Post-season tornado of absurdity and media idiocy

Yeah, I stopped updating this blog for a while. Big whoop, wanna fight about it?

This October is pure lunacy. I mean, we've got a friggin' Rockies-Red Sox World Series, a matchup that would have garnered nothing more than a, "What are you, retarded?" look were it forecasted just a few years ago, Joe Torre figuratively flipping the Yankees the bird and going out like a real a-hole, Dane Cook screaming at me from rapidly changing camera angles when I'm just trying to relax and watch some baseball, and the seventh damn year in a row the Yankees have failed to win a World Series title despite being by far the best team in baseball over that stretch.

I have to say, the media coverage of the Joe Torre debacle has been the most infuriating element of this hurricane of insanity. It's as if every beat writer has completely lost their mind. Maybe they're just bewitched. Who knows? Maybe Joe Torre is a witch. Regardless of whether he's a witch or not, here are a few things I know about Joe Torre:

1) He is a horrible baseball tactician. Notice I've initially stopped short of saying the word "manager", because whenever anyone dares to call him a bad manager, they are subjected to an avalanche of absurd claims along the lines of, "BUT HE MANAGES THE PERSONALITIES OF HIS PLAYERS SO WELL!!!!!11111". Let's refute this statement with two important points:

• It's irrelevant. I am sick and tired of the idea that a professional player's performance is somehow tied to how their personality is being "managed". Do you really think A-Rod is going up the plate thinking, "Well, normally I wouldn't even try here, but since Joe Torre has managed my personality so well, I'm just going to go ahead and hit a 450-foot home run." No. His thought process is more likely, "Okay, this guy threw me first-pitch fastballs the last two at-bats, so he's probably coming with the hook to start me off here. I'll lay off it and hopefully be sitting at 1-0. Then I'll hit a 450-foot home run which will further contribute to the hundreds of millions of dollars I'll be guaranteed this offseason. Man I rule."
• It's UNTRUE. Oh, so Joe Torre is skilled at managing the personalities of big-time mercenary-like players stuffed into one New York clubhouse, you say? Wow, that's interesting. Maybe you'd like to explain why Randy Johnson hated playing for this team, Carl Pavano picked up his check and checked out, and Gary Sheffield is off spewing crap about how the Yankees are racist. Torre was supposed to be able to handle these maniacs that the Yankees were paying tens of millions of dollars to every year, and he failed miserably.

Back to the whole tactician thing, Joe can't come even close to crafting the optimal run-producing lineup, is one of the worst bullpen managers in baseball history, and has a seemingly insatiable desire to run his team out of rallies with stupid hit-and-runs. I'm not just saying these things; most neutral sabermatricians and "baseball people" alike will agree with at least two of those three assertions.

2) He is outrageously overpaid. Consider that this season, Joe was paid $7.5 million, MORE THAN TWICE WHAT THE NEXT HIGHEST-PAID MANAGER MADE. I find this hilarious because I think paying him anything at all would constitute overpaying, because he puts his team at a competitive disadvantage through his bad managing. He literally subtracts expected wins from the team he manages and gets paid CEO-type money to do it. He's the freakin' Kenneth Lay of baseball. So why haven't the Yankees pulled an Enron and completely tanked during his tenure, then? Because relatively speaking, there is very little baseball managers can do to affect their team's performance. You could literally put a monkey in a Yankees uniform and staple-gun a depth chart to his back and he would be just as effective as Joe Torre. Hell, the monkey might even beat him in the long-run. If you actually wanted to help your team, though, you could write a computer program that would undoubtedly out-tactician Torre, and probably any other manager.

3) He is a miserable fat sloth. Am I the only person who noticed how he would constantly be fighting to stay awake during games? They'd cut to the bench, and there he'd be, a little pile of fat, barely moving and his eyes drooping down.

