Favorable factors for Yankees
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- June
- 17
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The demise of Tyler Clippard led to a little research tonight.
The Yankees have started rookies in 28 of their 66 games, a ridiculous 42 percent of their games. No team in the majors is close to that. The rookies are 8-10 with a 6.33 ERA. This is Clippard, DeSalvo, Hughes, Igawa, Karstens, Rasner and Wright.
The other starters are 15-12, 3.74.
Now that Clemens is here and Wang and Mussina are healthy, the Yankees are going to run a good starter out there 80 percent of the time. There is no reason yet to trust Igawa. But other than Hughes, I suspect the K-Man is better than the rest of them. Once Hughes gets back, he becomes the fifth starter.
The Yankees have underachieved offensively as well.
They need to go 61-35 to finish with 95 wins. Is that unreasonable? It doesn’t seem that way to me.
15 games left against Baltimore.
14 games left against Toronto.
12 games left against Tampa.
10 games left against Kansas City.
That’s 53 percent of the remaining schedule. I’m not saying print playoff tickets yet. But there is every reason to be optimistic.
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on Sunday, June 17th, 2007 at 12:39 am by Peter Abraham.
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Chad Jennings
Sam Borden
There’s also games against the awful Rockies and Giants, as well as the White Sox and Seattle.
There is, however, a really tough patch at the end of August, where the Yankees play 14 games against Detroit, the Angels and Boston. Other than that, it’s fairly easy sailing. Although I always hate when they face the Rays, something about massive amounts of base stealing always unnerves me.
The Yanks definitely had the toughest schedule in baseball the first half of the year. I wouldn’t be surprised if, from now on, they have the easiest.
I never pencil in wins against teams no matter how bad they are.
We just got to keep playing the hard nosed ball we’ve been playing for 2 weeks. Its not brain surgery.
You pitch great. You win.
I’m not ready to pencil in Igawa for much but he showed me a lot in that Red Sox game. He has the talent to win and pitch well here. Hopefully hes got his stuff down and hes ready.
Thanks for the insight.
I’m not worried about Boston, but oh Gawd, six games against _Hell’s_ Angels.
those 8 games against the tigers are cool, since they occur in late august, when Detroit usually swoons.
The don’t call the July-August stretch the dog daze for nutin’
after the all-star break, they play 53 games, with only 2 days off.
in constrast, they have 3 off days in june and 3 off days during the last 3 weeks of the season.
Since where is it a statistical given that the A.L. wildcard has to win 95 games?
The only teams I see winning 95 or more games are Boston, Detroit, and L.A., but who cares since they’d most likely be the East, Central, and West winners respectively?
What does Oakland, Seattle, Chicago, Cleveland, and Minnesota have that any of them will win 94 games?
Oakland can hit but they can’t pitch. Seattle has 81-84 wins written all over them and they’re suddenly a 94-win team? Chicago has no offense or bullpen -what have they done to improve their team from last year? Cleveland has too many good division opponents to battle (Detroit, Chicago, and Minnesota) plus L.A., Seattle, Oakland, Boston, and the Yanks. Minnesota’s rotation is nowhere close to being as good as Santana/ Liriano/ Radke/ Silva and what’s their offense beyond Mauer, Morneau, and Hunter? I see these five teams winning 81-87 wins each, and the Yanks winning the wildcard with only 90-91 wins.
Level Plane:
Oakland has statistically the best pitching.
“Oakland can hit but they can’t pitch.”
what the heck are you talking about? i stopped reading after this sentence
Also factor in more wins once we decide to stop playing Phelps at 1B and stop going to Farnsworth in the 8th
The Yankees could be getting some help from Tampa Bay. Because of a quirk in the schedule, Boston won’t play it’s 1st game of 18 games against the D-Rays until July. In recent years the Rays have given Boston fits and there’s bad blood between the 2 teams.
Meanwhile, Brian Cashman needs to fine tune the Yankees with upgrades at 1st base, the bullpen, a 5th starter, and a backup catcher.
July should be a busy month ….
That’s good stuff Pete.
I think the July schedule is where the Yankees have to make a big move. 27 games, 16 at home, 11 on the road.
The road games are: 4 at Tampa, 4 at KC, and 3 at Baltimore.
A big (20-7, for example) July, helps out when the schedule gets tougher and they scuffle in those games.
They will scuffle in close, low scoring games because their bullpen walks too many people. However, if they can pound the bad teams, they should get to 95-97 wins.
They also need to find another righty bat. That will help their record against lefty starters.
The trends are on the upswing, provided they stay healthy, (hopefully) get Hughes back, and can add a few parts at the deadline.
