“And in the lighted palace near, died the sound of royal cheer; And they cross'd themselves for fear, all the knights at Camelot..." T he Lady of Shalott, Tennyson
Oh for the symmetries of history: meaningless September games closed Ruth's House and meaningless September games opens Jeter's. But praise be the difference. Last autumn rang the death knell and dimmed the Stadium lights. This year, the trumpet calls and the drums of October rumble early.
So with the Yankees' return to the post-season growing daily more inevitable, a momentary lull occasions an instant's reflection before October's passion and pleasures, torments and griefs begin.
Reader, please bear with me then. My larger point about the Yankees emerges slowly and warrants a digression through America's other signal calling. If baseball is the national pastime, then politics is its national vocation.
You see, in the decades before crowds thronged ballparks to gawk and to marvel at player's prodigious physical talent and skill, thousand flocked to auditoriums to be spellbound by edifying oratory. Before Ruth, Gehrig, and DiMaggio, there was Webster, Clay, and Bryan. Before the epic battle the audience eagerly anticipated opposed the Yankees and Red Sox across a diamond, it pitted Lincoln against Douglas behind the lectern.
Perhaps, this explains why the two arenas so often borrow from and supply each other's repository of myths, idioms, symbols, and imagery. The media now covers election campaigns, for instance, as journalists might a baseball season. Instead of analyzing policy or investigating facts, the narrative consists instead of a facile, arcane, and largely trivial discussion of tactics and strategies, of turnouts and poll numbers, of the week's winner and losers-- befitting what Joan Didion once mordantly called Washington “Inside Baseball.” Conversely, baseball, over the years, has adopted all the patriotic trappings, civic pomp, and national rites we normally associate with the political arena. Anthems, flag-waving, military pageantry, honored guests and ceremonial pitches. Could you imagine a play, movie, concert, or opera, by contrast, opening with any of these obligatory patriotic rituals?
I mention this because in the exhaustive media coverage about the Brothers Kennedys that has accompanied the Massachusetts Senator's recent death I couldn't help but see in the indirect light it reflects on baseball, in general, and in particular, the Yankees. No, I don't refer to the photographs depicting an already wan Teddy outfitted in Red Sox regalia with a smiling John Henry beside him or for that matter, to the little known friendship between the Kennedys and Steinbrenners and the homage George paid, via his press agent, in the wake of his friend's passing. The connection is more oblique but not necesarily less telling.
As Michael Lewis' Moneyball potrayed it, Baseball-- that is, both the body that governs the league (headed by the Commissioner) and the the individual teams that comprise it: Baseball, despite an identity that today owes as much today to the Money as to the Ball, in attitude, outlook, financial practices and personnel management evokes far less a competitive modern corporation or profitable niche industry than a smug, hidebound country club. It's a Club where insularity, clannishness, exclusivity, solipsism dominate marketplace shibboleths like innovation, adapatability, and efficiency and where a Club member's greatest sin "is not ineptitude but disolyalty." An institution, in other words, not so unlike the local party clubs that together constituted the urban political machines that controlled the country's municipal government from the Republic's founding until well after World War II and that in the late 1940s just so happened to launch the Congressional career of a young, pasty-faced Irish-American war hero from Boston who later ascended to the Presidency.
Only as the Boston Congressman, and later, Massaschusetts Senator's career blossomed and he fixed his ambitions on the Presidency, he abandoned the ways and habits of the machine. His campaigns depended less and less upon the party to marshall votes and to bind allegiance because his family's wealth granted him the luxury of bypass its patronage apparatus and electoral organization. Instead, Jack, and his campaign manager, brother Bobby, tapping Poppa Joe's limitless financial resources, capitalized on the new media, computer technology, and advanced statistical applications the corporate world already used to pioneer the modern campaign-- polling voters, canvassing preferences, testing campaign themes, targetting equivocal audiences, lavishing huge sums on advertising, promoting a personality cult and forging loyalties independent of party.
Consequently, Kennedy, owing no debt to the bosses for his election, once in office, needn't repay it by hiring their cronies. In the Oval Office, Kennedy then could transform the Office of Chief Executive and Presidential cabinet from a spoils system for career bureaucrats and party functionaries into an managerial Elect of the "Best and Brightest" called to higher service. Like the poll, focus group, and televison spot, merit-based Presidential appointment is now such a commonplace, we often fail to appreciate fully just how profound a reform, in this regard, Kennedy initiated.
To quote Gore Vidal, writing in 1961,
"I had not been to the White House since 1957... The corridors were empty. In the various offices of the Executive, quiet gray men in waistcoats talked to one another in low-pitched voices. Last month, I returned to find the twentieth century [] installed. The corridors are filled with eager youthful men... Kennedy is unique among recent Presidents in many ways. For one thing, he had ended the idea that the Presidency is a form of brevet rank to be give a man whose career has been distinguished in some profession other than politics or if to a politician, one whose good years are past, the White House being merely a place to provide some old pol with a golden Indian summer."
THE BRONX BRAIN DRAIN AND BOSTON BRAIN TRUST
How does all of this relate to baseball, you ask; and more importantly to the Yankees?
Well, despite the seeming paradox-- that is, notwithstanding the Kennedy family's deep roots in New England; and notwithstanding the recently departed's allegiance to Fenway, I can't help see nonetheless in the Camelot Presidency, in its rise and in its reign, a parallel to Steinbrenner's Yankees. A story about related ascents that nonetheless arrive at different destinations, a parable about roads not taken and opportunities lost.
Like Jack Kennedy, George Steinbrenner inherited the wealth and status of a prominent, hard-driving, autocratic father and like the President, the Boss, in turn, parlayed this considerable patrimony to win a birthright all his own, achieving success and renown that exceeded his family's expecations and the endowments given him. Likewise, the Ambassador's son and the shipbuilder's heir, once reaching the top, had to weather the persistent, vitriolic attacks of an establishment determined to discredit them as arrivistes and to reduce the value of what they'd achieved to their money. Ill-gotten plunder bought Kennedy his Presidency, they said; filthy lucre, Steinbrenner his Championships.
It is however in how these two embattled men governed once they acceded to the throne however that they parted company. If Kennedy surrounded himself with the Best and Brightest with the uncharacteristic concession here and there to nepotism and loyalists, Steinbrenner governed in the opposite manner.
At first, the owner may have planned otherwise, hiring in Gabe Paul and Al Rosen shrewd and savvy executives to compensate for the baseball acumen he lacked. The policy didn't last. Soon enough the Boss either antagonized or fired his most able personnel, and the best and brightest, with offers elsewhere, shunned the Bronx. Instead of an organization distinguished by the Game's Best and Brightest, it harbored the Obsequious and the Obtuse. (The exception of Gene Michael's tenure during George's expulsion, of course, is the exception that only underscores the rule.)
In fact, the moniker "The Boss" fit so well precisely because Steinbrenner conjured Boss Tweed, New York's infamous party boss. Meanwhile, the Yankees' organization the Boss' tyranny had wrought recalled the machine's waste, incompetence, and mismanagement (and pace, Howard Spira), its corruption. It ran sure enough. Then again, so did Tammany Hall, as long as no one expected efficiency, competitive advantage, or good government, and money continued to grease its wheels. So much, in fact, did the Yankees depart from the Kennedy standard of merit and professionalism that in the Boss' final years the courtiers, opportunists, flunkeys and fools that dominated his Tampa Kitchen Cabinet were probably more qualified to cook (and to drive) than to advise him about baseball.
In the meantime, the baseball front-office that came to exemplify the Best and the Brightest ideal; that prized merit, that valued credentials, and rewarded critical thinking; that adapted the private sector's latest information technology, statistical tools, computer modeling, and advanced media to assembling a winning baseball team just as the Kennedys once did to assembling a winning political campaign wasn't the Yankees at all. It was their arch rival, the Regents of Ressentiment, otherwise known as the Boston Red Sox.
To quote Tom Verducci in The Yankee Years,
"[John] Henry believed in numbers. They made him a rich man. Henry established an alternative money management firm that proudly took human emotion and subjective analysis out of play. It made trading decisions based on a proprietary, objective systems that analyzed trends in each market... Henry saw no reason why data-based analysis should not work in baseball, too... and about 20 years earlier had discovered the work of statstical analyst Bill James and other so-called sabermetricians."
It was the Yankees' former limited partner, Henry, then, who took up the Kennedy mantle and adopting the marketplace's empirical methods, technological tools, and merit system to modernize the GM's office as the Kennedy's once did the political campaign.
True, as Lewis' Moneyball tells the story, Billy Beane's Oakland Athletics pioneered the reform but economic necessity animated them as much as it constained them. Henry's team, on the other hand, had the finanical wherewithal and the intellectual will to realize it in its all manifold applications.
First, the Red Sox set about accumulating as much brain power as possible for his baseball operations, from hiring the Great Bill James himself and courting his many disciples to hiring as many experienced GMs as the sport had to offer. Conflicting titles, overlapping hierarchies, elders answering to their youngers-- none of this mattered.
Nor did Henry apply the hiring criteria the Club (Lewis' invidious term for the baseball establishment) tends to favor. For example, lifelong citizenship in Red Sox nation, friendship with the Henry family, connections to the Mayor, and an aptitude for mollifying tyrants and retaining one's job, say, didn't qualify one for an office. To the contrary, Henry's front-office personnel had to fulfill the same qualifications as the players who fill his team roster-- merit and merit alone.
Then, once Henry installed his brain trust, he encouraged and subsidized them in discovering for the Jamesian empirical method new and innovative metrics and for the latest medical and media technology new and innovative application. According to Verducci, the Red Sox front-office, for example, went about collecting the statistics of every college player in the last decade and then tracking their production through the minors and majors to devise models on how amateur and professional performance correlated. They also numbered one of two teams to send ALL their pitchers to Dr. James Andrews' Institute for biomechanical imaging to identify mechancial flaws and to forestall arm injuries. No doubt, someone in the Red Sox front-office is pouring over the latest Pitch f/x data baseball now collects to explain such anecdotal and physical imponderables as late break, speed, and movement. And in all likelihood, the Red Sox continue to tap Japan for pitching because unlike the rest of baseball, they've probably formulated a metric that predicts how a pitcher there will fare here.
No, the Red Sox GM's office isn't infallible. (As the Kennedy administration's overtures in Vietnam, and John McNamara himself, illustrate, the Best and Brightest err often.) No, they're not immune to personnel mistakes; no they haven't assembled a flawless roster; no, haven't and won't win every year. However, the Red Sox already have built one if not the deepest farm system in the majors despite drafting near the back of the line each season.
To appreciate fully what Henry has accomplished, consider for a moment a parallel world in which the Red Sox possessed the Yankees revenue stream and the Yankees, the Red Sox, but without altering the composition of their respective front-offices. Do you doubt how the two rivals would finish this season or for the forseeable future?
THE CASH-MAN'S YANKEES
With the Yankees the proud owners of the league's best record, it no doubt will seem churlish to criticize the GM's office, petty to disparage it, and willfully blind to ignore the considerable improvement its personnel decisions have registered since 2005.
This year alone the farm system yielded fruits, replenishing and stabilizing the major league roster when criticial injuries claimed A-Rod and Posada, and bolstering the bullpen. Meanwhile, George retreated years ago and mercifully, taken the Tampa HillBillies and Fool's Court with him. And if the Brothers Steinbrenner, in stature, charisma, courage or cleverness won't earn many comparison to Ted and Bobby, the George' sucessors don't appear to meddle with the baseball operations department or to tyrannize its employees.
But then again who knows? Among other frailties, the Boss' legacy of paranoia has survived him. The Yankees endeavor to conceal as much of their inner workings under a veil of secrecy now as ever. "Plans" supposedly exist for everything from Joba Chamberlain's innings count to restoring Chien-Ming Wang' velocity to guaranteeing Alex Rodriguez his hiatuses. "There's a process in place," the GM assures his skeptics. Only no one but the GM is privy to it. Neither the end results nor his faltering explanations, in the meantime, flatter him however. To the contrary, Cashman's "secret plans" for Joba and Wang recall Nixon's "secret plan to end the War," and his mangling of the English language, upon communicating them, bespeaks Dubya. Behind secret veils and contorted syntax typically lies rank duplicity and/or bungling incompetence.
Why did it require three outings in April, for example, before the Yankees suddenly realized the precipitous fall in Wang's velocity betrayed the lasting effects of his lis franc injury? And why did they continue to pitch him and ignore the injury to his arm they risked by allowing him to overthrow to compensate? Why did they promote him if after Wang's third minor league start his velocity still hadn't recovered? Why, finally, did it require Wang's agent to demand a second opinion before Dr. Andrews diagnosed the tear to his labrum? And why did they let him throw on flat ground twice in the interim?
Questions about the GM's management of Joba's innings total abound as well. If the Yankees intended to pitch Chamberlain in the post-season while honoring his innings limit, why didn't they simply defer his first outing until May 1st or May 15 to avoid a hiatus during the season? Back in April, the Yankees could have used Hughes, Kennedy, Aceves for the season's first month or acquired a career AAAA pitcher to use as their fifth starter.
Perhaps, we shouldn't diminsh though what "Cash-Money," as his acolytes like to call him, does well. Cash-Money excels at writing checks. By this, I don't intend sarcasm or a backhanded compliment. I mean it, quite sincerely. As the Red Sox have shown again and again cultivating player's loyalty, earning their good will, and recruiting them to sign isn't easy or evidently, a task at which the Red Sox office excels. Manny, Minky, Pedro, Damon and Lowe: the Red Sox managed to antagonize or to alienate all of them. By contrast, Cashman successfully recruited Sabathia, allaying his misgivings about New York with an escape clause, and seduced Teixiera just as the Red Sox were doing their best to offend him.
Perhaps, the Best and the Brightest necessarily excludes the Obsequious and the Ingratiating.
If so, Cash-Money's Yankees will go only so far as competitive zeal travels between generations; stars gravitate to and shine in the Bronx; and $50 million dollars of payroll separates New York from Boston.
Monday, September 7, 2009
Monday, August 3, 2009
NO WANG, NO WASHBURN, NO WORLD SERIES
If after two years spent firmly entrenched behind their arch rival, the Yankees abruptly discover the roles reversed as they enter the final third of the 2009 season, perhaps one has to allow for the sudden prevalence of blithe confidence and myopic optimism.
In the deep recesses of our historical consciousness, the Red Sox recent superiority, after all, smacks of transience and aberration, a temporary rift in the cosmic order soon righted by the passage of time. While some eternal contract between the dead Ruth, the living Jeter, and prospects unborn underwrites the Yankees' ascendance with 2009 evoking the fitness, compensatory justice, and return to normalcy of a dynasty restored.
To all ye smug, complacent, and myopic, beware.
Two West Coast road trips beckon. Injury has claimed Chien-Ming Wang. Joba nears his innings limit. The 8th inning void, conscripting Hughes and Aceves, has stripped the farm and exhausted the reserves. And with Kei Igawa manning the barricades, a thin, fragile starting rotation stands an injury from disaster.
Meanwhile, the trade deadline has come and gone. The competiton has improved. The Yankees rested.
In the East, the Red Sox's acquisition of Victor Martinez and Casey Kotchman bolsters a faltering lineup, reinforces corners defense, deepens their bench, offers rest to the aged and infirm Varitek, Lowell, and Ortiz, injects youth into a team beset by injury and age, and secures them a catcher and first-baseman for next year. The Central-leading Tigers-- the team the Yankees' current standing would pit them against in the playoffs' first round-- snared Jarrod Washburn, the very starter the Yankees arguably needed and certainly coveted.
As a consequence, the Yankees now face the prospect of an October rotation, should they make it that far, of Sabathia, Burnett, Pettitte and Mitre. A post-season rotation about as redoubtable as predecessors featuring Shawn Chacon, Jared Wright, Corey Lidle, a dilapidated Unit, a grounded Rocket and leading straight to first-round exits.
THE THREE-ARMED CRAP SHOOT
The media machine's great cliched metaphor for baseball's post-season is the crap shoot, evoking the image of eight teams huddled around a crap table, the outcome hinging on a dice roll, the hottest arm running the table and sheer luck deciding the winner.
Nothing could be further from the truth. This isn't to deny chance its influence, the indiscriminate injury, the fortunate bounce. Nor is to gainsay that the World Series' winner is often less October's best team than the team that plays best in October. Or more accurately, the team that pitches best. Only, in the American League, the past four post-seasons, the team that pitched best happens also to have been the team with the best pitching.
To elaborate, among the four American league teams to have qualified for the playoffs the last four years, the team that ultimately represented the league in the World Series was the same team which possessed the pitching staff with the lowest era entering October.
For each, the staff's preeminence sprang from the depth of their starting rotation. Last year, Shields, Kazmir, and Garza led the Rays. In 2007, Beckett, Schilling, and Dice-K anchored the Red Sox. In 2006, it was Rogers, Verlander, Robertson and Bonderman, the Tigers; and in 2005, Contreras, Buehrle, Garland, and Garcia. Each team, as a consequence, started a pitcher 3 of every 4 post-season games likely to give them a quality outing-- a quality start defined as pitching 6 innings or more, yielding 3 earned runs or less. (In fact, every one of the above pitchers had accumulated ERAs lower than 4.00 for the season, Dice-K excepted.)
The above graphic shouldn't surprise anyone acquainted with the 1996-2003 Yankee championship teams and the fundamental strength that distinguished them from their feeble progeny. Unlike their offense-dependent offspring, pitching underpinned the championship teams. That success, above all, rose from the rotation's depth and extended as far as its 3rd starter and often unto the 4th: Pettitte, the mainstay, then Cone or Mussina, Key or Wells, Clemens and/or El Duque. A succession of arms that fortified them with their best defense against the losing streak that is so fatal in October.[1] By contrast, from 2004 through 2007, disaster arrived in early October once the Yankees first or second starter succumbed because behind him, the infirm, inept, middling, overwrought and ill-equipped followed.
