05 June 2007

State of the Yankees: First Tri-Mester Report Cards

The Yankees won last night's contest against the Red Sox in typically dramatic fashion, with an A-Rod homer off closer John Papelbon in the 9th inning, to take two of three games in the Boston series. That's the Good News.

The Bad News will take a lot longer than that to describe.

Probably the most significantly bad aspect of yesterday's game was the fact that yet another Yankee starter failed to notch a Quality Start, and worse yet, went down with an injury. Andy Pettitte started the game and was cruising along through the first four innings, having allowed only two harmless singles and a walk in that span. But the fifth inning saw a very different Pettitte on the mound, as he emerged to protect the 4-0 lead to which he'd been staked by his teammates. He allowed three straight singles before finally retiring Julio Lugo on a strikeout, then allowed a three-run double and another single, one that got past RF Bobby Abreu and allowed another runner to score and lead-footed David Ortiz to reach third base. Ortiz eventually scored ona sacrifice fly, and an earned run was charged to Pettitte even though Ortiz is so sluggish that if Abreu had actually caught the one-hop single, he might have thrown out Big Fat Slow Papi at first base. Regardless, Pettitte was done after just 83 pitches, a victim of back spasms, though Joe Torre and others have indicated that they expect him to make his next scheduled start, on Friday against the lowly Pirates.

Though he did not play yesterday, news broke that Doug Mientkiewicz 's wrist broke, not to mention his slight concussion, suffered in a collision with Mike Lowell as he tried to field a bad throw from His Clutchness. Though it sounds mean to say it, this might not be such terrible news, as this injury should keep Minky's pinky-sized bat (.226/.292/.379) out of the lineup for 6-8 weeks as he heals. By then, the Yanks may have found someone who can both field AND hit, possibly even someone with three out of four working limbs, to play first base for them. Giambi, already relegated to DH-only duties, may also be lost for the year, and Johnny Damon, with exactly one game as a first baseman in his major league career, is not the answer.

Josh Phelps, to his credit, has managed not to embarass himself (yet), but if he continues his .281/.352/.406 hitting, he would almost exactly match what Mientkiewicz used to do when he was in his "prime", which was good enough to make him one of the worst-hitting regular firstbasemen in the major leagues.

There are, however, two possible answers, and neither of them rhymes with "Mark Teixiera".

One is Andy Phillips. I know, I know, he's had his chances, and you're right about that. Phillips, despite hitting better than .300/.380/.570 in AAA in 2004 and 2005, has a career line of .228/.266/.391 in the majors, which, on a scale of one-to-ten, is really lousy. He is, however, hitting .313/.383/.490 this year in Scranton/Wilkes Barre, and he's got some major league experience. A more intriguing option might be Scranton/WB firstbaseman Shelly Duncan, who's tearing up the International League this year, with a .307/.387/.625 line. His Slugging percentage leads the IL at the moment, and his 15 homers are one behind the league leader. Supposedly he made some adjustments in the offseason, and they hope he won't go back to hitting .250 and striking out once a game, which is the most likely eventual outcome, but the Yanks may be well-served to give him a shot while his bat is hot. (Baseball Prospectus, for all their wisdom and experience, did not see fit to even include him among the 1600+ players they analyzed for their 2007 book, after he hit only .256 with no patience at AA Trenton last season.) The Yankees can always send him back to the minors if he doesn't hit. Just ask Andy Phillips.

As for the Teixiera rumors, I hear those too. I also hear that Whitey Ford might come out of retirement to help shore up the bullpen, and that a crazy scientist has invented an invisible substance you could apply to a ball that would make it magically avoid your opponents' bats and/or gloves. Sure, those things sound nuts, but not as nuts at the possibility of the Rangers giving up one of the best hitting firstbasemen in the major leagues, in his prime, for something like Eric Duncan, Darrel Rasner, Melky Cabrera, some nameless pitcher and a bucket of used pine tar. The Yanks aren't going to surrender Phil Hughes for three months of Mark Teixiera, who's likely to sign with Baltimore in the off-season.

