Saturday, May 23, 2009
Saturday Morning Snapshot
(Held Hostage by A.J. Burnett Edition)
In the northeastern part of the U.S., you can't have a better baseball weekend than a combo that brings together the Yankees, Phillies, Red Sox & Mets. Throw in the fact they're all over .500, and all to varying degrees playoff contenders and you have potential for a great three days in New York & Boston.
The night, however, proved to be a bit anticlimactic. In New York, the Phillies dusted off the Yankees in a tidy two hours and thirty-three minutes. The Yanks looked like a team that had burned the candle as far as it would go. Their winning streak halted before it could reach 10, something they haven't done since 2005. From the first pitch of the game on which Jimmy Rollins hit a home run to the 5-0 lead Philly built up before New York even put a run on the board, the outcome of this one felt inevitable throughout.
While Brett Myers wasn't dominant in any sense, but he was steady and the happy beneficiary of a nice, early cushion, good defense and some quick Yankee ABs. His final line: 8/8/3/3/0/5
A.J. Burnett on the other hand is starting to tread into the dangerous area of becoming a liability.
Of the three big free agent signings this is the one I was the most lukewarm on (and worse than that, truth be told), a sentiment I think shared by most Yankee fans. And when Burnett's most notable contribution to the season so far is tossing a couple of pies into his teammates' faces, well . . . there's just not a lot there.
Burnett hasn't won a game now since April 14. That's 5 1/2 weeks ago. He hasn't had an ERA under five since taking the mound at Fenway Park on April 25. He's second in the American League in home runs allowed, tied with Scott Baker at 10. The league leader is Jeremy Guthrie with 11. He's tied for third in walks allowed with 27.
From a fan's perspective, he's a frustrating guy to watch pitch. He has a mid-90s fastball, which sometimes seems to just crackle out of his hand, and he's typically able to maintain his velocity deep into games. He has an absolutey killer slider, which he used to bury Chase Utley a couple times last night. But these top-of-the-line tools just come & go . . . and I don't mean just game-to-game or inning-to-inning I mean batter-to-batter. There is no sense of continuity for Burnett, no such thing as "being on a roll" within a game. His powers seem to appear and reappear for no apparent reasons.
Case in point: In the same inning (top of the 5th) that he struck out Utley on a nasty pitch to start the frame, he gave up one of the longest home runs to date at The New Launching Pad to Jayson Werth three batters later. And this kind of thing happens all the time with Burnett.
I wrote the other day referencing the predilection of the saber-set to favor innings eaters with lesser numbers than guys who have better numbers with fewer innings pitched. And again, I don't know what the breaking point is for this philosophy. Is it better to have a guy who throws 5.2 innings every time out with a 3.00 ERA or a guy who goes that extra inning or inning-and-a-half and allows a 1/2 run more on average?
Burnett is an interesting case for this approach, because one thing he does do is throw his share of innings. He's thrown 58 now, good for 11th in the A.L. The only other starter in front of him likewise with only two victories is Cliff Lee, but that's more of a case of bad luck (2.90 ERA) than bad pitching. In fact, of the top 16 in terms of innings pitched, Burnett has by far the worst ERA:
Top 11 - Innings Pitched - AL
(through May 22)
2.52 - 75 IP - Halladay
3.12 - 66.1 - Millwood
0.82 - 66.0 - Greinke
3.43 - 63.0 - Sabathia
2.90 - 62.0 - Lee
3.41 - 60.2 - Garza
2.52 - 60.2 - Weaver
3.43 - 60.1 - Shields
2.55 - 60.0 - Jackson
3.17 - 59.2 - Saunders
5.28 - 58.0 - Burnett
You have to drop to 17th/18th/19th to find others (Guthrie, Carmona and Lester respectively) to find others that fit this high innings/poor results profile.
From a glass half-full perspective, you know what you're getting from Burnett nearly every time out. A guy whose going to pitch 6 innings, give or take a couple outs, and give up somewhere between three and five runs. With an offense like the Yankees, you'd think there would be more days in which they'd be able to compensate for this type of mediocrity and give him some W's for his record. But it just hasn't happened. At least not yet anyway.
There are a lot of things to point to as to why the Yankees became a bad post-season team after 2003. But the most glaring deficiency was their starting pitching in general, but more specifically having to rely on poor pitchers or broken-down pitchers in decisive games: the Randy Johnson/Jaret Wright disasters in games 3 and 4 vs. Detroit; Roger Clemens, game 3 vs. Cleveland; a Shawn Chacon in game 4 vs. Anaheim in '05, although admittedly he pitched well that night.
If the Yankees happen to get to the post-season, is A.J. Burnett a continuation of this theme? Am I going to feel good about giving the ball to this guy in a Game 3/Game 4 season-on-the-line type situation? There's hope. Hope that he has one of those scattered nights when he's absolutely untouchable. But hope is an entirely different animal than confidence.