APRES BURNETT, QUI?: CASHMAN'S LOST GAMBLE
The 2009 Yankees haven't sat in first place this late into a baseball season since 2006. The three pivotal Red Sox series to come and the two arduous West Coast road trips that await notwithstanding, the Yankees, thus far, have earned the mantle of genuine contender. They own at 63-42 record through 105 games. Mere average .500 baseball through September then would bring them to 90 wins. A tad better than than and at 31-26, they would total 94 wins and meet the customary threshold for post-season qualification.
So for the moment, let's court bad karma and for argument's sake, envision how the Yankees might fare against their postseason competition as currently constituted. Wang lost. Washburn forsaken. Joba inactive or relegated to the bullpen, his allotted 150-160 innings expended. Cashman's opportunity to acquire a comparable third starter long expired. The Yankees' rotation consisting of Sabathia, Burnett, Pettitte, and X.
Extrapolating from the four-year trend indicated above that AL playoff team with the best ERA crowns its World Series representative, I chart the competition below, listing their current staff ERA and the combined ERAs of their top four starters-- i.e., their playoff rotation. (I've excluded Tampa and Texas on the assumption that if either qualifies for the postseason, the Yankees will not.)
In the second column, while I've quanitfied and ranked the AL playoff contenders' likely playoff rotations, I concede, it's not without its inevitable flaws and unavoidable conjecture. In the Yankees' case, for example, their four best starters didn't correspond to their four probable post-season starters, so in prioritizing the latter, willy-nilly, the 4.22 ERA listed above excludes Joba Chamberlain's representative statistics and instead includes Mitre's unrepresentative 13.2 pitched innings and the 12 earned runs he's surrendered while doing so.
Why, you may ask? Because I take the Yankees at their word, trust they will honor Joba's inning cap, and can envision no circumstance under which he would start in the post-season. On his current schedule, he will exhaust his alloted innings by September. They're not likely to enjoy the luxury of skipping his starts, not with Tampa and Texas chasing them, not with enough frequency anyway to spare innings for October. And the scenario, under which they inactivate him for a long period and then kick start him for the post-season would seem to pose a risk as grave, if not more, than ignoring his innings' restrictions altogether.
Despite its provisional value, the chart above nonetheless suggests that if they genuinely harbor championship ambitions, the 2009 Yankees will have to defy history to do so. First, the starting rotation recalls far more the fatal flaw of the 2004-2007 teams than the 1996-2003 teams overriding strength. Second, assuming they play in October, they will have to overcome another recent trend and prove that a staff ERA, ranked no better than third among the AL's four qualifiers, can triumph nonetheless over its rivals. For whomever the Yankees select as their fourth starter-- whether Mitre or some nameless alternative with a fourth starter's league average ERA-- they still would oppose, in Boston, Detroit/Chicago, and/or Anaheim, two teams with more proficient pitching staffs and a third team they can't seem to beat under any circumstances, statistics notwithstanding.
Finally, the chart above illustrates the gravity of Cashman's decision to value the future dividends Austin Jackson could yield over Jarrod Washburn's immediate and tangible return.
(Jackson because among the other four, Joba, Hughes, Montero, and Romine, Cashman deemed untouchable, Austin Jackson, a AAA outfielder whose power either hasn't developed or doesn't exist, his elevation to prized status is the least defensible. I can't argue with hoarding the other four. In the wake of Melky's revival and Gardner's emergence, Jackson no longer is indispensable to the Yankees' future. All three cannot play center, after all, and their power deficits disqualify each from the corners.)
In fact, Washburn represents the margin of difference between boasting the AL's best most playoff rotation and risking association among its least, between winning the World Series and losing again in the first round. For with Washburn replacing Mitre (or a average fourth starter equivalent) the ERA of the Yankees' probable playoff rotation rises to 3.75 and moves them from fourth to first in the ranking above. Conversely, the ERA of Detroits' likely playoff rotation plummets to 3.77 and demotes them to second.
THE NEW WORLD YANKEE
In the Bronx, the new regime's worldview compasses broader horizons than in the past. King George has exited and carried his sentimental, profligate, impatient, win-now, profit-be-damned philosophy with him. Baby Bombers grown on the farm are cherished less for their pedigree, for the affection they earn, or for the solidarity they contribute. No, now, the front-office values home-grown prospects as precious financial assets, as human capital to be hoarded, nursed, husbanded, and ulitmately milked for years to come. Numbers now rule the day- profit and loss, cost-benefit, capital realization, fungible value denominates everything from the price of beer to the worth of Melk. The MBAs have inherited the Crown.
I commend the front-office for irrigating a long neglected, fallow farm, cultivating new talent, injecting youth and bringing the minor league affiliates back to life. The old way of mortgaging the future and plundering the farm augured a slow, suffocating death. Still, Cashman has yet to prove he can identify the focal point in the balance between, at once, capitalizing on his aging, dynastic nucleus' final years of contention while building a new foundation for the future. Instead, the front-office reeks of reaction. Like Russia, the Commissar succeeds the Czar and one extreme follows another. Sure, if peanuts brings you Abreu, eat. Sure if Nady and Marte, fortuitously, exacts spare parts, by all means, floor the engine. But relinquish a single crown jewel for the royal family's last gasp of glory, never.
Cashman serves today at the Steinbrenner's pleasure. Ultimately, he'll have to answer to history and more immediately, the 4 men in the clubhouse, Jeter, Posada, Pettitte, and Rivera responsible for the GM's achievements and to whom he owes one last opportunity.
Pray, Cashman hasn't forsaken it and may the name Jarrod Washburn, otherwise, fade into memory.
[1] In the '96 World Series when Pettitte and Key faltered, Cone rose to the occasion. In the '98 ALCS, when Pettitte wavered, the bullpen unraveled, and the barbarians thronged the gates, El Duque baffled the opposition and held the citadel. In the 2001 ALDS, with the team down 0-2 and the season teetering on the brink, Mussina saved the day and then again, in the 2003 ALCS, staving off ruin, in relief of Clemens.
In the deep recesses of our historical consciousness, the Red Sox recent superiority, after all, smacks of transience and aberration, a temporary rift in the cosmic order soon righted by the passage of time. While some eternal contract between the dead Ruth, the living Jeter, and prospects unborn underwrites the Yankees' ascendance with 2009 evoking the fitness, compensatory justice, and return to normalcy of a dynasty restored.
To all ye smug, complacent, and myopic, beware.
Two West Coast road trips beckon. Injury has claimed Chien-Ming Wang. Joba nears his innings limit. The 8th inning void, conscripting Hughes and Aceves, has stripped the farm and exhausted the reserves. And with Kei Igawa manning the barricades, a thin, fragile starting rotation stands an injury from disaster.
Meanwhile, the trade deadline has come and gone. The competiton has improved. The Yankees rested.
In the East, the Red Sox's acquisition of Victor Martinez and Casey Kotchman bolsters a faltering lineup, reinforces corners defense, deepens their bench, offers rest to the aged and infirm Varitek, Lowell, and Ortiz, injects youth into a team beset by injury and age, and secures them a catcher and first-baseman for next year. The Central-leading Tigers-- the team the Yankees' current standing would pit them against in the playoffs' first round-- snared Jarrod Washburn, the very starter the Yankees arguably needed and certainly coveted.
As a consequence, the Yankees now face the prospect of an October rotation, should they make it that far, of Sabathia, Burnett, Pettitte and Mitre. A post-season rotation about as redoubtable as predecessors featuring Shawn Chacon, Jared Wright, Corey Lidle, a dilapidated Unit, a grounded Rocket and leading straight to first-round exits.
THE THREE-ARMED CRAP SHOOT
The media machine's great cliched metaphor for baseball's post-season is the crap shoot, evoking the image of eight teams huddled around a crap table, the outcome hinging on a dice roll, the hottest arm running the table and sheer luck deciding the winner.
Nothing could be further from the truth. This isn't to deny chance its influence, the indiscriminate injury, the fortunate bounce. Nor is to gainsay that the World Series' winner is often less October's best team than the team that plays best in October. Or more accurately, the team that pitches best. Only, in the American League, the past four post-seasons, the team that pitched best happens also to have been the team with the best pitching.
To elaborate, among the four American league teams to have qualified for the playoffs the last four years, the team that ultimately represented the league in the World Series was the same team which possessed the pitching staff with the lowest era entering October.
For each, the staff's preeminence sprang from the depth of their starting rotation. Last year, Shields, Kazmir, and Garza led the Rays. In 2007, Beckett, Schilling, and Dice-K anchored the Red Sox. In 2006, it was Rogers, Verlander, Robertson and Bonderman, the Tigers; and in 2005, Contreras, Buehrle, Garland, and Garcia. Each team, as a consequence, started a pitcher 3 of every 4 post-season games likely to give them a quality outing-- a quality start defined as pitching 6 innings or more, yielding 3 earned runs or less. (In fact, every one of the above pitchers had accumulated ERAs lower than 4.00 for the season, Dice-K excepted.)
| 2008- ERA | 2007- ERA | 2006- ERA | 2005 - ERA |
| Tam- 3.82 | Bos- 3.87 | Det- 3.85 | Chi - 3.61 |
| LA- 4.00 | Cle - 4.05 | Min - 3.95 | Bos - 4.74 |
| Bos- 4.28 | LA - 4.23 | Oak - 4.22 | LA - 3.68 |
| Chi - 4.11 | NY- 4.50 | NY- 4.43 | NY- 4.54 |
The above graphic shouldn't surprise anyone acquainted with the 1996-2003 Yankee championship teams and the fundamental strength that distinguished them from their feeble progeny. Unlike their offense-dependent offspring, pitching underpinned the championship teams. That success, above all, rose from the rotation's depth and extended as far as its 3rd starter and often unto the 4th: Pettitte, the mainstay, then Cone or Mussina, Key or Wells, Clemens and/or El Duque. A succession of arms that fortified them with their best defense against the losing streak that is so fatal in October.[1] By contrast, from 2004 through 2007, disaster arrived in early October once the Yankees first or second starter succumbed because behind him, the infirm, inept, middling, overwrought and ill-equipped followed.
APRES BURNETT, QUI?: CASHMAN'S LOST GAMBLE
The 2009 Yankees haven't sat in first place this late into a baseball season since 2006. The three pivotal Red Sox series to come and the two arduous West Coast road trips that await notwithstanding, the Yankees, thus far, have earned the mantle of genuine contender. They own at 63-42 record through 105 games. Mere average .500 baseball through September then would bring them to 90 wins. A tad better than than and at 31-26, they would total 94 wins and meet the customary threshold for post-season qualification.
So for the moment, let's court bad karma and for argument's sake, envision how the Yankees might fare against their postseason competition as currently constituted. Wang lost. Washburn forsaken. Joba inactive or relegated to the bullpen, his allotted 150-160 innings expended. Cashman's opportunity to acquire a comparable third starter long expired. The Yankees' rotation consisting of Sabathia, Burnett, Pettitte, and X.
Extrapolating from the four-year trend indicated above that AL playoff team with the best ERA crowns its World Series representative, I chart the competition below, listing their current staff ERA and the combined ERAs of their top four starters-- i.e., their playoff rotation. (I've excluded Tampa and Texas on the assumption that if either qualifies for the postseason, the Yankees will not.)
| STAFF - ERA | STR 1-4 ERA | |
| Bos. | 4.12 | 4.07 |
| Det. | 4.15 | 3.16 |
| Chi | 4.15 | 4.11 |
| NYY | 4.50 | 4.22 |
| Ana. | 4.75 | 4.38 |
In the second column, while I've quanitfied and ranked the AL playoff contenders' likely playoff rotations, I concede, it's not without its inevitable flaws and unavoidable conjecture. In the Yankees' case, for example, their four best starters didn't correspond to their four probable post-season starters, so in prioritizing the latter, willy-nilly, the 4.22 ERA listed above excludes Joba Chamberlain's representative statistics and instead includes Mitre's unrepresentative 13.2 pitched innings and the 12 earned runs he's surrendered while doing so.
Why, you may ask? Because I take the Yankees at their word, trust they will honor Joba's inning cap, and can envision no circumstance under which he would start in the post-season. On his current schedule, he will exhaust his alloted innings by September. They're not likely to enjoy the luxury of skipping his starts, not with Tampa and Texas chasing them, not with enough frequency anyway to spare innings for October. And the scenario, under which they inactivate him for a long period and then kick start him for the post-season would seem to pose a risk as grave, if not more, than ignoring his innings' restrictions altogether.
Despite its provisional value, the chart above nonetheless suggests that if they genuinely harbor championship ambitions, the 2009 Yankees will have to defy history to do so. First, the starting rotation recalls far more the fatal flaw of the 2004-2007 teams than the 1996-2003 teams overriding strength. Second, assuming they play in October, they will have to overcome another recent trend and prove that a staff ERA, ranked no better than third among the AL's four qualifiers, can triumph nonetheless over its rivals. For whomever the Yankees select as their fourth starter-- whether Mitre or some nameless alternative with a fourth starter's league average ERA-- they still would oppose, in Boston, Detroit/Chicago, and/or Anaheim, two teams with more proficient pitching staffs and a third team they can't seem to beat under any circumstances, statistics notwithstanding.
Finally, the chart above illustrates the gravity of Cashman's decision to value the future dividends Austin Jackson could yield over Jarrod Washburn's immediate and tangible return.
(Jackson because among the other four, Joba, Hughes, Montero, and Romine, Cashman deemed untouchable, Austin Jackson, a AAA outfielder whose power either hasn't developed or doesn't exist, his elevation to prized status is the least defensible. I can't argue with hoarding the other four. In the wake of Melky's revival and Gardner's emergence, Jackson no longer is indispensable to the Yankees' future. All three cannot play center, after all, and their power deficits disqualify each from the corners.)
In fact, Washburn represents the margin of difference between boasting the AL's best most playoff rotation and risking association among its least, between winning the World Series and losing again in the first round. For with Washburn replacing Mitre (or a average fourth starter equivalent) the ERA of the Yankees' probable playoff rotation rises to 3.75 and moves them from fourth to first in the ranking above. Conversely, the ERA of Detroits' likely playoff rotation plummets to 3.77 and demotes them to second.
THE NEW WORLD YANKEE
In the Bronx, the new regime's worldview compasses broader horizons than in the past. King George has exited and carried his sentimental, profligate, impatient, win-now, profit-be-damned philosophy with him. Baby Bombers grown on the farm are cherished less for their pedigree, for the affection they earn, or for the solidarity they contribute. No, now, the front-office values home-grown prospects as precious financial assets, as human capital to be hoarded, nursed, husbanded, and ulitmately milked for years to come. Numbers now rule the day- profit and loss, cost-benefit, capital realization, fungible value denominates everything from the price of beer to the worth of Melk. The MBAs have inherited the Crown.
I commend the front-office for irrigating a long neglected, fallow farm, cultivating new talent, injecting youth and bringing the minor league affiliates back to life. The old way of mortgaging the future and plundering the farm augured a slow, suffocating death. Still, Cashman has yet to prove he can identify the focal point in the balance between, at once, capitalizing on his aging, dynastic nucleus' final years of contention while building a new foundation for the future. Instead, the front-office reeks of reaction. Like Russia, the Commissar succeeds the Czar and one extreme follows another. Sure, if peanuts brings you Abreu, eat. Sure if Nady and Marte, fortuitously, exacts spare parts, by all means, floor the engine. But relinquish a single crown jewel for the royal family's last gasp of glory, never.
Cashman serves today at the Steinbrenner's pleasure. Ultimately, he'll have to answer to history and more immediately, the 4 men in the clubhouse, Jeter, Posada, Pettitte, and Rivera responsible for the GM's achievements and to whom he owes one last opportunity.
Pray, Cashman hasn't forsaken it and may the name Jarrod Washburn, otherwise, fade into memory.
[1] In the '96 World Series when Pettitte and Key faltered, Cone rose to the occasion. In the '98 ALCS, when Pettitte wavered, the bullpen unraveled, and the barbarians thronged the gates, El Duque baffled the opposition and held the citadel. In the 2001 ALDS, with the team down 0-2 and the season teetering on the brink, Mussina saved the day and then again, in the 2003 ALCS, staving off ruin, in relief of Clemens.
Monday, July 20, 2009
THE FRONTIER SEPARATING NEW YORK AND BOSTON
"The woods are...dark and deep... and [there are] miles to go before I sleep."-- Robert Frost
Perhaps, the saving grace of the latest trial Joe G's team had to endure in Disney's House of Hell is that it ended the ceremonial 1st-half of the Yankees season. It enabled his team to beat a hasty retreat, leave the ignominy behind them, rest, recuperate, marshal their stamina and energy, and rejoin the battle. As consequence, the Yankees opened the 2nd half by reeling off four straight victories, the last three via the improbable feat of three consecutive, dramatic 2-1 victories. More improbable still, the streak has lifted the team into first place and drawn them even with the Red Sox.
To lend historical perspective, the Bombers haven't achieved equivalent success through 92 games since 2006. That year, you may recall, the Yankees also stood at 55-27 in late July but nonetheless didn't catch Boston until August 1st, the day they moved into a first-place tie atop the division. A lead they never relinquished. Two weeks later, they travelled to Fenway and over a five-game series, re-staged the '78 "Boston Massacre", sweeping the opening double header on Friday and taking the next three games as well, dealing the Red Sox's 2006 season the death blow from which it never recovered.
(Praise be to autumnal New England color-- gray skies, black mourning dresses, the blues of dejection, and Fenway in jaded green-- green with the bile of envy. To every October its Bucky and every Yom Kippur, Kaddish at the Green Wall. Amen.)
Ah, but I digress. Worse, the nostalgia invites hubris, the expectation that history will repeat itself. Don't count on it. At the risk of sounding like Cassandra, I'd urge you nonetheless to heed the omens.