A more likely possibility is Todd Helton. The Rockies slugger's career stats have gotten a lot of help from the thin air in Denver, but make no mistake, the man can hit anywhere. His career line of .296/.395/.508 is about as good as Teixiera's overall numbers anyway, and that's with the 110-point OPS boost that Mark gets from Ameriquest Field. Helton's 33 instead of 27, and he's definitely not the hitter he once was, plus he has another five years and about $90 million owed to him with his current contract, so the Yankees, who can afford to overpay for someone like that, won't have to give up as much to get him. As a 10-and-5 player, he can veto any trade, but why wouldn't he want to go to the Yankees, where he might actually get a chance to win? As an excellent fielder and an excellent hitter, he could be a star in New York, at least for a year or two. Players with his skills (and in good physical condition) tend to age pretty well, so there's no reason he couldn't be a productive hitter into his mid to late 30's. The only question is what it will take to get him.

But whatever they do, they'd better do it soon. Already 24-30, 12.5 games out of first and seven games out of the Wild Card race, the Yankees are in dire need of a winning streak. It sure was nice to take 2 out of 3 games against Boston in separate series in the last two weeks, but losing five of the six games in between those two series got them into a hole from which they may not be able to climb.

For perspective, since it happens that the 54 games they've played make up exactly one-third of the schedule, so we can easily multiply some of the players' stats by three and see how they'd fare if they kept this up for the entire 162-game schedule.

Derek Jeter: Hitting .333, that means he’ll be hitting .999 by the end of the year! Wait a minute, I don’t think it really works that way. Actually, he’s on a pace for 219 hits and 102 runs, 12 homers and 15 steals, all of which are right in line with his usual performance, though the steals are a little low, and the 15-caught stealings pace would be a career high, as would the 33-error pace. Yikes.

Jorge Posada: Leading the AL with a .362 batting average, but last year was the first time in history that an American League catcher won the batting title, and the first time in 65 years that any catcher won a major league batting title, so somehow I doubt that he can keep this up. Ditto for the 57-doubles pace, but he’s having a fine year, by any measure.

Alex Rodriguez: On a pace for 60 homers, 141 RBIs, 147 runs, and three extra-marital affairs. All of those numbers seem readily achieveable.

Bobby Abreu: Hitting better of late, he’s actually on a pace for 27 doubles, 24 steals, and 105 runs. Unfortunately, he’s also on a pace to whiff 135 times and to hit .244 with so few homers that Antonio Alfonseca could count them on one hand. I guess $15 million doesn’t buy what it used to.

Johnny Damon: His gimpy legs have him somehow on a pace for only 18 doubles, but 27 steals (and zero CS!). The .251 batting average and nine homer pace would make this his worst year since 2001, which he spent in cavernous Oakland Coliseum.

Robby Cano: Also on a pace for 9 homers and 45 doubles, but also 27 walks against 117 strikeouts, and three steals in 15 attempts. Unfortunately, I think those numbers could all come to fruition.

Andy Pettitte: Assuming that his back is OK, Andy’s on a pace for a 2.96 ERA in 228 innings, with 27 Quality Starts, but only a 9-12 record, because the Yankees never hit when he’s on the mound. Hopefully that will change without the quality in his pitching dropping off.
Chien-Ming Wang: No other Yankee pitcher is on a pace to qualify for the ERA title (162 innings) but Wang is closest, at about 159.

Mike Mussina: Right now, he has two Quality Starts, or one less than Casey Fossum. Who sucks. A lot. He’s on a pace for a 6-9 record and a 6.25 ERA in 120 innings. His “fast”ball has been in the 81-84 mph range, but he doesn’t have the experience that Jamie Moyer has with surviving ijn that range, so he’s getting lit up. Stanford boy is smart enought to make adjustments…I just don’t know if it will matter, as the famous knuckle curve hasn’t exactly been fooling anyone either.

Roger Clemens: On a pace for a 0-0 record with 0 strikeouts, 0 Quality Starts and a 0.00 ERA. Oh, and about $18 million in salary. If his “fatigued groin” doesn’t heal soon, he may achieve all of those numbers.

