davenport/Oliver/Steamer/ZiPS: 3.87 RA, 3.63 ERA, 3.38 FIP
I think the first group is closer to the truth.
CAIRO Percentile Forecasts
| % | IP | H | R | ER | HR | BB | SO | RA | ERA | FIP | RAR | WAR |
| 80% | 245 | 220 | 87 | 79 | 15 | 60 | 233 | 3.19 | 2.88 | 2.67 | 79 | 7.9 |
| 65% | 236 | 219 | 89 | 80 | 17 | 62 | 217 | 3.38 | 3.06 | 2.90 | 71 | 7.1 |
| Baseline | 227 | 218 | 90 | 82 | 19 | 64 | 201 | 3.57 | 3.24 | 3.14 | 63 | 6.3 |
| 35% | 204 | 203 | 85 | 78 | 19 | 61 | 175 | 3.76 | 3.42 | 3.37 | 53 | 5.3 |
| 20% | 182 | 186 | 80 | 73 | 18 | 57 | 150 | 3.95 | 3.60 | 3.60 | 43 | 4.3 |
Sign me up for that 80% forecast.
The Yankees rotation is probably the deepest it’s been in years. That being said, there’s CC and there’s everyone else. I am pretty sure the group of Hiroki Kuroda, Michael Pineda, Ivan Nova, Phil Hughes and Andy Pettitte will project similarly to each other, with Freddy Garcia a bit behind them. But none of them can replace Sabathia. CC lost some weight this offseason to help reduce the strain on his knees. Of course he did that last year too but seemed to gain it all back by year-end.
Let’s hope he can stay healthy and give the Yankees another great year.
Monday, January 16, 2012
How Should The Yankees Replace Jesus Montero at DH?
Upgrading the rotation came at the cost of losing the Yankees’ starting DH and top hitting prospect. As a fan, I’m bummed about losing Montero because of the emotional tie I’ve built up as he’s progressed through the Yankee system. I think the trade was fair and I understand why it was made, but it’s still a disappointment. But press on, we must.
We really don’t know how good Montero is right now and how good he’ll be in the future. Here were the ranges of his CAIRO projections as a Yankee DH heading into 2012.
| % | PA | AB | R | H | 2B | 3B | HR | RBI | SB | CS | BB | SO | GDP | HBP | AVG | OBP | SLG | wOBA | BR | BRAR |
| 80% | 695 | 636 | 86 | 184 | 41 | 3 | 37 | 104 | 4 | 0 | 61 | 113 | 11 | 6 | .289 | .362 | .536 | .387 | 115 | 25 |
| 65% | 637 | 583 | 75 | 162 | 35 | 2 | 31 | 91 | 3 | 0 | 52 | 109 | 12 | 5 | .278 | .344 | .503 | .365 | 95 | 13 |
| Baseline | 579 | 530 | 64 | 141 | 29 | 1 | 25 | 78 | 2 | 1 | 44 | 104 | 13 | 4 | .267 | .327 | .470 | .344 | 78 | 3 |
| 35% | 521 | 477 | 54 | 122 | 23 | 1 | 21 | 66 | 1 | 1 | 37 | 99 | 13 | 2 | .256 | .309 | .438 | .323 | 62 | -6 |
| 20% | 463 | 424 | 45 | 104 | 19 | 0 | 16 | 55 | 1 | 1 | 30 | 92 | 13 | 1 | .245 | .292 | .405 | .301 | 48 | -12 |
BR: Linear weights batting runs
BRAR: BR above replacement level, adjusted for position
wOBA: Weighted on-base average
It wouldn’t have surprised me to see Montero up near that 80% forecast, but for now he doesn’t project that way in his baseline projection.
Here’s how the range of projected wOBA’s would have looked broken down into platoon splits.
| % | wOBA vs L | wOBA vs R |
| 80% | .402 | .377 |
| 65% | .380 | .356 |
| Baseline | .358 | .335 |
| 35% | .335 | .314 |
| 20% | .313 | .294 |
The in-house solution for DH is probably Andruw Jones. Here’s how he projects over the same number of PA.