Leave aside the 2009 Yankees 0-8 record against the Red Sox for a moment, though it suggests malign karma of its own. Just look at the team's respective schedules for August and September. Behind our backs, the Scheduling Gods have contrived to tilt the playing field and to secure Boston the inside track for taking the division.
While the Red Sox finish the 2009 season with series against Baltimore, Kansas City, Toronto, and Cleveland, the Yankees's route to October follows a longer, more treacherous road and pits them against more formidable opponents along the way. Simply fending off Texas and Tampa and holding on to a playoff spot will test the Yankees' mettle, endurance, and capability on its own.
THE PEREMPTORY SCHEDULING GODS
The vagaries, disparities, inaninities, and outright injustices that bedevil the major league baseball schedule is, by now, notorious. In its composition, the irrational is only exceeded by the arbitrary.
The interleague schedule accounts for much of the inequality because it assigns teams in the same division a different set of interleague opponents. In 2009, for example, while the schedule pit the Yankees, Red Sox, and Orioles against each team in the NL East, inexplicably, for the Tampa Rays, it substituted the Rockies for the Braves; for the Blue Jays, the Red for the Mets.
Then, there's the capricious artificiality of the so-called "natural rival," Commissioner-engineered as often as it is organic, against whom a franchise plays 6 games every year. The idea of the Nationals, Pirates, Marlins, Padres, Rockies, Mariners, or Twins serving as any team's "rival," genuine or otherwise, is laughable. It smacks of the hustler's stamp of "genuine imitation leather." Apart from distorting the wild-card race, which the unbalanced intra-league schedule accomplishes anyway, the "natural rival" pretense saddles the Yankees, Mets, White Sox, Cubs, Cardinals, Royals, A's, Giants and perhaps a handful of other franchises, with more arduous and demanding games than those in settings where fans regard the outcome no differently than any other.
Never mind the tedium of two Mariners-Padres' series. Does the taxing urgency and freighted tension of a Phillies-Blue Jays series or for that matter, a Red Sox-Braves series, ever match Yankees-Mets or Cubs-White Sox? What Boston baseball fan seethes or sulks because the Red Sox lose to the Braves. Apart from the Francoeur family, is there a single Bostonian, still alive that is, who roots for the Braves-- better yet, who ever rooted did?
Perhaps, the 16-14 disparity between the National and American leagues in team size makes the interleague schedule's anomalies unavoidable. But how does the league justify the inequities in the intra-league schedule and among teams that play in the very same division?
THE YANKEES' FINAL FRONTIER: THE WILD WEST
More specifically, how does the league justify a schedule that sends the Red Sox to the West Coast twice and the Yankees three times. Just as disproportionate, however, is their respective timing.
The Red Sox completed their final road to the Pacific Time Zone for the 2009 season on May 17. That's right: MAY! The Red Sox traveled to the West Coast the 1st time in April for 6 games in Anaheim and Oakland (April 10-15). They returned in May for their 2nd to face Anaheim and Seattle (May 12th-May 17th.)
The Yankees, meanwhile, don't conclude their third and final odyssey through the Pacific Time Zone until September 23rd. Their 1st trip closed the season's first-half (July 10-12). Their 2nd is Aug 13 to 19 in Seattle and Oakland. (Directly, after which, they happen to play in Boston, August 21-23. Their 3rd trip takes them to Disney's House of Hell via Seattle, as I mention above, from September 18-23.
Like the Red Sox, the Rays, if you're interested, also play only two series in the Pacific Time Zone. Their 1st the Rays completed in April against Oakland and Seattle. The 2nd the Rays play in August from August 7-12th against Seattle and Anaheim. The Rays, however, returned to Tampa to play Boston in April, however; unlike the Yankees, who have to travel to Boston, following a West Coast trip, in August. The Rays also return home immediately after their 2nd West Coast trip in August.
Now, I concede no statistic-- none I've seen anyway--conclusively establishes the hardship exacted of baseball players when sent 3,000 miles away to play games three hours later than accustomed. Consider however the divide between the Yankees home and away record against Anaheim, Oakland, Seattle since 2000.
The difference between a 70-58 team and 57-63 team is about the difference between a team that qualifies for the playoffs and one that doesn't. (Incidentally, from 2000-2009, the Yankees' overall winning percentage on the road is five percent (-5.0%) less than at home.)
Or more perhaps, more illustrative, ask a Boston, New York, or Philadelphia beat reporters what players say privately about West Coast road trips. They'll tell you even the best-conditioned athlete isn't immune to the fatigue, insomnia, dehydration with which bi-coastal travel burden everyone. Why would 6-hour flights, travel delays, late nights, deferred start times, disrupted body clocks, and jet lag exhaust an athlete and diminish his performance any less than you or I.
THE TWILIGHT ROAD AHEAD
The Yankees exit the All-Star break with the Dog Days still ahead of them. Yet through the murky summer haze, flecks of autum color sprinkle the horizon and in the distance, the first dim, faint contours of October have started to emerge.
Disney's Angels have ensconced themselves in the West, while precocious, stout Texas lingers, maturing into a contender faster than anyone anticipated. In the Central, Detroit, Chicago, and Minnesota vie to distinguish themselves amid epidemic heartland mediocrity. Meanwhile, in the East, after a year's pause, Boston and New York have resumed their epic battle. With the Tampa upstarts-- spry, prolific, and with inexhaustible reserves of talent-- proving last year no fluke, injecting themselves into the rivalry and establishing a permanent claim to the throne.
Don't let the AL East's current standings deceive you however. Certainly, at this writing, Boston and New York stand atop the East with an identical 55-37 record. (Although Boston owns the tiebreaker because its 8-0 record with 10 to play all but guarantees them the season series.) While Tampa lags, on the loss side, five games behind them.
Teams' actual records index past performance however. By contrast, the sabermetricians have shown, run differential-- i.e. the difference between teams' Runs Scored (RS) and their Runs Allowed (RA) and the Pythagorean expected record it projects (RS^2/(RS^2+RA^2) -- predicts for more accurately how they will fare in the future. And the three teams' Pythagorean record doesn't bode well for the Yanks. Their (+61) run differential trails behind Tampa and Boston, each at (+79) respectively.
More ominous still for the Yankees' designs on the division is, as explained above, the taxing schedule, including two West Coast road trips, ahead of them. To document the more onerous schedule the Bombers' face, at least vis a vis Boston's, I post two charts below. To dramatize the comparison, the charts below encapsulate the Yankees' remaining schedules in addition to that of their three principal competitors' for the AL East title and/or AL wild-card, Boston, Tampa, and Texas.
"Chart A", below, groups each team's forthcoming opponents by AL division and lists the remaining number of games against each.
"Chart B" (i) list the sum of each team's remaining games home and away (ii) lists their respective winning percentages home and away; and (iii) uses a weighted measure of their opponents' records to quantify the difficulty of the four rivals' remaining schedule. To calculate a schedule's "weighted difficulty," I account for the frequency with which a team plays a forthcoming opponent, instead of treating each one equally. For example, if the Yankees play the Red Sox 10 times more this season and the Rangers only 5, the difficulty of the Yankees remaining schedule reflects the 2:1 ratio, weighting the Red Sox winning percentage twice as much as the Rangers' winning percentage in the final equation. Below, then, WEIGHTED SCHEDULE DIFFICULTY = (Opponents' Winning Percentage) * (Remaining Games versus Opponent ) / Total Games Remaining.
CHART A
CHART B
Apart from two onerous West Coast road trips spared their Boston nemesis, the season's final 10 weeks besets the Yankees with a more competitive schedule, in the aggregate, as well. On the other hand, the more stout competition Tampa has to overcome -- at least, as their opponents' collective winning percentage gauges it-- offers little comfort.
Perhaps, the saving grace of the latest trial Joe G's team had to endure in Disney's House of Hell is that it ended the ceremonial 1st-half of the Yankees season. It enabled his team to beat a hasty retreat, leave the ignominy behind them, rest, recuperate, marshal their stamina and energy, and rejoin the battle. As consequence, the Yankees opened the 2nd half by reeling off four straight victories, the last three via the improbable feat of three consecutive, dramatic 2-1 victories. More improbable still, the streak has lifted the team into first place and drawn them even with the Red Sox.
To lend historical perspective, the Bombers haven't achieved equivalent success through 92 games since 2006. That year, you may recall, the Yankees also stood at 55-27 in late July but nonetheless didn't catch Boston until August 1st, the day they moved into a first-place tie atop the division. A lead they never relinquished. Two weeks later, they travelled to Fenway and over a five-game series, re-staged the '78 "Boston Massacre", sweeping the opening double header on Friday and taking the next three games as well, dealing the Red Sox's 2006 season the death blow from which it never recovered.
(Praise be to autumnal New England color-- gray skies, black mourning dresses, the blues of dejection, and Fenway in jaded green-- green with the bile of envy. To every October its Bucky and every Yom Kippur, Kaddish at the Green Wall. Amen.)
Ah, but I digress. Worse, the nostalgia invites hubris, the expectation that history will repeat itself. Don't count on it. At the risk of sounding like Cassandra, I'd urge you nonetheless to heed the omens.
Leave aside the 2009 Yankees 0-8 record against the Red Sox for a moment, though it suggests malign karma of its own. Just look at the team's respective schedules for August and September. Behind our backs, the Scheduling Gods have contrived to tilt the playing field and to secure Boston the inside track for taking the division.
While the Red Sox finish the 2009 season with series against Baltimore, Kansas City, Toronto, and Cleveland, the Yankees's route to October follows a longer, more treacherous road and pits them against more formidable opponents along the way. Simply fending off Texas and Tampa and holding on to a playoff spot will test the Yankees' mettle, endurance, and capability on its own.
THE PEREMPTORY SCHEDULING GODS
The vagaries, disparities, inaninities, and outright injustices that bedevil the major league baseball schedule is, by now, notorious. In its composition, the irrational is only exceeded by the arbitrary.
The interleague schedule accounts for much of the inequality because it assigns teams in the same division a different set of interleague opponents. In 2009, for example, while the schedule pit the Yankees, Red Sox, and Orioles against each team in the NL East, inexplicably, for the Tampa Rays, it substituted the Rockies for the Braves; for the Blue Jays, the Red for the Mets.
Then, there's the capricious artificiality of the so-called "natural rival," Commissioner-engineered as often as it is organic, against whom a franchise plays 6 games every year. The idea of the Nationals, Pirates, Marlins, Padres, Rockies, Mariners, or Twins serving as any team's "rival," genuine or otherwise, is laughable. It smacks of the hustler's stamp of "genuine imitation leather." Apart from distorting the wild-card race, which the unbalanced intra-league schedule accomplishes anyway, the "natural rival" pretense saddles the Yankees, Mets, White Sox, Cubs, Cardinals, Royals, A's, Giants and perhaps a handful of other franchises, with more arduous and demanding games than those in settings where fans regard the outcome no differently than any other.
Never mind the tedium of two Mariners-Padres' series. Does the taxing urgency and freighted tension of a Phillies-Blue Jays series or for that matter, a Red Sox-Braves series, ever match Yankees-Mets or Cubs-White Sox? What Boston baseball fan seethes or sulks because the Red Sox lose to the Braves. Apart from the Francoeur family, is there a single Bostonian, still alive that is, who roots for the Braves-- better yet, who ever rooted did?
Perhaps, the 16-14 disparity between the National and American leagues in team size makes the interleague schedule's anomalies unavoidable. But how does the league justify the inequities in the intra-league schedule and among teams that play in the very same division?
THE YANKEES' FINAL FRONTIER: THE WILD WEST
More specifically, how does the league justify a schedule that sends the Red Sox to the West Coast twice and the Yankees three times. Just as disproportionate, however, is their respective timing.
The Red Sox completed their final road to the Pacific Time Zone for the 2009 season on May 17. That's right: MAY! The Red Sox traveled to the West Coast the 1st time in April for 6 games in Anaheim and Oakland (April 10-15). They returned in May for their 2nd to face Anaheim and Seattle (May 12th-May 17th.)
The Yankees, meanwhile, don't conclude their third and final odyssey through the Pacific Time Zone until September 23rd. Their 1st trip closed the season's first-half (July 10-12). Their 2nd is Aug 13 to 19 in Seattle and Oakland. (Directly, after which, they happen to play in Boston, August 21-23. Their 3rd trip takes them to Disney's House of Hell via Seattle, as I mention above, from September 18-23.
Like the Red Sox, the Rays, if you're interested, also play only two series in the Pacific Time Zone. Their 1st the Rays completed in April against Oakland and Seattle. The 2nd the Rays play in August from August 7-12th against Seattle and Anaheim. The Rays, however, returned to Tampa to play Boston in April, however; unlike the Yankees, who have to travel to Boston, following a West Coast trip, in August. The Rays also return home immediately after their 2nd West Coast trip in August.
Now, I concede no statistic-- none I've seen anyway--conclusively establishes the hardship exacted of baseball players when sent 3,000 miles away to play games three hours later than accustomed. Consider however the divide between the Yankees home and away record against Anaheim, Oakland, Seattle since 2000.
| OPPONENT ('00-'09) | HOME | AWAY | %DIFFERENTIAL |
| LAA | 20-23 | 18-26 | -5.6 % |
| OAK | 26-15 | 17-19 | -16.2 % |
| SEA | 24-20 | 22-18 | 0.0 % |
| TOTAL | 70-58 | 57-63 | -7.0% |
The difference between a 70-58 team and 57-63 team is about the difference between a team that qualifies for the playoffs and one that doesn't. (Incidentally, from 2000-2009, the Yankees' overall winning percentage on the road is five percent (-5.0%) less than at home.)
Or more perhaps, more illustrative, ask a Boston, New York, or Philadelphia beat reporters what players say privately about West Coast road trips. They'll tell you even the best-conditioned athlete isn't immune to the fatigue, insomnia, dehydration with which bi-coastal travel burden everyone. Why would 6-hour flights, travel delays, late nights, deferred start times, disrupted body clocks, and jet lag exhaust an athlete and diminish his performance any less than you or I.
THE TWILIGHT ROAD AHEAD
The Yankees exit the All-Star break with the Dog Days still ahead of them. Yet through the murky summer haze, flecks of autum color sprinkle the horizon and in the distance, the first dim, faint contours of October have started to emerge.
Disney's Angels have ensconced themselves in the West, while precocious, stout Texas lingers, maturing into a contender faster than anyone anticipated. In the Central, Detroit, Chicago, and Minnesota vie to distinguish themselves amid epidemic heartland mediocrity. Meanwhile, in the East, after a year's pause, Boston and New York have resumed their epic battle. With the Tampa upstarts-- spry, prolific, and with inexhaustible reserves of talent-- proving last year no fluke, injecting themselves into the rivalry and establishing a permanent claim to the throne.
Don't let the AL East's current standings deceive you however. Certainly, at this writing, Boston and New York stand atop the East with an identical 55-37 record. (Although Boston owns the tiebreaker because its 8-0 record with 10 to play all but guarantees them the season series.) While Tampa lags, on the loss side, five games behind them.
Teams' actual records index past performance however. By contrast, the sabermetricians have shown, run differential-- i.e. the difference between teams' Runs Scored (RS) and their Runs Allowed (RA) and the Pythagorean expected record it projects (RS^2/(RS^2+RA^2) -- predicts for more accurately how they will fare in the future. And the three teams' Pythagorean record doesn't bode well for the Yanks. Their (+61) run differential trails behind Tampa and Boston, each at (+79) respectively.
More ominous still for the Yankees' designs on the division is, as explained above, the taxing schedule, including two West Coast road trips, ahead of them. To document the more onerous schedule the Bombers' face, at least vis a vis Boston's, I post two charts below. To dramatize the comparison, the charts below encapsulate the Yankees' remaining schedules in addition to that of their three principal competitors' for the AL East title and/or AL wild-card, Boston, Tampa, and Texas.
"Chart A", below, groups each team's forthcoming opponents by AL division and lists the remaining number of games against each.
"Chart B" (i) list the sum of each team's remaining games home and away (ii) lists their respective winning percentages home and away; and (iii) uses a weighted measure of their opponents' records to quantify the difficulty of the four rivals' remaining schedule. To calculate a schedule's "weighted difficulty," I account for the frequency with which a team plays a forthcoming opponent, instead of treating each one equally. For example, if the Yankees play the Red Sox 10 times more this season and the Rangers only 5, the difficulty of the Yankees remaining schedule reflects the 2:1 ratio, weighting the Red Sox winning percentage twice as much as the Rangers' winning percentage in the final equation. Below, then, WEIGHTED SCHEDULE DIFFICULTY = (Opponents' Winning Percentage) * (Remaining Games versus Opponent ) / Total Games Remaining.
CHART A
| GAMES LEFT v. AL EAST | GAMES v. AL CENT | GAMESv. AL WEST | |
| NYY | Bal(9), Tor (11),TB (10), Bos (10) | Chi (7), KC (3) | LA(4), Tx (3), A(7), Ms (7) |
| Red Sox | Bal(11), Tor (9),TB (8), NY (10) | Det(4), Chi (8),KC(4), Cle (4) | LA (3), Tx(6), A's (7) |
| T. Rays | Bal(11), Tor (12),Bos (8), NY (10) | Det (7), Chi(4), KC (4) | LA (3), Tx(6), Ms (5) |
| Rangers | Bl(3), Tr (4), Tb (6),Bos (6), NY (3) | Det(3), KC(3), Cle(3), Mn (4) | LA (10), A's (11),Ms (9) |
CHART B
| #= gms left | #vs. teams +.500 | Wght. Sched. Difficulty | Home #/% | Rd #/% |
| NYY | 34 of 71 | .515 | 35/.644 | 35/.543 |
| Bos | 39 of 71 | .506 | 36/.689 | 34/.522 |
| T.Rays | 38 of 70 | .525 | 36/.667 | 33/.447 |
| Tex | 35 of 71 | .507 | 32/.604 | 39/.476 |
Apart from two onerous West Coast road trips spared their Boston nemesis, the season's final 10 weeks besets the Yankees with a more competitive schedule, in the aggregate, as well. On the other hand, the more stout competition Tampa has to overcome -- at least, as their opponents' collective winning percentage gauges it-- offers little comfort.