4) He most certainly doesn't understand what expected value is. If he did, he'd realize that the contract the Yankees offered him was not much of a pay cut. If you consider the Yankees a shoo-in to the make the playoffs and then a coinflip to win each playoff series, the EV of his base salary plus incentives is [5+(1)(1)+(.5)(1)+(.25)(1)] = $6.75 million. Oh no, a 10% pay cut! Now instead of having ten Ferraris to sit his fat ass in, he can only get nine! A 10% pay cut after failing to bring home a World Series title for seven years with what is consistently the best team in baseball is obviously acceptable.

God I hate Dane Cook.

Eye of the storm

The Yankees just finished the first seven games of a tough 14 game stretch against the Tigers, Angels, and Red Sox. They took three out of four from the Tigers but lost the next two games against the Angels, including one embarassing 18-9 loss, but avoided the sweep with yesterday's 8-2 victory behind Andy Pettitte's stellar outing. Today they have an off-day before another four game set against the Tigers, this time in Detroit, and then a three game series against the Sox at home.

The Yankee offense has been solid. In the past seven games, they faced the likes of Justin Verlander, Jeremy Bonderman, Kelvim Escobar, and John Lackey, and still managed to average nearly seven runs per game, which is outstanding. The hitters are stepping up and showing that they can handle tough pitching, easing some of my concerns that I voiced when I brought up the nominal nature of the Yankees' team OPS a couple weeks ago.

No, hitting certainly hasn't been the concern as of late. Rather, it's been consistent starting pitching. Here's a look at each Yankee starter's numbers so far this month and my take on them:

Andy Pettitte: 5 G, 35.0 IP, 2.06 ERA
Lately, Pettitte has been establishing himself as the team ace and, given his reputation as a big-game pitcher, he'll probably be the team's number one starter in the division series should they make the postseason.

Chien-Ming Wang: 4 G, 21.2 IP, 7.06 ERA
Wang has hit his first rough patch of the season. I'm fairly confident that he's just slumping a bit, but there is a budding concern that his eternal finger blister/cracked fingernail injury is finally catching up with him.

Roger Clemens: 3 G, 13.2 IP, 3.95 ERA
Clemens has been pitching decently as of late, but I'm worried about his durability. He's usually yanked before he gets to 100 pitches, and when he isn't relieved before the 100 mark, it seems to negatively impact his next start. He went over 100 during the first two starts of the season, which he followed up with a 4.1 inning loss in Colorado. He didn't reach 100 pitches in a game again until July 28th, when he threw 113 against the Orioles. His next outing was a disaster, as he lasted only 1.2 innings and gave up eight runs against the White Sox. Shortly thereafter, he decided not to appeal the five-game suspension handed to him for throwing at the Blue Jays' Alex Rios. Appealing the suspension would have allowed him to make his next scheduled start and push back his following start by only one game, but instead he was effectively skipped in the rotation and given ten days of rest. The fact that Clemens elected to do this makes me worry about his ability to go deep into games on a consistent basis. The man is 45, after all.

Phil Hughes: 4 G, 22.0 IP, 5.73 ERA
A lot of fans are worried about Phil Franchise because he hasn't been striking out every batter he faces like that wonderboy Joba Chamberlain, but I'm really not too concerned about him. Hughes hasn't been great since coming off the DL, but he's still learning. In all probability, he'll get better as the season nears its end. I'm much more worried about Wang and Clemens than I am about Hughes at this point, because they have attrition possiblities whereas Hughes has yet to reach his ceiling.

Mike Mussina: 4 G, 20.1 IP, 7.52 ERA
Man, just when Moose was starting to look better, he tanks in August. While I'm not going to join the angry mob of fans that believe he would be more valuable to the Yankees if Gene Monahan harvested his organs and sold them on the black market, he's clearly been a disappointment this season. It's funny when people say that Mussina should be left off the post-season rotation if he continues to pitch this poorly. Obviously, they're correct in stating that he would be the Yankees' worst starter if he continues to perform like this, but in all likelihood the Yankees won't make the playoffs unless he pitches well. With the Yankees five games behind the Red Sox in the AL East and three games back in the loss column from the red-hot Mariners in the Wildcard standings, they're going to need Moose to pitch well. I'm inclined to believe that he's capable of doing so. Granted, his drop in velocity this year is concerning, but he's never been a power pitcher. He relies on his control and good breaking ball to get hitters out.

