The Mariners are in town for a three-game series this weekend. As usual, our man Cliff has the preview over at the Pinstriped Bible.
Felix Hernandez has pitched thrown two complete games against the Yanks this year, allowing just one run.
Here’s hoping to woim toins tonight and the Yanks show the King who is:
Let’s Go Yan-Kees!
[Picture by Bags]
Only three teams in baseball have a better record than the American League West-leading Texas Rangers. The Yankees, who have the game’s best record, are of course one of them, which makes this week’s two game set in Arlington both very compelling and simultaneously disappointingly brief. That’s now further complicated by the fact that Mark Teixeira is currently on paternity leave from the team in anticipation of the birth of his third child. So as much as we might like to build up this series, I don’t think we can consider it a true playoff preview.
Still, the Yankees haven’t played the Rangers since the second week of the season, so this will be a chance for Yankee fans–not to mention their players, coaches and scouts–to get a good look at a potential playoff rival. That the Yankees will get, as they’ll be facing the Rangers’ top two starters, July addition Cliff Lee and converted reliever C.J. Wilson, both left-handers. So much for the Yankees “avoiding” Lee when he was traded prior to his scheduled start against them in Seattle just before the All-Star break.
Lee, who starts against Javier Vazquez tomorrow, has made six starts for the Rangers, four of which were dominating (minimum eight innings pitched, maximum two runs allowed, and a total of one walk and one home run allowed against 31 strikeouts). In his other two he also went deep (he’s completed at least eight innings in all six of his Rangers starts), but gave up a few too many runs along the way, taking the loss each time. Surprisingly, Lee has received just 2.5 runs of support on average since joining the Rangers, that after leaving the worst run scoring team in the majors for one of the top four.
Wilson, who faces A.J. Burnett tonight, has been very impressive in his transition to the rotation. He posted a 1.48 ERA in his first seven starts before experiencing a four-start slump (possibly a dead-arm period). After pulling out of that, he posted a 2.54 ERA over his next starts before turning in a three-inning stinker his last time out. Wilson has been hit-lucky (.255 BABIP), but his low line-drive rate suggests that has been a bit more than luck. Still, he leads the AL in walks and is close to doubling his innings total from last year. Wilson wasn’t moved to the bullpen until arriving in the majors in 2005, but entering the year, his career high in innings was the 136 he threw as a 21-year-old minor leaguer in 2002. He enters tonight’s start having thrown 136 1/3 innings this season and one wonders when and if he’s going to hit a wall and what effect that will have on the Rangers’ postseason rotation and postseason chances.
As for Burnett, he was scratched from his start on Sunday due to back spasms, which is a new item in his career-long list of minor aches and pains. Prior to that he had been lit up by the Blue Jays, coughing up seven runs in a disastrous fifth inning on August 2. Since opening the season 4-0 with a 1.99 ERA after six starts, Burnett hasn’t gone more than two starts without a disaster outing and has posted a 6.33 ERA over his last 16 starts, but at least he’s only 33 and signed for three more years. Oy.
With Teixeira away and Robinson Cano out with a cold, Joe Girardi is running out this lineup against the lefty Wilson:
R – Derek Jeter (SS)
S – Nick Swisher (RF)
R – Marcus Thames (DH)
R – Alex Rodriguez (3B)
R – Austin Kearns (LF)
S – Lance Berkman (1B)
R – Francisco Cervelli (C)
L – Brett Gardner (CF)
S – Ramiro Peña (2B)
Let’s just say I’m not too optimistic about this game. The bright side is that this is so far from what the Yankees will likely look like in a potential playoff series as to be meaningless beyond tonight.
The Yankees and Red Sox last met for a two-game set in the Bronx in mid-May. At the time, the big story surrounding the Red Sox was their poor start. In splitting those two games, the Sox held tight at .500. Almost immediately after, they finally found their groove. Including that last win against the Yankees, the Red Sox went 30-12 coming out of that series. That’s a blistering .714 pace that brought them within a half-game of the first place Bombers on July 3. Since then, however . . . meh, not so much. The Sox have gone 13-15 since that high-water mark, and seem to be rotating through the disabled list more often than they’re rotating through their lineup.
You might have heard that the Red Sox have been dealing with some injuries this season. Prior to returning Wednesday night, Jacoby Ellsbury had played just nine games all year due to various problems related to broken ribs suffered in an April collision with Adrian Beltre. He’s back, but he might have been the worst hitter in their opening day lineup and was moved to left field this spring because the Red Sox had major concerns about his defense in center. However, Mike Cameron, his intended replacement in center, is back on the DL for the second time this season with an abdominal strain, making Ellsbury the team’s center fielder and leadoff hitter, which may or may not be any better than having Ellsbury back on the DL. That also leaves J.D. Drew, who routinely misses games with a strained this and a sore that, as the only Boston outfielder having a “healthy” season.
Among those who have joined Ellsbury on the DL this season were Dustin Pedroia and Jason Varitek (both still out with broken feet), Victor Martinez (recently returned), Kevin Youkilis (more than countering Martinez’s return by hitting the DL the day before Cameron with a thumb injury that will require season-ending surgery), Daisuke Matsuzaka (of course), Josh Beckett and Clay Buchholz (both recently returned), and Manny Delcarmen (returned, but to low-leverage innings). Did I miss anyone? Boof Bonser doesn’t count, and I’m not sure Mike Lowell does either, though he’s suddenly become a very important player in the wake of Youkilis’s injury.
The good news for Boston fans is that, assuming Jon Lester’s Wednesday night leg cramp isn’t anything, the rotation is back at full strength. Buchholz and Beckett, who start tonight and Sunday, respectively, each enter this series coming off a pair of quality starts. Less encouraging has been the fact that Lester, who pitches Monday, has been off his game for four straight outings, and John Lackey, who faces CC Sabathia on Saturday, has been little more than a league-average-innings eater in his first season with the team. The Sox’s bullpen has been as problematic as the Yankees’, and the pitching staff as a whole, which has surely been undermined by the drop in the quality of team defense resulting from the many injuries to the starting lineup, something unlikely to be helped by Ellsbury’s return, has been below average in keeping runs off the board.
Whatever winning the Red Sox have been doing this season has been due to a few stretches of sharp starting pitching and their lineup, which has been buoyed by David Ortiz’s rejuvination and by a fantastic season by Adrian Beltre, but Youkilis has been the team’s best hitter, and Pedroia was in the top four, and without those two bats, this is a very different ballclub.
The best-case scenario for the Red Sox this weekend is to sweep a four game set in the Bronx and pull within two games of the Yankees for the Wild Card. I don’t see that happening, though the Yankees would be advised to win at least one of the first two as the pitching matchups become more favorable for Boston as the series progresses. The Sox will have 50 games left after this series, enough to overcome any deficit, but if the Yankees simply split, they will have robbed the Sox of a prime opportunity to make up ground and will take control of their rival’s fate by having a six-game lead over the Sox with just six head-to-head games left to play. All of that may take the edge of this series, but it’s worth noting that beating the Rays does the Yankees little good as both teams are likely to make the postseason. It’s burying the second place team in the Wild Card chase that will secure the Yankees’ playoff berth, and that second-place team is the Boston Red Sox.
I have to be honest, I just can’t figure the Blue Jays this year. It’s not just that I expected them to be a poor rebuilding team yet they haven’t been more than a game under .500 all season. It’s not just that they’ve had a confluence of career and comeback seasons, most of them boosted by the long ball (29-year-old Jose Bautista: 32 HR; 31-year-old Vernon Wells: 20 HR; 33-year-old Alex Gonzalez: 17 HR; 29-year-old John Buck: 14 HR). Now that the trading deadline has passed, I can’t figure out why the Jays did so little.
The Jays made a solid deal in mid-July, flipping Gonzalez to the Braves for 27-year-old Cuban shortstop Yunel Escobar, who had fallen out of favor in Atlanta, but has already rebounded nicely in Toronto, hitting .323/.344/.500 in 14 games (with three homers, of course). Escobar, a solidly above-average offensive shortstop who won’t hurt you in the field, will be arbitration eligible this winter, but won’t have much of a case given his .238/.334/.284 performance for the Braves, and will then remain under team control for the next three years.
