A Look at Brian Duensing

Game 1 vs. CC Sabathia tonight will be Brian Duensing. Let's take a look at Duensing's season so far:



Duensing in a 26-year-old rookie from Marysville, Kansas. Not exactly New York, New York. I wonder how he'll react to pitching in a very loud Bronx tonight against a relentless New York lineup (though he did pitch for the US Olympic team).

As you can see by his stats, they aren't really all that impressive. His minor league stats were pretty similarly unimpressive. Courtesy of Baseball-Reference (all our great stat bars are from them), here are his Triple-A stats the past two seasons:



So Duensing is a no-name pitcher who is a fringe major leaguer and who the Yankees should beat. This is exactly the type of starting pitcher the Yankees seem to struggle against recently.

The one difference? The Yankees actually faced Duensing this season and succeeded against him. That one appearance was in relief (he was much better as a starter going 5-1 with a 2.73 ERA). But here was his performance that day:



The Yankees need to be as patient as they were that day. They forced Duensing to throw 53 pitches in 2.2 innings and walk 4 batters. That was because he was all over the place. Below is the PitchFX Pitch Sequence Labeled Strikezone Plot on Duensing's outing from Brooks Baseball:



As you can see, he failed to throw a first pitch strike, missing low almost every time. His second pitch also seemed to miss low in many plate appearances. He walked Nick Swisher with the bases loaded to walk in a run. He also allowed two inherited runners to score.

Later we'll take a look at CC Sabathia vs. the Twins.