| % | PA | AB | R | H | 2B | 3B | HR | RBI | SB | CS | BB | SO | GDP | HBP | AVG | OBP | SLG | wOBA | BR | BRAR |
| 80% | 695 | 599 | 94 | 147 | 35 | 3 | 37 | 103 | 12 | 1 | 97 | 155 | 13 | 9 | .245 | .364 | .497 | .376 | 109 | 19 |
| 65% | 637 | 549 | 81 | 129 | 29 | 2 | 31 | 90 | 9 | 2 | 84 | 148 | 14 | 7 | .234 | .345 | .464 | .354 | 90 | 7 |
| Baseline | 579 | 499 | 70 | 112 | 24 | 1 | 26 | 77 | 7 | 2 | 72 | 141 | 15 | 5 | .224 | .327 | .431 | .332 | 72 | -3 |
| 35% | 521 | 449 | 59 | 96 | 20 | 1 | 21 | 66 | 5 | 3 | 61 | 132 | 15 | 4 | .213 | .308 | .398 | .311 | 57 | -11 |
| 20% | 463 | 399 | 49 | 81 | 15 | 0 | 16 | 55 | 4 | 3 | 51 | 122 | 15 | 2 | .202 | .290 | .365 | .289 | 43 | -17 |
And here are his projected wOBA platoon splits.
| % | wOBA vs L | wOBA vs R |
| 80% | .394 | .369 |
| 65% | .371 | .348 |
| Baseline | .348 | .327 |
| 35% | .326 | .305 |
| 20% | .303 | .284 |
The Yankees would lose about six runs over a full season if Jones replaced Montero at DH. That’s sub-optimal, but it puts them ahead of where they were before making the trade for Michael Pineda and signing Hiroki Kuroda. Maybe two or three wins ahead depending on how the innings for the rotation get allocated. They’d probably project in the 95-96 win range if they do nothing else before spring training.
The Yankees do have options to upgrade DH. Last year, the Yankees faced LHP in 29% of their plate appearances and the DH got 646 PA in total. A similar split would mean 187 PA for DH vs. LHP. The difference between Montero’s and Jones’s baseline wOBA projection vs. LHP would be worth a loss of about two runs over that number of PA.
That’s small enough that I think between Jones, Alex Rodriguez and Derek Jeter (I know, but he’s better against LHP) they have enough for the right-handed portion of a platoon DH.
So what about the other, more important side? Here are the options still in free agency.
| Player | Bats | Projected wOBA | Vs L | Vs R | RAJ |
| Carlos Pena | L | .365 | .331 | .379 | 21 |
| Russell Branyan | L | .353 | .324 | .360 | 13 |
| Wilson Betemit | L | .352 | .323 | .361 | 14 |
| Raul Ibanez | L | .350 | .324 | .359 | 13 |
| J.D. Drew | L | .345 | .315 | .355 | 11 |
| Johnny Damon | L | .340 | .324 | .346 | 8 |
| Hideki Matsui | L | .337 | .323 | .343 | 6 |
| Kosuke Fukudome | L | .331 | .305 | .337 | 4 |
| Eric Chavez | L | .295 | .264 | .308 | -8 |
RAJ: Runs above Andruw Jones (vs RHP over 459 PA)
Assuming the left-handed half of the DH platoon would see 459 PA here are how some of the various options project as Yankees. If you want to replace Montero’s baseline projection, you need eight RAJ, since you’ve lost two runs from the vs LHP part of DH. Then you’re effectively where you were before trading Montero.
Carlos Pena is head and shoulders above the field, and if this number is accurate he’s probably worth something like $8-10M. I don’t know if the Yankees are willing to spend that much, which means someone from the Branyan/Betemit/Ibanez/Drew group would be the next best option. I’d assume Branyan would be the cheapest of the group, but if they want to spend more they should probably go after Betemit since he can play 3B (not well) in the likely scenario that Alex Rodriguez misses some time. The nostalgia of bringing back Damon or Matsui would be kind of cool, but not the optimal way to proceed IMO.
I think they should make a play for Pena first and foremost. If not Betemit is my second choice. Then I don’t really have a preference.
Saturday, January 14, 2012
CBS Sports: Miller: Savvy Yankees hit home run with Pineda, Kuroda
Just a few days after meeting with the representatives for free agent Edwin Jackson, the Yankees became the talk of the industry on what had been a slow Friday night with their stealth move for Pineda, who, at 22, already is within sight of becoming an ace.
“He’s got that kind of stuff,” a scout who spent part of last summer focusing on AL West clubs said Friday night. “If you wanted to be conservative, he’s a No. 2. He’s got velocity, he came up with a slider that got better and better last year and he throws strikes. When he gives up a home run or a hard-hit ball, it does not chase him out of the strike zone.
“He’s got that rare combination of stuff and control. He’s young, he’s not afraid, he’s big, he’s still growing and he’s got makeup. He’s a prize.
“And the Yankees will have, what, five years of control over him? He’s the kind of guy you build around. Holy cow.”
...
