Word comes down that Hideki Matsui might need surgery on his troublesome knee. Matsui is a left handed outfielder/DH with decent power and OBP. Perhaps there is someone out there who can fill that role for the Yankees. Someone who wouldn’t cost too much. Someone who would appreciate a chance to play and make a run at the playoffs. The Yankees signed Sidney Ponson for goodness sake, and Joe Girardi made it a point to say that anyone arriving at the Yankees has a clean slate, in terms of off-field issues. Yes, it wouldn’t be too pretty; yes New York is already a media circus, and yes it would be a highly scrutinized move, but the Yankees really need to take a good hard look at bringing in Barry Bonds, and soon.
Recently, we made a vehement (and impassioned and eloquent–if we do so say ourselves) argument in favor of Joba Chamberlain’s switch from bullpen wiz to starter. Well 2 and a third innings, 1 hit, 4 walks and 3 strikeouts later, we don’t feel vindicated, but we don’t quite feel as dumb as this guy looks. Frankly, we think the umpires had a double standard in the game, squeezing the young starter while taking it easy on grizzled veteran Roy Halladay. (Roy is a dumb name. Ever watch “Wings”? TV show about an airport in Nantucket? The owner of the “other” airline, the competition for the show’s heroes, he was named Roy. Big fat guy with a ridiculous mustache. That’s the kind of guy who’s supposed to be named Roy. Not a stud pitcher. The only way to pull off Roy is to have it as a last name and pronounce it like it’s the French–”Roi”–and play goalie for the Avalanche. For more Roy news, see here). With a tight strike zone and a nit picky little balk call (and a stupid pitch count–we hate stupid pitch counts) the deck was pretty much stacked against Joba. We think he did OK. Not great, not bad. We’ll take it.
Anyway, at least we can rejoice over David Ortiz’s wrist injury. His likely replacement in the lineup? Coco Crisp. We quiver with fear. Anyway, enjoy that R*d S*x N*tion. We’ll enjoy newly reinvigorated Jorge Posada.
Filed under: Yankees
Phil Pepe, over at YESNetwork.com, thinks the Yankees are making
a mistake by converting Joba Chamberlain to a starter.
The problem is that Joba may be too good for his (and the Yankees’) own good. He’s a strikeout pitcher who is likely to use up his game quota of 100 pitches by the fifth or sixth inning. Then, who pitches the seventh and eighth innings? Do you really want to trust Latroy Hawkins, Ross Ohlendorf, Edwar Ramirez or Kyle Farnsworth to be the eighth inning guy?
General Manager Brian Cashman’s master plan for the long run is to stockpile young power arms and he has done a wonderful job in doing so. But let’s not lose sight of the fact that the Yankees’ most important player over the past dozen years, their MVP through six pennants and four World Series titles, has been [Mariano] Rivera.
And here’s a flash: Rivera is not going to be around forever. Sooner or later, he’s going to have to be replaced by someone with a chance to be as dominant as Mo has been. Only one pitcher has that potential, but the Yankees want him to be a starter.”
Let’s take this paragraph by paragraph. First paragraph in summary: Joba, as a dominant strike-out pitcher, will throw 100 pitches in 5 or 6 innings and will, therefore, have to be yanked too early to be especially useful.