Mike Myers: Normally a LOOGY, he’s been called upon to do long relief several times this season. He’s currently on a pace to make 81 appearances and to pitch almost 70 innings, which would be a career high, and nearly twice as much work as he’s typically gotten in his 12-year career. Given the workload and his age, 37, I think it’s fair to wonder whether the 3.06 ERA is likely to stay that low.

Righty relievers: Scott Proctor, Luis Vizcaino, and Brian Bruney are all on a pace to pitch about 80 innings or so, which is to be understood given how unreliable the starters have been.

Mariano Rivera: On a pace for 60 strikeouts in 57 innings, but also an ERA over 5.00 and only 15 saves. He should do better than that, but this will be the worst year of his career before it’s all over.

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01 June 2007

Yankees’ Division Dreams Dashed; but Playoffs Possible Still

Some things, you just know are not going to continue:

Barry Bonds not hitting home runs. (He went yard on Sunday for the first time in almost three weeks, his 12th of the season and 746th of his career.)

Gil Meche pitching like Bob Gibson. (Meche rattled off seven straight Quality Starts from April 12th to May 14th, after having strung together more than three QS only once before in his career, when he made four straight in August of 2004. Over his next two outings, Meche allowed 12 runs in 9.1 innings, losing both games. That's more like it.)

The Yankees being in last place.

Well, actually, we might want to get used to that last one. While they may not finish out the season in last place, at this point the Yankees have probably less than a 5% chance of making the playoffs, much less winning their division. Lemme 'splain...

As of today, the Yankees' record sits at 22-29, seven games under .500, and they are currently 13.5 games out of first place in the AL East. The Boston Red Sox have the best record in baseball, 36-16, but to be fair, they have not had much competition from anyone in their division. As the only team with a winning record in the AL East, their closest competition comes from the patently mediocre Baltimore Orioles, who currently sit a 27-27, 10 games out of first. The Sawx are 15-7 against their division rivals, and other than a 1-1 record against Oakland, they have a winning record against everyone they've played so far, including playoff contenders Detroit, Cleveland, Minnesota, and Atlanta, against whom they have a combined record of 12-4. Those facts alone do not bode well for the Yankees chances in 2007, but the news only gets worse from here.

The division title is clearly out of reach. As Jayson Stark recently pointed out, no team in history has ever come back from a 14.5 game deficit (which the Yankees had after losing five in a row this week) to win their division. Some of you staunch Yankee fans may be thinking about the 1978 Yankees, who famously came back from a 14 game deficit on July 19th to wrest the division from the cold, dead hands of the Boston Red Sox, and eventually take the World Series from the Dodgers.

That, however, was a different team, and a different time. Those Yankees, despite the huge hole they found themselves in around mid-July, were actually a pretty good team. For one thing, they had a winning record, albeit a modest one, at 48-42 at the time. They needed to kick it up a few notches after that, winning more than 70% of their games in both August and September, just to catch the Red Sox on the last day of the season and force a one-game playoff for the Division title. Add to this the fact that the Yankees got quite a lot of help from Don Zimmer, the Red Sox manager at the time, whose total lack of creativity and flexibility essentially rode his team into the ground. As Rob Neyer pointed out in his Big Book of Baseball Blunders, Zimmer's failure to effectively use his bench, and in doing so, to keep his players fresh for the pennant drive, turned a team that hit .283/.354/.461 before the All-Star Break into a team that hit .250/.316/.386 after it. The bats just wilted, and all at the same time.

So 1978 was a Red Sox loss as much as it was a Yankees win, and that just ain't gonna happen this year. These Red Sox are too well balanced. They're not playing over their heads like the 1978 team was. That .692 winning percentage is nice, and if they could keep it up all year, they'd win 112 games, but even if they only win 55% of their games from here on out, they'll still finish with 97 wins, and in 2007, that should be plenty to win the AL East. If anything, you can expect their bullpen to falter a bit. They're 7-1 with a 3.07 ERA and 19 saves in 21 chances, which has helped them to a sterling 8-3 record in 1-run games. That probably won't keep up, nor will the pitching staff's 3.23 ERA in road games, but even as those numbers regress to the mean, the Red Sox will remain a force to be reckoned with this year, and should easily hold onto the division.

