Now, I could talk about the debate that is going on over at River Ave. Blues right now, but it makes much more sense to just let you see for yourself. Check it out here.

So lets instead imagine that the Yankees decide to stand pat in the second half and try to reach the playoffs. What needs to go right for the Yankees to make the playoffs?

And here’s the sad truth: For the Yankees to reach the playoffs, just about everything needs to go right.

So basically, we need to get our sh*t together. Robby Cano needs to hit like the second-half madman he has in the last few seasons; Chien-Ming Wang needs to come back from his injury early and pitch like a groundball machine. Andy Pettitte needs to start picking off every runner that reaches first base… or at least, improve his overall performance. The Mustached Madman needs to keep on hitting like it’s 2000. Derek Jeter needs to start hitting like Derek Jeter.

I could talk about what every member of the Yankees needs to do, but I think it’s obvious. The team needs to start performing like the New York friggin’ Yankees. We are a playoff contender, we need to start playing like one. Playing like a third place team just isn’t going to cut it. Playing like a first place team isn’t going to cut it. They need to be really really good.

In other notes, the Yankees have some really good catcher depth in the minors right now. Beyond the obvious Jesus Montero, they have Austin Romine, who has been pretty darn good so far, and Francisco Cervelli, who, if he hasn’t already returned, should be returning any time soon. They say that you can never have too much pitching depth; if there was any other position where that mantra stands, it would have to be catcher.

We’ve got a pretty important series coming up against our (new) division rivals, the Rays, so pay close attention over the next few days!

-TwentySeven

Jose Molina in 2008, as of 4/10/08, 10:20 PM EST: 7-21 (.333 AVG), 4 doubles, 857 OPS.

-Red

19 total walks were given up in the game, including 5 from Evan Meek in the 12th alone. By my calculations, 466 pitches were thrown in the game. That’s what you call a marathon.

And, after all that, my fourth favorite player in the league didn’t get a hit. (That’s Nyjer Morgan, who went 0-3.)

——

Meanwhile: The D-Backs signed Chris Young to a 6 year contract, and it’s believed that it’s close to Troy Tulowitzki’s 30-mill contract in the offseason.

Uh, what? Sure, he hit 36 homers last year, but he also had a .237 AVG, a .295 OBP, and, most telling, an 89 OPS+. Now he’s solid young talent with room to improve and has obviously very impressive power. But unless he gets his average and walks up soon, those 36 homers won’t do much, and it’ll be close to 30 million wasted for below-average production.

——

In other news: It’s about 9 PM EST, and the Yanks are winning against the DEVIL Rays in the 7th inning, 4-1. Now – brace yourselves – the Yankees may score more than 4 runs for the first time this season.

As of before tonight’s game, The Yankees are batting .146 with runners in scoring position this year, worst in the league, and are averaging 2.83 runs per game, 3rd worst in the league. Now I know it’s only six games into the season, but… still. The only thing that has saved the Yanks from a Detroit-like embarrassment of a start to the season is their pitching. Perhaps a few years ago the Yanks would be 0-6 or 1-5 if not for their pitching this year.

Oh, and the team that’s second worst in AVG w/ RISP and worst in RPG? Detroit. Only the Yanks have a team ERA of 4.17 (Bloated by that 13-4 rout vs Tampa Bay), while Detroit has a team ERA of 5.30. Thus, Detroit is 0-6.

Sorry Detroit fans, but I’ve got to say it: He, he, he.

Update, 9:20 PM EST: The Yankees have scored 5 runs! And by a 2-out hit with RISP. Rejoice in the streets!

-Red

We like to think that we weren’t bad, and we weren’t, but we just posted very inconsistently. But that’s all changed.

(A week passed since these two sentences.)

So yes, that’s changed. Some of us at least are back and we’re going to going to try to give you different perspectives of anything we feel like in the baseball world. Seriously. I’m serious. I am.

If you’re new to the site, you might want to pop in the “about” page.

