Baseball Toaster was unplugged on February 4, 2009.
Mike Mussina and Javy Vazquez were both sharp last night. The Yanks squeezed out a run early with a soft two-out rally in the second that was started by two-out walks to Robinson Cano and Jason Giambi and extended by infield singles by Morgan Ensberg, who lined a shot off Vazquez's chest, and Melky Cabrera. Melky's hit plated the run before Vazquez struck out Johnny Damon to leave the bases loaded. There weren't any terribly hard-hit balls in the game until the fifth, when a two-out double by Jorge Posada plated Damon and Hideki Matsui, both of whom had singled, to make it 3-0 Yanks.
Entering the bottom of the fifth, Mussina had allowed just two singles and a walk, and only one of those two singles left the infield. With one out in that inning, Joe Crede blasted a solo homer to left, but the Yanks broke the game open with three runs in the top of the sixth to chase Vazquez, and Mussina came back with a 1-2-3 sixth of his own.
Moose allowed another solo homer (this to Carlos Quentin) with two outs in the seventh. With his starter up to 99 pitches and Crede due up again, Joe Girardi popped out of the dugout. When he got to the mound, he turned to Posada and asked, "What's he got?" Posada meant to say "there's nothing wrong with him," but it came out "he's got nothing." With that, Girardi began to lift his arm to call for a reliever, but Posada, realizing his mistake, quickly stopped his manager and explained what he meant to say. Girardi appeared puzzled, but accepted Posada's explanation and returned to the dugout without making a change. Mussina then got Crede out on two pitches to end the inning and his evening. (The incident reminded me of this game.)
Mussina was flat-out excellent in his seven innings and was working quickly and efficiently and in an easy rhythm with Posada (who had a great night overall, going 4 for 5 with three doubles). Said Moose after the game:
I didn't throw hardly any curveballs. Lotta sinkers, lotta cutters, good changeup. I think I had real good movement today. Seems like I jammed a lot of guys. They were diving out over the plate, and the ball ran back in on them a little bit, so I think the movement was my biggest asset today. I usually don't go out there planning not to throw curveballs. The curveball's a pretty big part of my game. Just today, right from the beginning, it seemed like I could throw two-seamers and get some run out of it, get some sink out of it, and I got a ton of groundballs, so I just kept on throwing them. [Jorge and I] were just trying to figure out what worked and we found something pretty early, so we just kept doing it. It wasn't really rocket science, we just kept doing what was working.
Those early grounders became fly balls in the latter innings (thus the two homers), but by then the game was in hand. As for that good changeup, the YES gun clocked a few of Mussina's pitches at 63 miles per hour. Now pitching, Bugs Bunny . . .
Girardi did bring in LaTroy Hawkins to start the eighth, but after a walk and a single, he turned to Billy Traber to face Jim Thome with one out and a four-run lead. For the second night in a row, Traber failed to retire Thome (he walked him in a completely unnecessary matchup on Tuesday night), giving up an RBI single that made the score 6-3. With Paul Konerko due up as the tying run and Joba Chamberlain having worked an inning and two-thirds the night before, Girardi went straight to Mariano Rivera for a five-out save.
Said Joe after the game, "The game was on the line. That was when we had to shut the door and close the game. . . . that was when we needed him."
Damn straight, skip. Girardi did the same thing with Chamberlain in the seventh inning on Tuesday night when the Sox, trailing by three, loaded the bases with one out. I applaud his willingness to use his big bullpen guns as stoppers (though I was less convinced of the need to leave Chamberlain in to pitch the eighth on Tuesday with the lead expanded to 9-4). Girardi has called on Rivera in the eighth twice this year and used Chamberlain in the seventh three times and has won all five of those games. The extra outs have thus far totaled up to just three extra innings combined for the two pitchers, which would pace out to about 22 innings over the course of the season.
Oh, and since I'm crunching numbers, if you take Manny Ramirez's hits and RBIs out of Mike Mussina's season totals, his ERA drops to 3.04 with a 1.06 WHIP.
Moose usually shakes off whoever's catching him at least a couple of time every inning. Last night, he was throwing whatever Po's fingers were telling him. Less thinking leads to more sucess from Mussina, let's hope so. Great game to watch, save the 8th.
Anyway, good game for the Yanks (exception: Traber/Hawkins).