By season’s end, over 28 starts, he struck out 173 hitters while walking just 55 over 171 innings. His average fastball was clocked at 94.7 m.p.h., according to FanGraphs.What’s notable about that? The fastballs of only three other AL starters checked in higher: Texas’ Alexi Ogando, Detroit’s Justin Verlander and Tampa Bay’s David Price.
Kuroda? He turns 37 next month. But he gave the Dodgers 202 innings in 2011, going 13-16 with a 3.07 ERA. He’s a competitor with fierce pride.
“Solid No. 3,” the scout said. “He throws strikes, he’s got good stuff, a crisp fastball that’s deceptive and he throws harder than people think. He’s at 90 to 94 with sink down in the zone, a crisp breaking ball and a good split.
“He’s got out pitches. I’d love to have Kuroda.”
If you’re going to trade Montero, trading him for a potential ace with five more years under team control makes it sting a little less.
Anyway, the starting pitcher WAR I posted in the last thread were off, so here is the revised version.
Before
CC Sabathia, 220 IP, 6.1 WAR
Ivan Nova, 190 IP, 2.4 WAR
Phil Hughes, 175 IP, 2.8 WAR
A.J. Burnett, 175 IP, 2.1 WAR
Freddy Garcia, 150 IP, 2.6 WAR
Hector Noesi, 50 IP, 0.3 WAR
Adam Warren, 25 IP, 0.2 WAR
David Phelps, 15 IP, 0.1 WAR
Starters, 1000 IP, 16.6 WAR
After
CC Sabathia, 220 IP, 6.1 WAR
Hiroki Kuroda, 182 IP, 3.1 WAR
Michael Pineda, 168 IP, 3.2 WAR
Ivan Nova, 175 IP, 2.2 WAR
Phil Hughes, 100 IP, 1.6 WAR
A.J. Burnett, 100 IP, 1.2 WAR
Freddy Garcia, 100 IP, 1.7 WAR
Starters, 1045 IP, 19.1 WAR
So figure something in the area of a 2.5 win upgrade in the rotation, more if they can split those Burnett innings between Hughes and Garcia.
Friday, January 13, 2012
Montero/Noesi for Pineda/Campos? Kuroda signed?
@GregJohnsMLB Greg Johns
No confirmation from team, but source says Mariners sending Pineda and Jose Campos to Yankees for Jesus Montero/Hector Noesi.
First thought is that I don’t like this. But I’ll do an analysis on it tomorrow.
Update: I like this better.
The Yankees will have the best 7 man rotation in baseball. Who needs a DH, really?
Update v2: Projections for Pineda and Kuroda as Yankees
| Player | Michael Pineda | ||||||||||||||||
| mlbam_id | 501381 | ||||||||||||||||
| Age | 23 | ||||||||||||||||
| % | G | GS | W | L | IP | H | R | ER | HR | BB | HBP | SO | RA | ERA | FIP | RAR | WAR |
| 80% | 32 | 32 | 12 | 9 | 193 | 159 | 81 | 75 | 19 | 53 | 3 | 195 | 3.77 | 3.49 | 3.12 | 50 | 5.0 |
| 65% | 30 | 30 | 11 | 10 | 185 | 158 | 84 | 78 | 21 | 54 | 4 | 180 | 4.07 | 3.77 | 3.45 | 41 | 4.1 |
| Baseline | 28 | 28 | 10 | 9 | 168 | 150 | 82 | 76 | 21 | 53 | 5 | 157 | 4.37 | 4.06 | 3.79 | 32 | 3.2 |
| 35% | 22 | 22 | 7 | 8 | 134 | 125 | 70 | 65 | 19 | 45 | 5 | 121 | 4.67 | 4.35 | 4.13 | 21 | 2.1 |
| 20% | 19 | 19 | 6 | 7 | 118 | 114 | 65 | 61 | 18 | 42 | 5 | 101 | 4.98 | 4.64 | 4.46 | 14 | 1.4 |
| Player | Hiroki Kuroda | ||||||||||||||||
| mlbam_id | 493133 | ||||||||||||||||
| Age | 37 | ||||||||||||||||
| % | G | GS | W | L | IP | H | R | ER | HR | BB | HBP | SO | RA | ERA | FIP | RAR | WAR |
| 80% | 33 | 33 | 13 | 9 | 202 | 199 | 90 | 78 | 18 | 43 | 3 | 155 | 4.00 | 3.49 | 3.32 | 47 | 4.7 |
| 65% | 31 | 31 | 12 | 9 | 191 | 196 | 91 | 80 | 20 | 44 | 4 | 141 | 4.29 | 3.75 | 3.62 | 38 | 3.8 |
| Baseline | 29 | 29 | 11 | 9 | 182 | 193 | 92 | 81 | 21 | 45 | 5 | 128 | 4.57 | 4.01 | 3.92 | 31 | 3.1 |
| 35% | 24 | 24 | 8 | 8 | 146 | 160 | 79 | 69 | 19 | 39 | 5 | 98 | 4.86 | 4.28 | 4.22 | 20 | 2.0 |
| 20% | 21 | 21 | 7 | 7 | 127 | 145 | 73 | 64 | 18 | 36 | 5 | 82 | 5.14 | 4.54 | 4.52 | 13 | 1.3 |
FIP: Fielding-independent pitching
RAR: Runs saved above replacement level using RA
WAR: Wins above replacement level (RAR divided by 10)
The Yankees added two pitchers that project to be better than their second starter a few hours ago. I hate losing Jesus Montero’s long-term potential, but truthfully, his CAIRO projection as a DH was barely above replacement level. The Yankees may regret this trade at some point, but it makes them stronger in 2012 and at least they traded Montero for a 23 year old with five years of team control left and with a big-time arm.