-Red

Andy Pettitte used human growth hormone to recover from an elbow injury in 2002, the New York Yankees pitcher admitted two days after he was cited in the Mitchell Report. Pettitte said he tried HGH on two occasions, stressing he did it to heal faster and not enhance his performance. He emphasized he never used steroids.

This admission might change the way the Mitchell Report is being viewed and pave the way for more players to admit that they have used steroids before. Andy Pettitte is well respected within the players community and a big name like him sticking his neck out there could be a big deal.

In addition, I think that because he came clean about this, he’ll come out looking good for having the guts to take what comes with being labeled a cheater. The fact that he came clean about it doesn’t change the fact that he did cheat, but it changes the way I view him, and I’m sure it does for a lot of people too. Unlike guys like Roger Clemens and Barry Bonds who avoid coming clean and get entrenched in people calling them cheaters, he put his neck out there and admitted it was wrong. That’s good for baseball.

As we all know, former Senator Mitchell finally released his report on the usage of performance-enhancing drugs in baseball, and I have to admit, I am very, very unimpressed. I’m going to copy and paste a post I made on a message board, since I think it sums up my initial feelings quite well, and I should have a more detailed reaction next week, after I’ve had time to read the report cover-to-cover (and I escape the shadow of my coming finals):

Personally, I think the accusations and allegations of steroid users was ultimately the weakest aspect of the report, both from an investigative standpoint and from an effectiveness standpoint. Especially since this is by no means a comprehensive list, nor is everyone named in the report given equal documentation/corroborative evidence beyond hearsay and testimonial reports. Granted, there’s only so much one can expect from a report without subpoena power, but I think that’s precisely why that should have been an under-emphasized facet of the report. Either you should go all out, or not at all–and personally, I don’t think the costs of such an investigation match the positive results they’d produce.

We can talk all day about how the sexiness of names arouses interest in the report, but a lot of that interest is completely useless if it isn’t made into a positive force: that is to say, people throughout baseball (and ultimately, in the entire sports world, since there are sports that have as bad, if not worse, PED problems than baseball), at all levels and in all capacities, should put some serious effort into changing the culture of the sport in order to prevent such a thing from happening again.

I would imagine that, itself, would be incentive enough to try cleaning up the sport, and that public interest wouldn’t act as an additional motivator. But ultimately, I don’t think public interest even works that way–and if this turns out to be the firing gun that begins another round of fighting between ownership and the union (because, let’s be honest, the union probably isn’t all-too-thrilled with the allegations/accusations the report levies at individual players), then you’ve severely handicapped your ability to strengthen baseball’s anti-PED culture/policies.

It’s pretty sad that one of the first knee-jerk reactions that have been observed, both from the media and fans, was “who was named?”, rather than focusing on the positive aspects of the report, such as the descriptive “why and how did this happen in the first place?” and the prescriptive “what should baseball do about this moving forward, to prevent it from happening again?”

In the second respect, at least, I think Mitchell makes some pretty good points. Therefore, although my first impression of the report–and I’ll admit I did more skimming than reading throughout most of it, so that impression is likely to change–is rather critical, I think the report has the potential for some good. I did more reading than skimming when it came to Mitchell’s suggestions for the future, and I liked more than less of what was there.

I do fear that this report will drive a greater wedge between the owners and the union, which I think would be devastating for baseball moving forward, especially since both sides have been able to work so much better together these last few years (relative other periods of baseball history).

~The Fallen Phoenix

Today, we learned that Jimmy Rollins won, and the complaints of yesterday quickly faded away to a new set of complaints.

For example: Jimmy Rollins? He had a great season, sure, but really. His numbers were inflated by Citizen’s Bank Park. His team just barely beat the Mets. David Wright’s play was just as deserving of an MVP award as Jimmy Rollins. You could justify it by saying that the Phillies got into the playoffs, but it’s not Wright’s fault that the Mets didn’t get into the playoffs. According to VORP, Wright was second in the NL behind Hanley Ramirez, who’s team clearly was not close to the playoffs.

Meanwhile, J-Roll was ninth in the NL in VORP. Heck, even teammate Chase Utley had a higher VORP than him.

