Two out of Three Won’t be Bad

Call me crazy, but based on the way the Yankees are playing lately, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to think the Yankees could take 2 out of three against Boston this week.

Probably the most interesting matchup is the first game. I always feel good about the Yankees chances when Joba pitches. The kid is legit: 2.64 ERA as a starter. He strikes out more than a man an inning, and has only allowed one walk in his last 12+ innings.

Joba matches up against Beckett, who yeah he’s Josh Beckett, and yeah he’s a Red Sock, and so I’m supposed to hate him, but dude can deal. Yankees will need runs in this one. But Joba should keep them in the game. Probably will come down to the pens. And for the first time in a long time, I like the Yanks pen against anyone.

Pettitte against Wakefield will be another good one in Game 2. Pettitte was admittedly pretty bad the last time he faced Boston, so hopefully he has made or will make some adjustments.

Game three is Ponson against Lester. While I keep waiting for the Sid Ponson experiment to go careening off the rails, maybe his contract with the devil has a few more decent starts left on it.

We’ll see, losing 2 of 3 or getting swept would be a real punch in the gut. Not insurmountable, but it will hurt.

Maybe he could help?

I mean, he is Batman, afterall.

For the past week or so, ever since I looked at how few home runs the Yankees are hitting this season, and how they are over delivering pitching and defense and seriously underdelivering offense, I’ve been screaming that the Yankees need a bat. I think I also threatened to start rooting for the Red Sox if they get a reliever.

Amazingly, not everyone is with me on this, but today I was happy to see that I’m not alone. The two Yankee bloggers, whose opinions I hold in the highest regard are Cliff Corcoran from Bronx Banter, and SG, from Replacement Level Yankees Weblog.

Here’s what Cliff had to say, and here’s SGs comment.

So while professional journalists like Pete Abraham insist that they need a starter, I don’t really think that’s the case.

An Open Letter to Brian Cashman

Dear Sir,

Jorge Posada works for you. Please insist to him that he get surgery like tomorrow. Resting his shoulder hasn’t helped anything so far. You have 3 more years and $30 million tied up in this guy. Forget this season, take care of the next three years.

Love

Me.

I’m trying very hard

to keep my composure. Sure the Yankees have won 5 straight and are closer to first than they have been since May. Still, there are so many concerns with this team, I intended to list them, but when I started taking mental inventory, I threw up in my mouth a little bit, so I’ll skip it.

Let’s just say that while the wheels could come flying off this wagon pretty spectacularly, I have hope. And frankly, if the last game played in Yankee Stadium is some meaningless regular season game, I might lose my mind for a few days, and just wander the streets numb.

What’s gonna need to happen.

Two of the Yankees prime problems this season have been:

1) The absence of Posada’s bat.
2) The absence of Cano’s bat.

One of these, seems to be improving. Cano has been hitting much better of late. The other of these looks like it’s going to continue. It appears that Posada should just shut it down for the season, have his surgery and get back healthy and strong next season.

So, what’s gonna need to happen if the Yankees want to make the playoffs is…

1) A-Rod is gonna have to carry the offense.
2) Giambi is gonna need to stay healthy and about as productive as he has been so far
3) Those two are going to need consistent help from one or more of the following: Cano, Abreu, Jeter or Matsui.

Frankly, I think Matsui is done for, so he’s not likely. Frankly I think Jeter is just old so I’m not betting on him. Frankly, I think Abreu is just Abreu. I don’t think he’s going to get really hot down the stretch. So that leaves us with Second Half Monster Robinson Cano. And I mean, he’s gonna need to go King Kong and Godzilla fucked and had a baby up in the Bronx if the Yankees are going anywhere.

The Heart of the Matter

It’s the home runs, stupid.

Lot’s of stuff spinning around about what the Yankees need if they want to make the playoffs this year. According to my favorite source “unsourced Internet rumor,” Brian Cashman is shopping for LH bullpen help. I personally think this is the wrong thing to be shopping for.

The Yankees pitching has been quite good this season, especially in the bullpen with only a few exceptions (I’m looking at you Hawkins).

Wang went down, but he was essentially replaced with Joba. Mussina has been very unexpectedly good, Pettitte has been good, Rasner has been better than either Hughes or IPK, and Ponson has been better (in a very small sample) than I thought he would be. Net net, the Yankees this season have allowed 10% fewer runs than they were projected to at the beginning of the year. *

The trouble with the team is the offense. Based on projections by SG at the RLYW, the Yankees have scored about 20% fewer runs this season than they should have by now.

