A.J. Burnett and His Catchers

Everything that A.J. Burnett and Jose Molina do tomorrow is going to be criticized and analyzed and broken down. Why? Because Burnett and potential Hall of Fame catcher Jorge Posada did not have chemistry and Joe Girardi felt he needed a change. Let's take a look at what opposing hitters did vs. Burnett in 2009 by catcher courtesy of Baseball-Reference:



Before you jump up and down and say Francisco Cervelli should start over Jose Molina, let me remind you that 2 games is too small of a sample size. I feel like 11 games (Molina's games with Burnett) and 16 games (Posada's games with Burnett) are also too small of a sample size. But we work with what we have.

Can we determine from this that Molina is a much better catcher for Burnett than Posada? Well ever one of the slashes (BA/OBP/SLG) and, therefore the overall OPS, favors Jose Molina. The one caveat here is that the batting average of balls in play BAbip is about 22 points higher which does suggest that the opposing hitters got a bit more lucky with Posada catching.

But the glaring number for me is the strikeout to walk ratio and the strikeout rate. Burnett was much more efficient at striking out people and--almost as importantly with AJ--not walking people with Molina as his backstop.

Let's look at A.J.'s two starts vs. the Twins this season. The first game was Kevin Cash (I was surprised to see he caught that many games with Burnett) and Fransisco Cervelli and the second game was Jorge Posada:



Both games were Yankees wins where Burnett pitched into the 7th. He allowed two runs in each game, but gave up way too many hits and walks. In total he allowed 23 base runners in 13 innings. They won the games but Burnett labored too much in each (his 123 pitches on May 7th was a season-high). He needs to improve his command and keep focused, especially when he inevitably has runners on base. Maybe the issue is that he worries about them stealing too much

Let's hope that having Molina back there tomorrow night will make the difference, because while Jorge Posada is a Hall-of-Fame-caliber hitter, Molina is one of the worst hitters in the game.