Kudos to general manager Alex Anthopoulos for that one, but I can’t figure out why Bautista, Buck, Lyle Overbay, Jason Frasor, Shawn Camp, and especially Scott Downs are still Blue Jays. I’m going to go out on a very short limb and say that Bautista will never have a more productive season than he’s having now and will not be on the next Blue Jays playoff team. Given his performance this season, he’s due for a huge arbitration raise, and his trade value will never be higher than it was on Saturday. Buck, Overbay, Frasor, and Downs are all free agents this winter and should have been cashed in. Perhaps there was no market for the first three, but Downs was highly sought after. As his predecessor J.P. Ricciardi did with a much bigger chip at last year’s deadline, Anthopoulos set his price too high and refused to budge. In the case of Roy Halladay, the Jays still owned him for another season and after Ricciardi was fired, Anthopoulos was able to get a solid return for him (though he frittered away part of it, turning impressive prospect Michael Taylor into marginal one Anthony Gose via two subsequent moves). Downs, however, will now provide the Jays no long-term benefit.
So the Jays are left to click along as just-above-.500 team in a division in which a .600 winning percentage is typically required for a second place/Wild Card finish. I don’t get it.
The twist for the Yankees this week is that the Jays, having held onto all of their major league trade chips, remain a solid team worth taking seriously. Tonight, the Yankees and A.J. Burnett face Brandon Morrow, one of Anthopoulos’s better additions, who has begun to find some consistency after having finally been left alone in the rotation. He leads the major leagues in strikeouts per nine innings with an even ten and enters tonight’s game coming off two quality starts, although both came against the Orioles. The knock on Morrow at the moment is that he seems to thrive against bad teams and struggle against good ones, though that pattern isn’t consistent. The Yankees have already faced Morrow twice this season. He dominated them in Toronto on June 6 (7 IP, 4 H, 1 R, 1 BB, 8 K), but struggled in a rematch in the Bronx (6 IP, 9 H, 5 R, albeit with just one walk and seven Ks).
Burnett enters this game having not allowed a run in 11 1/3 innings over two starts since cutting his hand in a clubhouse temper tantrum and having to leave his previous start in the third inning. Burnett has faced his former team twice this season, inverting Morrow’s results (or echoing them, depending on your perspective) by pitching poorly in Toronto and well in the Bronx, throwing 6 2/3 shutout innings against the Jays at home on July 2.
Nick Swisher returns to the two-hole tonight, Mark Teixeira returns to first base, and Alex Rodriguez returns to the lineup. Jorge Posada is catching and batting sixth ahead of Fat Elvis. Quothe Berkman, “I don’t know if I’ve ever hit seventh. I’ve hit sixth before, I know that. But I also can’t remember the last time that I’ve been on a team with like eight Hall of Famers. That has a lot to do with it.” Future Hall of Famers Curtis Granderson and Brett Gardner fill the last two spots
As I type this, neither the Rays nor the Yankees has made a deadline deal, but that could change by first pitch with the non-waiver trading deadline of 4pm Saturday bearing down on us. Both teams are said to be looking for a designated hitter, but the Yankees are in more urgent need of a relief pitcher (though apparently not urgent enough to give Jonathan Albaladejo an extended look).
On first glance, it might seem the Yankees would be wise to stay in the DH market to cause problems for the Rays, who trail by just two games in the AL East entering this weekend’s three-game set at the Trop, but the real threat to their playoff chances is the Red Sox. Though the Sox are another 5.5 games behind the Rays, they are the second-place team in the Wild Card race and thus the team with the best chance of keeping either the Yanks or Rays out of the playoffs, and the Red Sox big target is relief pitching.
Of course, all of that is mere speculation for now. The hard facts are that the Yankees took two of three from the Rays in the Bronx two weeks ago to even the season series at 4-4, but the Rays have gained a game back in the interim by winning eight of ten and their last six in a row. The Yankees last visited Tropicana Field on the first weekend of the season, taking two of three from the Rays then as well.
In the second game of that series, the Bombers put up four runs in six innings against Wade Davis, who starts for the Rays tonight against Phil Hughes. Davis had more success against the Yanks in a rematch in the Bronx in May, and has been sharp of late, turning in three straight quality starts and posting a 3.47 ERA in his last eight games.
Hughes, meanwhile, seems to be wearing down a bit as the season progresses. He was effective in two of his last three starts, but those came against the lowly Royals and Mariners, while the Angels, Blue Jays, and Mariners in a previous turn got to him good in his other most recent starts. Going back to his start in CitiField on May 17, Hughes has posted a 5.47 ERA over 12 starts, though good run support has lifted his record to 7-3 over that span. However, it’s worth noting that two of Hughes’ recent duds came after his previous start was skipped. Five of his last eight starts on regular rest have been quality and a sixth saw him allow three runs in 5 1/3 innings. Hughes will be be on regular rest again tonight.
The Yankees took two of three from the Indians at the end of May, but the Indians team they face for four games this week is better than the one they faced two months ago. Since June 27, the Indians have gone 15-9 (.625) thanks to an improved performance from their pitching staff, and a coalescing young offense.
Blue-chip catching prospect Carlos Santana made his major league debut on June 11 and has hit .270/.418/.516 since, most impressively racking up more walks (34) than strikeouts (25). Matt LaPorta, the blue-chipper received from the Brewers for CC Sabathia in 2008, returned to the majors on June 27 to replace Russell Branyan at first base after he was dealt back to Seattle, and has hit .320/.386/.560 since. Shortstop Asdrubal Cabrera just returned from the disabled list last Tuesday and has hit .294 in the Tribe’s four games since. Cabrera has pushed Jason Donald, the infielder received from the Phillies in the Cliff Lee deal, over to his proper place at second base, which should only increase his comfort level. Donald has hit .304/.366/.461 since June 10 and .321/.345/.571 in eight games at second base this year. Heck, even 30-year-old Yankee castoff Shelley Duncan is contributing, hitting .283/.359/.522 while spotting in the outfield corners, first base, and DH.
On the mound, former Red Sock Justin Masterson, who had a 6.13 ERA entering the Indians’ last series against the Yankees, has settled down with a 4.56 ERA in 11 starts dating hack to his quality start against the Yankees on May 30. Jake Westbrook, returning from Tommy John surgery, has posted a 4.38 ERA in 14 starts since May 11. Former Rays prospect, rookie Mitch Talbot, who faces Andy Pettitte’s vacated rotation spot on Thursday, has been solid all season (3.89 ERA). Ditto All-Star Fausto Carmona, who will bring his 3.51 ERA to face A.J. Burnett on Wednesday.
The Cleveland rotation did spring a leak in David Huff’s old spot. With replacement Aaron Laffey having just gone down with a bum shoulder, the Tribe will turn to 25-year-old rookie righty Josh Tomlin Tuesday night against their former ace CC Sabathia. I’ll have more on Tomlin tomorrow, but “25-year-old rookie righty vs. CC Sabathia” tells you most of what you need to know.
The Yanks face former David Justice trade bait Westbrook tonight. By providing 1,183 1/3 league-average innings for the Indians over the years, Westbrook has actually made that trade a net loss for the Yankees, though I can’t imagine many Yankee fans have any regrets about the deal. From 2003 to 2007, Westbrook posted a 4.11 ERA in 922 2/3 innings over 143 starts and 15 relief appearances for the Tribe, but in 2008 he made just five starts before going down with an elbow injury that led to Tommy John surgery. He then missed all of the 2009 season, but has returned to his old form this year and, in the final year of his contract, is actually considered a low-end starting pitching option for teams looking to fill a back-end-of-the-rotation hole prior to the trading deadline, teams that could include the Yankees in the wake of Andy Pettitte’s groin injury.
I still think the Yankees would be better off giving Ivan Nova a look, but that’s a rant for another day. Tonight, they have Javier Vazquez looking to rebound from a poor start against the Angels. Vazquez seems to have finally settled in as the mid-rotation starter the Yankees hoped he would be when they acquired him from the Braves this past offseason. He hasn’t had consecutive poor outings since April 25 and May 1 and nine of his 12 starts since then have been quality starts. Vazquez hasn’t faced the Indians since he was with the White Sox in 2008, which means half of the Cleveland lineup has never seen him before.
The Yankees run out their standard lineup tonight with Jorge Posada at DH and Francisco Cervelli behind the plate. Despite his hit-by-pitch scare, Alex Rodriguez is back at third base, still sitting on 599 career homers. Nick Swisher remains in right, batting second.