First of all, the Rays complete their final West Coast trip in August-- not during the third week of September after which the Yankees return, by contrast, to battle Boston and Tampa in games likely to determine the fate of their season. Secondly, while the Yankees are running their late September gauntlet through Disney's House of Hell, the Rays will be clicking their heels, echoing Dorothy, and extoling home. 15 of Tampa's last 18 games are in the Orange Juice Can (the last three agains the Yankees) where they've played .690 baseball the last two seasons. Finally, Tampa plays Texas six more times, 3 during the final week in September, meaning that if Texas' less arduous schedule lets them linger in the wild-card race, the Yankees won't be able to gain ground on both.
So savor the Yankees' flirtations with 1st place while it lasts. For the road to October heads West through dark, treacherous, unchartered territory and runs through Disney's House of Hell.
Monday, June 29, 2009
THE CANO YOU DON'T KNOW
"If you think you're going to hit into a double play, do the right thing and strike out."-- Earl Weaver
Among the more compelling narrative threads woven through Tom Verducci's "The Yankee Years" is the story of the philosophical rift that gradually estranged the former Yankee manager from his erstwhile friend, advocate, and GM and that ultimately ended in an unseemly public and gratuitously acrimonious divorce. The divide, evidently, first opened in 2005. In the off-season that year, Brian Cashman finally received the full prerogatives a GM's title implied and with it, the power to modernize the Yankees' antiquated baseball operations and to rejuvenate the team's decaying farm system. The plan contemplated greater reliance on the advanced statistics and Jamesian sabermetrics that Billy Beane's acolytes in Boston had been using for years to outmaneuver their arch rival. The suden changes cast Torre, the consummate baseball traditionalist, in the role of the skeptic. The seasoned manager warned of the soulless number crunchers who would replace abstract percentages for instinctive judgment and who would err because they didn't, or couldn't, apprehend the living, beating heart that animated the Game.
In one especially telling episode, back in 2007, when the Yankees were sputtering through their 21-29 start because their vaunted offense had foundered for inexplicable reasons, Cashman, explains Torre, suggested an unconventional and seemingly counterintuitive lineup change. The statisticians, it seems, had concluded that the team could produce more runs by placing its two hitters most adept at getting on base at the top of the order. Sounds eminently reasonable. Only it meant hitting Bobby Abreu first, Jason Giambi second, and moving Damon and Jeter God knows where. Torre confides that he scoffed at the idea and that ended the discussion.
Cut to February 2008. Exit King Lear and his Court. (A sixth Act awaits their arrival in the Land of Dreams.) Enter the new viceroy, Joseph Elliot Girardi. Cue the p.r. creation myth.
You may recall the 2008 off season. After a winter of well-deserved villification for their smugly cavalier and ruthlessly passive-aggressive dismissal of the hired help, the Levine Cabal and the Cashman Clique spent the Spring casting the new viceroy in their image. Girardi, we discovered, championed fitness and discipline. Girardi symbolized vigor and stamina. In General Girardi, we trust. That was one part of the new Girari mythology.
However, there was a second element of the Girardi persona touted as well. And this part bears the Cashman Clique's signature and hearkens back to his rift with Torre. Girardi, we discovered, had graduated with an engineering degree from Northwestern. Girardi possessed an acute, incisive intelligence. Girardi trusted the numbers; more importanlty, he excelled at them. He read Baseball Prospectus. He wanted to deploy cutting-edge sabermetric tools. Girardi personified innovation, ingenuity, and acumen. Together, Genius Girardi and Canny Cashman would lead the revolution to modernize the Yankees and to close the gap the Arbitrage Magnate and his Boy Wonder has opened between New York and Boston.
Of course, rarely does the image mirror the reality. And while Girardi regularly shows a greater affinity for numbers and more impressive command of statistics than his predecessor, he has proven himself far more the traditionalist than the myth led us to anticipate. Sure, he counts pitches, records innings, spreads workloads. Witness his bullpen management in '08. Sure, every now and then, he'll invert two players in the batting order. Witness his inspiration (or Cashman's) to switch Jeter and Damon in the order, capitalizing on the latter's power production and alleviating the latter's tendency to first inning double plays.
However, these notable exceptions only illustrate fate's inexorable rules. Like father, Like son. And New Joe is very much Old Joe's ideological son and managerial protege. Instinct, trust, and experience, by and large, not abstract numbers, inform his management style and guide his decisions. When the veteran talks, the manager listens. CC says, "I can get Drew," and so, Girardi believes him. A-Rod says, "I'm not tired," and so, Girardi plays him. Rivera's velocity wanes. No matter, when emergency strikes in the eighth, break glass: Call Mo.
Beyond inheriting Old Joe's habits, Girardi, in addition, subscribes to his orthodoxies. New Joe also believes in the bunt, the sacrifice, the steal-- despite the statistician's skepticism or outright abhorrence. He believes in reserving closers for saves. (Not, for example, leveraging his best relief pitcher when the game's pivotal juncture demands it, inning be damned.) Girardi honors the archaic shibboleth of batting average.
How else to explain the Yankee manager's defiant infatuation with Robinson Cano? How else to explain the baffling strangehold the human GIDP, the walk's consummate antagonist, Plate Indiscipline personified, has gained on the fifth spot in Girardi's batting order? Is there a less ideal candidate for the role of the middle-of-the-order bulwark behind A-Rod than a hitter whose plate profiency actually falls as runners on base increase in number and as they draw closer to home?
WAITING FOR CANO
By now, every Yankee fan, at one time or another, has marvelled at the talent and kindled to the promise of the second baseman, Robinson Jose Cano. We've all foreseen the potential greatness that seemingly looms just over the horizon. The sublime swing, the prodigious opposite-field power, the sweeping plate coverage, the swift hands, the nimble glove, the panoptic range, the impeccable grace and preternatural agility. A noble lineage claimed Cano no less early in life than in his career. The infant named after Jackie Robinson, in just his sophomore year received the title of Rod Carew's twin and Jeter and A-Rod's heir.
The problem, it seems, is that the Yankees' organization, in general, and Joe Girardi, in particular, too often, have rewarded Cano for flourishes of greatness that have proven fleeting. By all means, applaud Girardi his faith and his loyalty. But recognize as well, in few Stadiums outside the Field of Dreams is faith self-realizing, and when it defies reality, it's downright self-destructive.
Although Cano's defense-- as viewed by the naked eye, if not also confirmed by Revised Zone Ratings-- has shown a steady, gradual improves each season, he continues, at the plate, to exhibit the same obdurate vice that has beset him since his rookie year. The shortcoming has stifled the potentially great hitter from germinating-- his impatience in the batter's box. Extraordinary plate coverage has begotten feeble plate discipline. Cano still swings at eye-level pitches because, remarkably, he can. And if he still reaches them, he rarely hits them, not fair and hard anyway.
In fact, by plate discipline's standard measures, pitches per plate appearance and isolated plate discipline[1], Cano's development has stagnated. From 2006 through 2009, the annual average of pitches he sees per plate appearance (P/PA) has levelled at 3.34 and his isolated plate discipline, IsoD (the spread between his batting average and on base percentage) has averaged about .035.
2006 - P/PA = 3.22; IsoD = .023
2007 - P/PA = 3.42; IsoD = .047
2008 - P/PA = 3.35; IsoD = .034
2009 - P/PA = 3.37; IsoD = .035
Cano's overeagerness manifests itself most vividly with runners on base. Witness the precipitous decline Cano's OPS has undergone, throughout his career, as the pressure mounts.
Career OPS- Bases Empty = .860
Career OPS - Runners on Base = .742
Career OPS - RISP (Runners in Scoring Position) = .702
Career OPS - RISP w/ 2 outs = .688
Career OPS - Bases Loaded = .587
TOTAL CAREER = .812
His numbers in 2009 only accentuate the overall trend. I list first, his OPS, and second, his batting average, in classic "situational hitting" opportunities below.
2009 OPS- Bases Empty = .902
2009 OPS - Runners on Base = .710
2009 OPS - RISP (Runners in Scoring Position) = .594
2009 OPS - RISP w/ 2 outs = .552
2009 OPS - Bases Loaded = .367
2009 BA- Bases Empty = .333
2009 BA - Runners on Base = .255
2009 BA - RISP (Runners in Scoring Position) = .215
2009 BA - RISP w/ 2 outs = .190
2009 BA - Bases Loaded = .167
THE ANTI-CANO
Compare, by contrast, the Yankees' most disciplined hitter, Nick Swisher, who, in raw tools, probably possesses a fraction of Cano's talent. The comparison is instructive for multiple reasons. First, the identity in their career OPS statistic; each possesses a .812 career OPS. Second, only a year separates Cano's and Swisher's rookie seasons, 2005 and 2004, respectively. Third, despite their manager's access to the same statistical data, Girardi, in defiance of it, routinely bats Cano 5th (42 of 72 games) in the heart of the order, behind A-Rod, while batting Swisher 6th, 7th or 8th (24, 10, and 10 times respectively, in 72 games)
Swisher's career averages in P/PA of 4.25 and IsoD of .113, in fact, exceed Cano's by almost a full order of magnitude. Swisher averages, then, almost one more full pitch per at-bat than Cano, and the .080 IsoD differential explains why Cano, while amassing anywhere between 20 to 50 more hits each year than Swisher, still reaches base less often. Swisher's career OBA exceeds Cano's (.356 to .335).
It may also account for the seeming paradox that while Cano's career slugging percentage exceeds Swisher's (.470 to .455), his career OPS+ is lower. Despite his relative power deficit, Swisher, then, in his ability to draw walks, makes a more valuable contribution to his team's run production, in the long run, than Cano.
Swisher's plate discipline may also account for the relative constancy his production evinces regardless of the situation.
2009 OPS- Bases Empty = .810
2009 OPS - Runners on Base = .814
2009 OPS - RISP (Runners in Scoring Position) = .781
2009 OPS - RISP w/ 2 outs = .821
2009 OPS - Bases Loaded = .977
TOTAL CAREER OPS = .812
GO AHEAD: WALK A-ROD!
Further contributing to the problem with batting Cano 5th behind A-Rod is that his greatest asset -- the infrequency with which he strikes out -- has abetted the frequency with which he grounds into double plays. Cano currently leads the team with 11 GIDPS.
Throughout his career, Swisher, by contrast, strikes out twice as often as Cano-- an SO/PA of 21.5% to 11.1%-- and yet grounds into one third as many DPs-- GIDP/PA = 2% to 3%. (Although in 2009 Swisher hasn't proven much more immune to the double play than Cano. Swisher's 7 GIDP ranks him third behind Cano and Jeter in aggregate double plays and in GIDP/PA.)
Yet Swisher's relative immunity to the DP during his career-- relative, compared to Cano anyway-- probably stems less from his tendency to strike out than in his tendency to hit fly balls. Observe the difference between the two hitters in their career ratios of ground ball outs to fly ball outs (GO/AO). While Swisher's career GO/AO 0.83, Cano's is 1.36.
Thus far, Cano's GO/AO of 1.27 for 2009, has been about representative. In fact, among the hitters Girardi has chosen to bat 5th this season most frequently-- Cano, Swisher, Posada, amd Matsui-- Cano's 1.27 ground out to fly out ratio (GO/AO) for 2009 ranks highest.
To compare, I list below each one's 2009 statistic in the following categories:
(i) ground out to fly out ratio (GO/AO)
(ii) strike out per plate appearance percentage (SO/PA);
(iii) their on-base percentage (OBA)
(iv) Average with Runners in Scoring Position (RISP)
(v) Overall Productivity (OPS+)
I also include Johnny Damon's for reasons that will become evident below.
Among the more compelling narrative threads woven through Tom Verducci's "The Yankee Years" is the story of the philosophical rift that gradually estranged the former Yankee manager from his erstwhile friend, advocate, and GM and that ultimately ended in an unseemly public and gratuitously acrimonious divorce. The divide, evidently, first opened in 2005. In the off-season that year, Brian Cashman finally received the full prerogatives a GM's title implied and with it, the power to modernize the Yankees' antiquated baseball operations and to rejuvenate the team's decaying farm system. The plan contemplated greater reliance on the advanced statistics and Jamesian sabermetrics that Billy Beane's acolytes in Boston had been using for years to outmaneuver their arch rival. The suden changes cast Torre, the consummate baseball traditionalist, in the role of the skeptic. The seasoned manager warned of the soulless number crunchers who would replace abstract percentages for instinctive judgment and who would err because they didn't, or couldn't, apprehend the living, beating heart that animated the Game.
In one especially telling episode, back in 2007, when the Yankees were sputtering through their 21-29 start because their vaunted offense had foundered for inexplicable reasons, Cashman, explains Torre, suggested an unconventional and seemingly counterintuitive lineup change. The statisticians, it seems, had concluded that the team could produce more runs by placing its two hitters most adept at getting on base at the top of the order. Sounds eminently reasonable. Only it meant hitting Bobby Abreu first, Jason Giambi second, and moving Damon and Jeter God knows where. Torre confides that he scoffed at the idea and that ended the discussion.
Cut to February 2008. Exit King Lear and his Court. (A sixth Act awaits their arrival in the Land of Dreams.) Enter the new viceroy, Joseph Elliot Girardi. Cue the p.r. creation myth.
You may recall the 2008 off season. After a winter of well-deserved villification for their smugly cavalier and ruthlessly passive-aggressive dismissal of the hired help, the Levine Cabal and the Cashman Clique spent the Spring casting the new viceroy in their image. Girardi, we discovered, championed fitness and discipline. Girardi symbolized vigor and stamina. In General Girardi, we trust. That was one part of the new Girari mythology.
However, there was a second element of the Girardi persona touted as well. And this part bears the Cashman Clique's signature and hearkens back to his rift with Torre. Girardi, we discovered, had graduated with an engineering degree from Northwestern. Girardi possessed an acute, incisive intelligence. Girardi trusted the numbers; more importanlty, he excelled at them. He read Baseball Prospectus. He wanted to deploy cutting-edge sabermetric tools. Girardi personified innovation, ingenuity, and acumen. Together, Genius Girardi and Canny Cashman would lead the revolution to modernize the Yankees and to close the gap the Arbitrage Magnate and his Boy Wonder has opened between New York and Boston.
Of course, rarely does the image mirror the reality. And while Girardi regularly shows a greater affinity for numbers and more impressive command of statistics than his predecessor, he has proven himself far more the traditionalist than the myth led us to anticipate. Sure, he counts pitches, records innings, spreads workloads. Witness his bullpen management in '08. Sure, every now and then, he'll invert two players in the batting order. Witness his inspiration (or Cashman's) to switch Jeter and Damon in the order, capitalizing on the latter's power production and alleviating the latter's tendency to first inning double plays.
However, these notable exceptions only illustrate fate's inexorable rules. Like father, Like son. And New Joe is very much Old Joe's ideological son and managerial protege. Instinct, trust, and experience, by and large, not abstract numbers, inform his management style and guide his decisions. When the veteran talks, the manager listens. CC says, "I can get Drew," and so, Girardi believes him. A-Rod says, "I'm not tired," and so, Girardi plays him. Rivera's velocity wanes. No matter, when emergency strikes in the eighth, break glass: Call Mo.
Beyond inheriting Old Joe's habits, Girardi, in addition, subscribes to his orthodoxies. New Joe also believes in the bunt, the sacrifice, the steal-- despite the statistician's skepticism or outright abhorrence. He believes in reserving closers for saves. (Not, for example, leveraging his best relief pitcher when the game's pivotal juncture demands it, inning be damned.) Girardi honors the archaic shibboleth of batting average.
How else to explain the Yankee manager's defiant infatuation with Robinson Cano? How else to explain the baffling strangehold the human GIDP, the walk's consummate antagonist, Plate Indiscipline personified, has gained on the fifth spot in Girardi's batting order? Is there a less ideal candidate for the role of the middle-of-the-order bulwark behind A-Rod than a hitter whose plate profiency actually falls as runners on base increase in number and as they draw closer to home?
WAITING FOR CANO
By now, every Yankee fan, at one time or another, has marvelled at the talent and kindled to the promise of the second baseman, Robinson Jose Cano. We've all foreseen the potential greatness that seemingly looms just over the horizon. The sublime swing, the prodigious opposite-field power, the sweeping plate coverage, the swift hands, the nimble glove, the panoptic range, the impeccable grace and preternatural agility. A noble lineage claimed Cano no less early in life than in his career. The infant named after Jackie Robinson, in just his sophomore year received the title of Rod Carew's twin and Jeter and A-Rod's heir.
The problem, it seems, is that the Yankees' organization, in general, and Joe Girardi, in particular, too often, have rewarded Cano for flourishes of greatness that have proven fleeting. By all means, applaud Girardi his faith and his loyalty. But recognize as well, in few Stadiums outside the Field of Dreams is faith self-realizing, and when it defies reality, it's downright self-destructive.
Although Cano's defense-- as viewed by the naked eye, if not also confirmed by Revised Zone Ratings-- has shown a steady, gradual improves each season, he continues, at the plate, to exhibit the same obdurate vice that has beset him since his rookie year. The shortcoming has stifled the potentially great hitter from germinating-- his impatience in the batter's box. Extraordinary plate coverage has begotten feeble plate discipline. Cano still swings at eye-level pitches because, remarkably, he can. And if he still reaches them, he rarely hits them, not fair and hard anyway.