Peter Abraham: 21 G, 483 bags of potato chips eaten, countless little children scared

Did you know that A-Rod, not Hitler, was responsible for the Holocaust?

I get a kick out of the fact that writers for two popular Yankee blogs that I follow would even suggest that Alex Rodriguez should be blamed for the Yankees' lopsided loss tonight because of something that happened 75 days ago. Here's some background information:

• On May 30th, when the Yankees stood at a horrendous 21-29, they led the Blue Jays 6-5 in the top of the ninth inning with two outs. Jorge Posada hit a pop-up to the left side of the infield, and baserunner Alex Rodriguez shouted "Ha!" at third-baseman Howie Clark at the last second, apparently causing him to lose focus and botch the play.
• The Blue Jays descended into a state of fiery inexorable rage, refusing to move on even after more than two months had passed, throwing at A-Rod, bad-mouthing him in the press, and burning effigies of him whenever the opportunity arose.
• A week ago, A-Rod was plunked by Blue Jays pitcher Josh Towers. Later in the game, Roger Clemens decided to respond by throwing at Alex Rios. He was ejected, and because of retarded MLB anti-retaliation rules, he was suspended for five games.
• Tonight would have been Clemens's spot in the rotation, and he was replaced by Jeff Karstens, who got roughed up. The Yankees lost 12-0.

So somehow, by the logic of certain Yankee bloggers, fans should be upset with A-Rod for getting Clemens suspended. What?

There are several obvious things to point out in order to negate this batshit-insane needless A-Rod bashing, but let's start off with a more subtle point -- one that took some rigorous investigative journalism on my part. If you review frame-by-frame footage of the game from last week, you'll actually notice that it was Roger Clemens who threw at Rios, not Alex Rodriguez! I know, I know, I just run a small-time blog and you probably think I'm a "conspiracy theorist" and whatnot, but seriously, check it out for yourself!

Seriously, how can Alex Rodriguez be blamed for something that Roger Clemens chose to do? It's not as if it was purely up to him to retaliate, something that Krazy Kyle Farnsworth or the dispensable Jim Brower (who came in after Clemens) were assuredly perfectly capable of, and as a 24-year veteran, he understood the implications of intentionally throwing at an opposing batter after warnings were issued. Which brings me to my next point: Roger Clemens could have appealed the suspension in order to avoid missing a start. This happens all the time. When starting pitchers get suspended, they delay the process in order to miss as few turns in the rotation as possible. Why Clemens chose not to do so is bizarre at best, and infuriating at worst. Quite frankly, with regard to this "Ha!" butterfly-effect fiasco, any sort of fan frustration with a Yankee player should be directed towards the Rocket, not A-Rod.

In any case, the most ridiculous mainstream oversight, in my opinion, is that the "Ha!" helped the Yankees at a time when they needed it most. At 21-29, they were 14.5 games behind Boston. A-Rod's antics allowed the team to score four important insurance runs in the ninth inning, en route to a 10-5 victory. MLB.com reported that when asked what he was trying to accomplish with the play, he responded, "To win a game. We're desperate. We haven't won a game in a little bit now, so we won the game." A-Rod was simply trying to help the team any way he could (in case his trillion home runs weren't quite good enough) and fans should respect him for doing so.

Also, can somebody please explain why a baserunner yelling at a fielder is generally considered a gross breach of baseball "etiquette"? This isn't golf. Most professional athletes have to deal with loud crowd noises and other distractions all the time. Hell, in basketball, almost everyone yells at an opponent going in for a wide-open layup, which is certainly that sport's equivalent to fielding a routine pop-up. A-Rod didn't even go as far as to yell "I got it!", which would have been much more disruptive to Howie Clark considering the relative proximity of Toronto shortstop John McDonald.