The Royals have had just one winning season (props, Tony Peña) since 1994, so it’s easy to write them off as a bad team. They are a bad team, and they’re not getting better, but they’re not remarkably bad the way they used to be. Sandwiched around that 83-win season in 2003 were four 100-loss campaigns. In the four years since then, the Royals winning percentage hasn’t dipped below .400 and if the standings stay the way they are, 2010 will be the third straight season in which they finish above last place in their division. Those are pathetically low standards, yes, but they’re also a reminder that, while the Royals are bad, they’re not awful.
Better yet, K.C. has played nearly .500 ball since Ned Yost replaced Trey Hillman as manager on May 14. That’s a little more than two months of break-even baseball, which is a big deal for this ballclub. The Royals went 9-4 under Yost over the remainder of May, then outscored their opponents in June (though they were still just 13-14 on the month).
Things have cooled off a bit in July. The Royals are again just a game under .500 for the month (7-8), but they’ve been outscored by 37 runs, a bigger run deficit in 15 games than they had in 23 games while going 9-14 under Hillman in April. Chalk that one up to three lop-sided losses (11-0 to the Angels, 15-5 to the White Sox, and 13-1 to the Blue Jays) all three coming in games started by Anthony Lerew, who will face Phil Hughes on Sunday.
Playing the Royals is an advantage in and of itself, but the Yankees luck out by facing them for four games yet avoiding defending Cy Young award winner Zack Greinke. Instead the Yankees will face, in order, Bruce Chen, Brian Bannister, Kyle Davies, and Lerew. That Yost has been able to keep this team around .500 with those guys making up 80 percent of the rotation is both startling and a sign that the Royals likely won’t keep it up, at least not without getting an effective Gil Meche back from the disabled list (he started a rehab assignment on Wednesday).
Indeed, only the Pirates and Orioles have a lower rotation ERA than the Royals’ 5.12. The same is true with Baseball Prospectus’s win-expectancy based SNLVAR, only the Bucs and O’s have had worse rotations by that measure. The Kansas City bullpen is closer to average thanks to lock-down closer Joakim Soria, ex-Ranger Robinson Tejada, and, get this, ex-Yankee Kyle Farnsworth and Kanekoa Texeira, the reliever acquired by the Yankees in the Nick Swisher trade then lost to the Mariners as a Rule 5 pick in December. Farnsworth has allowed just two home runs in 41 innings this year and is walking just 2.2 men per nine innings. Texeira, who was plucked off waivers in June, has walked just 1.6 men per nine as a Royal and boasts a 2.38 ERA in 22 2/3 innings for Kansas City.
I’m not about to go yearning for Farnsworth’s return, but it’s a bit galling to see those two helping the Royals’ bullpen to a performance not far removed, and in fact slightly superior, to that of the Yankees’ pen. The Yankees have a slight edge in ERA, 4.22 to 4.26, but the Royals’ pen has contributed nearly 40 more innings, which increases their advantage over the Yankees in the cumulative win-expectancy-based WXRL.
As for the offense, it’s probably enough to point out that this lineup makes the 34-year-old Scott Podsednik look valuable, and that their worst hitter, 36-year-old catcher Jason Kendall, is not only replacing one All-Star catcher (John Buck) and another who was more deserving of that honor (Miguel Olivo), but is hitting second. First baseman Billy Butler, 24, is the featured hitter, but his power is still a bit lacking (.467 slugging). Center fielder David DeJesus, now 30, is having his finest season, but with only an option remaining on his contract, is a top candidate to be traded. DH Jose Guillen, a 34-year-old in his walk year, is also trade bait. Can’t miss prospect Alex Gordon is back in the minors, but raking at Triple-A. Then again, he’s 26 already, and after Butler, the youngest man in the major league lineup is 28. That’s not encouraging for a team that’s theoretically rebuilding.
Tonight CC Sabatha faces Bruce Chen, the well traveled Chinese-Panamanian lefty who was a top prospect last century and is now with his tenth major league club at the age of 33. Chen flirted with a perfect game on July 3, but otherwise has been decidedly average and prone to short, though not disastrous outings. Since joining the rotation on May 30, he has made nine starts, posted a 4.28 ERA and averaged about 5 1/3 innings per start. He last faced the Yankees in 2006 (two starts plus two relief appearances for the Orioles).
Sabathia looked a little rusty in his last start, though he was actually starting on normal rest having started the two games on either side of the Yankees’ four-day All-Star break. He still gave the Yanks seven solid innings in an eventual win. In his last nine starts, he has gone 8-0 with a 2.03 ERA and just two home runs allowed.
Marcus Thames starts at DH against the lefty Chen and bats seventh ahead of Curtis Granderson. Everyone else is in their usual place. Meanwhile, the suddenly very busy (and depressing) Yankee uniform has added another element, a black arm-band in memory of Ralph Houk, who passed away on Wednesday. I can’t remember the Yankees ever wearing three memorial objects on their uniform at once, though they’ve also never work a memorial patch before doing so for George Steinbrenner and Bob Sheppard this month (previously they had stuck to arm bands or retired numbers on the sleeve).
It seems like little more than a hazy memory now, but the Yankees and Angels played each other six times in April, each taking two of three at home from the other. They’ll finish their season series in the next 24 hours with a two-game set that will kick off at 7:05 tonight in the Bronx and should wrap up before the end of the work day tomorrow.
Despite the departures of John Lackey and Chone Figgins, the Angels were my pre-season pick to win the American League West, but with the Rangers’ 4.5-game lead and recent acquisition of Cliff Lee, I can’t see the second place halos catching up. Obviously, I didn’t anticipate Kendry Morales’ suffering a season-ending broken leg during a walk-off celebration at home plate on May 29. Nor did I expect that third baseman Brandon Wood would be such a total bust at the plate (.168/.185/.225). The Angels appeared to solve their hot corner problem with former Giants second base prospect Kevin Frandsen, but Frandsen has hit just .136/.200/.162 since June 30 and is a far inferior fielder to Wood.
I expected better things from ex-Yankees Hideki Matsui, who is making the Bombers look bright for letting him go by hitting just .249/.329/.393 and slugging just .359 since the end of April, and Bobby Abreu, who’s .259/.351/.412 is his worst across the board since he was a rookie with the Astros last century.
I also expected better things from the Anaheim rotation, which I repeatedly described as “five deep.” Jeff Weaver, Scott Kazmir, Ervin Santana, Joe Saunders, Joel Piñeiro seemed like a solid quintet in April, but Kazmir has been awful (6.92 ERA, 1.22 K/BB) and just hit the disabled list with a bum shoulder, and Saunders has been erratic (4.83 ERA, 1.32 K/BB).
As a team, the Angels have been below average in both runs scored and runs allowed this season and, despite their 50-45 record entering this series, they have been out-scored on the season. That’s a large part of the reason that I think the AL West race is over: the Rangers are the only team in the division with a positive run differential and they just got better with the addition of Lee.
Sean O’Sullivan takes Kazmir’s spot in the rotation tonight. A 22-year-0ld righty, O’Sullivan posted a 5.92 ERA in ten starts and two relief appearances as a rookie last year. This year, he’s made just four relief appearances in the majors (albeit with good results), and had a 4.76 ERA in 15 Triple-A starts.
O’Sullivan will face Phil Hughes, who last pitched at Angel Stadium, taking the loss in the All-Star game by giving up singles to two of the three batters he faced. Hughes ended the first half with a strong outing against the punchless Mariners (7 IP, 6 H, 1 R, 0 BB, 5 K), but had just one quality start in his previous four outings (7.03 ERA). With Andy Pettitte heading to the DL with a groin injury that will keep him out until the end of August, the Yankees need Hughes to get back on track.
Pettitte officially goes on the DL tonight. Expect Jonathan Albaladejo, who has been dominating out of the Scranton pen, to take his spot for now, with another move being made Saturday to allow Sergio Mitre to be activated to take Pettitte’s place in the rotation (though I’d rather see Mitre return to the bullpen and Ivan Nova get that chance).
It has been two months since the last meeting between the Yankees and Rays, the teams with the two best records in baseball who also happen to share the same division, but the two teams have 13 games against each other in the second half starting with this weekend’s three-game set in the Bronx. When they last met, the Rays padded their lead in the East by winning a pair of slugfests at the Trop by a combined score of 18-12, sending the Yankees packing five games out of first place. Since then, the two teams have switched places, with the Yankees entering this weekend’s set with a two game lead in the East, having thus gained seven games on the Rays in the last two months.