In fact, by plate discipline's standard measures, pitches per plate appearance and isolated plate discipline[1], Cano's development has stagnated. From 2006 through 2009, the annual average of pitches he sees per plate appearance (P/PA) has levelled at 3.34 and his isolated plate discipline, IsoD (the spread between his batting average and on base percentage) has averaged about .035.
2006 - P/PA = 3.22; IsoD = .023
2007 - P/PA = 3.42; IsoD = .047
2008 - P/PA = 3.35; IsoD = .034
2009 - P/PA = 3.37; IsoD = .035
Cano's overeagerness manifests itself most vividly with runners on base. Witness the precipitous decline Cano's OPS has undergone, throughout his career, as the pressure mounts.
Career OPS- Bases Empty = .860
Career OPS - Runners on Base = .742
Career OPS - RISP (Runners in Scoring Position) = .702
Career OPS - RISP w/ 2 outs = .688
Career OPS - Bases Loaded = .587
TOTAL CAREER = .812
His numbers in 2009 only accentuate the overall trend. I list first, his OPS, and second, his batting average, in classic "situational hitting" opportunities below.
2009 OPS- Bases Empty = .902
2009 OPS - Runners on Base = .710
2009 OPS - RISP (Runners in Scoring Position) = .594
2009 OPS - RISP w/ 2 outs = .552
2009 OPS - Bases Loaded = .367
2009 BA- Bases Empty = .333
2009 BA - Runners on Base = .255
2009 BA - RISP (Runners in Scoring Position) = .215
2009 BA - RISP w/ 2 outs = .190
2009 BA - Bases Loaded = .167
THE ANTI-CANO
Compare, by contrast, the Yankees' most disciplined hitter, Nick Swisher, who, in raw tools, probably possesses a fraction of Cano's talent. The comparison is instructive for multiple reasons. First, the identity in their career OPS statistic; each possesses a .812 career OPS. Second, only a year separates Cano's and Swisher's rookie seasons, 2005 and 2004, respectively. Third, despite their manager's access to the same statistical data, Girardi, in defiance of it, routinely bats Cano 5th (42 of 72 games) in the heart of the order, behind A-Rod, while batting Swisher 6th, 7th or 8th (24, 10, and 10 times respectively, in 72 games)
Swisher's career averages in P/PA of 4.25 and IsoD of .113, in fact, exceed Cano's by almost a full order of magnitude. Swisher averages, then, almost one more full pitch per at-bat than Cano, and the .080 IsoD differential explains why Cano, while amassing anywhere between 20 to 50 more hits each year than Swisher, still reaches base less often. Swisher's career OBA exceeds Cano's (.356 to .335).
It may also account for the seeming paradox that while Cano's career slugging percentage exceeds Swisher's (.470 to .455), his career OPS+ is lower. Despite his relative power deficit, Swisher, then, in his ability to draw walks, makes a more valuable contribution to his team's run production, in the long run, than Cano.
Swisher's plate discipline may also account for the relative constancy his production evinces regardless of the situation.
2009 OPS- Bases Empty = .810
2009 OPS - Runners on Base = .814
2009 OPS - RISP (Runners in Scoring Position) = .781
2009 OPS - RISP w/ 2 outs = .821
2009 OPS - Bases Loaded = .977
TOTAL CAREER OPS = .812
GO AHEAD: WALK A-ROD!
Further contributing to the problem with batting Cano 5th behind A-Rod is that his greatest asset -- the infrequency with which he strikes out -- has abetted the frequency with which he grounds into double plays. Cano currently leads the team with 11 GIDPS.
Throughout his career, Swisher, by contrast, strikes out twice as often as Cano-- an SO/PA of 21.5% to 11.1%-- and yet grounds into one third as many DPs-- GIDP/PA = 2% to 3%. (Although in 2009 Swisher hasn't proven much more immune to the double play than Cano. Swisher's 7 GIDP ranks him third behind Cano and Jeter in aggregate double plays and in GIDP/PA.)
Yet Swisher's relative immunity to the DP during his career-- relative, compared to Cano anyway-- probably stems less from his tendency to strike out than in his tendency to hit fly balls. Observe the difference between the two hitters in their career ratios of ground ball outs to fly ball outs (GO/AO). While Swisher's career GO/AO 0.83, Cano's is 1.36.
Thus far, Cano's GO/AO of 1.27 for 2009, has been about representative. In fact, among the hitters Girardi has chosen to bat 5th this season most frequently-- Cano, Swisher, Posada, amd Matsui-- Cano's 1.27 ground out to fly out ratio (GO/AO) for 2009 ranks highest.
To compare, I list below each one's 2009 statistic in the following categories:
(i) ground out to fly out ratio (GO/AO)
(ii) strike out per plate appearance percentage (SO/PA);
(iii) their on-base percentage (OBA)
(iv) Average with Runners in Scoring Position (RISP)
(v) Overall Productivity (OPS+)
I also include Johnny Damon's for reasons that will become evident below.
| 2009 | GO/AO | SO/PA | OBA/ISOd | RISP | OPS+ |
| Cano | 1.27/1 | 7.5% | .330/.033 | .215 | 111 |
| Swisher | 1.06/1 | 21.7% | .373/.128 | .204 | 127 |
| Matsui | 0.97/1 | 15.5% | .345/.099 | .212 | 110 |
| Posada | 0.95/1 | 19.3% | .359/.087 | .273 | 126 |
| Damon | 0.80/1 | 15.6% | .364/.076 | .313 | 131 |
From the composite picture the above table paints, it's little surprise to discover that Cano leads the Yankees through 72 games with 11 GIDP's. Only Jeter rivals Cano in this statistic with 8, the harm from which Girardi, at least, has endeavored to contain by moving the captain into the lead off spot. (Despite the plate discipline Jeter developed as he matured, his susceptibility to the double play has stemmed from a GO/AO ratio that only has risen as he's aged. Through 72 games in 2009, it's 3.07.)
IF NOT CANO, WHOM?
Yet if Girardi discerned this frailty in Jeter's game, and compensated for it accordingly by inverting Damon and Jeter, he hasn't acted likewise to contain the damage Cano's susceptibility to the DP, likewise, has inflicted in the middle of the lineup. Now, a double play, it's true, throttles a rally whenever it occurs. But when it regularly stifles rallies ignited by your two best hitters, at 3rd and 4th in the order, respectively, the double play is especially lethal. Worse, it can metastasize and spread. After all, how long will Texieria and A-Rod resist the temptation to expand their strike zones if a double play looms behind them.
The table above suggests that any one of the players Girardi has batted 5th this season-- Swisher, Matsui, or Posada-- would acquit the role of A-Rod's anchor better than Robinson Cano. The second baseman doesn't merit a higher position in the batting order than the seventh or eighth spot he used to occupy until his pitch selection improves, if ever.
Swisher's statistics, on the other hand, bespeak a hitter with the discipline and constancy that follows him regardless of the situation or his spot in the order. His career OPS+ bears this out-- whether batting second or eighth, it varies little. Yet Swisher, perhaps for different reasons than Cano, poses a palpable DP threat as well.
Which is why if Cashman has become so enamored with using statistics to inform the Yankees' lineup Damon suggests such a tempting, if unorthodox, alternative for the spot behind A-Rod. Although long-standing tradition and well-worn practice have come to associate Damon with the upper echelons of the batting order, most of all, the lead off position, in 2009, Damon's statistics just as easily fit the profile of the daunting, middle-of-the-order, power bat.
With an OPS+ of 131, Damon ranks third on the team behind Teixiera and A-Rod. More persuasive still are his peripheral statistics. The plate discipline (P/PA of 4.15 and IsoD of .076). The team-leading 0.80 GO/AO. The knack for clutch hits with runners in scoring position. In 2009, his batting average with runners in scoring position is .313; over his entire career, it's .297.
But most of all, Damon, unlike Cano, Posada, Matsui, or Swisher, has demonstrated a remarkable talent throughout his career for avoiding the double play. That he's hit lead-off for much of his career has played a part, but a small one. After all, for much of his career, Jeter has led off as well. And while the captain has hit into 203 DPs in 9417 Plate Appearances (GIDP/PA 2%) during his career, Damon has only hit into 78 DPs in 9116 Plate Appearances, a GIDP/PA of less than 1%. Wouldn't the Yankees capitalize more on Damon's unique confluence of speed and power, at once, avoiding the DP and slugging for extra base hits, behind Teixiera and A-Rod than in front of them? Meanwhile Swisher's .373 OBA already has identified him as a candidate worthy of the 2-hole. His tendency for the DP, less marked, first of all, than Cano's is second of all, less likely with faster runners like Cabrera/Gardner and Jeter in front of him.
A HOLE IN FIVE
The architects of the Yankees' 2009 roster imagined they'd constructed a roster founded on the strength of their starting rotation. Little did they suspect that architects elsewhere had other ideas. Nostalgia has ill served the Yankees this time. Some aesthete's fetish for an archaic, and largely illegible, scoreboard lowered the walls, shortened their distance, and turned the new Yankee Stadium into modern equivalent of Fenway. If the trend continues, the Yankees will have to rely on producing runs more than they ever bargained. Runs which they won't produce if a deficit in their 5th spot continues to plague their lineup. At the moment, the Yankees have received less production from their five hole (an 80 OPS+) than from any other spot in their batting order. I list below the OPS+ they've received from each position in the order. Only their 5th hitter falls below 100, the benchmark for the league average.
1) 139
2) 140
3) 132
4) 101
5) 80
6) 129
7) 125
8) 111
9) 113
By now, we all know the Yankees define themselves as an organization rooted in a venerable lineage and a consecrated tradition, the immediate question for 2009, however, is how well they can adjust to unplanned contingencies and new circumstances and how much suffocating orthodoxies, outmoded dogma, and deleterious habits, will nonetheless control their manager's thinking.
[1] Isolated Plate Discipline or IsoD consists of the difference between a player’s on-base percentage and his batting average and is calculated as follows: IsoD = OBA (on base %) – BA (batting average). The oft-used metric BB/PA (percentage of walks a player earns per plate appearance) is a virtually identical calculation, just enumerated and expressed differently. The one caveat is that BB/PA statistic excludes two (or three) alternative means, beyond the traditional walk, by which a hitter can reach base, in the absence of a hit, and raise their OBA-- the error, the hit-by-pitch, the strike-out/wild pitch. I prefer the IsoD metric accordingly.
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
FREE WANG; CURB CASHMAN
"What's the difference between Theo Epstein and Brian Cashman? When I talk to the Red Sox GM, I know I'm speaking to someone smarter than me; when I talk to his Yankees counterpart, I worry I'm not." --anonymous colleague of Selena Roberts
Brian Cashman, the GM only a Steinbrenner could love or a personality cult, revere. For every conspicuous eclat there corresponds the inexplicable and exasperating folly.
Witness the last year alone. He steals from Pirates but seizes the wrong bounty, returning with Nady and Marte instead of Bay. Meanwhile, the money he saves by replacing Abreu with Nady, he squanders on 3-years for Marte. He nets Swisher with ground bait. Yet to hook AJ Burnett, he goes ice fishing, wearing leaden boots and carrying golden lures. He scavenges amid the dross of Berroa and Tomko but won't spend a farthing for Ty Wigginton or Juan Cruz. He courts and seduces Sabathia and snares Teixiera by outflanking his eternal rival. Yet he relinquishes draft picks he could have retained had he offered Abreu the arbitration the ex-Yankee later confessed he would have refused. In 2006, his first two draft picks yield Ian Kennedy and Joba Chamberlain; in 2008, they yield, quite literally, nothing-- Cole, a pitcher he can't sign and Bittle, a pitcher he doesn't want to.
The contradictions, half-measures, and lapses proliferate. To begin the 2009 season, Cashman's roster includes not a single long-reliever. 6 weeks later, it boasts three. One of whom just so happens to have been the orangization's best starter the previous three seasons. Raising, as such, the question: how do either the Yankees or Chien Ming Wang gain by interning him in the bullpen?
The team, certainly, doesn't. Because just as using Joba as a reliever wastes his talent -- and Cashman, despite the critics, is right; you don't waste pitchers with Chamberlain's potential and repertoire in the bullpen -- Chien Ming-Wang, by the same logic, doesn't belong there either. In fact, because Wang averages 4.0 K's/9 and 1.3 WHIP, in any role beyond mop-up, he may even pose a liability.
Yet Wang doesn't stand to benefit much from the role either. Again, witness the contradiction. If, as Girardi contends, pitching more, following his surgery, is necessary to strengthen Mariano's arm and bolster his velocity, then why would Chien Ming-Wang, recuperating from an injury that, likewise, has sapped his fastball and attenuated his sinker, profit from a long-reliever's role that, by definiton, consigns him to pitch less, to appear more sporadically if not also less frequently, and to compete for innings with two other pitchers who fulfill the identical role, Aceves and Tomko?
Why? Because in August 2007, when 39-year-old Mike Mussina was reeling, having suffered three consecutive batterings to the tune of a 19.00 ERA, a month's mental and physical respite partially restored him? Of course, a major injury and 9-month hiatus didn't account for Mussina's woes either. Moreover, Mussina never regained his velocity. He simply learned to pitch without it, slowing his breaking pitches and changeup to compensate. If the Yankees think Wang can emulate him, remake himself, and morph into a finesse pitcher, they're seriously deluding themselves.
DICE-K v. WANG: A STUDY IN CONTRASTS
Observe what the Red Sox did with Dice-K, by contrast, under circumstances similar, if not identical, to those the Yankees confronted with Wang. The difference, as usual, is instructive.
If you recall, Dice-K returned from the WBC with a "dead arm" after the Japanese team abused him. As a consequence, after his first two starts in April, he'd posted a 12.79 ERA and his fastball, which had averaged between 92mph and 94mph a start in '07 and '08, fell below 90. So, the Red Sox disabled him in mid-April and sent him for rehabilitation in AAA Pawtucket. In the meantime, they returned Masterson to the rotation and called up another starter, Michael Bowden, to replace Masterson's spot in the bullpen.
Then, they waited. They waited, patiently, for Dice-K's arm to recover, intent on exhausting every one of the 30 days available to them (the limit for major league players on minor league rehabilitation assignments.) After 3 starts in Pawtucket, Dice-K's velocity returned to its customary range in the mid-low 90's and the Red Sox activated him. He hardly has dominated since returning, but in his two starts since he certainly has fared better than he did in April. More importantly, his arm has recovered, and he's returned to the Red Sox rotation, where he only stands to improve.
Compare Wang's trajectory. Like the Red Sox, the Yankees disable their pitcher after hitters bludgeon him in consecutive outing. On April 18th, they send Wang to the DL and dispatch him to Tampa for medical testing and rehabilitation. Three weeks later, they start him in Scranton. Yet in neither of his two starts, on May 12 and May 17, according to Chad Jennings, beat reporter for the Scranton Yankees did Wang's fastball or his sinker match their traditional speed, break, or potency. (Cashman's subsequent report concurred with Jennings' observation.)
Yet the Yankees, in a rash, myopic, and inexplicable blunder, promote Wang anyway before determining whether or not they need him. Scheduled to start in Scranton on May 21st, the Yankees cancel his start in AAA, recall him to New York, sqaunder the 10-15 days and 2-3 more starts the rehabilitation clock allowed, and assign him to the Yankees bullpen to wait for an emergency start that never materializes.
THE LIE OF NECESSITY
The Yankees Front-Office insists, nonetheless, that they didn't want to foreclose Wang from starting in Scranton. Cashman claims circumstance left no alternative. That after a blow to the knee sidelined Chamberlain in the 1st inning on May 21st and Aceves pitched 3.3 innings in relief, the organization had to cancel Wang's scheduled May 22nd start in Scranton, to activate him from the disabled list, and to prepare him to start on May 26th in case Chamberlain couldn't.
The Front-Office's logic here is so tortured, their reasoning, so porous, I don't know what's worse: asking us to believe their cant or entertaining the possibility that they do. Who, you ask, would start on May 26th then if Chamberlain could not? Is not the answer obvious? Aceves. He was a starter, after all, in Scranton. Moreover, after pitching 3.3 innings on May 21st in relief of Joba, Aceves wasn't available anyway until May 25th (when Girardi wasted him in the 9th inning of a blow out.) Ironically, Aceves ended up pitching on May 26th anyway, as a reliever, true, but in a game he just as easily could have started.
The Yankees didn't need Wang in the interim. Against the Phillies, Tomko already offered the Yankees the security of a long-reliever for outings like May 22nd, where Girardi used Wang for three innings instead. Once recalled, Robertson or Melancon, meanwhile, could have filled Tomko's role. (The other Bruney, once they disabled him.)
Alternatively, if the Yankees concluded over the weekend that Joba couldn't start on May 26th, they could have enlisted any number of starters from Scranton or Trenton-- Igawa, Fossum, Johnson, McCallister, or Kontos--for an single, isolated start. Instead, they've activated Wang, consuming a roster spot and consigning their fallen ace to languish and to atrophy in the bullpen-- of help neither to his team nor to himself.
WANG: THE LITTLE BOY WHO PLAYS COY
To recap Wang's season thus far. In his first three outings, the Yankees' erstwhile ace surrendered 23 earned runs and lasted a sum total of 6 innings.
April 8th vs. Baltimore -- 3.67 innings, 7 earned runs
April 13th vs. Tampa -- 1 inning, 8 earned runs
April 18th vs. Cleveland- 1.33 innings, 8 earned runs
Total = 6.0 IPs, 34.50 ERA, 4.83 WHIP
The woeful performance speaks for itself. Rarely does an established major league pitcher falter so abjectly, let alone a starter of Wang's caliber and accomplishments. What's especially remarkable about Wang unraveling is that while even great major league pitchers suffer the occasional beating or struggle through a period of the season, Wang, throughout his career, seemed immune from both the wretched outing or the prolonged rut.