However, as we have learned over the past 12 years, a team does not have to win its division to have a shot at the World Series. The Yanks are "only" seven games out in the Wild Card race right now, which, on the face of it, does not appear to be an insurmountable lead. Indeed, of the 12 teams that have won the World Series since 1995, the first year we had both a 3-division format and a World Series, seven of the 24 teams to play in the Series (29%) have been Wild Card teams, and three of the 12 (25%) victors have been Wild Card winners. Given that there are eight teams in the playoffs every year, Wild Card teams have been twice as successful as anyone else in the Fall Classic, winning once in four times instead of once in eight.

But does that even matter for the Yankees? As they currently sit in last place in their own division, and 7 games behind AL Wild-Card leader Detroit, is it reasonable to expect a resurgence that could see them get into the playoffs anyway?

Since the inception of the Wild Card in 1995, there have been MLB 96 playoff teams. Among those, 47 of the eventual 72 division winners (65%) were leading their divisions at the close of play on June 1st of that year, and 8 of the 24 eventual Wild Card winners (33%) were leading the pack in that race when the dust had settled on June 1st. In the American League, three of the 12 eventual Wild Card winners were actually leading their division on that date, though no Wild Card team from the Senior Circuit had that distinction. So statistically speaking, teams that are leading their divisions at this point are about as likely to maintain that position come October as teams that currently lead the Wild Card races are to lose that spot by the end of the year. Good news for Cleveland and Milwaukee; Bad news for the Detroits and Arizonas.

But if the news for the Tigers and D-Backs is bad, then it’s positively dreadful for the Yankees. Among the 96 playoff teams since 1995, only nine of them were as far as 7.5 games back of either their division or the Wild Card race at the close of play on June 1st, and of those nine, two were actually leading the Wild Card pack as they trailed their own division. So that leaves us only seven chances in 96 opportunities that a team with a deficit roughly half the size of the one the Yankees’s current hole could actually get into the playoffs, or about 7%. When you make the cut-off 10 games or more, there are only five teams left. Let’s look at these one-by-one and see if we can find any parallels with the 2007 Yankees.

1) The 2001 Oakland Athletics stood at 26-27 and trailed their division leader by 15(!) games on June 1st, which was to be expected, as the 2001 Seattle Mariners would eventually win 116 regular season games, but the A’s also trailed in the Wild card race by nine games at that point. Though they would go only 12-15 in June, they went an amazing 64-19 the rest of the way, with a 2.90 collective ERA from July 1st on. The offense also stepped up, though not quite as much, as the team’s collective OPS jumped about 100 points after the All-Star break. While the pitching staff of the 2006 Yankees doesn’t have a Hudson/Mulder/Zito combo like the 2001 A’s did, they should get a shot in the arm from Roger Clemens, slated to make his first start in pinstripes on Monday against Chicago. That, combined with Pettitte and the now-healthy Chien-Ming Wang and Mike Mussina, should give them all the pitching they need. And the offense, after leading the majors in run-scoring in April, should be able to bounce back from its recent struggles. Of course “able to” and “will” are two different things.

2) The 2002 Oaklands trailed their division by 8.0 games after June 1, but trailed the Wild Card race by 10.0 games, and eventually came back to win it. Only 26-28 after beating Tampa bay that day, Oakland went 77-31 the rest of the way, including a 20-game winning streak in August and September. This Oakland team, unlike the 2001 version, accomplished this almost entirely with pitching. The offense had a .764 OPS before the All-Star Break, and a .780 OPS thereafter, nearly identical. The pitchers however, lowered their collective ERA almost two whole runs, from 4.91 in April and May to 3.10 from June 1st on. Again, the 2007 Yankees have some pitching talent, but probably not that much talent.
For the record, both the 2001 and 2002 versions of the Oakland A’s lost in the first round of the playoffs.