Introducing that last series, I wrote about how the Rays had played over their heads to that point, scoring more runs than their component offensive numbers would suggest thanks to some effective baserunning and clutch hitting. Indeed, the primary difference between the two teams thus far has been run production. The Rays and Yankees are one and two in the AL in both fewest runs allowed (Rays: 3.85 R/G; Yanks: 4.00 R/G) and defensive efficiency (Yanks: .714; Rays: .708). The big difference is is on offense, where the Yankees have scored 5.33 runs per game with potential for second-half improvements from Mark Teixeira, Alex Rodriguez, Derek Jeter, and a healthy Jorge Posada, while the Rays have scored 5.05 runs per game despite slugging just .405 as a team, the ninth-best mark in the league, which suggests they’re more likely to head in the other direction.
The Rays have improved at catcher, as 26-year-old rookie John Jaso has solidified the position with his strong on-base skills (.274/.393/.377), while former Yankee prospect Dioner Navarro, now also 26, has been farmed out to Triple-A after hitting .216/.268/.314 in 531 plate appearances between last year and this. They have yet to solve the designated hitter spot, however. When they last met the Yankees, the Rays had just dropped Pat Burrell in favor of Hank Blalock, but since then they’ve released Blalock as well, turning to Matt Joyce, the outfielder they received from the Tigers for Edwin Jackson. Joyce has shown some on-base skills of his own, walking 11 times against just seven strikeouts in 15 games, he hasn’t actually hit yet. Altogether, the Rays DHs have hit .240/.307/.373 on the season.
That’s better than what they’ve gotten from Jason Bartlett at shortstop, but at least Bartlett contributes in the fiel . . . huh? What’s that you say about his UZR numbers this season? Oh. So why hasn’t Reid Brignac stolen his job yet? Bartlett hit what last season? And what makes you think that was anything but a fluke? Hello? Hello? . . . I think they hung up.
Where was I?
Oh, so yeah, the Rays’ offense has its problems. It’s basically Crawford, Longoria, some solid on-base rates from Jaso and Ben Zobrist (.385, but a .398 slugging), the occasional Carlos Peña dinger (he has 18, but is still hitting just .203/.321/.415), and some bonus stolen bases from B.J. Upton when he actually gets on base (.230/.320/.395, but 25 for 31 on the bases). Sean Rodriguez has some power and speed, which is nice from a second-baseman, but he’s drawn just six walks all year (one every 39 plate appearances!) and has a .302 OBP.
Still, with their pitching and defense, the former of which includes a deeper end game than the Yankees thanks to strong showings from hard-throwing 32-year-old righties Grant Balfour and Joaquin Benoit and spectacular work from newly imported closer Rafael Soriano (1.60 ERA, 4.14 K/BB, 23 of 24 save chances converted), the Rays remain dangerous, and this weekend’s series will likely be just an opening salvo in battle between the two teams down the stretch.
While I have my eye on Sunday’s game, which pits veteran lefty Andy Pettitte against tyro southpaw David Price, both whom ranked among the top pitchers in the league in the first half, tonight’s game presents a far more favorable pitching matchup for the Yankees. It’s not that James Shields is a pushover, though he’s struggled of late, going 1-3 with a 6.29 ERA in his last four starts allowing at least four runs each time out and going 2-7 with a 7.66 ERA over his last nine appearances (eight of them starts, one a throw-day relief appearance in extra innings). It’s more that CC Sabathia has looked unbeatable of late going 8-0 with a 1.81 ERA over his last eight starts, all of them quality, all lasting a minimum of seven innings. He has faced the Rays once this year, holding them scoreless for 7 2/3 innings back on April 10, and is pitching on normal rest having started the Yankees’ last game on Sunday, so there’s little reason to expect his rhythm to be disrupted.
More good news, Juan Miranda has returned to the team to boost the feeble bench, bouncing Kevin Russo back to Scranton and starting at DH tonight and batting eighth between Curtis Granderson and Brett Gardner. Jorge Posada is behind the plate, making this the best offensive lineup the Yankees have run out in some time.
The Yankees will honor Bob Sheppard and George Steinbrenner before the game. It seems fitting that they’re playing Tampa tonight given the Boss’s home base there and the added emphasis he always placed on beating the Rays. I expect the Yankees will do him proud tonight.
Last week, After Cliff Lee and Felix Hernandez became the first pitchers in a decade to toss consecutive complete games against the Yankees, I pointed out the following about their recent performance.
In their last six combined starts, Lee and Hernandez have gone 5-0 with five complete games. In the sixth game, Hernandez allowed just one run in nine innings, but the Mariners lost in 13.
Both pitchers have made one start since then. Lee beat the Tigers, holding them to one run over eight innings, striking out 11 against one walk. Hernandez allowed a whopping two runs in seven innings to the Royals in a game the Mariners’ bullpen blew immediately in the eighth.
The Yankees will have to run the Lee/Hernandez gauntlet again this weekend in the middle two games of a four-game set against the Mariners that will conclude the first half for both teams. That puts the onus on them to make hay against bookend starters Jason Vargas and Ryan Rowland-Smith, the latter of whom held the Yanks to two runs over six innings in the finale of last week’s series only to be out-dueled by CC Sabathia. Rowland-Smith has posted a 4.15 ERA in seven starts since returning to the rotation from a May stint in the bullpen, but he has walked four more men than he has struck out and allowed seven home runs, including one to Robinson Cano, in those seven starts.
Tonight, the Yankees and All-Star Andy Pettitte (10-2, 2.82 ERA) take on Jason Vargas, the former Marlin and Met lefty who came to Seattle in the massive J.J. Putz trade. Vargas, now 27, has proven to be a perfect Mariners pitcher in that he throws strikes (2.3 BB/9) and lets his defense and ballpark take care of the rest. Opponents are hitting .263 on balls in play against Vargas, and the lefty has gone 5-1 with a 2.30 ERA at home (against 1-3, 4.50 on the road), though to his credit he’s also just flat-out nails against lefty batters, holding them to a .173/.204/.288 line this season with 18 strikeouts against just three walks.
Despite Vargas’s dominance of lefthanders, Curtis Granderson starts in center (after sitting to start Wednesday night’s game). Robinson Cano returns to the lineup after a 24-hour Derbyitis bug. Alex Rodriguez will be the DH with Ramiro Peña filling in at third base. Brett Gardner drops to eighth against the lefty, hitting between Gardner and Peña.
Oh, and Nick Swisher won his popularity contest.
Trevor Cahill, the A’s lone All-Star this year and CC Sabathia’s opponent Tuesday night, was on the disabled list with a scapula problem when the Yankees took two of three from the A’s in Oakland in April. Since then, he’s gone 8-2 with a 2.47 ERA while three other members of the A’s rotation (Brett Anderson, Justin Duchscherer, and Dallas Braden) have landed on the DL. That leaves tonight’s starter, the brittle Ben Sheets, as the only member of the A’s intended Opening Day rotation not to hit the DL this year.
If that wasn’t troubling enough for the A’s, Sheets has been struggling through his worst major league season (3-7 with a career worst 4.98 ERA and 1.85 K/BB). Mind you, Sheets hasn’t been awful, he has just been consistently unimpressive. Out of his six June starts (1-4, 5.11 ERA), he lasted six innings in five (seven in the exception) and allowed four runs in five (five runs in the exception). When he faced the lowly Pirates, he struck out nine against no walks. Against everyone else he struck out 14 against 11 walks over five starts, and he has allowed a home run in each of his last seven outings.
Consistently unimpressive pretty much describes this A’s team as a whole. They’re scoring just 4.1 runs per game, but in this pitching-dominated year there are seven teams that score even less often, including the Yankees’ next opponent, the Mariners. The pitching has been solid when healthy, though even Cahill isn’t particularly threatening or exciting, their ballpark helps, and 31 of their games (37 percent of their schedule to this point) have come against the Mariners, Orioles, Indians, Cubs, and Pirates, five of the teams below them in runs per game.
The A’s enter this series hot because they just played three of those teams and went 7-2 against the Pirates (sweep), Orioles, and Indians (two of three, each). Tonight they face Javier Vazquez, who struck out eight Mariners in a futile quality start against Felix Hernandez his last time out. Javy posted a 3.23 ERA in June and his first win of the season came in Oakland back on April 20. With the Yankee bats having shown some life the last two days, the all signs point to a good series for the Yankees this week. If only they could bring that glaring summer afternoon Bronx sun with them to these three night games in Oakland.
With Jorge Posada day-to-day with a sprained left ring finger, Joe Girardi tries a new look lineup tonight. Brett Gardner leads off with Derek Jeter batting second and Nick Swisher hitting in Posada’s vacated sixth spot. I can dig it. Swish is the DH tonight, Colin Curtis plays right field and bats ninth behind Francisco Cervelli.
Oh, and it has nothing to do with the game, but Andy Pettitte is indeed going to the All-Star game, as Clay Buchholz’s injury replacement.
We’ve seen this before. Last year, the Blue Jays shot out of the gate, were 27-14 (.659) on May 18, but went just 48-73 (.397) the rest of the way. This year, the Jays were 25-17 (.595) on May 19 and have gone 15-23 (.395) since. Of course, they took two of three from the Yankees in Toronto during the latter stretch, but that’s because the one thing the Jays still have going for them are some strong starting pitchers.
Tell me if this sounds familiar: the Jays have scored just three runs per game since June 1, but lefties Brett Cecil and Ricky Romero and righty Brandon Morrow, the same three pitchers who will face the Yankees this weekend in the Bronx, held the Yankees to a total of four runs in 23 combined innings in that previous series. Cecil, who faces A.J. Burnett tonight, has struggled in his last three starts (0-3, 9.19 ERA), but the other two, who face Andy Pettitte and Phil Hughes over the weekend, have remained sharp.
Of course, the focus today will be how A.J. Burnett responds to the early-week return of pitching coach Dave Eiland. Not that Eiland had any magical fix. Here’s what he had to say upon returning to the team on Tuesday:
For me to sit here and say the reason that A.J. pitched the way he pitched was I wasn’t here is not fair. A.J. has been pitching a long time. He knows what he needs to do. It’s nothing that A.J. and I haven’t addressed and discussed already. Every pitcher you have to stay on about certain things, and with A.J. there are a couple of things. They’re very minor things that are going to make a huge difference. But A.J. has to do it. He’s been told over and over in the past what they are.
It seems Burnett’s main problem was opening up his left side to early. Said Eiland Thursday after working with Burnett in the bullpen, “It’s not like I gave him anything new today. Mike Harkey was telling him the same thing.”
There’s a certain element there of not wanting to throw Harkey under the bus for failing to get Burnett straightened out, but there’s also a lot of exasperation in those Eiland quotes.
Normally you’d feel good going up against a pitcher like Cecil who has been 0-3 with a 9.19 ERA in his last three starts, but Burnett has gone 0-3 with a 16.55 ERA in his last three starts and was 0-5 with a 11.35 ERA in June. The big question heading into tonight’s game is which one of these guys is going to snap out of their funk. The upside might be that, if the answer is neither, you have to like the Yankees’ chances of winning a slugfest in their own park.
Okay, so I just wrote one of the longest previews I’ve ever written getting some stuff off my chest that’s been there since November and shoved aside some other important work to do it. But it all got erased. So while I try not to lose my mind, here’s the roster of the Mariners, who have scored just 3.4 runs per game this year, but are running out one of the league’s best pitchers tonight.
I’m pretty jazzed up for this weekend’s interleague set between the Yankees and Dodgers. Not just because of the familiar faces in the opposing dugout (yes, Joe Torre, but also Don Mattingly, who has also never been part of the Yankees’ opposition before tonight and who never wore another team’s uniform before following Torre to L.A. for the 2008 season, and former undesirables Manny Ramirez and Jeff Weaver, whose presence helps stir the emotional pot), but because it’s Yankees-Dodgers. This matchup was the greatest World Series rivalry in baseball history. From 1947 to 1956, the Yankees and Dodgers met in the World Series six times in ten years, and from 1977 to 1981 they met three more times in a five-year span. Altogether, the Yankees and Dodgers have played 11 World Series against one another, the most of any paring in major league history, with the Yankees holding a 8-3 advantage in those Series.
Given that history, it’s shocking to me that this is just the second interleague meeting between the two teams and that they have yet to play an interleague game in the Bronx (which means the the final dozen years of Yankee Stadium’s existence passed without such a matchup). Since the Dodgers come-from-behind victory in the 1981 World Series, the Yankees and Dodgers have played just one series, a three-game set in Chavez Ravine in mid-June of 2004 that the Dodgers took two games to one. The winning pitchers in that series were Brad Halsey for the Yankees in the middle game and Weaver (who, in his first Dodgers stint immediately following the Kevin Brown trade, beat Javy Vazquez in his first stint with the Yankees) and the late Jose Lima for the Dodgers.
This year, Weaver is in the bullpen and Vazquez won’t pitch until the Yankees return home next week, but the matchup is even more compelling. Beyond that history and the familiar faces, this series pits the defending world champions against the team that lost the last two National League Championship Series. Say what you want about Joe Torre, but he has kept his postseason streak alive since leaving the Bronx.
I figured the Dodgers would make it 15 straight seasons for Torre before this season started, and though they got off to a slow start (13-17 and six games out of first place on May 8), they turned things around in a hurry with a nine-game winning streak, the start of a 23-7 run from May 9 to June 9 that put them a game ahead of the inexplicable Padres. They’ve only won three of their last 12 since then, however, and have fallen back to third place, three games behind San Diego. Included in that swoon has been a 1-5 performance against their local rivals in Anaheim and a three-game sweep at the hands of the surging Red Sox in Boston, where the return of Ramirez and old rival Torre added a similar charge of emotion.
The bad news for Yankee fans is that despite the Dodgers slide, Manny has been red-hot, hitting .421/.463/.711 with three homers in his last ten games (nine starts) and enters this game with a six-game hitting streak. The Dodgers are finally seeing some signs of life from Andre Ethier as well. Ethier was having an out-of-his-mind season before breaking a finger in batting practice in mid-May. He didn’t hit a lick upon returning on May 31, but has gone 5-for-13 with a pair of doubles in his last three games. The same goes for Matt Kemp, who slumped badly for most of June but went 4-for-13 with a double and a homer in those three games. The Dodgers also just got Rafael Furcal back in the lineup after he missed close to a week on bereavement leave.
The most favorable pitching matchup in this weekend’s series for the Yankees is tonight’s as CC Sabathia takes on Vicente Padilla. CC has been sharp in June, going 4-0 with a 2.48 ERA 28 strikeouts in 29 innings, a 3.11 K/BB and just two home runs allowed, both in his first start of the month. Padilla, meanwhile, has made just one start since April 22 due to a nerve irritation in his right forearm that shelved him for nearly two months. Padilla gave up four runs in 5 1/3 innings at Fenway his last time out. In his last start against the Yankees, on June 2 of last year while he was still a Texas Ranger, he gave up seven runs in 3 2/3 innings.
In 2007, the Diamondbacks won the National League central with a 90-72 record despite a negative run differential that translated to a 79-83 Pythagorean record. That team, which swept the Cubs in the Division Series only to be swept by the Rockies in the NLCS, was flush with young talent including shortstop Stephen Drew, second baseman Alberto Callaspo (then a backup to Orlando Hudson), and right-fielder Carlos Quentin (all 24), third baseman Mark Reynolds, center fielder Chris Young, and back-up catcher Miguel Montero (all 23), 19-year-old right-fielder Justin Upton, 25-year-old first baseman Conor Jackson, 26-year-old catcher Chris Snyder.
That winter, Arizona flipped Quentin to the White Sox for first-base prospect Chris Carter (not the one on the Mets, the now-23-year-old slugger who lurks in Sacramento as one of the top prospects in the American League) then made a big-splash by trading Carter to the A’s with outfielder Carlos Gonzalez and left-hander Brett Anderson, among others, for starter Dan Haren. Haren, then 27, partnered with the then-29-year-old Brandon Webb to give the Diamondbacks a tremendous 1-2 punch in their rotation, and with a lineup filled with developing young talent, the team looked ready for a big break out after experiencing a bit of correction with an 82-80 second-place finish in 2008.
I was one of four SI.com “experts” to pick the Diamondbacks to win the NL West in 2009, but all of us were surely banking on the impact of Webb and Haren atop the rotation. Instead, Webb got smacked around for four innings on Opening Day and hasn’t pitched since due to shoulder issues, surgery, and subsequent set-backs. Mind you, this was a pitcher who from 2006 to 2008 went 56-25 (.691) with a 3.13 ERA and finished in the top two in the Cy Young voting each year, winning in ’06.