Whatever cliched stereotype captures the exact opposite of the "little-girl with the curl" personified Wang instead. Not when she's bad, she's very bad; when he's bad, he apologizes and quickly atones.
Indeed, from 2005 and 2008, Wang made 95 starts for the Yankees. He yielded 7 or more runs in a sum total of 5 outings. FIVE! To compare, over the identical period, the Great Halliday yielded seven or more runs in THREE starts and Josh Beckett faltered as badly EIGHT times.
Wang also rebounded each time in the next start. Not did he repeat the ignominy in consecutive outings. (The sole exception, of course, occurred when Cashman and Torre decided to pitch Wang on three days rest in Game 4 of the 2007 ALDS.)
THE NEED FOR SPEED
Wang has accrued a chorus of detractors over the years, nonetheless, because unlike the traditional ace, his career strikeout ratio per 9 innings is 4.0, on the low side. Furthermore, Wang stirs the doubters because he relies so greatly on a single, above average pitch, his sinker, otherwise known as the two-seam fastball (although minor variations differentiate the two).
True, Wang probably qualifies as a sinkerball pitcher. Nonethless, Wang differs from the traditional prototype because his velocity exceeds theirs-- a distinction (in both senses) that explains much of the success he's enjoyed.
Compare Wang's to the classic sinkerball pitcher, for example. As defined by the league's best Groundball to Flyball ratio from 2005 to 2008, Brandon Webb (3.24) and Derek Lowe (2.99) probably rank as the league's two foremost sinkerball specialists. (Wang's GO/AO ratio over the same period, by contrast, is 2.54 and has fallen, progressively, each season.)
Wang throws considerably harder than both of them. Albeit, not in the manner you might expect. It's the speed of Wang's four-seam fastball, oddly, where the Yankee pitcher excels. To illustrate, I compare below the average velocity for Wang, Webb, and Lowe's sinker and their four-seam (regular) fastball, as Fangraph reports the figures for 2007 through 2009.
Wang sinker - 90.0 mph; fb-- 92.3 mph
Webb sinker - 88.9mph; fb-- 88.5 mph
Lowe sinker - 89.7 mph; fb-- 89.2 mph
The additional 3-4 mph on Wang's four-seamer makes a big difference, especially when opposing hitters have to contend with his sinker as well. Which may explain, in addition, why Wang also throws his four-seam fastball with much greater frequency than either Webb or Lowe. According to fangraphs, between '07-'09, four-seamers account for 71% of Wang's total. By contrast, Webb and Lowe, respectively, throw their four-seamers 60% and 57% of the time.
EXIT VELOCITY
From the figures cited above, one would surmise that if the velocity of Wang's four-seam fastball-- i.e., 71% of the pitches he throws-- fell precipitously it would impact his performance adversely. And as fate would have it, through Wang's first 3 starts in 2009, this is precisely what transpired. Below is a velocity graph from Fangraph.com which charts both the velocity range and average speed of Wang's four-seam fastball during given starts over the last three years.
(Note: the graphic below only depicts starts for which Pitch Fx readings were available. Each gray line indicates a distinct start; its end points marks the velocity range; the dot in the middle shows the average speed for all four-seamers thrown.)
The chart illustrates both (i) the prominent deficit in velocity in the pitcher's first three starts and (ii) the marked contrast it counterposes to Wang's starts in 2oo7 and 2008.
Brian Cashman, the GM only a Steinbrenner could love or a personality cult, revere. For every conspicuous eclat there corresponds the inexplicable and exasperating folly.
Witness the last year alone. He steals from Pirates but seizes the wrong bounty, returning with Nady and Marte instead of Bay. Meanwhile, the money he saves by replacing Abreu with Nady, he squanders on 3-years for Marte. He nets Swisher with ground bait. Yet to hook AJ Burnett, he goes ice fishing, wearing leaden boots and carrying golden lures. He scavenges amid the dross of Berroa and Tomko but won't spend a farthing for Ty Wigginton or Juan Cruz. He courts and seduces Sabathia and snares Teixiera by outflanking his eternal rival. Yet he relinquishes draft picks he could have retained had he offered Abreu the arbitration the ex-Yankee later confessed he would have refused. In 2006, his first two draft picks yield Ian Kennedy and Joba Chamberlain; in 2008, they yield, quite literally, nothing-- Cole, a pitcher he can't sign and Bittle, a pitcher he doesn't want to.
The contradictions, half-measures, and lapses proliferate. To begin the 2009 season, Cashman's roster includes not a single long-reliever. 6 weeks later, it boasts three. One of whom just so happens to have been the orangization's best starter the previous three seasons. Raising, as such, the question: how do either the Yankees or Chien Ming Wang gain by interning him in the bullpen?
The team, certainly, doesn't. Because just as using Joba as a reliever wastes his talent -- and Cashman, despite the critics, is right; you don't waste pitchers with Chamberlain's potential and repertoire in the bullpen -- Chien Ming-Wang, by the same logic, doesn't belong there either. In fact, because Wang averages 4.0 K's/9 and 1.3 WHIP, in any role beyond mop-up, he may even pose a liability.
Yet Wang doesn't stand to benefit much from the role either. Again, witness the contradiction. If, as Girardi contends, pitching more, following his surgery, is necessary to strengthen Mariano's arm and bolster his velocity, then why would Chien Ming-Wang, recuperating from an injury that, likewise, has sapped his fastball and attenuated his sinker, profit from a long-reliever's role that, by definiton, consigns him to pitch less, to appear more sporadically if not also less frequently, and to compete for innings with two other pitchers who fulfill the identical role, Aceves and Tomko?
Why? Because in August 2007, when 39-year-old Mike Mussina was reeling, having suffered three consecutive batterings to the tune of a 19.00 ERA, a month's mental and physical respite partially restored him? Of course, a major injury and 9-month hiatus didn't account for Mussina's woes either. Moreover, Mussina never regained his velocity. He simply learned to pitch without it, slowing his breaking pitches and changeup to compensate. If the Yankees think Wang can emulate him, remake himself, and morph into a finesse pitcher, they're seriously deluding themselves.
DICE-K v. WANG: A STUDY IN CONTRASTS
Observe what the Red Sox did with Dice-K, by contrast, under circumstances similar, if not identical, to those the Yankees confronted with Wang. The difference, as usual, is instructive.
If you recall, Dice-K returned from the WBC with a "dead arm" after the Japanese team abused him. As a consequence, after his first two starts in April, he'd posted a 12.79 ERA and his fastball, which had averaged between 92mph and 94mph a start in '07 and '08, fell below 90. So, the Red Sox disabled him in mid-April and sent him for rehabilitation in AAA Pawtucket. In the meantime, they returned Masterson to the rotation and called up another starter, Michael Bowden, to replace Masterson's spot in the bullpen.
Then, they waited. They waited, patiently, for Dice-K's arm to recover, intent on exhausting every one of the 30 days available to them (the limit for major league players on minor league rehabilitation assignments.) After 3 starts in Pawtucket, Dice-K's velocity returned to its customary range in the mid-low 90's and the Red Sox activated him. He hardly has dominated since returning, but in his two starts since he certainly has fared better than he did in April. More importantly, his arm has recovered, and he's returned to the Red Sox rotation, where he only stands to improve.
Compare Wang's trajectory. Like the Red Sox, the Yankees disable their pitcher after hitters bludgeon him in consecutive outing. On April 18th, they send Wang to the DL and dispatch him to Tampa for medical testing and rehabilitation. Three weeks later, they start him in Scranton. Yet in neither of his two starts, on May 12 and May 17, according to Chad Jennings, beat reporter for the Scranton Yankees did Wang's fastball or his sinker match their traditional speed, break, or potency. (Cashman's subsequent report concurred with Jennings' observation.)
Yet the Yankees, in a rash, myopic, and inexplicable blunder, promote Wang anyway before determining whether or not they need him. Scheduled to start in Scranton on May 21st, the Yankees cancel his start in AAA, recall him to New York, sqaunder the 10-15 days and 2-3 more starts the rehabilitation clock allowed, and assign him to the Yankees bullpen to wait for an emergency start that never materializes.
THE LIE OF NECESSITY
The Yankees Front-Office insists, nonetheless, that they didn't want to foreclose Wang from starting in Scranton. Cashman claims circumstance left no alternative. That after a blow to the knee sidelined Chamberlain in the 1st inning on May 21st and Aceves pitched 3.3 innings in relief, the organization had to cancel Wang's scheduled May 22nd start in Scranton, to activate him from the disabled list, and to prepare him to start on May 26th in case Chamberlain couldn't.
The Front-Office's logic here is so tortured, their reasoning, so porous, I don't know what's worse: asking us to believe their cant or entertaining the possibility that they do. Who, you ask, would start on May 26th then if Chamberlain could not? Is not the answer obvious? Aceves. He was a starter, after all, in Scranton. Moreover, after pitching 3.3 innings on May 21st in relief of Joba, Aceves wasn't available anyway until May 25th (when Girardi wasted him in the 9th inning of a blow out.) Ironically, Aceves ended up pitching on May 26th anyway, as a reliever, true, but in a game he just as easily could have started.
The Yankees didn't need Wang in the interim. Against the Phillies, Tomko already offered the Yankees the security of a long-reliever for outings like May 22nd, where Girardi used Wang for three innings instead. Once recalled, Robertson or Melancon, meanwhile, could have filled Tomko's role. (The other Bruney, once they disabled him.)
Alternatively, if the Yankees concluded over the weekend that Joba couldn't start on May 26th, they could have enlisted any number of starters from Scranton or Trenton-- Igawa, Fossum, Johnson, McCallister, or Kontos--for an single, isolated start. Instead, they've activated Wang, consuming a roster spot and consigning their fallen ace to languish and to atrophy in the bullpen-- of help neither to his team nor to himself.
WANG: THE LITTLE BOY WHO PLAYS COY
To recap Wang's season thus far. In his first three outings, the Yankees' erstwhile ace surrendered 23 earned runs and lasted a sum total of 6 innings.
The woeful performance speaks for itself. Rarely does an established major league pitcher falter so abjectly, let alone a starter of Wang's caliber and accomplishments. What's especially remarkable about Wang unraveling is that while even great major league pitchers suffer the occasional beating or struggle through a period of the season, Wang, throughout his career, seemed immune from both the wretched outing or the prolonged rut.
Whatever cliched stereotype captures the exact opposite of the "little-girl with the curl" personified Wang instead. Not when she's bad, she's very bad; when he's bad, he apologizes and quickly atones.
Indeed, from 2005 and 2008, Wang made 95 starts for the Yankees. He yielded 7 or more runs in a sum total of 5 outings. FIVE! To compare, over the identical period, the Great Halliday yielded seven or more runs in THREE starts and Josh Beckett faltered as badly EIGHT times.
Wang also rebounded each time in the next start. Not did he repeat the ignominy in consecutive outings. (The sole exception, of course, occurred when Cashman and Torre decided to pitch Wang on three days rest in Game 4 of the 2007 ALDS.)
THE NEED FOR SPEED
Wang has accrued a chorus of detractors over the years, nonetheless, because unlike the traditional ace, his career strikeout ratio per 9 innings is 4.0, on the low side. Furthermore, Wang stirs the doubters because he relies so greatly on a single, above average pitch, his sinker, otherwise known as the two-seam fastball (although minor variations differentiate the two).
True, Wang probably qualifies as a sinkerball pitcher. Nonethless, Wang differs from the traditional prototype because his velocity exceeds theirs-- a distinction (in both senses) that explains much of the success he's enjoyed.
Compare Wang's to the classic sinkerball pitcher, for example. As defined by the league's best Groundball to Flyball ratio from 2005 to 2008, Brandon Webb (3.24) and Derek Lowe (2.99) probably rank as the league's two foremost sinkerball specialists. (Wang's GO/AO ratio over the same period, by contrast, is 2.54 and has fallen, progressively, each season.)
Wang throws considerably harder than both of them. Albeit, not in the manner you might expect. It's the speed of Wang's four-seam fastball, oddly, where the Yankee pitcher excels. To illustrate, I compare below the average velocity for Wang, Webb, and Lowe's sinker and their four-seam (regular) fastball, as Fangraph reports the figures for 2007 through 2009.
The additional 3-4 mph on Wang's four-seamer makes a big difference, especially when opposing hitters have to contend with his sinker as well. Which may explain, in addition, why Wang also throws his four-seam fastball with much greater frequency than either Webb or Lowe. According to fangraphs, between '07-'09, four-seamers account for 71% of Wang's total. By contrast, Webb and Lowe, respectively, throw their four-seamers 60% and 57% of the time.
EXIT VELOCITY
From the figures cited above, one would surmise that if the velocity of Wang's four-seam fastball-- i.e., 71% of the pitches he throws-- fell precipitously it would impact his performance adversely. And as fate would have it, through Wang's first 3 starts in 2009, this is precisely what transpired. Below is a velocity graph from Fangraph.com which charts both the velocity range and average speed of Wang's four-seam fastball during given starts over the last three years.
(Note: the graphic below only depicts starts for which Pitch Fx readings were available. Each gray line indicates a distinct start; its end points marks the velocity range; the dot in the middle shows the average speed for all four-seamers thrown.)
The chart illustrates both (i) the prominent deficit in velocity in the pitcher's first three starts and (ii) the marked contrast it counterposes to Wang's starts in 2oo7 and 2008.
Three distinct indices underscore the shortfall. In those first three gray lines of 2009, the velocity range narrows, its high point falls, and in each, his average velocity hovers at the low point to which it had dropped in any discrete, isolated start over the previous two seasons.
Of course, the good news is the fourth line. It registers Wang's relief outing on May 22, 2008 against the Phillies. Here, the nadir to which his fastball's velocity plunges actuallly exceeds the average registered in each of his three 2009 starts.
The flip side to which is an obvious caveat and a tacit qualification. Though Wang's three innings in relief almost match, in duration, his longest outing, thus far, as a starter, he entered in the 6th inning and consciously, in the role of reliever. Perhaps, his velocity rose merely because entering the game in the 7th inning, he could "air it out", as they say, knowing his appearance wouldn't exceed 3 innings. (A tie game would have enlisted Mo.)
The qualification, actually, is two-fold. First, in his outing in relief, Wang yielded 2 earned runs, while his WHIP was a woeful 2.33, and only a remarkable Cano play behind 2nd base in the 8th inning to start a double play prevented Wang from yielidng more than a run. Second, and more ominous, is the danger that the improved velocity and performance will prompt the GM to conclude that Wang somehow stands to improve as his innings in relief rise. Not likely. If he's not used with greater frequency than twice a week, the likelihood only diminishes.
All of which only further serves to remind me how much I'd like to trust in Brian Cashman's judgment but don't.
Friday, May 15, 2009
THE PAST THAT NEVER DIES: 2009's FIRST QUARTER REPORT:
"Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale Her infinite variety..." Anthony and Cleopatra
"As full of grief as age; wretched in both..."-- King Lear
The season dies an ignominious death. An august, hallowed Stadium closes. Autopsies ensue.
Management confers; the Front-Office re-evaluates. A new regimen looms.
Coaches are dismissed. Old players depart, without ceremony. New players enter, with fanfare. Fans gush. Rivals complain. Critics hector and whine. Suddenly, yesterday's disappointment evaporates and tomorrow's expectations soar.
Finally, Spring arrives, and hope abounds as a grand new Coliseum opens. Columnists evoke the Golden Age. Pundits foresee a dynasty resurrected. Executives congratulate their own triumph.
Only then, they play the games. And the results? The results, inexplicably, exasperate and disappoint. Despite the dramatic changes, Despite the lavish expenditures, Despite the giddy confidence, the outcome on the Diamond somehow doesn't differ from last year or for that matter, the year before.
On May 15, 2009, the Yankees stand at 17-17. If you hear an eerily familiar ring in it, you haven't succumbed deja vu, just the recurrence of an unpleasant memory. For something like it has happened before-- twice in fact. Last year, through 34 games, the Yankees were 17-17, and in '07, the team was a nearly identical 16-18.
What explains the Sisyphean fortune of an organization that with all its financial might, pushed the Rock of Fate up the hill only to see it return whence it came.
New York Post columnist Joel Sherman attributes it "to beautiful karmic justice," the fruits of building a "$1.5 billion temple to exclusion and greed." (New York Post, May 14, 2009). Sherman, it seems, fantasizes a Jobian world in which God visits injury on the prosperous for the sin of having too much money. In March, Sherman wrote of Alex Rodriguez after doctors diagnosed his hip injury, "“His insatiable needs and greeds... Phil Helmuth at his side, Warren Buffet involved in his contract negotiations, Madonna in his bed... has blown up [on him].”-- "Alex Has Time to Get Hip" Sherman, NY Post, March 6, 2009. (To which one might add an author's note, "And, conversely, Mike Lupica in my columns." Albeit, with comparatively more coherent and lucid prose-- hardly the most dazzling accomplishment considering the prototype.)
(The irony, of course, is that for all his criticism of Yankee elitism, Sherman's theodicy bespeaks the ressentiment of the Boston Brahmin. From Yawkey to Henry, Red Sox ownership has sought to impose upon baseball the manner and ethos of the Mayflower Yacht Club-- turning it into some patrician clique where modesty, forbearance, and genteel bon homie prevails and the brash upstart and impudent noveau-riche know their place. May the Landsdowne Gentry kindly eat cake. )
No, the Yankees' recurring lackluster starts isn't owed to supernatural causes, karmic or Calvinist. What links the 2007, 2008, and 2009 Yankees and largely explains their lackluster starts is the common trait between them-- the frailty that has endured notwithstanding the brand new free-agents, the revamped and replenished roster, the deeper, fortified rotation. In a word, their age.