(Held Hostage by A.J. Burnett Edition)
In the northeastern part of the U.S., you can't have a better baseball weekend than a combo that brings together the Yankees, Phillies, Red Sox & Mets. Throw in the fact they're all over .500, and all to varying degrees playoff contenders and you have potential for a great three days in New York & Boston.
The night, however, proved to be a bit anticlimactic. In New York, the Phillies dusted off the Yankees in a tidy two hours and thirty-three minutes. The Yanks looked like a team that had burned the candle as far as it would go. Their winning streak halted before it could reach 10, something they haven't done since 2005. From the first pitch of the game on which Jimmy Rollins hit a home run to the 5-0 lead Philly built up before New York even put a run on the board, the outcome of this one felt inevitable throughout.
While Brett Myers wasn't dominant in any sense, but he was steady and the happy beneficiary of a nice, early cushion, good defense and some quick Yankee ABs. His final line: 8/8/3/3/0/5
A.J. Burnett on the other hand is starting to tread into the dangerous area of becoming a liability.
Of the three big free agent signings this is the one I was the most lukewarm on (and worse than that, truth be told), a sentiment I think shared by most Yankee fans. And when Burnett's most notable contribution to the season so far is tossing a couple of pies into his teammates' faces, well . . . there's just not a lot there.
Burnett hasn't won a game now since April 14. That's 5 1/2 weeks ago. He hasn't had an ERA under five since taking the mound at Fenway Park on April 25. He's second in the American League in home runs allowed, tied with Scott Baker at 10. The league leader is Jeremy Guthrie with 11. He's tied for third in walks allowed with 27.
From a fan's perspective, he's a frustrating guy to watch pitch. He has a mid-90s fastball, which sometimes seems to just crackle out of his hand, and he's typically able to maintain his velocity deep into games. He has an absolutey killer slider, which he used to bury Chase Utley a couple times last night. But these top-of-the-line tools just come & go . . . and I don't mean just game-to-game or inning-to-inning I mean batter-to-batter. There is no sense of continuity for Burnett, no such thing as "being on a roll" within a game. His powers seem to appear and reappear for no apparent reasons.
Case in point: In the same inning (top of the 5th) that he struck out Utley on a nasty pitch to start the frame, he gave up one of the longest home runs to date at The New Launching Pad to Jayson Werth three batters later. And this kind of thing happens all the time with Burnett.
I wrote the other day referencing the predilection of the saber-set to favor innings eaters with lesser numbers than guys who have better numbers with fewer innings pitched. And again, I don't know what the breaking point is for this philosophy. Is it better to have a guy who throws 5.2 innings every time out with a 3.00 ERA or a guy who goes that extra inning or inning-and-a-half and allows a 1/2 run more on average?
Burnett is an interesting case for this approach, because one thing he does do is throw his share of innings. He's thrown 58 now, good for 11th in the A.L. The only other starter in front of him likewise with only two victories is Cliff Lee, but that's more of a case of bad luck (2.90 ERA) than bad pitching. In fact, of the top 16 in terms of innings pitched, Burnett has by far the worst ERA:
Top 11 - Innings Pitched - AL
(through May 22)
2.52 - 75 IP - Halladay
3.12 - 66.1 - Millwood
0.82 - 66.0 - Greinke
3.43 - 63.0 - Sabathia
2.90 - 62.0 - Lee
3.41 - 60.2 - Garza
2.52 - 60.2 - Weaver
3.43 - 60.1 - Shields
2.55 - 60.0 - Jackson
3.17 - 59.2 - Saunders
5.28 - 58.0 - Burnett
You have to drop to 17th/18th/19th to find others (Guthrie, Carmona and Lester respectively) to find others that fit this high innings/poor results profile.
From a glass half-full perspective, you know what you're getting from Burnett nearly every time out. A guy whose going to pitch 6 innings, give or take a couple outs, and give up somewhere between three and five runs. With an offense like the Yankees, you'd think there would be more days in which they'd be able to compensate for this type of mediocrity and give him some W's for his record. But it just hasn't happened. At least not yet anyway.
There are a lot of things to point to as to why the Yankees became a bad post-season team after 2003. But the most glaring deficiency was their starting pitching in general, but more specifically having to rely on poor pitchers or broken-down pitchers in decisive games: the Randy Johnson/Jaret Wright disasters in games 3 and 4 vs. Detroit; Roger Clemens, game 3 vs. Cleveland; a Shawn Chacon in game 4 vs. Anaheim in '05, although admittedly he pitched well that night.
If the Yankees happen to get to the post-season, is A.J. Burnett a continuation of this theme? Am I going to feel good about giving the ball to this guy in a Game 3/Game 4 season-on-the-line type situation? There's hope. Hope that he has one of those scattered nights when he's absolutely untouchable. But hope is an entirely different animal than confidence.