On a side note, Joe Torre is an idiot for DH-ing anyone other than Giambi at this point. It's a crime that a guy with a .413 career OBP isn't an everyday player. He is a terrible manager and I curse the Lord for taking Phil Rirruto instead of him. Those are z's.

I INVENTED THE PIANO-KEY NECKTIE, I INVENTED IT

Last night I was mulling over the Yankees' recent surge and whether or not I should adjust my 90-win forecast. The Bombers have been scoring runs at an insane rate lately, but mostly against teams that have pitched poorly all season, such as the Devil Rays, Royals, and White Sox. I began to wonder if there was any decent way of quantitatively expressing a team's tendency to outperform against poor pitching and underperform against good pitching relative to other teams. So I made up a random statistic and called it On-Base Plus Slugging Nominality (OPSN), defining it as the percent difference between the slope of the linear regression of a batting entity's OPS versus league pitching entity performances and the ratio of a batting entity's OPS over the average league OPS. It's a mouthful, but I'm pretty sure it makes some sort of sense. The result should be that a positive OPSN means that the batting entity performs disproportionately better against below-average pitching entities and whose OPS is therefore nominal in nature, and vice versa. Anyway, in this case the batting entity is the Yankees, the pitching entities are broken into teams (in the American League), and the time-frame is the 2007 season to date. Here's a graph that sort of breaks it down:


So the Yankees' OPSN versus AL pitching staffs is (2.1129-1.1029)/1.1029 = .916, which is probably a significant figure despite the relatively small sample sizes of around eight games per opponent faced. In other words, this Yankee team is likely to beat down on bad teams and get shut down by good pitchers. Why this might be the case is a matter of speculation, but I would guess that it probably has to do with things like:

- Bobby Abreu has lost a bit of bat speed and can be overpowered.
- Robinson Cano chases pitches that break out of the strike zone.
- Alex Rodriguez is something of a guess-hitter.
- Hideki Matsui has trouble with above-average two-seam fastballs.
- Melky Cabrera is young.
- Andy Phillips can struggle against high-level offspeed, breaking stuff.

Of course, my methods are pretty unscientific here and my conclusions could be off. In all likelihood, the best way of doing this analysis would be to calculate the OPSN of each individual Yankee hitter over the last several years (or however long they've been in the majors) against individual pitchers, adjusting for seasonal or ballpark factors, and doing some fancy statistical work to account for varying sample sizes. But I'm too lazy. Bottom line is, I'm not going to go with the new market consensus that the Yankees will win 95 games this year, but I'll go ahead and adjust to 91 wins, maintaining a 3.5 win standard deviation.

Joba Chamberlain, the Yankees second-biggest pitching prospect next to Phil Hughes (though I guess he's not just a prospect anymore), has been called up to work out of the bullpen. While I love that the Yankees are flexing their young-pitching muscle, I have mixed feelings about this move. Joba has been rushed, and he's only had three appearances in the minors as a reliever before being called up to the bigs to be a seventh-inning guy. He could easily overpitch on adrenaline and hurt himself. Word seems to have it that his fastball is sitting at 98 in relief, as opposed to 94 in starts, and the truth is that most pitchers simply can't put that kind of strain on their arms for more than a few seasons. Just ask Eric Gagne and Joel Zumaya (Guitar Hero my ass). Or, invent a time machine and ask Jonathan Papelbon in a couple years after this happens:

I'm secretly rooting against Jorge Posada

Jorge Posada is having a mind-blowing kind of season. He entered 2007 as a 35-year-old who had caught 1,222 games in his major league career, and it was looking like his best years were behind him. Those best years were impressive -- from 2000-2003, he won four Silver Slugger awards and finished third in the 2003 AL MVP balloting. He could practically be marked down for having an OPS of around .850 each season, which is tremendous production from a catcher. However, the start of his decline seemed inevitable in what would be his 17th season in professional baseball (including the minors). That's 17 hot summers of squatting behind a plate wearing heavy catcher's equipment and getting pounded by foul tips and pitches in the dirt. Baseball Prospectus's PECOTA card forecasted that Posada would hit .259/.365/.443 in 2007 and would continue to decline until his predicted retirement after the 2010 season. In addition to his expected drop in all batting metrics, the BP model also showed a 24% "attrition rate", meaning the chance of a player being injured or benched for a significant portion of the season.

