Thursday, April 10, 2008
Oh Where, Oh Where Has My Little Offense Gone?
While my head knows that nine games is still way too small of a sample size to draw undue distinctions from, it sure didn’t feel like it while I watched the again punchless Yankees fall to Kansas City 4-0 last night. Granted, sometimes you run into a Roy Halladay. Sometimes you run into A.J. Burnett. Sometimes you run into Dustin McGowan. Sometimes you run into Andy Sonnastine. Sometimes you run into Edwin Jackson. Sometimes you run into James Shields. Sometimes you run into Jason Hammel. Sometimes you run into Brian Bannister. Sometimes you run into Zach Greinke. But come on, ALL NINE OF THEM?
With a forecast of rain all night, Joe Girardi pulled Ian Kennedy from starting the game and went with Brian Bruney to start the game. The reason given was so that they wouldn’t start the game with Kennedy and then lose him if the rain stopped the game. Considering the grief Girardi got for bringing back Josh Johnson from a long rain delay when he managed the Marlins in 2006 and Johnson’s subsequent breakdown which may or not have been related, this was pretty interesting out of the box thinking. For the most part it seemed to work well, although it likely cost the Yankees the use of Bruney and Farnsworth in today’s game. That’s probably bad in the former case but not necessarily so in the latter case. Kennedy ended up pitching the 6th through 8th, starting off poorly but finishing off pretty well.
The pitching didn’t really matter because the offense continued to stink. Here’s how the Yankees rate by position-adjusted batting runs above average using linear weights to this point.
Matsui : 2
Abreu : 1.5
Rodriguez : 0.7
Molina : 0.3
Gonzalez : 0.2
Cabrera : 0.1
Ensberg : -0.5
Damon : -0.5
Duncan : -0.5
Betemit : -1
Jeter : -1.5
Posada : -1.9
Giambi : -2.4
Cano : -4.4
How is Damon not worse? Hey Robinson, feel free to stop sucking. How bad has Cano been? Here are the five worst offensive players so far in the AL this season by position-adjusted BRAA:
Crawford : -4.3
Johjima : -4.3
Ortiz : -4.3
Cano : -4.4
Polanco : -4.6
Only Placido Polanco has been worse. He’s in good company with David Ortiz and Carl Crawford at least.
Like I said, it’s still too early to panic, but it’s probably not too early to get irritated or annoyed.
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