So then the question is why. The team OBP is 3rd in the AL which is cool, but a lot of people are pointing out that the Yanks are horrendous with RISP. That’s true, and since clutch or situational hitting doesn’t seem to be a really repeatable skill, you would expect the team to revert to the mean, and start hitting better in those situations. And so, there’s hope. But I think the thing that people forget is that the Yankees are not hitting home runs. Like, at all. There are 3 hitters on the team with 10 or more HR, Giambi(20), A-Rod(20), and Abreu (10).**

The beauty of HR is that you can score runs when you don’t even have guys in “scoring position.” Historically, the Yankees have been well ahead of the league in HR hitting. Here is a list, going back to 2000 that shows, how many HR the Yanks have hit indexed against the league average.

So, going back to 2000 the Yankees have been at a bare minimum 7% better than the AL when it comes to HR hitting. This season, they are a tic below average. If they don’t find a way to increase the HR production, I’m not terrible optimistic about the post season.

Wouldn’t it be cool if like the all time best home run hitter was available on the cheap? Oh well, I guess it’s just a pipe dream.

*Based on 2008 team projections done by SG at RLYW (linked above.)
**Sexson has 11, none hit while a Yankee.

Chart: * straight projection based HR pace for Yankees and League.

Getting married is hell on blogging.

It’s been more than a while since my last update so I’ll just jump right in.

Couple of thoughts:

On the media: I think it’s funny how much people write about the fact that Murray Chass doesn’t like blogs. Guess what, I don’t like Murray Chass. So who cares? Whether Murray likes blogs or not, is irrelevant. It’s like discussing whether or not dinosaurs like meteors.

On the All Star Game: Expand the rosters to 35. Allow any team with a starting pitcher selected to the team to designate him as officially unavailable, then he gets to dress and hang out, but he can’t pitch and he doesn’t count against the roster.

That isn’t so bad, is it?

On the Fact that the Yankees suck: This will be the first year in what 12, 13 years that I won’t be watching baseball in October. That will be weird. I blame my wife. It’s a perfect correlation. The Yankees have never made the post season in a year in which I have been married. Sorry.

Finally, the fine fellas at FJM linked to a story by Jeffrey Flannagan of the KC Star in which he does a segmentation of sports fans, and one of the segments are stat loving VORPies by any other name. Flannagan calls them (me, us?) MOM’S BASEMENT.

I took it upon myself to hunt down Mr. Flannagan’s e-mail address and fired off the following note.

Mom’s Basement? Seriously?

First off, I love stats, my favorite baseball book is Baseball Between the Numbers. It’s great, you should read it. If you get paid money to write things about baseball, you should really read it. At the same time, my favorite baseball player is Jason Giambi, because he is totally human, and sweaty, and looks like he’d be a good dude to get hammered with. In other words, I’m glad he’s not a computer. I like stats, but I also like the imperfect, quirky cool guys who play the game.

In your attempt at jock humor, you managed to be offensive to those of us who like to understand the game of baseball by evaluating the facts. Well done, you should be very proud of yourself.

While I have a firm grasp on what VORP and WARP3 and EQA are, I will assume that you do not. (By the way, if you are going to make fun of long acronyms, how about the NAACP or the AARP, those are pretty long! What’s that? No? Fine, have it your way.) But, shame on you. You are a sportswriter, it is literally your job to at least know what those pretty simple baseball stats are.

The real problem with your piece though, is the utterly lazy creation of an already lazily created stereotype. You may take shots at my belief that batting average is a stupid statistic, or that pitchers wins are an unfair way to judge a pitcher. But you may not insinuate that my beautiful loft in Chicago, my beautiful wife, and my lack of mom living with me, are figments of my imagination.

If I may steal an arrogant device from Olberman, That sir, is where I draw the line.

Regards,

Steve Bonner. (and his mom) Shut up mom, you’re ruining everything!! (want some soup dear?)

In his defense, Flannagan replied to me in like 15 minutes and said,

Really wasn’t trying to strike a nerve with any of the stat folks. I just
think it can get a little carried away. Stats can be fun, but in the end, if
you want to know if a player is good, trust your eyes. Your eyes know.

Loved your email, though, and your sense of humor.

The lesson here is, of course, that I’m funny. Also, Flanagan was nice enough to reply, so there’s that.