Back of envelope projection says that as long as they add a league average bat to serve as either the primary DH or to play all over the field while they DH the regulars, they went from something like:
CC Sabathia, 220 IP, 5.5 WAR
Ivan Nova, 190 IP, 2.0 WAR
Phil Hughes, 175 IP, 1.9 WAR
A.J. Burnett, 175 IP, 1.2 WAR
Freddy Garcia, 150 IP, 2.2 WAR
Hector Noesi, 50 IP, 0.0 WAR
Adam Warren, 25 IP, 0.0 WAR
David Phelps, 15 IP, 0.0 WAR
Starters, 1000 IP, 12.8 WAR
to something more like:
CC Sabathia, 220 IP, 5.5 WAR
Hiroki Kuroda, 180 IP, 2.3 WAR
Michael Pineda, 175 IP, 2.3 WAR
Ivan Nova, 175 IP, 1.8 WAR
Phil Hughes, 100 IP, 1.1 WAR
A.J. Burnett, 100 IP, 0.7 WAR
Freddy Garcia, 100 IP, 1.4 WAR
Starters, 1050 IP, 15.2 WAR
I am being somewhat conservative on innings with Pineda and Nova by design, and if the Yankees would dump Burnett I’d give his innings to Hughes and Garcia and it would make them look even better.
They’ve probably added about three wins tonight, which if added to the last batch of still early and mostly useless projections makes them the best team in baseball. Yay.
Tuesday, December 27, 2011
SportingNews: New York Yankees out on Hiroki Kuroda?
Last week, FoxSports.com reported that both the Yankees and Red Sox were interested in adding righthander Hiroki Kuroda to their rotation, but on Monday morning, ESPNNewYork.com reported the Yankees aren’t likely to make a bid for the former Dodgers starter.
The Yankees have been uncharacteristically quiet this offseason after retaining the services of lefthanded ace CC Sabathia before the start of free agency, and it seems their interest in Kuroda was likely a bluff, the website reports.
Good.
Also, Baseball America’s Top Ten Yankee Prospects.
Thursday, July 28, 2011
Hiroki Kuroda, Yay or Nay?
I’ll admit that I don’t know a ton about Hiroki Koruda. What I knew before delving into the numbers was that he was in his mid 30s (actually 36), was from Japan, and had pitched pretty well for the Dodgers over the last 3+ seasons. I also thought he had missed significant time due to injury, but that isn’t really the case. He missed a chunk of 2009 but that’s it.
So not knowing anything about him, I figured he wouldn’t be that big of an upgrade, on the assumption that he was pitching in a weaker league in a pitcher’s park and had marginal stuff.
Kuroda actually has pretty good stuff. He throws his fastball at an average of around 92 mph, and he’s got a good slider as his second pitch. He also throws a splitter as his third pitch and has a curve he doesn’t use all that much.
Coming into 2011, here’s how Kuroda projected.