Now since most managers today tend to be guided by pitch counts, the vast majority of big league pitchers are anchored to that 100 pitch count in one way or another, meaning that if we accept Pepe’s premise, then no strike-out pitcher is going to be of great use to his team. This is manifestly untrue. Furthermore, Pepe’s contention that strike-out type pitchers have higher pitch counts is not completely and inarguably true–or at least it’s not the only truth. Now it’s always problematic working with Joba’s numbers because the sample sizes are small and these numbers have been accrued in relief, but we have to work with what we’ve got. That said, let’s take a look at how many pitches on average Joba throws per plate appearance: 3.97. This is higher than the league average (which is 3.79) but not by a huge margin. In comparison, known sinkerballers (and contact, as opposed to strike-out, pitchers) Chien-Ming Wang and Derek Lowe have career pitch per plate appearance averages of 3.41 and 3.61 respectively. Significantly lower. But take a look at those numbers in comparison to Josh Beckett–the pitcher Pepe refers to as a comparison for Joba. Beckett’s career average Pit/PA: 3.77, just below league-average. But his Pit/PA for 2002, his second year in the league, was 3.92, comparable to Joba’s numbers at this point in his career. So yes, right now Joba might not pitch into the seventh or eighth innings all that often, but it seems likely that in the very near future (2009) he will. Also we should keep in mind that a reliever does his best to rack up strikeouts, knowing that he is only out there for an inning or two. It remains to be seen if Joba will make any adjustments to his pitching style that will result in more non-K outs.
Paragraph two in summation: Brian Cashman stockpiled lots of power arms, and Mariano Rivera is the most important Yankee of the last 12 years.
Well we’re all still waiting on B-Cash’s power arms to come through, but the more interesting claim is the latter. As a Yankees fan, you hear a few statements a whole lot: “Mariano Rivera is the most important Yankee of the last 12 years.” And, “Jorge Posada is the most important Yankee of the last 12 years.” O, and, “Derek Jeter is the most important Yankee of the last 12 years.” Well of course one of these three must be the most important Yankee of the last dozen years, because they’re the only three who have been there for the last 12 years. So maybe of those three, Mariano has been the most important. That’s certainly debatable but we don’t have time. Please feel free to carry the debate into the comments section. We would only like to point out that Pepe shouldn’t have said Mariano has been the most important Yankee, he should have said “Closer has been the most important position for the Yankees over the last 12 years.” This a much easier point to argue, and at this point there is a large body of evidence pointing to the fact that a pitcher who goes 200 innings is more valuable than one who goes 70 or 80. Was it the lack of a quality closer that got the Yankees knocked out of the playoffs the last few years? Simply put: no.
And that brings us to the third paragraph, in which Pepe suggests that Joba Chamberlain is the only suitable eventual replacement for Mariano River in the closer role. Clearly the closer is so important in Pepe’s view that it is worth keeping a premier young pitcher in the setup role at least through 2010 just so he can be in a position to take over when Mariano decides to retire.
Ultimately, Pepe doesn’t seem to be able to settle on any one good reason to keep Joba in the ‘pen. Either it’s because Joba won’t be a successful starter, or because the team needs someone to pitch the eighth, or because the team needs an eventual replacement at closer. We don’t find any of these arguments especially compelling, and they don’t form a particularly coherent whole when taken together. Furthermore, Pepe essentially defeats his own case. His reasoning is based on the idea that the best way for the Yankees to win games is “to shorten the game and find someone to be the bridge to Rivera,” and that “Chamberlain has proved he is the one best suited to get the game to Mariano. As a starter, the only way he can do that would be to pitch eight innings.” We find these two statements to be incompatible. If the goal is to get to Mariano, then having someone who can lock down 6, 7, or 8 innings every 5 games is by far the best way to do it. Pepe makes it sound like whoever takes the spot Chamberlain was destined for in the rotation will be guaranteed to have success, and that Chamberlain will be able to pitch every game as a reliever. Whoever takes the spot in the rotation, will likely not be guaranteed to be successful, will likely be someone like Kei Igawa or Darrel Rasner (you know, the Rasner that is supposed to be out there, not the quality pitcher we’re currently seeing) and will frequently not even make it to the 5th or 6th inning. And Joba can’t pitch every day out of the ‘pen. While we are great admirers of Phil Pepe in general, and find him to be an skilled and insightful writer, we must completely disagree with him on this front, and wholeheartedly support the idea that Joba move to the rotation as soon as possible.