In 2007, the Yankee roster averaged 30.7 years of age. In 2008, it was 31.4. In 2009, it's 3o.4. The average age of their lineup has varied even less: 30.6, 31.3, 30.3, respectively. And age's greatest handicap, as the Yankees Disabled List for the months of April and May the last three seasons dramatically illustrates, is its vulnerability to injury.
In 2008, injuries disabled A-Rod, Jeter, Posada, Bruney, and the Yankees' prospective third starter, Phil Hughes, in April and May. (Matsui joined the walking wounded in late June.)
In 2009, injuries, again, have sidelined A-Rod, Jeter, Posada, Bruney, and the Yankees' prospective third starter, Wang, in April and May. (Nady, Molina, Marte, Matsui, and Coke have joined this year's walking wounded besides.)
Sure, the bizarre parallels invites superstitious associations. But the stark truth is that three of the four players on whose health the Yankees' fortune depends because the organization cannot replace their production -- Rivera, Posada, and A-Rod-- will be 34 or older by season's end. And all the conditioning in the world can't arrest the aging process nor can it immunize them from injury. Indeed, barring the sudden emergence in the organization of worthy successors, this Achilles Heel will imperil their championship aspirations for the foreseeable future.
IGNORE THAT INJURED HITTER BEHIND THE CURTAIN
Wait, the skeptic demurs, the 2009 Yankees, through 33 games, have scored 181 runs (5.48 per game) which is 4th in the AL. Meanwhile, they've allowed 200 runs (6.6 per game) which places them at 14th, dead last in the AL. How then can injuries to A-Rod and Posada, among other less critical players, inform why the Yankees have languished in April and May of 2009?
Well, the two American league teams who rank 1st and 2nd in Runs Scored happen to be the two teams leading the Yankees in AL East standings at present, the Toronto Blue Jays and Boston Red Sox.
Leave aside Toronto for a moment however. Indeed, truth be told, what distinguishes the Red Sox and Yankees at the moment isn't Runs Scored but Runs Allowed. (Boston ranks third in the AL in runs scored and excels the Yankees 5.68 to 5.48 in average runs per game.) Nonetheless, the 3.5 games that separates them is owed largely to the full less run per game their pitching has allowed-- the Red Sox's average 5.2 RA (10th in the AL) to the Yankees' 6.06 RA (14th, dead last).
This returns us, however, to the 4th indispensable Yankee, I alluded to above. The appreciation due him notwithstanding, the Yankee season no longer rises and falls on Derek Jeter, not anymore. No, the 4th indispensable Yankee is the one easiest to take for granted-- Chien Ming-Wang.
What, you say, Heresy! Get Thee to the Stake and Await Thy Doom: Wang isn't even the team's Number #1 starter! CC Sabbathia now is.
Sure, every available index-- from the inning totals Sabathia has averaged, to the ERA he has posted in Cleveland, to the Cy Young Award he won--suggests he can be the Yankees' premiere starter, their pillar, their ace. But he hasn't fulfilled that role just yet, not entirely and only the gauntlet of the full season will determine, definitively, whether CC can claim the mantle.
Regardless, the AL East is not the NL Central. CC alone, accordingly, is not enough. For their duel with Boston, the Yankees will require a second.
IF WANG BE DONE, THE HEAVENS MAY FALL
Recall the enigma with which we began-- why the Yankees stand 17-17-- and where it led-- to the 14th and last place the Yankees occupy in the AL in Runs Allowed. To appreciate the importance of Wang, consider the following hypothetical. How would the Yankees have fared thus far had Wang been Wang?
That is, replace Wang's three wretched 2009 outings and Hughes' checkered three with the average performance Wang's career statistics would lead one to extrapolate over six starts. Suddenly, the gap between New York and Boston narrows considerably.
In 6 combined starts in 2009, Hughes and Wang pitched 17.67 innings and surrendered 34 earned runs, totalling an ERA of 17.32.
By contrast Wang's historical statistics would project him throwing 38.76 innings over 6 starts (6.48 IP per start) and yielding 18 earned runs, the total his 4.09 ERA would predict.
This significance for the Yankees' Runs Allowed is two-fold.
1) First, over the 17.67 innings Injured Wang and Phil Hughes actually pitched, a hypothetical Healthy Wang would have cost the Yankees 16 less runs. The saving doesn't end there however.
2) For over the 21.1 of the innings-- see above 38.76 IPs [Hypothetical Wang]- 17.67 IPs[Injured Wang+Hughes]-- that the Yankees bullpen had to absorb after Girardi removed Injured Wang and Phil Hughes (approximately the next 3.5 innings per game afterward)-- during those 21.1 innings a healthy Wang would have pitched instead, the Yankees bullpen yielded another 20 runs.
Accordingly, in 2009, had a healthy Wang pitched and merely matched his career averages in ERA and in Inning Pitched, the Yankees, through 33 games, would have surrendered no more than 184 runs and perhaps, as few as 170 runs.
Using James' Pythagorean Theorem expectation (Rs^2/RS^2 + RA^2= Win %), we can deduce that with a healthy Wang pitched the Yankees would have won between 1.5 and 3 more games, the difference between undifferentiated mediocrity (.485 baseball) and post-season contention (.560 baseball) and at present, the distance between Boston and New York in the standings.
Or consider Wang's importance this way. Assume for the sake of argument, for a moment, that Sabathia realizes his full potential in Pinstripes, and in 2009, CC manages to duplicate Mike Mussina's performance in 2008, amassing a 3.37 ERA over 200+ innings. One ace merely would have replaced another. Then what? Remember what derailed the Yankees in 2008? Once injuries claimed, in succession, the two best starters behind Mussina, Wang and Chamberlain, the Yankees season, effectively, ended. On August 4, 2008, Chamberlain's final start in Texas, the Yankees were 5.5 games behind the Rays and 2.5 games behind the Red Sox. By months end, they'd fallen to 12 games out of 1st, and 7 behind the Red Sox.
And if not Wang, whom? Would any Yankee fan care to bet that A.J. Burnett can replace the innings totals, the consistent quality starts, the reprieve for the bullpen and ballast for the rotation that Wang reliably conferred. As for Andy Pettitte, was last year the aberration or the omen? Meanwhile, the Yankees, wisely, have excluded Joba from the second's role, a priori. On his current pace, his inning cap is likely to expire sometime in August.
At this writing, Wang is poised to start on Sunday, May 17th for AAA Scranton and rumors abound that it will be his last in the minors. I hope not-- not if Wang's velocity continues to stall at 90-92 mph, 3-5 mph lower than he typically throws. To appreciate how precipitous the decline in Wang's velocity, witness the following chart I copied from Fangraph.Com. By plotting his fastball's velocity through 2007, 2008, and 2009, the graph dramatically illustrates 2009's deviation from his prior two years-- the range contracts, the apex and nadir fall.
Nothing could harm Wang's confidence, recovery, and season-- and with it, the Yankees' fortunes-- more than his returning prematurely only to endure another battering.
Wang's velocity compensates for his sinker's occasional habit of moving laterally instead of dropping vertically; it also enables his slider and change up to deceive hitter by changing speeds. Without it, Wang is no more formidable or reliable than Sidney Ponson. And without Wang, the 2009 Yankees are no more formidable than the 2008 incarnation and no less liable to recapitulate the latter's fate through its first 34 games as through its final 128.
"As full of grief as age; wretched in both..."-- King Lear
The season dies an ignominious death. An august, hallowed Stadium closes. Autopsies ensue.
Management confers; the Front-Office re-evaluates. A new regimen looms.
Coaches are dismissed. Old players depart, without ceremony. New players enter, with fanfare. Fans gush. Rivals complain. Critics hector and whine. Suddenly, yesterday's disappointment evaporates and tomorrow's expectations soar.
Finally, Spring arrives, and hope abounds as a grand new Coliseum opens. Columnists evoke the Golden Age. Pundits foresee a dynasty resurrected. Executives congratulate their own triumph.
Only then, they play the games. And the results? The results, inexplicably, exasperate and disappoint. Despite the dramatic changes, Despite the lavish expenditures, Despite the giddy confidence, the outcome on the Diamond somehow doesn't differ from last year or for that matter, the year before.
On May 15, 2009, the Yankees stand at 17-17. If you hear an eerily familiar ring in it, you haven't succumbed deja vu, just the recurrence of an unpleasant memory. For something like it has happened before-- twice in fact. Last year, through 34 games, the Yankees were 17-17, and in '07, the team was a nearly identical 16-18.
What explains the Sisyphean fortune of an organization that with all its financial might, pushed the Rock of Fate up the hill only to see it return whence it came.
New York Post columnist Joel Sherman attributes it "to beautiful karmic justice," the fruits of building a "$1.5 billion temple to exclusion and greed." (New York Post, May 14, 2009). Sherman, it seems, fantasizes a Jobian world in which God visits injury on the prosperous for the sin of having too much money. In March, Sherman wrote of Alex Rodriguez after doctors diagnosed his hip injury, "“His insatiable needs and greeds... Phil Helmuth at his side, Warren Buffet involved in his contract negotiations, Madonna in his bed... has blown up [on him].”-- "Alex Has Time to Get Hip" Sherman, NY Post, March 6, 2009. (To which one might add an author's note, "And, conversely, Mike Lupica in my columns." Albeit, with comparatively more coherent and lucid prose-- hardly the most dazzling accomplishment considering the prototype.)
(The irony, of course, is that for all his criticism of Yankee elitism, Sherman's theodicy bespeaks the ressentiment of the Boston Brahmin. From Yawkey to Henry, Red Sox ownership has sought to impose upon baseball the manner and ethos of the Mayflower Yacht Club-- turning it into some patrician clique where modesty, forbearance, and genteel bon homie prevails and the brash upstart and impudent noveau-riche know their place. May the Landsdowne Gentry kindly eat cake. )
No, the Yankees' recurring lackluster starts isn't owed to supernatural causes, karmic or Calvinist. What links the 2007, 2008, and 2009 Yankees and largely explains their lackluster starts is the common trait between them-- the frailty that has endured notwithstanding the brand new free-agents, the revamped and replenished roster, the deeper, fortified rotation. In a word, their age.
In 2007, the Yankee roster averaged 30.7 years of age. In 2008, it was 31.4. In 2009, it's 3o.4. The average age of their lineup has varied even less: 30.6, 31.3, 30.3, respectively. And age's greatest handicap, as the Yankees Disabled List for the months of April and May the last three seasons dramatically illustrates, is its vulnerability to injury.
In 2008, injuries disabled A-Rod, Jeter, Posada, Bruney, and the Yankees' prospective third starter, Phil Hughes, in April and May. (Matsui joined the walking wounded in late June.)
In 2009, injuries, again, have sidelined A-Rod, Jeter, Posada, Bruney, and the Yankees' prospective third starter, Wang, in April and May. (Nady, Molina, Marte, Matsui, and Coke have joined this year's walking wounded besides.)
Sure, the bizarre parallels invites superstitious associations. But the stark truth is that three of the four players on whose health the Yankees' fortune depends because the organization cannot replace their production -- Rivera, Posada, and A-Rod-- will be 34 or older by season's end. And all the conditioning in the world can't arrest the aging process nor can it immunize them from injury. Indeed, barring the sudden emergence in the organization of worthy successors, this Achilles Heel will imperil their championship aspirations for the foreseeable future.
IGNORE THAT INJURED HITTER BEHIND THE CURTAIN
Wait, the skeptic demurs, the 2009 Yankees, through 33 games, have scored 181 runs (5.48 per game) which is 4th in the AL. Meanwhile, they've allowed 200 runs (6.6 per game) which places them at 14th, dead last in the AL. How then can injuries to A-Rod and Posada, among other less critical players, inform why the Yankees have languished in April and May of 2009?
Well, the two American league teams who rank 1st and 2nd in Runs Scored happen to be the two teams leading the Yankees in AL East standings at present, the Toronto Blue Jays and Boston Red Sox.
Leave aside Toronto for a moment however. Indeed, truth be told, what distinguishes the Red Sox and Yankees at the moment isn't Runs Scored but Runs Allowed. (Boston ranks third in the AL in runs scored and excels the Yankees 5.68 to 5.48 in average runs per game.) Nonetheless, the 3.5 games that separates them is owed largely to the full less run per game their pitching has allowed-- the Red Sox's average 5.2 RA (10th in the AL) to the Yankees' 6.06 RA (14th, dead last).
This returns us, however, to the 4th indispensable Yankee, I alluded to above. The appreciation due him notwithstanding, the Yankee season no longer rises and falls on Derek Jeter, not anymore. No, the 4th indispensable Yankee is the one easiest to take for granted-- Chien Ming-Wang.
What, you say, Heresy! Get Thee to the Stake and Await Thy Doom: Wang isn't even the team's Number #1 starter! CC Sabbathia now is.
Sure, every available index-- from the inning totals Sabathia has averaged, to the ERA he has posted in Cleveland, to the Cy Young Award he won--suggests he can be the Yankees' premiere starter, their pillar, their ace. But he hasn't fulfilled that role just yet, not entirely and only the gauntlet of the full season will determine, definitively, whether CC can claim the mantle.
Regardless, the AL East is not the NL Central. CC alone, accordingly, is not enough. For their duel with Boston, the Yankees will require a second.
IF WANG BE DONE, THE HEAVENS MAY FALL
Recall the enigma with which we began-- why the Yankees stand 17-17-- and where it led-- to the 14th and last place the Yankees occupy in the AL in Runs Allowed. To appreciate the importance of Wang, consider the following hypothetical. How would the Yankees have fared thus far had Wang been Wang?
That is, replace Wang's three wretched 2009 outings and Hughes' checkered three with the average performance Wang's career statistics would lead one to extrapolate over six starts. Suddenly, the gap between New York and Boston narrows considerably.
In 6 combined starts in 2009, Hughes and Wang pitched 17.67 innings and surrendered 34 earned runs, totalling an ERA of 17.32.
By contrast Wang's historical statistics would project him throwing 38.76 innings over 6 starts (6.48 IP per start) and yielding 18 earned runs, the total his 4.09 ERA would predict.
This significance for the Yankees' Runs Allowed is two-fold.
1) First, over the 17.67 innings Injured Wang and Phil Hughes actually pitched, a hypothetical Healthy Wang would have cost the Yankees 16 less runs. The saving doesn't end there however.
2) For over the 21.1 of the innings-- see above 38.76 IPs [Hypothetical Wang]- 17.67 IPs[Injured Wang+Hughes]-- that the Yankees bullpen had to absorb after Girardi removed Injured Wang and Phil Hughes (approximately the next 3.5 innings per game afterward)-- during those 21.1 innings a healthy Wang would have pitched instead, the Yankees bullpen yielded another 20 runs.
Accordingly, in 2009, had a healthy Wang pitched and merely matched his career averages in ERA and in Inning Pitched, the Yankees, through 33 games, would have surrendered no more than 184 runs and perhaps, as few as 170 runs.
Using James' Pythagorean Theorem expectation (Rs^2/RS^2 + RA^2= Win %), we can deduce that with a healthy Wang pitched the Yankees would have won between 1.5 and 3 more games, the difference between undifferentiated mediocrity (.485 baseball) and post-season contention (.560 baseball) and at present, the distance between Boston and New York in the standings.
Or consider Wang's importance this way. Assume for the sake of argument, for a moment, that Sabathia realizes his full potential in Pinstripes, and in 2009, CC manages to duplicate Mike Mussina's performance in 2008, amassing a 3.37 ERA over 200+ innings. One ace merely would have replaced another. Then what? Remember what derailed the Yankees in 2008? Once injuries claimed, in succession, the two best starters behind Mussina, Wang and Chamberlain, the Yankees season, effectively, ended. On August 4, 2008, Chamberlain's final start in Texas, the Yankees were 5.5 games behind the Rays and 2.5 games behind the Red Sox. By months end, they'd fallen to 12 games out of 1st, and 7 behind the Red Sox.
And if not Wang, whom? Would any Yankee fan care to bet that A.J. Burnett can replace the innings totals, the consistent quality starts, the reprieve for the bullpen and ballast for the rotation that Wang reliably conferred. As for Andy Pettitte, was last year the aberration or the omen? Meanwhile, the Yankees, wisely, have excluded Joba from the second's role, a priori. On his current pace, his inning cap is likely to expire sometime in August.
At this writing, Wang is poised to start on Sunday, May 17th for AAA Scranton and rumors abound that it will be his last in the minors. I hope not-- not if Wang's velocity continues to stall at 90-92 mph, 3-5 mph lower than he typically throws. To appreciate how precipitous the decline in Wang's velocity, witness the following chart I copied from Fangraph.Com. By plotting his fastball's velocity through 2007, 2008, and 2009, the graph dramatically illustrates 2009's deviation from his prior two years-- the range contracts, the apex and nadir fall.
Nothing could harm Wang's confidence, recovery, and season-- and with it, the Yankees' fortunes-- more than his returning prematurely only to endure another battering.
Wang's velocity compensates for his sinker's occasional habit of moving laterally instead of dropping vertically; it also enables his slider and change up to deceive hitter by changing speeds. Without it, Wang is no more formidable or reliable than Sidney Ponson. And without Wang, the 2009 Yankees are no more formidable than the 2008 incarnation and no less liable to recapitulate the latter's fate through its first 34 games as through its final 128.
Sunday, May 3, 2009
INVESTIGATING THE INVESTIGATORS: Ms. Roberts' Profession
“Tell them that God bids us do good for evil: And thus I clothe my naked villainy with old odd ends stolen out of holy writ; and seem a saint, when most I play the devil.” – Richard, III
So who is Selena Roberts? With Joel Sherman of the New York Post and John Heyman of Sports Illustrated extolling the New York Times’ former sports columnist, respectively, as an “excellent reporter” and the “best [in fact], I’ve ever worked with,” curiosity mounted. I felt compelled to observe first-hand-- well, almost first-hand anyway-- the "Many Lives" of the reporter who can reduce her notoriously cynical colleagues to "hero-worship" (to borrow one of the tropes Heyman himself employs to describe fans indifferent to players' steroid use).