| projecton | G | IP | H | R | ER | HR | BB | SO | RA | ERA | FIP | RSAR | WAR | BABIP | BB/9 | K/9 |
| cairo | 28 | 167 | 156 | 76 | 66 | 15 | 38 | 125 | 4.10 | 3.56 | 3.63 | 24 | 2.4 | .282 | 2.05 | 6.74 |
| marcel | 28 | 169 | 162 | 80 | 69 | 15 | 44 | 130 | 4.26 | 3.67 | 3.67 | 21 | 2.1 | .290 | 2.34 | 6.92 |
| oliver | 28 | 172 | 169 | 85 | 74 | 16 | 40 | 121 | 4.47 | 3.85 | 3.70 | 18 | 1.8 | .288 | 2.09 | 6.33 |
| pecota | 29 | 171 | 172 | 72 | 66 | 15 | 43 | 117 | 3.77 | 3.47 | 3.81 | 31 | 3.1 | .292 | 2.26 | 6.15 |
| zips | 28 | 164 | 158 | 70 | 65 | 14 | 38 | 119 | 3.83 | 3.56 | 3.63 | 28 | 2.8 | .286 | 2.08 | 6.50 |
| average* | 28 | 169 | 163 | 77 | 68 | 15 | 41 | 122 | 4.09 | 3.62 | 3.70 | 24 | 2.4 | .288 | 2.17 | 6.52 |
| 2010 | 31 | 196 | 180 | 87 | 74 | 15 | 48 | 159 | 3.99 | 3.39 | 3.37 | 30 | 3.0 | .287 | 2.20 | 7.29 |
| 2011 | 18 | 115 | 110 | 45 | 39 | 12 | 30 | 83 | 3.53 | 3.06 | 3.90 | 24 | 2.4 | .282 | 2.35 | 6.51 |
RA/ERA: Runs/Earned runs allowed per nine innings
FIP: Fielding-independent pitching
RSAR: Runs saved above a replacement level pitcher(park and role-adjusted, using RA)
WAR: Wins above replacement level (RSAR divided by 10)
He’s exceeded his projections so far in RA and ERA, but his peripherals are actually slightly worse as he’s allowed a few more homers and walks on a rate basis than projected.
He’s been a slightly above average pitcher in terms of getting ground balls in his career at 49.1% although this year he’s actually slightly below league average (42.8%).
If I move him from the Dodgers to the Yankees, here’s what happens to his CAIRO projection.
| % | G | GS | IP | H | HR | BB | K | RA | ERA | FIP | RSAR | WAR |
| 80% | 30 | 30 | 184 | 174 | 15 | 36 | 142 | 4.51 | 3.90 | 3.37 | 30 | 3.0 |
| 65% | 29 | 29 | 175 | 172 | 16 | 37 | 130 | 4.72 | 4.10 | 3.62 | 24 | 2.4 |
| Baseline | 28 | 27 | 167 | 169 | 17 | 38 | 120 | 4.94 | 4.30 | 3.87 | 19 | 1.9 |
| 35% | 25 | 25 | 150 | 157 | 17 | 36 | 104 | 5.15 | 4.50 | 4.12 | 14 | 1.4 |
| 20% | 22 | 22 | 134 | 144 | 17 | 34 | 88 | 5.37 | 4.70 | 4.37 | 9 | 0.9 |
The NL->AL switch is usually about 0.5 runs of ERA which is the bulk of the difference here, with the park change also accounting for about another 0.2. This doesn’t account for the depressed run environment in MLB so far, so that may be a bit higher than expected.
As far as what that means to the Yankees, it depends on how good Bartolo Colon really is. If he’s as good as he’s pitched so far this year, which we really don’t know, Kuroda probably becomes the third best starter on the Yankees. If Colon’s not that good, or if he gets hurt, Kuroda’s probably the #2 starter.
Another thing that may or may not be a concern is his platoon split.
Career vs. LHB: .249/.301/.405 in 1362 PA
Career vs. RHB: .246/.288/.346 in 1266 PA
Those are not really any different than the average RHP’s platoon splits. What worries me is that Kuroda may see more lefties as a Yankee. Taking A.J. Burnett as an example, so far this year he’s faced 309 LHB and 250 RHB. Kuroda’s projection is based on a split of 51.8% RHB and 48.1% LHB. So Kuroda’s projection might be (51.8% times RHB projection + 48.1% times LHB projection now, but should instead be 44.7% RHB projection + 55.2% times LHB projection. Looks like that only adds about .05 in ERA/RA/FIP though, so it’s not a big deal.
Interestingly, despite pitching in a pitcher’s park, Kuroda’s been slightly more effective on the road, allowing a line of .248/.290/.364 compared to .248/.299/.385. It’s not just a BABIP issue, as he’s walked fewer batters and struck out more batters on the road (5.3% BB/BF and 18.3% K/BF vs. 6.1% and 17.1%).
Kuroda’s better than I thought, and would be a fine addition to the staff, although as with any deal it depends on the cost.
In other news, the Yankees will be scouting Erik Bedard, who comes off the DL on Friday.
Also, Chris Jaffe has an interesting bit about CC Sabathia at the Hardball Times today. It’s a list of the pitchers with the most wins by age 31.
Page 1 of 1 pages: