Sunday, August 19, 2007
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Being 14 1/2 games back on May 29th put the Yankees in a situation where pretty much every game is important, and while a spectacular surge over the past couple of months has made winning seem less urgent, it isn’t. A five game deficit isn’t too big to be overcome in a month and a half—or two weeks for that matter—but the Yankees don’t have that many opportunities to make up those games.
And so it’s important that the Yankees win series they might not expect to win. It’s important for the Yankees to win this afternoon, it’s important to win two of three in Anaheim, and three of four in Detroit next weekend, because the over/under for Boston in that span is probably 6-2, too, and you don’t want to six, seven or eight back when Boston comes into town at the end of the month. Even with a sweep… you’ve still got your work cut out for you then.
Plus, if Boston stumbles and goes, say, 4-4… the Yanks could be 3 out going into that series, and a “mere” series win, 2 games to 1, would put the Yankees in outstanding position heading into the last month.
All this of course ignores the Wild Card, which the Yankees are 1/2 a game out of (2 in the loss column, though). That deficit is small enough that you’d almost expect the Yankees to win out based on how they’ve been going—but Seattle has only been slightly “worse” than the Yanks over that time. So you can’t take that for granted. The Yanks will have to win their way into the playoffs, and the best way to do that is aim for the division title. If they fall short of that only because Boston does give up the ground, then you’ll probably get the Wild Card. If you aim for the Wild Card, though, you might lose the division because Seattle and Detroit/Cleveland slumped. But all that’s just rhetoric. You just try to win.
A huge help in trying to win came from Mariano Rivera’s performance yesterday afternoon. earlier in the week Rivera had three straight performances that were just plain awful. He very nearly blew a large lead in Cleveland, did blow a lead against Baltimore, then blew a tie in the tenth inning two days later. It was, of course, the now infamous “What’s Wrong With Mariano Week”, where the media starts wondering if age and overuse are getting to Rivera, and while the questioning was more tempered than in years past, it was still there. The media being what it is, they couldn’t just accept that Mariano Rivera is going to have a stretch of games where it’s just not working for him, and he’s going to get hit.
That doesn’t mean Rivera’s going to be this good forever. One day he’s really going to lose it for good, but I would hope the media would pick up on the fact that he goes through this stretch every year, and you’ve gotta wait more than a week to start questioning it. If he goes for a whole month sucking, then question it. But three games? C’mon.
Anyway, the Yankees got some outstanding pitching yesterday, particularly out of Mo and Clemens (who was better than the 10 hits would indicate), but also Vizcaino, and even Farnsworth. In my time in the press box, I hear the repeated refrain from actual insiders that the Yankees don’t have the pitching to do anything in October, or even necessarily make it to October. I think a lot of these insiders are going to be surprised.
I’m more than happy to go into the playoffs (should they finish the comeback off) with a rotation of Wang, Clemens, Pettitte and Hughes. Now Hughes needs to improve a bit, but I think he’ll be fine by the end of the season. Mussina is the most worrisome of the starters, but if he makes the postseason roster it would probably be as a long reliever, saving the bullpen in case someone gets shelled.
Last year the pitching was a huge letdown in the playoffs (although it really was the offense that let them down… and what are you going to do about that?). But the real problem the Yankees needed fixed wasn’t that the pitching wasn’t awesome, it was that it wasn’t “okay”.
If the Yankees give up 3 runs over the first 6 innings of a game, they’ve got a good chance to win. The problem with the pitching in the postseason last year was that Randy Johnson gave up 5 in less than 6 innings, and Wright gave up 4 in less than 3—and not only did they do that, you pretty much knew they were going to do that coming in, and if they didn’t it would have been a surprise.
Would anyone be surprised if any of the Yankees’ starters gave up “just” 3 in the first six innings? Of course not. They don’t have a great pitcher, but they have several solid to good pitchers.
Now, one concern is that the offense seems to get shut down by good pitchers. Starters with an ERA below 3.50 have posted a 3.59 ERA against the Yanks this year (15% worse than their normal 3.13). Sure, the Yanks do better against them than the average, but not much. On the plus side, the pitchers they’ve faced who they’re most likely to face in October have a 6.93 ERA against them. So there’s that.
But ultimately, they’ve got to make it to October first, and as I said, if they want to do that, it’s important that they finish off series they can win. They’ll need a good start from Wang, they’ll need to get hits off of Bonderman. And it would be nice if the Angels could hold a lead against the Red Sox (that goes for the ChiSox versus the Mariners, too…).
Comments
It’s essentially no brainer to say we have to win to get into the playoffs but objectively, it’s almost impossible to see how the Yankees could not take the wild card barring some utter disastor or incrediable fluke.
