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Thursday, April 19, 2018

Why it will get worse

As many have pointed out here, it would be difficult for the Yankees to hit or field worse than they have so far, and the team has already taken an inordinate number of serious injuries to day-to-day players, including young and usually healthy ones.

This should all point toward a general improvement in the season as it goes forward, right?

Wrong.

I, too, expect the Yanks to hit and field better, and if they get at least some of their fabulous invalids back, they should look better.

But if anything, the first tenth of the season shows them headed toward a total breakdown of the most vital element of the game, which is pitching.

This team cannot win if it's starters to continue to pitch so little, so badly. It's that simple. Yes, the bullpen has been bad so far, too—but it will only get worse if the starting staff does not pick it up.

Let's take a look at a little history, namely the best years of the last Yankees dynasty. The 1998 team's top five starters—Pettitte, Cone, Wells, Irabu, and El Duque/Mendoza—threw a total of 1,036 innings.

This really empowered the team's Big Five bullpen—The Great One, The Other Mike Stanton, Nelson, Moonlighting Mendoza, and Graeme "The Fighting Kangaroo" Lloyd—which needed to throw only 260.1 innings. Throw in the sixth reliever, the little-used Darren Holmes, and you were still up to only 311.2 innings.

No surprise, the team led the AL in complete games with 22, and was second in saves, with 48. The two stats ARE related.

All right, I know, I know:  the fabled 1998 team was pretty special in all ways. But even in 1999 and 2000, after Lloyd and Wells left for Clemens, the top five starters stayed pretty strong:

1999: 984.2 top five slot starter innings, 316.2 top five reliever innings (366 top six), 50 saves (1st in AL), 6 CG (6th in AL)

2000: 946.2 top five slot starter innings, 329.2 top five reliever innings (354.2 top six), 40 saves (7th in AL), 9 CG (5th in AL).

So based on the first tenth of this season, how are we looking? Well, it projects to:

2018: 833 top five slot starter innings, 383 top five reliever innings (456 top six), 20 saves, 0 CG.

Scary, no? Especially those 456 innings for the top six relievers. Obviously, the team will run up more than 20 saves in the end (right?)—but as is, those 20 would make the lowest total for the Yankees, a team that has traditionally thrived on good relief pitching, since 1946.

But of course, I hear you say, the game has changed a great deal, even since 2000.

Well, let's take a look at the Yanks' last championship team, then, in 2009. Even with a makeshift starting staff of CC, Pettitte, Burnett, Joba, and a No. 5 made up of Gaudin/Hughes/Wang/Sergio Mitre, it looked like this:

2009: 937 top five slot starter innings, 301.2 top five reliever innings (340.2 top six), 51 saves (1st in AL), 3 CG (11th in AL).

That's right: even a team that didn't really have a fifth starter managed to get over 100 more innings out of its top five than this team is projected to get now.

My friends, at its current rate, this Yankees' squad is headed for a complete pitching breakdown—and thus far, we have only had CC on the DL, in which time he did not even miss a start. Undoubtedly, he and Tanaka will miss more time—maybe go down altogether.

Who will pick up the slack?







15 comments:

Joe of AZ said...

Great news. Our pitching will show up......in September ala 2017...let's hope we haven't dug ourselves in such big of a hole come end of aPril2018 that it doesn't matter

Rufus T. Firefly said...

OK,

Just watching the game with the master and his faithful sidekick on radio.

Why the fuck is Tyler (two for April and that IMPROVED his average) Wade playing second when Miguel AndUjar, who just tied a record with three straight 3 extra-base hits in a row as a rookie is SITTING? He Tied Bob Meusel, part of the first dynasty, for those of you who want to look it up.

I'm beginning to think it wasn't Joey Binders (and NO, I don't want him back).

MAYBE, it is the front office -- which makes this even more horrible.

Why the fork would you bat a stone cold hitter instead of a guy on a roll?

And did you see Toe's glove? I love the guy, but I think he borrowed Mike Scranton's OF glove and used it at third base. Gotta think that had an effect on his bobble last inning.

This is making me regret watching tonight.

Calgon Pineapple scent -- Take me away!

Rufus T. Firefly said...

Jack Kerouac here, with stream of consciousness still flowing:

It was pretty neat that the Yankees did a video for that girl that was being bullied in school. Kids are stupid and vicious, a bad combination. But they shouldn't be. Gotta think this is parents that either didn't bring their kids up right or were clueless what the kids were doing.

It is evil to think it, but I hope the Yankees show up to her school and make the bullies feel like shit.

HoraceClarke66 said...

Nicely said, Rufus.

HoraceClarke66 said...

And I have to agree with you about benching Andujar. That had Binders written all over it.

Maybe he was figuring the hot hand had already cooled with the off-day. And Walker did have a key hit. And maybe they just want to make sure that Tyler Too has absolutely nothing before he vanishes forever.

But still!

JM said...

Jack Curry is a nice guy and very tolerant Twitterer. But when he posited that AnDUjar was sitting because right handed hitters bat .215 against him, I responded that we don't know Andu wouldn't hit him and we'd never find out tis way. He did not respond, which isn't like him. I think he knows when stats cross over to stupid and chose silence and job security.

JM said...

Bat .215 against Aaron Sanchez, that is.

Anonymous said...

DOMINGO NEEDS TO GET A REAL SHOT.

HoraceClarke66 said...

Agreed, John M. and ALL-CAPS. And what the hell are they saving Chance Adams for?

He could scarcely have less trade value just now. They might as well give him a shot.

Still...a win! A close win!!

Anonymous said...

HC66 takes a tiny sample, multiplies it out tenfold, and then equates it to a large sample. Evidently he failed Statistics/Probability 101, or more likely has never really taken such matter seriously. I will bet the house he has not read one book on sabremetric analysis.

Anonymous said...

Sassy, can I borrow a bag-full of the sabremetricicle books ya' have on the bulging shelves next to your bed in your mom's basement?? Sounds like a hoot. LB (No J)

HoraceClarke66 said...

All I'm saying is, if present trends continue, this Yankees bullpen—already nothing to write home about it—will be stressed beyond the breaking point.

And taking into account overarching, mega-trends, what are the odds on CC and Tanaka both staying off the DL, something that will stress the pen even more?

Sure, with the warm weather maybe some of these starters will stretch out and start to go seven. But the current trend—one-tenth of the season—is very ominous.

Anonymous said...

Boone ain't managing. It's cASSman who's calling the shots!!

Anonymous said...

Mom's basement--gee I haven't heard THAT flame EVER BEFORE on the Internet.

In fact, I bet not one regular poster can intelligently discuss any concept or book in the now forty-plus year history of sabremetric innovation, dating back to the mimeographed sheets Bil James used to mail out in the late 70s when he was taking tiny classified ads in The Sporting News while working the night shift as a security guard at Stokely Van-Camp.

In case anyone is interested--and small voice tells me I am pissing in the wind--I recommend one of the great pioneering books in the field, the 1984 Hidden Game of Baseball by Thorn and Palmer. You can find it on amazon. (Thorn has been the official historian of Major League Baseball since 2011.)

https://www.amazon.com/Hidden-Game-Baseball-Revolutionary-Statistics/dp/022624248X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1524276015&sr=8-1&keywords=the+hidden+game+of+baseball&dpID=41ag2LtLScL&preST=_SY291_BO1,204,203,200_QL40_&dpSrc=srch

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