“This is a simple game. You throw the ball! You hit the ball! You catch the ball!â€?
Well, the Yankees were doing none of those things particularly well for the first two months of the season. Now, they are.
Interesting look at the rotation Pete. Between Now and Hughes you have to figure the number 5 guy is getting about 10-12 starts. IF it;s Iggy, and he can keep the Yankees in 7 or 8 of those games, then we are sitting very pretty indeed.
1st base is still a big concern or me, though. I know that sometimes it’s better to be lucky than to be good, but Cairo’s luck with the bat has to tail off at some point. And missing a lumber swinging 1st sacker means that Abreu, Posada, Matsui and A-Rod HAVE to stay hot, there’s no big bopper to pick up their slack. I know rattling off four names like that makes it seem like the Yankees have an embarrassment of riches, but as April and May have shown, teams can go into collective funks. One more legitimate bat is a great antidote against that.
Can we trade Farnsworth and $50 million to Texas for Teixeira?
Maybe if we let Texas off the hook for their portion of A-Rod’s contract we can get them to give us Tex…
this team is a lock for the Wild Card woo hooo
I’m glad people are talking about Hughes, he looked like a young Doc Gooden and then the hammy!
As I said yesterday the bullpen situation looks alot different when Joe can mix and match for 5 outs and then Mo.
I think Phelps will hit better with some consistent ABs. Cairo is so great! However, he’s holding Phelps back and JP could maybe get us 15-20 long balls and 50+ RB!.
F the wild card, as far as the division goes, we concede nothing! Fight on New York Yankees!
Dan, have you watched the games? Phelps has been terrible both in the field and at bat. We have seen enough of him. At this point, he is the backup DH/ pinch hitter in NL parks for pitchers. That’s it. Look for a smaller 1B deal than Teix by the deadline.
You guys are definitely experts. One point though, I do not really think that Cairo hits well these days because he is lucky. I think that it is because he is the only one who is playing real small ball in the Yankees. He cuts, pushes, or bites the balls as much as he could (please forgive me for the in-accurate words I used…I am not native English speaker). Sometimes I think all of the Yankees put too much on their respective shoulders. That won’t help people to walk out of clutch times with good results. The highest level offense is an offense that continues rolling on. Ugly hits that people thought of as lucky ones are much better than long balls that are caught in front of the warning track or even at the wall.
Trivia, huh? Sorry.
BTW, Pete, you thank people for checking in your blog in the previous post. Let me tell you, I found this blog because I read your book about Chien-Ming Wang. Oh, you guys have never heard of that book? Yeah! That’s because that book was only published in Taiwan, in Traditional Chinese. Perhaps you guys can help pushing this book to be published in the US, in English (Spanish too, if possible). Nice book, Pete.
Alq, welcome to the blog. I agree with you that Cairo’s small ball approach is helpful. Not to mention his outstanding defense.
As to Pete’s book on Chien in Taiwanese, he’s mentioned it. He seems to have a special relationship with him. I would definitely buy the book if it gets published in English.
Wang, Mussina & Pettite all healthy and Clemens pitching only half of the season the Yanks can go 20-7 in July. The Yanks Schedule is very very easy for the next couple months and we should be able to go a run just like the 9 straight one.
I understand the excitement, but I don’t know if we should trust Hughes that much this season. He’s coming back from injury. He did have that game in Texas, butlet’s not forget that his debut wasn’t all that pretty. His upside in the future is undeniable, but he is still young and learning. He is going to be inconsistent, and putting him right back into the thick of a pennant race right after an injury doesn’t sound that smart to me. His changeup is not quite major league ready, and he takes way too long to home plate out of the stretch….
Level plane, Oakland has the best pitching in the AL and a weak offense. Their offense is anemic. Their pitching is what wins them games.
Screw the Wild Card, we are back in it for the division. The Red Sox won 1 – 0 against the Giants yesterday. Their offense has fallen asleep.
Jeff NJ,
I just don’t think we can Judge a guy off of 80 AB’s.
So, if not Texiera, who’s coming to play 1B?
As far as Oakland is concerned, Piazza is due back any day and some of their “clutch” hitters are back on track. They’re starting their second half surge a little early…
According to SG’s Pythagorean Final Winning Percentage table over at RLYW, the A’s MIGHT end up with 93 wins. That’s 2 ahead of the Yankee’s predicted 91 wins, as of today, and that’s after a disastrous injury-riddled 1st two months similar to that of the Yanks.
“The Red Sox won 1 – 0 against the Giants yesterday. Their offense has fallen asleep.”
The Red Sox have scored 8 runs on 9 hits today against Matt Morris.
heard piazza is going to be their backup catcher one off the DL.