3) The 2003 Florida Marlins, at 26-32, trailed the Atlanta Braves by 12 games on June 1st, and trailed Wild Card leader Montreal (remember when there was a team in Montreal?) by 7.5 games. Of course, the Expos were bound to falter, and they did, having been lucky to do as well as they had to that point. The Marlins had fired manager Jeff Torborg after 38 games, when the team was 16-22, and new manager Jack McKeon had improved the team to “mediocre”, getting them to go 10-10 over his first 20 games, though they would go 64-39 from there on out. They were never a great team, but their collective ERA improved by about 1/2 a run after the All-Star Break (to 3.78 from 4.23) and the offense maintained its pace, scoring 4.76 runs per game before the All-Star break, and 4.46 runs/game after.

The Marlins essentially rode the arms of Josh Beckett, Brad Penny and Carl Pavano (remember when there was a pitcher named Carl Pavano?) into the postseason, and their good pitching and even better fortune in clutch spots lasted just long enough for them to beat the Yankees in the World Series.

4) The 2005 Houston Astros were 20-32 on June 1st, 14 games behind St. Louis for the NL Central division and 9.5 games back in the Wild Card race. Of the teams that eventually went on to the postseason, this team had the worst record as the start of June, but they went 70-41 from June 1st to the end of the year. The offense (.724 OPS before the All-Star Break, .739 after) doesn’t get much of the credit for this team’s resurgence. The staff had a 4.36 ERA at the end of May, but compiled a 3.14 ERA thereafter. Andy Pettitte went 11-2 with a 1.69 ERA after the All-Star break, and several rookie pitchers also showed significant improvement.

This team represents another potentially encouraging note for Yankee fans, as Pettitte’s career numbers seem to show that he gets better as the season wears on (his career ERA is about 1/2 a run lower after the All-Star break). In addition, with all the rookies they’ve debuted this year, there’s a good chance that Tyler Clippard or Phil Hughes or Matt DeSalvo or Darrel Rasner or even (dare I say it?) Kei Igawa could give the Yanks’ pitching staff the kind of boost that the 2005 Astros got from Brandon Backe and Ezequiel Astacio in the second half.

5) The 2006 Minnesota Twins are the most recent example. They were 11.5 games out in the AL Central Division on 6/1, with a 24-29 record, and trailed not just Detroit, but also Cleveland and Chicago in the division, and a bunch of teams in the Wild Card race as well. The Twins had been outscored 281-246 at that point in the year, but they went 72-38 from June first on, outscoring their opponents 555-406 over those 110 games. Mostly, the pitching came together. They had a 6.28 ERA in March and April, to go with a 9-15 record, but after a 4.19 ERA in May, they nover posted another month with an ERA over 3.94. The team was 27-7 when Johan Santana pitched and 20-8 when rookie Francisco Liriano took the mound, and the bullpen was nearly impeccable.

Unfortunately the Yankees don’t have a Johan Santana, though Pettitte, the Yankees’ own lefty ace, has been pretty darn good so far this year (2.51 ERA despite a 3-4 record). For all the rookies that have taken the mound for New York this year, though, only Phil Hughes could be aptly termed a “phenom” and he won’t get much chance to phenominate if his hamstring doesn’t heal soon.

One other possible ray of hope for the Yankees is the fact that they have actually outscored their opponents to this point, 268-244, even though their record doesn’t reflect that. Four of the five teams above had been outscored to this point in the year, and the 2001 Oaklands had just barely outscored their competition after play ended on June 1st, 263-257. The 2007 Yankees need look no further than their 2-10 record in 1-run games. Just being slightly above .500 in that area would be worth six more wins at this point and would put them in a much better position for the wild card, with a 27-24 record, within one game of what you would expect from their Pythagenport projection based on runs scored and allowed. With some luck, and some regression to the mean, the Yankees should be able to improve on that record, but whether they can reverse the trend and make up all that ground is highly doubtful.

So, children, what have we learned today?

A) No team in history has ever come back from such a deep hole as the 2007 Yankees have dug for themselves to win a division.

2) That does’t really matter, because we might still win the Wild Card, which seems to offer as good a chance (or better) to win the World Series as winning the division would.

III) Travis sure knows how to search the data available at www.baseball-reference.com! Thanks to Sean Forman and his peoples for all they do.

iv) If the Yankees are going to win anything other than a crow-eating contest this year, they had better get their butts (and bats!) in gear…

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