Taking those factors into consideration, I agreed with Brian Cashman's decision to wait until the end of 2007 to negotiate a contract with Posada, rather than offer him an extension during the offseason.

Um, oops.

So far in 2007, Posada is hitting .343/.417/.553, all of which would be career-highs. The .343 BA is especially outrageous considering his prior best was a .287 mark in 2000. This is all great, and he's been incredibly valuable to the team this year, but he has consistently asserted that he is looking forward to free agency and will ceratinly test the market. Basically, what this says is that the Yankees will have to throw something like $75 million over five years at a 36-year-old catcher come this winter. He might even get more considering how irreplacable he is and how much he is adored by Yankee fans (Hip hip, Jorge! Hip-hip, Jorge!!! Hip-hip, OH GOD YOU TOOK ALL OF OUR MONEY).

So, getting back to the title of this entry, yes, I do root against Jorge Posada, but only when the Yankees are either way behind or way ahead. Don't take it personally, Jorgie. I don't really want you to fail, I just want you to rapidly regress to the mean in your contract year, goddammit.

Market correction

Equities were down Thursday and Friday, and so were the Yankees, as they dropped two straight (not including the completion of the suspended game) against the Royals and the Orioles. Market activity was primarily driven by the overvaluation of performances against subprime teams like the Devil Rays, and credit concerns regarding Kei Igawa's huge contract despite his apparent inability to do anything but throw 89-mph thigh-high fastballs right down the middle of the plate.

Alex Rodriguez is sitting on 499 home runs on the same day that Barry Bonds is one short of tying Hank Aaron's 755. There has been a lot of discussion about A-Rod and Bonds approaching these significant power milestones simultaneously, as most everyone outside of San Francisco views Bonds as a dirty cheater and A-Rod as a purer player. My position on Bonds has been and always will be that the guy was an extraordinarily good hitter before he started taking steroids, and while he may not "deserve" the all-time record, it's really Major League Baseball's fault for not instituting an illegal substance-testing policy when every other major sport in America had one. Ever since the MLB started testing players, Bonds has not been suspended, so really, what can you do?

Also, I don't take it for granted, as many sportswriters do, that A-Rod will hit 800 home runs in his career and break Bonds's record. Rodriguez turned 32 yesterday, inching closer to that mid-thirties mark where players inevitably begin to decline. A-Rod will have to remain healthy and really rake over the next few seasons in order to have a shot at the record.

Roger Clemens takes the mound for the Yankees today, and he'll be followed by Rambo Wang on Sunday to complete the three-game series against the O's. The Yanks will probably win both of these games. I'll maintain my initial post-All-Star forecast for the Yankees to win 90 games this season, but I'll lower the standard deviation to 3.5 games and reitirate that they probably will not make the playoffs.

The Devil Rays are really bad

So yeah, the Yankees just outscored the Devil Rays 45-12 in the last three games of their four-game series. The bottom five team ERA's in the MLB now stand as follows:

26. Cinicinnati Reds: 4.81
27. St. Louis Cardinals: 4.83
28. Philadelphia Phillies: 4.87
29. Texas Rangers: 4.95
30. Tampa Bay Suck-Asses: 5.98

Wow. They give up over a run per game more than the next worst pitching team in the league. Their bullpen is essentially AAA quality, seeing as though Shawn Camp (who?) and Brian Stokes (WHO?!) lead the team in appearances. The worst bullpen in baseball facing what is probably the best starting lineup in baseball three times in under 28 hours results in, well, bloodshed. With one out in the sixth inning, the Yankees leading 16-3, and Alex Rodriguez up against Shawn Camp, who had already surrendered a home run and two doubles in the inning, I almost expected A-Rod to step out of the box, gaze into the owner's box, and see this:


Naturally, everyone in Yankee-land is on top of the world right now, but make no mistake, this Bronx beatdown should mostly be attributed to the level of competition. That being said, this series was a great confidence booster to guys like Robbie Cano, who fell just a double short of the cycle today and went 11 for 18 in the series, raising his BA from .275 to .291.