That was a devastating loss, but it was made no easier by the fact that the young talent in the Arizona lineup has failed to coalesce into a productive offense. Callaspo was, like Quentin, traded after the 2007 season, ultimately yielding Dontrelle Willis (via Billy Buckner) earlier this month. As for the rest, Jackson never developed power, came down with Valley Fever last year, and didn’t seem fully recovered this spring before being flipped to the A’s last week for closer prospect Sam Demel. Stephen Drew, J.D.’s little brother, slugged .502 with 21 homers in 2008 and looked primed for a breakout, but has hit just .266/.328/.430 since. Young was two stolen bases shy of a 30/30 season in 2007, but saw his production decline each of the last two years, though he seems to have finally righted his ship this season. Upton showed steady progress the last two years, but is striking out at an alarming rate this year (92 Ks in 67 games) and has seen his production regress in turn (.247/.326/.429). Montero claimed the catching job from Snyder with a break out season last year, but has played just 12 games thus far this year due to knee surgery.
Then there’s Reynolds, who had perhaps one of the most unique offensive seasons in baseball history last year when he hit 44 home runs, stole 24 bases, and shattered his own single-season strikeout record by wiffing 223 times. Reynolds’ positives (314 total bases plus 76 walks and those steals at a 73 percent success rate) out-weighed all those Ks last year, but he’s testing that balance this year having already struck out 99 times while hitting just .215/.327/.472 and stealing just three bases.
To that frustrating core, the Diamondbacks have added reheated ex-Braves Adam LaRoche and Kelly Johnson at first and second base, respectively. Johnson started the season with a wholly unexpected barrage of home runs (9 in April), but has hit just four more since while hitting .244/.355/.399. LaRoche, perhaps the game’s most notorious second-half hitter, typically hits the turbo boost around this time of year and has hit .300/.363/.546 after the All-Star break in his career.
That all adds up to one of the NL’s better offenses thus far this season, but it also makes for one of the league’s worst defenses, and the pitching staff, without Webb and with Haren’s ERA inflated by bad luck on both balls in play and fly balls leaving the yard, is suffering for it. Curiously, old pal Ian Kennedy has actually had very good luck on balls in play, and thus leads the Snakes’ staff in ERA despite a similar home run problem (which has not been a product of his new home park). Edwin Jackson, who accompanied Kennedy to Arizona in the three-way Curtis Granderson deal, however, is having similar problems to Haren, his BABIP having lept up from .278 last year to .326 this year.
The D’backs’ bullpen, meanwhile, has just been flat awful, posting a 7.14 ERA, blowing 12 saves and picking up 16 losses. Closer Chad Qualls has lost his job to ex-Met Aaron Heilman, the only Arizona reliever with an ERA below 4.00. The less said about the rest of the pen the better other than to point out that the pen has contributed to the Diamondbacks allowing the most runs in baseball thus far, having allowed 38 percent of the 405 the Snakes have give up.
Perhaps all you need to know about the Diamondbacks pitching is that tonight A.J. Burnett faces Rodrigo Lopez. Lopez resurrected his career (briefly) as a fill-in for the Phillies last year, going 3-1 with a 5.70 ERA in five starts and a pair of relief appearances. He’s been a rotation regular for the D’backs this year and pitching pretty much in line with his career rates, which means he’s not a far cry from the pitcher you might remember from his five years with the Orioles from 2002 to 2006. Lopez’s main trick this year has been pitching efficiently enough to go deep into games regardless of his ability to keep runs off the board (a product of that lousy bullpen). In his last two starts, Lopez pitched 14 innings, but allowed 11 runs. Burnett, meanwhile, is in the middle of a full-on skid, having gone 0-3 with a 9.00 ERA across just 16 innings over his last three starts. More bad numbers from those last three: nine walks against ten Ks, three hit batsmen, and six home runs allowed.
Meanwhile, outfielder Colin Curtis has been called up from Triple-A, replacing Chad Moeller on the 25- and 40-man rosters. A fourth-round pick out of Arizona State (which has also produced Ike Davis and Mike Leake in recent years) in the Yankees boffo 2006 draft, Curtis disappointed up on hitting Double-A in mid 2007, hitting .250/.311/.359 in 1,343 plate appearances above High-A from 2007 to 2009. Curtis reportedly fixed his swing before appearing in the Arizona Fall League last fall and raked there (in a hitting-friendly environment), in spring training, and for Triple-A Scranton in April (.339/.435/.441), but an ankle sprain interrupted his season and he’s been back to being awful since returning to action, hitting .226/.284/.306 in June. Even with his strong start, he’s homerless on the season. Curtis, now 25, bats lefty with a reverse split (at least this season) and can play all three outfield positions. I don’t see the point, but then I didn’t see the point in Moeller, either.
Joe Girardi runs out his primary lineup tonight. Remember, there’s no designated hitter, so A.J. Burnett hits ninth behind Brett Gardner.
Friggin’ Mets. I wish they’d decide what they are. They finished April with an eight-game winning streak that lifted them into first place, but by the time the Yankees made their way over to Queens on May 21, the Muts had fallen all the way down to last place in the National League East, a full seven games behind the Phillies. The Mets took two of three from the Yankees that weekend and, including those two wins, they have gone 18-5 since, vaulting past the slumping Phils and climbing within a half game of the similarly surging first-place Braves.
What gives? Well, a seven-game winning streak built on series sweeps of the Orioles and Indians has played a part, but the Yankees can’t talk trash about that having just beat up on those two teams to slip into a first-place tie themselves.
Replacing John Maine and Oliver Perez in the rotation with 23-year-old Jonathon Niese (who had been on the disabled list with a hamstring strain) and journeyman knuckleballer R.A. Dickey (who had been in the bullpen) has also been key. Maine and Perez both hit the DL with ERAs over 6.00, while Niese and Dickey, in eight combined starts since mid-May, have gone 7-0 with a 2.28 ERA. Hisanori Takahashi, another repurposed reliever, has also been a solid addition to the rotation having turned in three quality starts in five tries, going 2-1 with a 3.81 ERA. Add in a Cy Young-contending season from Mike Pelfrey and his new split-finger fastball and incumbent ace Johan Santana, and the Mets rotation, which seemed in ruins a month ago, is suddenly a strength.
Then there’s David Wright. On May 7, he was hitting .287/.416/.568 with seven homers, earning an honorable mention in my debut Awards Watch column on the MVP races soon after. Then, from May 8 to May 29, he hit just .187/.256/.320 with one home run and 31 strikeouts in 20 games, a rate of one K every 2.8 plate appearances. Since then, over a period of just less than three weeks, he’s hit .431/.477/.724 with four home runs and just 12 Ks (5.4 PA/K). It’s oversimplification to say as goes Wright, so go the Mets, but the parallels are certainly indicative of his importance to the team. Of course, Wright needs someone to drive in, and on that count, Jose Reyes’ resurgence has been perfectly timed. Over that 18-5 stretch, Reyes has hit .371/.419/.577 with eight steals in nine attempts.
Those performances from Reyes and Wright have been especially important because Jason Bay, since tripling his season home run total by going deep twice off CC Sabathia, has hit just one more dinger in his last 19 games, going .234/.306/.351 over that span. Similarly, rookie Ike Davis, who was driving the offense when the Yankees were in Queens, has hit just .235/.278/.425 since, though he’s been hot the last few games, getting two hits in each game of the Cleveland series, three of them for extra bases.
The pitching matchups for this weekend’s Subway Series finale are identical to the previous series in Queens four weeks ago. In that series, Javier Vazquez and Takahashi dueled to a draw in a 2-1 Yankee win Friday night. Then Pelfrey and Santana shut the Yankees down the next two nights as Phil Hughes and CC Sabathia struggled. Hughes and Sabathia have been better of late, but they have their work cut out for them rematching against the Mets top two starters.
Tonight, the Yankees look to rouse their bats from their recent two-game slumber as they take on 35-year-old Japanese “rookie” lefty Takahashi. There’s been a general impression lately that the Yankees are struggling against left-handed starters. There’s something to that as the team has hit just .252/.337/.426 in games started by a lefty versus .290/.374/.451 in games started by a righty and is just 12-11 in games started by opposing lefties, but I’m not sold. Overall, the Yankees have hit .277/.363/.460 against left-handed pitching and .277/.361/.434 against righties. I think the issue is rather the quality of the lefties they’ve been facing rather than the handedness of those pitchers. Nine of those losses were started by Johan Santana, Jon Lester, David Price, Rickey Romero, Brett Cecil, Jon Danks, Jamie Moyer, Scott Kazmir, and Dallas Braden. The other two were games were lost by the Yankee bullpen and had little to do with the either starting pitcher (one was Sergio Mitre vs. Detroit spot-starter Brad Thomas, who pitched just three innings, the other was the game in which David Huff got hit in the head by an Alex Rodriguez line drive in the third inning).
