A Few Baseball Thoughts...

Starting 9: 6/10/09

 

1) Yankee losses to the Red Sox bother me no matter what, but games like last night bother me a tremendous amount. One of the big reasons, supposedly, that the Yankees went out to get A.J. Burnett was because of his great numbers against the Red Sox, and especially in Fenway Park. I was willing to look past his injury history or his pitching inconsistencies if he could just beat Boston. Well, I was in the stands on that Saturday in April when he gave away a 6 run lead and then watched him unable to get out of the 3rd inning last night. As Peter Abraham reports: Two starts against Boston this year: 7.2 innings, 13 hits, 11 earned runs. That’s a 12.91 ERA.

2) The guy the Yankees should have signed a few years ago is Ted Lilly. Instead, they went with Kei Igawa who is nothing more than a AAA All-Star. According to Joel Sherman, Lilly's value against the BoSox: One other item that was attractive to the Yankees about Lilly was that in his three years as a Blue Jay just prior to his free agency he had pitched well against the Red Sox (5-4, 3.27) and at Fenway Park (3-1, 3.27). As we see from Burnett, past success [in a Blue Jays uniform] does not always equal future results. But it's at least worth trying, no?

3) Nick Swisher has been one of the most valuable Yankees in his ability to fill the gap left by pitch-eaters Bobby Abreu and Jason Giambi. Swisher is fourth in baseball with 4.36 pitches per plate appearance. Jason Giambi is 16th (4.19) and Bobby Abreu 40th (4.07) on that list. Swisher now has had 225 plate appearances this season and he's worked the count full in 50 of them (over 22%). His line in those full counts is .355/.600/.700 with 3 HRs, 11 RBIs, 19 BBs and only 11 Ks. That means that in almost a quarter of his plate appearances, Nick Swisher has drawn at least 6 pitches (5 pitches for the full count, plus the next one). Robinson Cano? Not so much. According to Joel Sherman, Cano through June 4th saw 3.27 pitches per PA which was 169th out of 175 qualified batters. Ouch.

4) A weird Nick Swisher line from BP Daily on ESPN.com: After 29 games played in the Bronx, teams are averaging an AL-high 5.7 runs and an MLB-high 1.8 homers per game, with batters posting a robust .271/.354/.476 (AVG/OBP/SLG) line...[yet] through Monday, [Swisher] was hitting just .190/.390/.354 at home, and that was after homering in each of his last two games there -- just his second and third round-trippers at home. Meanwhile, he's thrashing at a .313/.400/.708 clip on the road, where he's hit nine home runs and 19 of his 26 extra-base hits. I think that's just been a case of trying to hard in front of the adoring home fans. And as for those homeruns, AccuWeather says it's not about the weather, but about the walls, with a great graphic on Deadspin to prove it. Rob Neyer tries to uncover a Brian Cashman cover-up (not really, but sounds better that way). Best headline today comes from The Big Lead: "Citi Field is an Embarrassing Bandbox" and funniest article from The Onion.

5) CNNSI's Tim Marchman's very clear and concise piece of why Joba should be a starter and why the decision is so simple. Joel Sherman says that if you think Joba should be in the 'pen, you'd have an even better case for David Price...and he's starting for Tampa against no one's wishes.

6) Will the real Melky Cabrera please stand up? I've written before about the Melk Man and trying to figure out if his early season success is his coming around as a player or just us falling for him again before ultimately being disappointed. Well I wasn't alone. Mark Feinsand looks into that as well with a good quote from Tex (“What can you say about Melky? He’s always coming through for us.”) and Steven Goldman discusses as well pointing out that Melky still can't hit lefties.

7) Well if you didn't know, David Ortiz homered last night, and Baseball-Reference now did what I did and looked at his stats vs. Carlos Delgado's last year concluding that if he even finished with 80% of Delgado's season, it'll be a success. That article also looks into Derek Jeter and A-Rod in the clutch. Speaking of the Sawks, ABC News looks into how baseball and the recession have not met in Boston thanks to Boston's MVP: Fenway Park. The New York Post has an article about how a Yankee fan tried to but Yankee Stadium grass on the Fenway field (didn't seem to work last night). The Red Sox are looking to reacquire Orlando Cabrera according to Sporting News. And, lastly on the Sox, an article on what the singular of Red Sox is from Bugs & Cranks (H/T Rob Neyer).

8) Deadspin summed it up pretty well with a picture and a joke: Jose Reyes out indefinitely with a torn hamstring tendon. Also: Johan Santana contracts scarlet fever, team forced to burn down Citi Field to avoid contamination. Or Peter Abraham reading off of Mike Vaccaro of the Post's Twitter: Mets medical staff is listing David Carradine as day-to-day …But it's not funny at this point (the second one probably isn't funny at all) with all these injuries and you wonder if someone (coaches, trainers, conditioning people) are to blame. It's especially not funny because like the Yankees last year, what is reported as little problems (ie- strained hamstring for Jose Reyes) end up being huge ones (ie - torn hamstring for Jose Reyes). Reyes' status is still unclear according to the New York Times. But then again, the Mets aren't the only one with injury problems as the Blue Jays, according to MLBTradeRumors, have lost another starter to Tommy John surgery, which makes him the third Jays pitcher with arm surgery.

9) Randoms: Shysterball on abolishing the baseball draft, Rob Neyer on Phil Hughes taking to a new role, Sliding Into Home on the Yankee pitchers pitching inside, and some awesome baseball pictures from Square America (H/T Rob Neyer).

 

This isn't baseball, but this story from the Examiner is quite amazing (H/T Sarah). My favorite line: He found that their attack on "Crunchberries" should fare no better than their prior claims that "Froot Loops" did not contain real froot.