I believe there are two main factors explaining Cano's drop-off this year. First of all, there is the widely agreed-upon theory that his 2006 BABIP was far too high considering his lack of speed; he finished the season at .363, higher than the career BABIP's of guys like Ichiro Suzuki (.356) or Derek Jeter (.360). So far this season, his BABIP stands at .321.

While Cano has stood out this year as one of the big under-achievers on the team, the thing that really sets him apart from the rest of the club is that he is the only starter who is essentially a guess-hitter (A-Rod being the next closest). That being said, I think the dip in Cano's numbers this season can also be attributed to, ironically, his attempt to become a more patient hitter. Last season, he saw 3.22 pitches per plate appearance, but this year he's up to 3.43. While his isolated patience has accordingly increased from .023 in 2006 to .039, the rest of his numbers have suffered. SWING AWAY, ROBBIE!

Yankees down Jays 6-4

Even though Kei Igawa issued four walks and gave up two home runs, he managed to give the Yankees five acceptable innings, and A-Rod hit his billionth home run of the season. Mariano Rivera notched his third save in as many games. Mo has only give up five runs since he gave up four to the Red Sox on April 27th, lowering his ERA from 12.15 to 3.41 over that stretch. Mo regaining his form seems to have brought a sense of normalcy to the season. I mean, when he gave up a walk-off home run to Marco Scutaro on April 15th, many of my fundamental perceptions of reality were called into question, and I spent weeks wandering the streets in an existential haze.

Satan Starting from the Touch of Scutaro's Spear

It's also great to see Andy Phillips getting a shot at playing every day at first and succeeding. I believe that his stigma as a "quadruple-A" player is unwarranted. I simply don't see how a player who has torn up AAA the way he has shouldn't have the ability to be an above-average major league hitter. If he builds up some confidence, he is capable of a solid .275/.350/.475.

Yankees take last two games in Tampa; Wang in your face

The Yankee offense offset early-inning struggles from Chien-Ming Wang and Mike Mussina to beat the Devil Rays 6-4 on Saturday and 7-6 this afternoon. Bobby Abreu homered and had 5 RBI's yesterday, while Jeter led the way today with a two-run shot. Also, in his 52nd at-bat of 2007, Yankee backup catcher Wil Nieves, whose mighty presence at the plate sends chills down the spine of even the league's most seasoned pitchers, notched his first extra-base hit of the season, boosting his ISO to an intimidating .019. Back before I finally snapped during a YES broadcast and took an axe to my TV set to forever purge my living room of Michael Kay's nefarious aural presence, it made me wretch to constantly hear his insistence that Wil Nieves is "the nicest guy in the world". This isn't the Special Olympics, you dolt, this is Major League Baseball. If I were the manager of the Yankees, my first move would be to invest in a very lifelike Wil Nieves scarecrow that I could send up to the plate while the human version lay safely chloroformed in the clubhouse.

The Yankees are now over .500.

Chien-Ming Wang is the coolest pitcher in the majors. Watching him induce out after out on the ground is just hilarious. I was looking at his statistics from last season, in which he was the runner-up in Cy Young voting. His startlingly low 76 strikeouts in 218 innings made me wonder what was the last time anyone had a more successful season than Wang's 2006 campaign while striking out less batters. So, I ran an Access query using the handy (and free) Lahman Baseball Database, and found out that the most recent pitcher to throw over 218 innings, strike out less than 76 batters, and have an ERA under Wang's 3.63 was Andy Hawkins with the Padres in 1985, 22 seasons ago. Coincidentally, Hawkins was a Yankee later in his career and became the only pitcher in franchise history to lose a game in which he threw a no-hitter, suffering a 4-0 loss at Comiskey Park. Go figure.