I’d already read and scrutinized her work (See “Selena’s Poison Pen,” April 21, 2009). But still, I wondered, who was the real woman behind it? And how did she become the veritable A-Rod of the New York press? Why does she inspire such fierce loyalty? Where do all the rapt acolytes come from?
So to find out, The Yankees Republic dispatched its own investigative reporter, Peter Fallow, to Westport Connecticut, where the Hall of Fame journalist resides, to answer these questions and to capture Selena Roberts in her multiple guises and manifold lives.
Fallow, recently, filed this report.
SELENA KEEPS STORE
Beneath the facade of the muckraking journalism, Selena Roberts conceals her lust for vengeance and will to power. In the name of exposing the sports world’s misogyny and corruption, she channels her inner Dickens -- a personality comprised of two parts Miss Havisham and one part Fagin.
*
Past the Wine Cellar, Cohen’s Fashion Optics, Starbucks and the picturesque shops arrayed along Westport Connecticut’s Post Rd., a lone shabby, ramshackle sign, painted in mottled white, obtrudes. Its discolored, eroding typeface; its cracked, weather-beaten awninb; and the seedy shop inside is the one blight amid the posh décor otherwise characteristic of Main Street in one of New England’s affluent, late-sipping suburbs.
The name of the store is “Selena’s Sportswear”. But the motto inscribed on the awning perhaps describes, more precisely, what its owner sells. It reads: “Enter and Ye Shall See the High and Mighty Fall… and Rejoice.”
Yet the ravaged storefront and the tattered and stained bridal dress visible through the front window tell only half the story. The missing details neighboring proprietors, nonetheless, are all too eager to add. They speak of broken sewage pipes, of roach and vermin infestations, and of the faint stench of sulfur. More ominous still, they allude to moral transgressions, grave and sinister.
“Selena’s Sewer, I call it,” said Murray Rosen, the owner of Westport Kosher Meat. “You know, we been trying to get rid of that farschtinkener hovel for years. But we can’t because our alta cocker mayor kisses Miss New York Times’ rear. Yeah, they think she’s a big deal up here. Like one rag is better than the next. What, Charmin wipes your ass cleaner than Scott.”
Across the street the Palace of Panache’s chief interior designer Hayden Brown echoed Rosen’s distaste for the Post Rd.’s notorious blemish. “Look, what the woman does inside her store is her business. But outside affects everyone. And worse than the dirty storefront is that disgusting, old dress she displays in the window. It’s Sporting Goods store; what’s it doing there?”
"She must have lost her virginity in it,” Ms. Brown’s young male assistant snickered. “And cheap, too— with that big book advance, she can’t spring for a cleaning woman? Uch.”
Yet when Ms. Brown was asked to clarify what she meant by “what the woman does inside,” she refused to elaborate. All she’d allow was, “Let’s put it this way. My husband played football at Auburn. I know a thing or two about Selena Roberts that it wouldn’t be lady-like for me to repeat.”
One of Ms. Brown’s customers harbored fewer reservations. “Come on, everybody knows what goes on inside that store,” she said, “Ask any of those kids outside with the hoodies and dirt bikes; they’ll tell you.”
MISS HAVISHAM'S PROFESSION
They did, indeed.
An examination of Selena’s business creates the portrait of an author driven to publish a book on Alex Rodriguez as a “branding tool” to enlarge her public profile and to advance her social mission. No, she doesn’t exactly bear the singularly vindictive motive of a woman scorned, but the Miss Havisham caricature holds sway in Westport’s business community for a reason.
Two weeks later, on a balmy, resplendent Saturday afternoon in April, Post Street bustled with young couples running errands, taking kids out for lunch, or indulging in a little idle window-shopping while basking in the sunshine.
Selena’s Sportswear, oddly, hadn’t opened as yet for business. At one-thirty p.m. steel security gates fixed with padlocks still curtained the door and windows and veiled the interior from view. A motley group of prepubescent boys, along with a single slightly younger, androgynous girl, nonetheless circled the store continuously on BMX racing bikes, as though waiting for a parent to arrive.
“When does the store open?” I asked.
“Who wanna know?” the shortest among them replied.
“Oh, just a customer looking for some new golf clothes.”
“Yo, P., he look in a white dress, yo.”
P. and company erupted in laughter.
“Do you guys know when the store opens?”
“When Momma feel like, yo. You feel me?” Apparently, Roberts had nurtured her brood in the art of loyalty.
In ten years of available public documents, Selena’s Sportswear reported no less than a $50,000 loss every year. Accounting for depreciation and a one-time, paltry charitable contribution of $5.00 in 2006, paid to the Duke University chapter of “Take Back the Night,” Selena’s Sportswear has lost just shy of a million dollars over the last decade.
For evident reasons, Selena doesn’t talk “biz” because Selena’s Sportswear doesn’t sell goods for profit. Commerce isn't its purpose at all. To the contrary, Selena’s Sportswear is a store “front,” quite literally. The commodity it trades is ideology; The service it peddles is indoctrination.
“That yo phat ride, man?” the short white kid called P. Honey asked.
I nodded.
“Yo, that pretty far driving for golf shirts. They run out in New York,” he snickered. The bicycles came to an abrupt halt as P. Honey gestured toward the Empire State plates.
“Yo, this a reporter or some shit, 'mon, boys, we outtie,” P. Honey announced and the troops fell in line with one notable exception.
Incredulous, she rode over to examine the car in its entirety and within seconds, to her consternation and outrage, glimpsed the incriminating bumper sticker—the telltale interlocking N.Y.
“You’re… You’re a Yankee fan,” she spluttered, her eyes welling with tears. “Can’t you people leave her alone? Why don’t you stop persecuting her?”
“Sister Souljah,” P. Honey shouted, “Give it a rest. We outta here.”
“You don’t understand. You don’t know how great Selena is. You don’t care. You want to destroy her.
“Ever since I was little, my parents forced me to play tennis, to practice six hours every day. All they ever talked about was how I had this gift I had to use to become a professional tennis player. Tennis this, and Tennis that. They never asked whether I liked the sport, whether I wanted to play professional tennis, whether I could handle the sacrifice. I wasn’t even allowed to question it. They turned me into a nine-year-old freak, no friends, no education, no interests-- nothing but tennis.
Then one day, I lost this match and couldn’t leave the Court afterward. I sat there, catatonic, for three hours. My parents, they didn’t care. They left me there to stew. But Selena saw me; she comforted me; she rescued me. She told me how stupid sports are. How it's just a game; it doesn't mean anything. She told me how selfish and vain and shallow athletes are.”
“Enough,” P.Honey persisted, trying to stop her.
“Selena told us all about her years covering professional sports in New York, the Yankees, in particular. She let us know how crass and stupid baseball players are. She told us all the dirty, vile things they say in the locker room. How they cheat on their wives and then abandon them. How they really hate women, all women. She taught us how athletes like A-Rod care only about money and fame and success. And she told us how deluded and psychotic you fans are that cheer for and defend them. How you act like animals in ballparks. How…”
“Estelle, shut the FUCK UP, now!!!” P.Honey yelled, threw down his bike, grabbed her handlebars, and pulled her and her bicycle away, but not before this pitiable, precocious, tormented little girl vented her last, eloquent gasp of rage.
“Don’t you get it: I AM SELENA!!”
Indeed, few experiences compare to the humbling meted out by a nine-year-old girl when she illuminates the truth staring you in the face but couldn't see.
Yes, poor Estelle, fated to nurse the vicarious grudges of a woman kept from the altar who longs, above all, to be on stage.
For Ms. Roberts’ question of Alex Rodriguez “Will A-Rod ever worry about what’s beneath the moneymaking veneer? Or will he forever be Mr. Potter in pinstripes?” begs the converse, as well.
That is, Will Selena Havisham ever probe beneath her veil of resentment? Will the spotlight she steals from A-Rod requite old grievances and bind ancient wounds; will the fifteen minutes of fame Miss Selena Havisham gains by destroying A-Rod's already battered reputation enable her, finally, to shed the soiled dress, to exhaust the poison pen and to leave her vindictive scorn behind.
**********************************
Whatever truth the foregoing story reveals, it, of course, contains not a kernel of fact (not unlike Selena Roberts’ columns.) As I understand it, Fallows' purpose, instead, was two-fold (i) to parody the agitprop the “excellent reporter” published in the New York Times on December 7, 2007, titled “A-Rod’s Properties and Charity Suggest Some Stinginess” and (ii) to mirror the facile and reductive caricature that informs Roberts' work and by all indications, her Manichean worldview. (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/07/sports/baseball/07roberts.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=Potter&st=nyt)
As such, the story you have read above consists solely of an exercise in imaginative speculation. Any resemblance it bears to reality is purely coincidental.
So who is Selena Roberts? With Joel Sherman of the New York Post and John Heyman of Sports Illustrated extolling the New York Times’ former sports columnist, respectively, as an “excellent reporter” and the “best [in fact], I’ve ever worked with,” curiosity mounted. I felt compelled to observe first-hand-- well, almost first-hand anyway-- the "Many Lives" of the reporter who can reduce her notoriously cynical colleagues to "hero-worship" (to borrow one of the tropes Heyman himself employs to describe fans indifferent to players' steroid use).
I’d already read and scrutinized her work (See “Selena’s Poison Pen,” April 21, 2009). But still, I wondered, who was the real woman behind it? And how did she become the veritable A-Rod of the New York press? Why does she inspire such fierce loyalty? Where do all the rapt acolytes come from?
So to find out, The Yankees Republic dispatched its own investigative reporter, Peter Fallow, to Westport Connecticut, where the Hall of Fame journalist resides, to answer these questions and to capture Selena Roberts in her multiple guises and manifold lives.
Fallow, recently, filed this report.
SELENA KEEPS STORE
Beneath the facade of the muckraking journalism, Selena Roberts conceals her lust for vengeance and will to power. In the name of exposing the sports world’s misogyny and corruption, she channels her inner Dickens -- a personality comprised of two parts Miss Havisham and one part Fagin.
*
Past the Wine Cellar, Cohen’s Fashion Optics, Starbucks and the picturesque shops arrayed along Westport Connecticut’s Post Rd., a lone shabby, ramshackle sign, painted in mottled white, obtrudes. Its discolored, eroding typeface; its cracked, weather-beaten awninb; and the seedy shop inside is the one blight amid the posh décor otherwise characteristic of Main Street in one of New England’s affluent, late-sipping suburbs.
The name of the store is “Selena’s Sportswear”. But the motto inscribed on the awning perhaps describes, more precisely, what its owner sells. It reads: “Enter and Ye Shall See the High and Mighty Fall… and Rejoice.”
Yet the ravaged storefront and the tattered and stained bridal dress visible through the front window tell only half the story. The missing details neighboring proprietors, nonetheless, are all too eager to add. They speak of broken sewage pipes, of roach and vermin infestations, and of the faint stench of sulfur. More ominous still, they allude to moral transgressions, grave and sinister.
“Selena’s Sewer, I call it,” said Murray Rosen, the owner of Westport Kosher Meat. “You know, we been trying to get rid of that farschtinkener hovel for years. But we can’t because our alta cocker mayor kisses Miss New York Times’ rear. Yeah, they think she’s a big deal up here. Like one rag is better than the next. What, Charmin wipes your ass cleaner than Scott.”
Across the street the Palace of Panache’s chief interior designer Hayden Brown echoed Rosen’s distaste for the Post Rd.’s notorious blemish. “Look, what the woman does inside her store is her business. But outside affects everyone. And worse than the dirty storefront is that disgusting, old dress she displays in the window. It’s Sporting Goods store; what’s it doing there?”
"She must have lost her virginity in it,” Ms. Brown’s young male assistant snickered. “And cheap, too— with that big book advance, she can’t spring for a cleaning woman? Uch.”
Yet when Ms. Brown was asked to clarify what she meant by “what the woman does inside,” she refused to elaborate. All she’d allow was, “Let’s put it this way. My husband played football at Auburn. I know a thing or two about Selena Roberts that it wouldn’t be lady-like for me to repeat.”
One of Ms. Brown’s customers harbored fewer reservations. “Come on, everybody knows what goes on inside that store,” she said, “Ask any of those kids outside with the hoodies and dirt bikes; they’ll tell you.”
MISS HAVISHAM'S PROFESSION
They did, indeed.
An examination of Selena’s business creates the portrait of an author driven to publish a book on Alex Rodriguez as a “branding tool” to enlarge her public profile and to advance her social mission. No, she doesn’t exactly bear the singularly vindictive motive of a woman scorned, but the Miss Havisham caricature holds sway in Westport’s business community for a reason.
Two weeks later, on a balmy, resplendent Saturday afternoon in April, Post Street bustled with young couples running errands, taking kids out for lunch, or indulging in a little idle window-shopping while basking in the sunshine.
Selena’s Sportswear, oddly, hadn’t opened as yet for business. At one-thirty p.m. steel security gates fixed with padlocks still curtained the door and windows and veiled the interior from view. A motley group of prepubescent boys, along with a single slightly younger, androgynous girl, nonetheless circled the store continuously on BMX racing bikes, as though waiting for a parent to arrive.
“When does the store open?” I asked.
“Who wanna know?” the shortest among them replied.
“Oh, just a customer looking for some new golf clothes.”
“Yo, P., he look in a white dress, yo.”
P. and company erupted in laughter.
“Do you guys know when the store opens?”
“When Momma feel like, yo. You feel me?” Apparently, Roberts had nurtured her brood in the art of loyalty.
In ten years of available public documents, Selena’s Sportswear reported no less than a $50,000 loss every year. Accounting for depreciation and a one-time, paltry charitable contribution of $5.00 in 2006, paid to the Duke University chapter of “Take Back the Night,” Selena’s Sportswear has lost just shy of a million dollars over the last decade.
For evident reasons, Selena doesn’t talk “biz” because Selena’s Sportswear doesn’t sell goods for profit. Commerce isn't its purpose at all. To the contrary, Selena’s Sportswear is a store “front,” quite literally. The commodity it trades is ideology; The service it peddles is indoctrination.
“That yo phat ride, man?” the short white kid called P. Honey asked.
I nodded.
“Yo, that pretty far driving for golf shirts. They run out in New York,” he snickered. The bicycles came to an abrupt halt as P. Honey gestured toward the Empire State plates.
“Yo, this a reporter or some shit, 'mon, boys, we outtie,” P. Honey announced and the troops fell in line with one notable exception.
Incredulous, she rode over to examine the car in its entirety and within seconds, to her consternation and outrage, glimpsed the incriminating bumper sticker—the telltale interlocking N.Y.
“You’re… You’re a Yankee fan,” she spluttered, her eyes welling with tears. “Can’t you people leave her alone? Why don’t you stop persecuting her?”
“Sister Souljah,” P. Honey shouted, “Give it a rest. We outta here.”
“You don’t understand. You don’t know how great Selena is. You don’t care. You want to destroy her.
“Ever since I was little, my parents forced me to play tennis, to practice six hours every day. All they ever talked about was how I had this gift I had to use to become a professional tennis player. Tennis this, and Tennis that. They never asked whether I liked the sport, whether I wanted to play professional tennis, whether I could handle the sacrifice. I wasn’t even allowed to question it. They turned me into a nine-year-old freak, no friends, no education, no interests-- nothing but tennis.
Then one day, I lost this match and couldn’t leave the Court afterward. I sat there, catatonic, for three hours. My parents, they didn’t care. They left me there to stew. But Selena saw me; she comforted me; she rescued me. She told me how stupid sports are. How it's just a game; it doesn't mean anything. She told me how selfish and vain and shallow athletes are.”
“Enough,” P.Honey persisted, trying to stop her.
“Selena told us all about her years covering professional sports in New York, the Yankees, in particular. She let us know how crass and stupid baseball players are. She told us all the dirty, vile things they say in the locker room. How they cheat on their wives and then abandon them. How they really hate women, all women. She taught us how athletes like A-Rod care only about money and fame and success. And she told us how deluded and psychotic you fans are that cheer for and defend them. How you act like animals in ballparks. How…”
“Estelle, shut the FUCK UP, now!!!” P.Honey yelled, threw down his bike, grabbed her handlebars, and pulled her and her bicycle away, but not before this pitiable, precocious, tormented little girl vented her last, eloquent gasp of rage.
“Don’t you get it: I AM SELENA!!”
Indeed, few experiences compare to the humbling meted out by a nine-year-old girl when she illuminates the truth staring you in the face but couldn't see.
Yes, poor Estelle, fated to nurse the vicarious grudges of a woman kept from the altar who longs, above all, to be on stage.
For Ms. Roberts’ question of Alex Rodriguez “Will A-Rod ever worry about what’s beneath the moneymaking veneer? Or will he forever be Mr. Potter in pinstripes?” begs the converse, as well.
That is, Will Selena Havisham ever probe beneath her veil of resentment? Will the spotlight she steals from A-Rod requite old grievances and bind ancient wounds; will the fifteen minutes of fame Miss Selena Havisham gains by destroying A-Rod's already battered reputation enable her, finally, to shed the soiled dress, to exhaust the poison pen and to leave her vindictive scorn behind.
**********************************
Whatever truth the foregoing story reveals, it, of course, contains not a kernel of fact (not unlike Selena Roberts’ columns.) As I understand it, Fallows' purpose, instead, was two-fold (i) to parody the agitprop the “excellent reporter” published in the New York Times on December 7, 2007, titled “A-Rod’s Properties and Charity Suggest Some Stinginess” and (ii) to mirror the facile and reductive caricature that informs Roberts' work and by all indications, her Manichean worldview. (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/07/sports/baseball/07roberts.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=Potter&st=nyt)
As such, the story you have read above consists solely of an exercise in imaginative speculation. Any resemblance it bears to reality is purely coincidental.
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