Takahashi’s first major league start came against the Yankees. His second came against the Phillies. In those two games he allowed no runs in 12 innings and struck out 11 against one walk. In his next two starts, against the weak-hitting Padres and Marlins, he gave up 11 runs in 9 1/3 innings while striking out six against four walks and yielding three home runs. His last time out, he allowed just one run in seven frames to the Orioles, but struck out only two. As for Vazquez, as I reported on Monday, he is 4-2 with a 2.94 ERA over his last six starts, including six scoreless innings against the Mets, and has won each of his last three starts, posting a 2.57 ERA while striking out 22 in 21 innings against just five walks and 11 hits (albeit with four of those hits leaving the park).
Three weeks ago the idea of the Yankees coming out of the soft part of their schedule and running right into the two-time defending National League champion Phillies was downright frightening, but as luck would have it, the Yankees might be catching the Phillies at exactly the right time. Though they’ve split four of them, the Phillies haven’t won a series since mid May and are 6-14 in their last 20 games having fallen to third place in the NL East behind the Mets (the Mets!).
Shockingly, the Phillies big problem has been scoring runs. Over an 11 game span from May 22 to June 2, they scored just 14 runs while going 2-9 over that span. Since then they’ve perked up a bit, but only a bit. Take out their one ten-run outburst against the Marlins a week ago and the Phillies have scored just three runs per game in eight of their last nine contests while going 3-5 in those games.
How did the team that led the NL in runs in each of the last four seasons suddenly lost the ability to score? Start with a calf injury that has limited 2007 MVP and leadoff hitter Jimmy Rollins to 12 games. Chase Utley missed two games with the flu in mid-May, has hit just .175/.295/.263 in 95 plate appearances since, and hasn’t homered since May 20. Ryan Howard, always a slow starter (.260/.342/.525 career in the first half vs. .303/.407/.633 in the second half) is sticking to that pattern with a .286/.342/.461 line thus far. That’s the core of the Phillies’ offense right there, and the team’s inability to replace Rollins with even a replacement level bat (per VORP, Wilson Valdez and Juan Castro have combined to cost the Phillies a half a win relative to replacement level already this season) has made his absence hurt even more than it should.
But that’s not all. Raul Ibañez, who was a stud last year before a groin injury interrupted his flow, is looking every one of his 38 years this year, putting up his worst performance since he became a full-timer a decade ago, hitting .247/.335/.394. There’s so much slumping going on in the Phillies’ lineup that it seems to have become contagious. Jayson Werth, who should be one of the top free agents to hit the market this winter, was hitting .327/.403/.641 on May 25, but has hit just .137/.241/.235 in 58 PAs since.
I bet Roy Halladay thought he had left his complete-game losses behind him in Toronto, but he suffered a complete game loss on May 18 to the Pirates of all teams, losing 2-1, and in his last start, he allowed just one run in eight innings but took another loss as the Phillies failed to score against Josh Johnson and lost 2-0 (though I suppose that latter was fair play as Johnson was the losing pitcher in Halladay’s perfect game despite not allowing an earned run in that start).
Halladay has a 1.96 ERA on the season and has complied this line in his last three starts: 24 IP, 16 H, 3 R, 0 HR, 2 BB, 26 K. He faces CC Sabathia tonight, who according to Yahoo! Sports, “is 6-3 this season, but four of those wins have come against the Orioles, who began play Monday with by far the worst record in baseball (17-46). Sabathia’s ERA in his other nine starts this season is 4.69.” Indeed, Sabathia has been sharp in his last two starts, but both came against the O’s, and in the two before that he gave up 11 runs (ten earned) in just 11 innings in losses to the Mets and the lowly Indians.
Facing a slumping Phillies team that typically relies on big lefty bats Howard and Utley could help CC continue his recent success, but even if he pitches well, one will still have to wonder if it was CC or his slumping opposition that was the key factor. Either way, he’ll have his work cut out for him facing Halladay.
The next two pitching matchups are far more favorable to the Yankees. On Wednesday, A.J. Burnett takes on Kyle Kendrick, who is filling in for injured lefty J.A. Happ, and on Thursday the seniors tour comes to town as 47-year-old Jamie Moyer takes on the red-hot Andy Pettitte, who, at 38, is still nine years Moyer’s junior.
Alex Rodriguez remains out of the lineup tonight due to his hip flexor tendonitis, but said the swelling has gone down and that he could start at third base tomorrow. Rodriguez was supposed to DH tonight and is available to pinch-hit. Ramiro Peña bats ninth and plays third base and with the DH spot opened back up, Jorge Posada, who was originally in the lineup at catcher, will DH and hit sixth behind Nick Swisher with Robinson Cano cleaning up. The bottom three in the lineup are Brett Gardner (LF), Francisco Cervelli (C), and Peña.
In other injury news, Sergio Mitre, who hadn’t pitched since the first day of the Toronto series, was placed on the 15-day disabled list with an oblique injury that occurred during batting practice on Sunday (the Yankees play six games in NL parks next week, though I can’t imagine Mitre would have gotten an at-bat or been expected to deliver had he had one). He is being replaced by lousy lefty Boone Logan. If the Yankees retroactively date Mitre’s DL stay, he would be eligible to be activated on Saturday, though I’m sure he wouldn’t be ready to return that quickly.
Toward the end of the 2007 season, it seemed obvious that the Astros, on their way to a 73-89 record just two years removed from the franchises’ only World Series appearance, were going to have to start rebuilding. Instead, the team hired former Phillies general manager Ed Wade and decided to take an out-of-left-field shot at winning their weak division, which had been won by an 85-win Cubs team in ’07.
Wade traded closer Brad Lidge to the Phillies in November, but made no effort to trade any of his other valuable veterans and instead traded seven players to the Orioles and Diamondbacks in December for shortstop Miguel Tejada and closer Jose Valverde, respectively. Thanks to a monster season from Lance Berkman, it almost worked. The Astros won 86 games in 2008 and were just two games behind the Wild Card lead on September 14, but a five-game losing streak at that point ended their postseason hopes and they finished 11 games behind the 97-win Cubs in the division and 3.5 games behind the second-place Brewers for the Wild Card.
Despite that disappointment and winning just 74 games in 2009, the Astros still have not rebuilt, though now that they’re on pace for a sub-70 win season this year, it seems the time has finally come as Berkman, who has a $15 million option for 2011, ace Roy Oswalt, who is owed $16 million next year with an option for the same amount in 2012, and left fielder Carlos Lee, who is owed $37 million over the next two seasons and thus could prove unmovable, are all expected to be on the block for this year’s trading deadline.
I’m actually impressed that the Astros are doing as well as they are this season. Coming into the season, I really thought Houston would be the worst team in the majors this year, but right now, five teams in baseball have worse records, and the Royals have an identical one. Still, only the Orioles and Pirates have worse run differentials and Baseball Prospectus’s Third-Order Wins drop the ‘Stros below the O’s as well.
Yeah, they’re that bad.
The Astros biggest problem is they can’t score. Again, only the O’s and Bucs have scored fewer than the Astros average of 3.34 runs per game. The Astros’ team on base percentage is .291, which I needn’t tell you is the worst in the majors, and their .340 slugging is also dead last among the 30 teams. Their team OPS+ it 69. It’s stunning how bad the Astros offense is. Berkman is slugging just .418. Carlos Lee has done little outside of his nine home runs (.227/.264/.396). The second-best hitter on the team to this point has been 30-year-old infield castoff Jeff Keppinger, who is hitting a very batting-average-dependent .300/.352/.399 with all but one of his extra-base hits being doubles. Busted catching prospect J.R. Towles again failed to hold onto the job, leaving it in the hands of catch-and-throw veteran Humberto Quintero (.252/.282/.353). Second baseman Kaz Matsui was so bad he got released. The new left side of the infield, free agent third baseman Pedro Feliz and rookie shortstop Tommy Manzella, is hitting a combined .222/.259/.288 with three homers and 15 unintentional walks in 382 plate appearances. It’s bad, people, real bad.