The greatest thing about Chien-Ming Wang, though, is that he is thoroughly unflappable. Even when things aren't going his way, he never loses focus on the mound, which is probably a by-product of his gradual desensitization to the runs of bad luck that a pitcher of his style will inevitably encounter. Another challenge that Wang has faced and will probably continue to face throughout his career is the recurring blister that develops on the middle finger of his throwing hand. For many pitchers, a little finger blister means a trip to the DL, but Wang pitches through it even when his fingernail begins to split and bleed. What a badass.

Yankees run into Kazmir, fall 6-4

Scott Kazmir is a very good, young pitcher. The Yankees were able to get his pitch count up by working a lot of deep counts, forcing him out of the game after six innings and 117 pitches. They had three innings to feast on the supple meat of the hopelessly terrible Devil Ray bullpen, but came up a bit short despite back-to-back jacks from Jorgey and Godzirra.

Clemens looked a bit flat and took the loss. After the game, Torre predictably blubbered about how "These last two games, he has given us so much more than we could've ever expected." Really, Joe? I don't know what you expected for a pro-rated $28 million, but I expected the Rocket to throw a no-hitter every night while riding around the diamond on a unicycle and simultaneously juggling flaming torches and knives. Well, maybe not, but to imply that he's performing above expectations when his ERA is 4.20 is unreasonable.

Speaking of Joe, is he really going to bat Melky out of the two-hole indefinitely? It's such nonsense. I love the Melkster as much as any other Yankee fan, and pointing out his shortcomings sort of feels like hitting a puppy dog, but the man has an OBP of .331. The optimal run-producing top of the order at this point would probably be Abreu-Jeter-ARod-Posada-Matsui, but as long as Torre's at the helm, we're going to see a decrepid Damon and a still-developing Melky take at-bats away from the more capable hitters.

Boras! Versus... Cashman! FIGHT!

According to today's Daily News, the Yankees have told A-Rod that he either signs an extension or seeks employment elsewhere. This is the smartest thing that they could have done. As I mentioned yesterday, the Yankees are the only team that can afford A-Rod, and it is now apparent that they know it. The Yankees are pulling a William Vickrey-esque game theory strategy by simply trying to avoid a sealed-bid auction for A-Rod. They're obviously willing to pay as much as any other team in baseball could offer (so basically, what the Angels could offer), but no more. Bravo, Brian Cashman, for making a stand against Scott Boras and all of his wacky antics.

Yankees defeat Devil Rays 7-3, and a Bobby Abreu discussion

The Yanks won last night as Derek Jeter, A-Rod, and Bobby Abreu all homered. Andy Pettitte, who was coming off two straight horrendous performances that inflated his ERA from 3.24 to 4.25, was a little shaky but he got the win.

Let's talk about Bobby Abreu, whose offensive performance is now commonly believed to be the deciding factor in the team's ability to score runs. In the five seasons prior to 2007, Abreu never ended a year with an OBP under .405 or a SLG under .462. He also averaged over 30 steals per season at a reasonable 79% success rate. Does that sound like a declining player to you? Me neither.

For whatever reason, he had a startlingly bad first half by his standards, hitting .276/.356/.390. A 102 adjusted OPS (OPS+) simply isn't Bobby Abreu. If you consider him to be the same player he's been over the previously mentioned past five years, that OPS+ would fall over 2.5 standard deviations away from the mean were it to remain steady for the remainder of his 2007 campaign.

So is this season's Bobby Abreu the sensational five-tool player he's been for nearly ten years, or is it the 2003 Bernie Williams version? Is he merely slumping or is he beginning to decline?