Yesterday we sat down to watch the UEFA Champions League final between Manchester United and Chelsea. Now we realize soccer, fine sport though it is, doesn’t compare to the wonderful game of baseball, but we found the storyline too compelling to pass up. Two great clubs, both from England, who had fought it out throughout the season in the Premiership, with Man. U. barely edging out Chelsea to the league championship with a win in the final week, set to go at it again in a winner-takes-all battle to claim supremacy throughout Europe. The match started off slow (well slow by soccer standards–lightning fast, painfully fast, unimaginably fast by baseball standards) and we began listing all the things we hate about England. The Spice Girls, warm beer, the fact that they have knights and we don’t (though I don’t know what passes as standards for knights nowadays–do you really think Sir Ian McKellen could take on a dragon?) when we were suddenly interrupted by a thunderous roar. Cristiano Ronaldo (pictured above for those of you who don’t know) had pounded home a header to give Manchester United a 1-0 (it’s called a zero, not a nil–get it right, Brits) lead. This lead was overturned by a scrappy goal right at the end of the half by the Blues of Chelsea and we went into the half at 1-1. We’ll spare you the details of the second half and the thirty minutes of overtime and jump straight to the exciting conclusion: Penalty Kicks–every casual soccer fan’s favorite moment, and every serious fan’s most detested means of ending a match. Manchester United won the coin toss (yes, they have those in Europe) and elected to shoot first. Carlos Tevez stepped up to the spot, struck it well, and United was up 1-0. Michael Ballack responded for Chelsea. 1-1. Michael Carrick coolly pushed Man. U. ahead, 2-1, and Juliano Belletti quickly stuffed one away to even it at 2-2. Cristiano Ronaldo stepped up to the penalty spot. And then time stopped. We knew right then and there that he was going to miss, and miss badly. We quietly moved out of arm’s reach of all nearby United fans. Think about it. Here we had arguably the best player in the world, a man known for racking up mind-blowing stats against lesser opponents and then disappearing against top competition (his earlier header had been his first goal against Chelsea in 13 matches), a man who exuded a very thinly veiled arrogance, a physical marvel, a man who has some difficulty fitting in, an athlete constantly in the public eye, poised at the precipice of one of the biggest moments of his life. A career-defining moment. And take a look at that picture–the olive skin, the purple lips, the obvious tendency toward odd, semi-manic moments. All of a sudden we weren’t watching a soccer player taking a penalty kick in the UEFA Champions League final, we were watching A-Rod step up the plate in the 9th inning of a playoff game with Jeter and Abreu on base, and the game on the line. The outcome was inevitable. Ronaldo took a breath, ran up to the ball, stutter-stepped, trying to fake the goalie out and force him to commit, then hurriedly snapped off a shot, with much less than usual velocity, and the keeper pounced on it easily. (That stutter-step, by the way, was at best semi-legal–precisely the kind of awkward rule-bending we have seen Rodriguez engage in so often). Instead of trusting his natural ability, Ronaldo over-thought the situation, and in trying to limit the risk and improve his odds, he guaranteed his own failure.
In the end, luck smiled on the lads from Manchester, and the soggy turf that had troubled players throughout the match caused Chelsea captain (and DTS favorite) John Terry to slip and push the decisive penalty kick wide (stay strong, John, it’s not your fault), allowing United back in the match, and enabling Edwin Van Der Sar to make a heroic save two shots later to seal the victory.
The lesson? That’s up to you. Maybe it’s that the best players will always struggle to defeat their inner demons. Maybe it’s that a team needs more than one super-duper-star to win. Maybe it’s that luck is always the strongest force in any situation. But for us, the lesson is simple. Steer clear of the pretty ones.
Even though Joba and Goose supposedly made nice, we feel compelled to weigh in on the whole fist pump controversy. Sure, Joba might be a little overly enthusiastic out there from time to time, but we ask you–what is a greater crime against humanity: Joba’s fist pump, or the Goose’s ’stache?