The Ms are just not that good. people saying they are are basically the glass is half empty… except that in this case it’s more like the glass is 1/10 empty, as the Ms have essentially one advantage over the Yankees, the bullpen. which is the most unreliable of all advantages. the Yankees have the easier scheduel, they coud put their worest lineup in the field and still outhit the Ms by a ton, their SP match up about the same with much more upside going for the Yankees. ( Wang / Hughes / Mussina improving from here on is mmmmmuch more likely than any of the M’s SP improving from here on other than Felix)
And even if the Ms keep fluking it out, it would means they take down the Angels, which would still give us the wild card anyway.
obviously from the players perspective of course they should just go out and focus on winning every game for the rest of the season… or hell they should focus on doing that from game 1. but from a objective non-player standpoint it’s reallly hard to see how the Yankees could not make the playoffs. wether they could do anything in the playoffs is another matter. but i think that has more to do with luck than anything else. Yankees had a very long string of luck for most of the last decade, so it is only fair that they been giving a lot of it back in the post season lately, but still, like you said, the rotation is better, the lineup is more soundly constructed, the bullpen is better. their likely first round oppenent is one of the Angel/Ms or Tiger/ Indians. with the exception of the Angels, none of those team worry me .
and even if it is the Angels, their rotation now is what.. Lackey / Escobar / Weaver / Colon / Santana / Saunders? Lackey and Escobar are truely scary pitchers, but Weaver is just above average and the rest are medioare to terrible. it’s far from unbeatable. and we’ve touched up on Lackey a few times before.
I’m more than happy to go into the playoffs (should they finish the comeback off) with a rotation of Wang, Clemens, Pettitte and Hughes. Now Hughes needs to improve a bit, but I think he’ll be fine by the end of the season. Mussina is the most worrisome of the starters, but if he makes the postseason roster it would probably be as a long reliever, saving the bullpen in case someone gets shelled.
Sounds nice, but Moose is almost assuredly the #4 starter in the playoffs. Torre will play the experience card. And really, I wouldn’t be upset if Moose was the 4th starter (this also assumes Moose proves over the next six weeks that 3 of every 4 starts is quality). Because with days off in the post-season, you could impose the “Chamberlain rules” on Hughes, and every game you would have two innings of either Hughes or Chamberlain available. Add that in with Mo in the post-season and Vizcaino, and you’re basically making each game a 5 inning game. Works for me.
The Ms are just not that good. people saying they are are basically the glass is half empty
everyone keeps saying this, and i know it in my heart to be true, and yet they just keep on winning.
at some point (25 games?), it won’t really matter if they are actually good or not b/c even the Devil Rays are perfectly capable of going 16-9 over 25 games just by good luck and getting hot at the right time.
in other words, the mariners just might not go away.
what *COULD* happen though, something that was unthinkable 2 months ago, is that the Yankees might catch Anaheim (with Seattle catching them too). if that happens, then the Yankees will be in excellent shape.
earlier in the week Rivera had three straight performances that were just plain awful.
i’m not sure i would call the Cleveland performance awful. it was awful for 3 batters, and then incredible for 3 batters. how do we classify that?
to his discredit he allowed a run and had 2nd/3rd with 0 outs. tying run on 2nd base.
but then he K’ed the next 2 guys and got the next guy to pop out. the runners never moved.
i’d call it “uneven”, not awful.
/nitpick
The Yanks can’t really worry about what other teams are doing. They need to continue winning, which means getting innings and good starts out of the their pitching staff. I was at the game yesterday (sitting right next to the left field foul pole where Abreu’s HR, which looked like a lazy foul ball, chipped a piece of yellow paint off) and Clemens gave the team exactly what it needed. If Wang, Pettitte, Clemens, Hughes and Mussina can give the team quality starts for the most part, this team can play .700 baseball from here on out - especially given the improved bench and bullpen.
I also favor using Hughes along with Joba has a high leverage reliever in the playoffs. Not because I think that Mussina is better than Huges, but because I think that Mussina would have almost zero value as a reliever. Yeah, I remember 2003 Game 7, but he just doesn’t have the velocity anymore.
The Mariners are really pissing me off. I don’t mind chasing a team that’s generally good, like if the Tigers were the Wild Card leader or the Angels, but for the Yankees to be unable to catch up to the freakin’ Mariners is simply maddening.
Especially because every article about the Mariners’ good play usually includes one or two insults of “stat nerds” who say that the Mariners should not be playing this well.
I’m assuming everyone remembers the game where the bad call at second base on the steal by Yuniesky Betancourt determined the game.
How much worse is that call now that we have the WC race as context? That could end up being historically bad.
SUNDAY’S A JOBA DAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The Yanks also lost a 15-11 game at home to Seattle where they scored five runs in the first inning. That’s not nearly as sexy as blaming the umpire for a missed call, but that loss hurts just as much, if not more. In any case, it’s hard to believe the Mariners are going to continue at this pace for the remainder of the season. After all, they have an everyday 1B who is hitting .200. They also have Jeff Weaver in their starting rotation. In the end, the stat heads will be vindicated.
By the by, the whole run differential reminds me of a couple of funny Rob Neyer chats.
First one, a few weeks back when the Yankees were just creeping over .500, and Neyer was saying they were better than their record, based on the run differential. And the chatters were all, “It is the games that matter! Not run differential!” etc.
And then, a couple of weeks later, the Yankees were playing about their record, just like Neyer said they would. Only now it is, “Why are you disrespecting the Mariners? It’s the games that matter! Not run differential!” etc.
I also can’t forget that 15-11 loss to Seattle a legacy gift from Igawa and a few relievers(details escape me on which relievers were the culprits). Another solid outing by Kennedy 6ip 1er 2h 6k and I hope if the Yankees need an emergency starter he gets consideration over those who have failed so badly.
Oh, the 15-11 loss definitely stings. I was mostly pointing out that, at the time I shrugged it off saying that it likely wouldn’t matter in the long run. But now, obviously, it very well might, even doubly so, because, who knew the Mariners would do what they are doing.
and a few relievers(details escape me on which relievers were the culprits).
Colter Bean and Bad Vizcaino.
that was a low point of the season.
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