Let's take a look at his BABIP over the course of his career:


That wasn't Bobby Abreu's BABIP over the course of his career. That was duck rape, a fascinating topic in itself. Here is Bobby Abreu's BABIP over the course of his career, courtesy of fangraphs.com:


His 2007 BABIP is slightly out of alignment, but not enough to explain how bad he's been this year. Another relevant peripheral statistic in analyzing Bobby Abreu's drop-off is pitches seen per plate appearance. Bobby Abreu has been an on-base monster over the course of his career because of his superb batter's eye and willingness to work the count. If he loses those abilities, he loses much of his effectiveness. Here is a Bobby Abreu season-by-season NP/PA chart (data unavailable before 1999):


There's a concerning sharp drop-off from his previous five seasons, but he's still above his 1999 and 2001 NP/PA. Lastly, let's take a look at his GB/FB/LD distribution, again thanks to fangraphs.com:


Again, there is a troubling decline in line drives this season, but he's still been successful with such peripherals in other seasons (in this case, 2004).

Taking all of this data and mallard mating habits into consideration, I think it's pretty clear what's going on with Bobby Abreu, and the answer to our original question (slump or decline?) falls between the two extremes. After hitting 15HR last season, the lowest full season total of his career, Bobby Abreu is doing the whole "trying too hard because of the pressure in New York" thing. He's trying to hit home runs when he should be doing what he does best, just getting on base. This is resulting in him seeing less pitches per plate appearance and hitting more fly balls than he should be. It is obvious that Abreu no longer has 30HR power, but there's no reason for him not to get on base over 40% of the time.

My prediction is that he'll make the appropriate adjustments in his approach to hitting in the second half of the season. A batter of his caliber simply has to be excellent at making such adjustments. Provided that he avoids injury in the second half, I'm forecasting a final OPS+ of 113 with a standard deviation of 6.

The A-Rod opt-out

There appears to be a consensus in baseball that if the Yankees do not offer Alex Rodriguez a contract extension, he will opt out of the remaining three years of his $252 million, ten-year megacontract, foregoing the $81 million he is owed in that period.

I'm not so sure. Consider the three teams with the highest payrolls in baseball after the Yankees. At #2, the Red Sox ($143 million) obviously wouldn't sign him. Wright and Reyes aren't going anywhere, so that rules out the Mets ($115 million) at #3. Then there's the #4 Angels ($109 million). They're obviously the most likely candidate to go after A-Rod, but we're talking about a team that already has big money invested in Gary Matthews and Garret Anderson. I think their bid for A-Rod would max out around five years and $120 million.

That being said, Scott Boras could potentially use his dark magic to convince the Yankees that there is indeed a long-term, $30+ million-a-year market for A-Rod. Boras puts the fear of God into a lot of front offices, and we may very well see him wringing out a $190 million six-year deal from the Yankees' urine-soaked trousers.

Whatever the case, A-Rod will almost undoubtedly be a Yankee next year and most likely for the remainder of his career. I'm excited.

The Yankee Trough

Hi, my name is Jordan Meisner, and I've decided to start a Yankee web log. I've done so largely because the Yankees are having their first poor regular season in quite some time and most fans are unnecessarily panicking. Fears have been quelled somewhat by the fact that the team is only one game below .500 at the All-Star break, but on May 29th their 21-29 record and Boston's 14.5 game division lead had turned nearly all Yankee fans into a crazed, bloodthirsty mob ready to burn Brian Cashman, Bobby Abreu, Robinson Cano and the like at a stake, offering their charred flesh as a sacrificial gift to the wrathful hamstring gods.

I think the 2007 Yankees are a good team -- as good as any team they've fielded this decade, really. I also believe that Brian Cashman has the franchise headed in a very positive direction. The team has simply underperformed in the first half. I'm unscientifically forecasting a 47 win second-half (resulting in a 90-72 final record) with a five win standard deviation. In other words, I think it is very unlikely that the Yankees will finish the season under .500, but they probably won't make the playoffs, either.

This is just a trough. It's still a great time to be a Yankee fan. The team's future is brighter than most think and the new Stadium should be awesome.