YES's gun is wierd. It was clocking Mussina's fastball at 81 mph. I know he doesn't throw hard anymore, but that's low. It had been clocking Wang at 91, and we know he throws harder than that. One pitch Mo threw was clocked in the sixties. Something is screwy with that gun.
I had the ESPN feed (and gun) too. Something was obviously goofy with the YESgun. Makes you realize (again!) how many grains of salt are needed for those speed reads. What puzzles me (any engineers here?) is why this should be SO disparate ... with Clemens retired (one can hope) this ain't, er, Rocket science! Jenks at 88? Pshaw!
Cano is, frankly, in much worse shape than Giambi, and that take some doing. He gets the 'youth' pass because Jason can be done and there's no possible reason to assume Robbie is other than cold, but he's hurting the lineup a lot at the plate.
One other possibility is that whoever is operating it is at a poor angle. If he's too much to the side he's only measuring the component of velocity in his direction, but I don't know enough about modern radar guns to know if they can compensate for this.
I read through the comments in RLYW's game thread and I think it was SG who said "76 mph cutter? Fix your gun." It wasn't just off a bit. It was totally outta wack.
As for Cano... dude hit the ball hard again last night and got nothing. He also had some weak-ass ABs, don't get me wrong...
The real speed might lie somewhere between YES and ESPN. An 80mph fastball sounds slow, but I would bet that ESPN tries to set theirs up to get the fastest reading possible. After all, baseball isn't exciting unless someone's throwing 100mph.
There's a surprising Yankees name on the list. Make sure you don't take a sip of coffee while reading it, or you might spit it all over your screen:
http://baseballanalysts.com/archives/2008/04/pitchers_can_be.php
Enjoy.
As for Moose vs. Manny: Isn't exactly the problem him trying to throw fastballs? It's amazing that we have an owner who actually understands baseball. Where his dad would have called Moose a "Skinny Pussy Elk", his son correctly identifies the problem in his approach.
The big difference is he had control with the soft stuff. And it seems he can be successful with that approach. Find one breaking pitch that's working each game and stick with it - throw it 60-70% of the time. Mix in a few fastballs and a few of the other breaking balls and hitters will stay off balance. The best hitters will simply wait for a fastball. If he keeps them waiting, he can succeed. But he's going to get hammered if he has to/wants to rely on it.
With the below numbers, caution: small sample sizes apply.
Traber is, so far, worst on the team in preventing inherited runners from scoring. So, if you figure his job is to come in and prevent a lefty from knocking in the guys on base, he's not doing his job. However, he keeps having these non-LOOGY appearances, so it's a little hard to tell for sure from that.
Small sample, but he's next to last on the team in WXRL (-0.005; he was at +0.80 before last night). He's also 4th in terms of leverage appearances (by just the relievers), at 0.81. tommyl is right - Girardi's pen usage is excellent. Here are how the Yanks relievers break down by leverage score:
Mo - 1.74
Joba - 1.35
Bruney - 1.09
Traber - 0.81
Ohlendorf - 0.60
Hawkins - 0.52
Farnsworth - 0.52
Albaladejo - 0.31
Edwar - 0.07
That list is basically perfect. The two best relievers pitch the highest leverage situations. The two worst* relievers in the pen, Kyle and Hawkins, pitch the lowest leverage innings. The two guys who have been up just to be innings sponges - Albaladejo and Edwar - have done just that.
*FWIW, Hawkins is 3rd in WXRL (0.078) while Farnsworth is 4th (0.039). Like I said, small sample size . . .
Beat that
Carl Pavano
And extra points for anyone who realizes what typesetting notation I just used ;).
That being said, he hasn't been particularly good otherwise, and the poor defense isn't going to change.
Oh, for an edit button.
http://www.radarguns.com/radar-and-cosine-effect.html
I would think it would be a factor (along with calibration and type/manufacturer of gun) in the difference in speeds recorded.
I am honored to be elected into the nerdy baseball fan hall of fame. I'd like to start my acceptance speech today with some musings on the standard deviation of pitching changes...
;-)
This is a physicist's thing. We tend to go for broad understanding from a few basic principles so we don't name a lot of things (solutions to general relativity notwithstanding). Its those pesky biology types who have to name every little thing.
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