Both J-Roll and Wright play excellent defense, though J-Roll does it at a more difficult position. However, though they had similar numbers, Wright made nearly 100 less outs in a similar number of at-bats, and his OBP was far higher than that of J-Roll.

However, this year the writers were looking for a good story. What’s surprising is that they found it in J-Roll, when there was such an obvious feel-good story in Matt Holliday. He was fourth in the NL in VORP. His numbers may have been inflated by the Coors effect, but he was clutch and was a key to the Rockies getting to the playoffs. I fully expected him to get all the votes; he was far more deserving than J-Roll.

Thankfully, Holliday got second place by a very close margin, so most of the writers agreed with me, but it’s still disappointing to see him fall second. He may never have another season like this again.

The Detroit Tigers were several games out of a playoff spot. The Yankees barely scraped a playoff spot. In fact, considering how much A-Rod contributed, had he not been on the Yankees in 2007, replaced by an average third baseman, the Yankees would not have made the playoffs. That’s a lot of value that he provides.

There is no excuse for not voting for A-Rod. He did it all – excellent defense; consistent performance; excellent hitting out of an important defensive position, hitting in the clutch. Magglio had a great year; in a typical year he should have won. But A-Rod did not have a typical year; in fact, A-Rod had a historical year. There is a very legitimate argument that A-Rod had won of the ten greatest seasons of all time in 2007, and even an argument that, after Barry Bonds’ 2001 season, it is the second most valuable season by a hitter of all time. A year as historically amazing as A-Rod’s is just a class above Magglio’s year.

There were some other interesting things to note about MVP voting.  Mike Lowell… fifth? I’m sorry, but that’s just silly. According to VORP, there were fifteen more valuable hitters in the AL than Lowell. That’s a lot of people.

Jorge Posada ended up sixth behind Lowell. Despite the fact that Posada had the fourth highest VORP in the AL. I mean, catchers who can post and OPS+ of 154 with average defense just grow on trees, right?

In addition, Carlos Pena’s voting sadly disappointed me.  The fifth most valuable VORP-adjusted hitter in the AL got ninth place in voting.

Also surprising was Bobby Abreu receiving a seventh place vote. In perhaps his worst season ever, where he barely scrape a 114 OPS+.

Hopefully, the writers will learn. But until then, they make good blog fodder.

-TwentySeven

However, since that study was conducted in 2001, a few holes have been discovered. For one thing, there are pitchers out there who are able to maintain consistently at consistently low BABIP – typically extreme sinkerballers – Chien-Ming Wang, Brandon Webb, and Fausto Carmona were good examples of pitchers who had better numbers than their peripheral stats indicated.

However, what I really want to address is a very common misconception. Even my fellow writer Red used this misconception in the previous post, to some extent. The misconception is that BABIP is as random for hitters as it is for pitchers. Among pitchers, there are pitchers who consistently put up a trend of having low BABIP’s or high BABIP’s, but for the most part, BABIP comes from how good the fielders of the team are and from luck. With hitters, however, this is just not so. For hitters, there is a clear trend showing that BABIP is a skill. Some hitters, like Ichiro!, and Derek Jeter, quite consistently post very high BABIP’s. Some hitters, like Jack Cust or Pedro Feliz, consistently post low BABIP’s. That’s not to say that there isn’t luck involved in hitter BABIP, too. Just take Jorge Posada, who had a .389 BABIP in ’07. For a hitter, he posts a typically high BABIP, around .320, but it is quite clear that quite a bit of luck was involved in his season.

But for the most part, hitters maintain the similar BABIP’s year in and year out, with a bit of decline as the player gets older and slower, and just a touch of luck in the mix. Though BABIP is variable just as much as any stat, if you compare the standard deviation of a hitter’s BABIP to that of a pitcher, it is obvious that the pitcher’s BABIP is much more reliant on luck.

Hopefully that helps to clear up that misconception a bit.

-TwentySeven

…Or maybe it’s just because he had a ridiculously unfair BABIP in early ’07?

(Graph from fangraphs.com – thank you.)

You gotta love stats.

-Red