The pitching is better, in part because it has to be, and in part because Wade took a gamble on one of his former Phillies players and it paid off. Brett Myers, who starts tonight against Andy Pettitte, is leading the Astros in ERA (3.01) and wins (4). Roy Oswalt, who the Yanks will miss, has pitched better, but with less luck (2.66 runs of support per game and a 3-8 record) and has struggled in his last two starts, inflating his ERA by close to a run. Twenty-six-year-old Felipe Paulino, whom the Yankees will also miss, has been coming on strong of late, but with little to show for it (3.00 runs of support and a 1-7 record).
The performances of the other two starting pitchers the Yankees will face this weekend, 31-year-old lefty Wandy Rodriguez and 38-year-old veteran Brian Moehler, have been less encouraging. Rodriguez, who will face the rejuvenated Javier Vazquez on Saturday, showed some nice improvement in his late 20s and seemed to have a break-out season last year, winning 14 games for a bad team with a 3.02 ERA, 193 strikeouts, and a 3.06 K/BB, but this year his strikeouts are down, his walks are up, he posted a 6.75 ERA in May, and he is getting killed by righties (.324/.391/.459). Moehler, who will face Phil Hughes, a pitcher 15 years his junior, on Sunday, is a replacement for injured 25-year-old Bud Norris, who wasn’t pitching well either. Moehler has made three starts in place of Norris, one awful, one solid, one quality, but this is a pitcher who has posted a 5.16 ERA over the last six seasons and has struck out just 3.6 men per nine innings this season.
Frankly, the Yankees should sweep this series. There are no Jake Arrieta’s on the way to the Bronx to replace Moehler. If there’s any concern here, it’s that the Yankees’ interleague history against the Astros comes with some bad mojo. First there was the six-pitcher no-hitter seven years ago tonight (thanks for the reminder, Will), then there was Chein-Ming Wang’s career-altering broken foot in 2008. The upside is that the Yankees are 5-0 against the Astros in games in which they’ve gotten a hit. Here’s hoping they keep that streak intact this weekend.
With Brett Gardner still out with pain in his thumb and Alex Rodriguez diagnosed with tendonitis in his hip flexor (apparently unrelated to his hip labrum issue from last year), the Yankee lineup is a bit short tonight. Robinson Cano hits cleanup and Nick Swisher backs him up in the five spot, that leaves the two hole to Curtis Granderson, brings Francisco Cervelli up to seventh, Granderson’s usual spot, and the last two spots are the replacement players: Ramiro Peña at third and Kevin Russo in left. Gardner is going to take batting practice and the doctors say Rodriguez could pinch hit (both are day-to-day), but for all intents and purposes, the Yankee bench is Marcus Thames and Chad Moeller.
Good thing they’re playing the Astros and have four days to get healthy before they have to face the Phillies. To that end, Jorge Posada has tested himself behind the plate and says he’s ready to catch. I still prefer him in the DH spot, but I don’t think Posada starting at DH necessitates Moehler being on the roster if Posada can catch. Moeller can always be called back up for the next day’s game if there’s an injury to Cervelli, so at most you’d lose the DH for a few innings without Moehler there. What’s more detrimental to the team: a couple of at-bats going to a pitcher or Chad Moeller taking up a roster spot every single day?
The Yankees are 8-1 against the Orioles this year, and the O’s have scored an average of just 2.2 runs in those nine games. The Yankees swept the O’s last week in the Bronx, part of a ten-game Orioles’ losing streak during which the O’s scored an average of 1.6 runs per game against their opponent’s 6.6. That streak was snapped on Sunday as the O’s pulled out a 4-3, 11-inning victory over the Red Sox.
The only change the O’s have made since leaving the Bronx is that they finally fired manager Dave Trembley, replacing him with third-base coach Juan Samuel on an interim basis. I always thought the knock on Trembley’s predecessor Sam Perlozzo was that his team would lie down on him late in the season, but that trend continued under Trembley. This year they never stood up despite being expected to finally show some signs of life. It’s wasn’t Trembley’s fault that the only members of the lineup who are hitting are 32-year-olds Ty Wigginton and Luke Scott or that Brian Roberts got hurt, but then there’s nothing to credit Trembley with either. Trembley’s winning percentage had dropped in each of his three seasons despite the perception that the team was improving its talent level. It was time to make a change, but don’t expect the team to rally around Samuel, who had been coaching third-base for the O’s since 2006.
When the Yankees began their current stretch of patsy opponents, commenter OldYanksFan suggested that the Yankees should really aim to win 12 of their 16 games against the Indians, Orioles, Blue Jays, and Astros. Thus far they are 7-3, but I think it’s entirely within reason to expect them to take five of their next six against Baltimore and Houston and not out of the question to expect them to sweep their way through the weekend, particularly given that they won’t be facing Roy Oswalt when the Astros come to town. That work begins tonight as Phil Hughes, who aced his last two starts, the last coming against the O’s, looks to keep hard-luck Kevin Millwood winless on the season.
Now that the Red Sox, Braves, Dodgers, and Reds (all teams I picked to make the playoffs this year) are ascendant, there are just two teams whose performances escape my understanding. One is the San Diego Padres, who continue to have the best record in the National League thanks to a wildly overperforming starting rotation and despite almost no contribution from their offense. The other is the Toronto Blue Jays, who are tied with the Red Sox with the fourth-best record in the American League thanks to a homer-happy offense that leads the majors in dingers having tagged 20 percent more taters than the second-place Bosox. The Blue Jays also lead the majors in slugging with a remarkable .474 team mark, but are fourth-worst in on-base percentage, second only to the Diamondbacks in strikeouts, and their pitching has been merely average.
If that’s not confusing enough, here are the Jays’ top home run hitters this year:
16 – Jose Bautista
13 – Vernon Wells
11 – Alex Gonzalez
Huh? Bautista’s 16 homers lead the majors; they also tie his previous career high set in 2006. Wells averaged just 17 taters the last three years, and Alex Gonzalez averaged just 13 in his six full seasons from 2003 to 2009 (he missed 2008 due to a knee injury). Wells has hit 30 homers twice before, but while Bautista and Gonzalez are both known to have some pop, they’ve both far exceeded their previous propensity for power.
I might have understood if the Jays were winning with starting pitching. Shaun Marcum is back from a season and a half lost to Tommy John surgery and pitching like a front-of-the-rotation horse. Ricky Romero, who faces Andy Pettitte on Saturday afternoon, is building on his strong rookie performance from a year ago, and Brandon Morrow, the former Mariners prospect acquired in an offseason swap for Brandon League and right-field prospect Johermyn Chavez and who faces Javy Vazquez on Sunday, has tremendous stuff, as the Yankees saw first hand when he pitched 7 2/3 no-hit innings against them in late 2008. Yet, Morrow has been erratic, and after Marcum and Romero, the pitching staff has been largely mediocre.
I suppose the good news for the Jays is that while Bautista and Gonzalez have been going yard, their young offensive core of Adam Lind, Aaron Hill, and Travis Snider have been scuffling and/or injured. That suggests that once the early-season flukes fade (which seems to already be happening), the Jays will still have the bats to keep the offense afloat. Still, even with those that young core producing, the Jays weren’t really supposed to be good this year (as I thought I made clear in my essay on the team in Baseball Prospectus 2010).
The Jays have gotten fat on the Orioles and Indians (9-0), but then so have the Yankees (11-2). Perhaps it’s more telling that Toronto is 3-9 against the Rays and Red Sox and have yet to face the Yankees. That ends this weekend as the Yanks arrive in Toronto for a three-game set. Things kick off tonight with A.J. Burnett facing sophomore lefty Brett Cecil. Burnett had two quality starts against his old team in the Bronx last year, but lost his one start in Toronto. In his career, he’s 22-9 with a 3.83 ERA with 290 strikeouts in 270 innings pitched at the Rogers Centre, most of them with the Jays behind him rather than in front of him.
Cecil was the Jays’ top pitching prospect heading into last year, but in that organization that’s not a huge compliment. He was erratic as a rookie last year and started this year in the minors, joining the rotation at the end of April. Toss out his one big stinker against the Rangers on May 14 and he’s been solid thus far, going 5-2 with a 2.45 ERA in his other seven starts. In his last three, he has averaged roughly 7 1/3 innings while posting a 1.66 ERA and a 0.74 WHIP, winning all three games.
Marcus Thames starts in left against the lefty Cecil, giving Brett Gardner a day off. Chad Moeller catches Burnett, giving Francisco Cervelli a breather. Jorge Posada is the DH again.
