The Curse of... oh, let's say, Clay Bellinger:








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John Brattain Memorial Fund

The Hardball Times has set up a memorial fund for John Brattain's family. He left behind a wife and two teenage daughters.

Four years ago, I found from personal experience how generous the online community can be to its own in their hour of need. I am now literally begging you to be even more generous than you were to me.


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Blue Jays (42-39) @ Yankees (46-33), Saturday, July 4, 1:05pm **Game Chatter**
(212 Comments - 7/4/2009 4:19:59 pm)

Blue Jays (42-38) @ Yankees (45-33), Friday, July 3, 1:05pm **Game Chatter**
(174 Comments - 7/4/2009 11:31:05 am)

Mariners (39-38) @ Yankees (45-32), Thursday, July 2, 7:05pm **Game Chatter**
(196 Comments - 7/3/2009 12:54:58 pm)

Yankees.com: A-Rod puts Yanks’ win streak at seven
(49 Comments - 7/2/2009 7:25:01 pm)

Fangraphs.com: Another Look at HRs at the New Yankee Stadium
(23 Comments - 7/2/2009 6:52:43 pm)

Yankees.com: Yanks make it six straight, pick up Bruney
(155 Comments - 7/2/2009 2:22:32 pm)

Mariners (39-37) @ Yankees (44-32), Wednesday, July 1, 2009, 7:05pm **Game Chatter**
(152 Comments - 7/1/2009 10:00:39 pm)

Mariners (39-36) @ Yankees (43-32), Tuesday, June 30, 2009, 7:05pm **Game Chatter**
(360 Comments - 7/1/2009 12:41:00 am)

LA Times: Yankees acquire Eric Hinske from Pirates for 2 minor leaguers
(81 Comments - 6/30/2009 7:50:45 pm)

Yankee Zone Rating and Pitching Bar Graphs through Games of June 28, 2009 (UZR added upon request)
(41 Comments - 6/30/2009 1:24:19 pm)



Player

Current Projected
Jonathan Albaladejo
1 G
162 G
1.3 IP
216 IP
Brian Bruney
1 G
162 G
.3 IP
54 IP
Phil Coke
1 G
162 G
1.7 IP
270 IP
Damaso Marte
1 G
162 G
.3 IP
54 IP
Edwar Ramirez
0 G
0 G
0 IP
0 IP
Mariano Rivera
0 G
0 G
0 IP
0 IP
Jose Veras
0 G
0 G
0 IP
0 IP

Look what people have to say about Larry Mahnken's commentary!

"Larry, can you be any more of a Yankee apologist?.... Just look past your Yankee myopia and try some objectivity."
- Bernal Diaz

"Mr. Mahnken is enlightened."
- cordially, as always,
rm

"Wow, Larry. You've produced 25% of the comments on this thread and said nothing meaningful. That's impressive, even for you."
- Anonymous

"After reading all your postings and daily weblog...I believe you have truly become the Phil Pepe of this generation. Now this is not necessarily a good thing."
- Repoz

"you blog sucks, it reeds as it was written by the queer son of mike lupica and roids clemens. i could write a better column by letting a monkey fuk a typewriter. i dont need no 181 million dollar team to write a blog fukkk the spankeees"
- yan

"i think his followers have a different sexual preference than most men"
- bob

"Boring and predictable."
- No Guru No Method

"Are you the biggest idiot ever?"
- Randal

"I'm not qualified to write for online media, let alone mainstream media."
- Larry Mahnken



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Disclaimer: If you think this is the official website of the New York Yankees, you're an idiot. Go away.


Monday, April 28, 2008

Wang and Melky

Behind a Melky Cabrera HR and seven scoreless innings by Chien-Ming Wang, the Yankees beat the Indians 1-0 yesterday. On a team that's been loaded with underachievers to this point, Cabrera and Wang have been great.

I wondered if Melky had changed anything in his approach that could be verified statistically, so I used the ever valuable fangraphs.com to see what his secondary stats may show.

Year AVG OBP SLG IsoD IsoP BB/PA K/PA P/PA LD% GB% FB% BABIP xBABIP
2006 .280 .360 .391 .080 .111 .107 .113 3.656 17.2% 49.5% 33.3% .310 .292
2007 .273 .327 .391 .054 .118 .070 .111 3.670 19.7% 51.2% 29.2% .301 .317
2008 .291 .356 .506 .065 .215 .099 .132 4.077 18.8% 46.4% 34.8% .290 .308


Melky's recovered some of his 2006 walk rate after dipping last year. He's also striking out more frequently, which may not necessarily be a bad thing if it means he's working deeper counts. He's seeing about 0.4 pitches more per plate appearances, which tells me he's not necessarily swinging at the first hittable pitch but perhaps is being more selective and looking for a pitch he can drive. He's hitting more fly balls than he hit last year, and fewer ground balls and line drives. Interestingly, if you use the LD% +.12 for his expected batting average on balls in play he shows as being slightly unlucky, so he's not necessarily overperforming right now.

As always, small sample size caveats apply here, but we should expect 23 year old players to improve. So go Melky!

Moving on to Chien-Ming Wang. The constant knock has been Wang's low K rate. I've shown that he does enough other stuff well that he was not a fluke, but what if he's added strikeouts to his repetoire?

Year HR/BF BB/BF K/BF GB% FB% LD% FB% Avg Vel SL% Avg Vel CH% Avg Vel SF% Avg Vel
2005 1.9% 6.6% 9.7% 63.9% 22.0% 14.1% 77.9% 92.0 mph 12.9% 85.4 mph 7.5% 82.6 mph 1.6% 85.9 mph
2006 1.3% 5.8% 8.4% 62.8% 20.3% 16.9% 75.5% 93.1 mph 14.7% 85.6 mph 4.5% 82.1 mph 5.3% 85.8 mph
2007 1.1% 7.2% 12.6% 58.4% 23.3% 18.3% 76.4% 92.7 mph 16.2% 83.9 mph 6.2% 79.9 mph 1.2% 86.6 mph
2008 0.6% 6.8% 16.8% 52.1% 24.0% 24.0% 76.1% 92.3 mph 19.7% 86.3 mph 3.3% 80.0 mph 0.9% 86.5 mph


Wang has struck out 16.8% of the batters he's faced this year, compared to 9.7%, 8.4%, and 12.6% from 2005-2007. The AL average is 15.8%. Yes, that's right. Wang is striking out more hitters than the average AL pitcher so far in 2008. What's he doing differently? He's throwing the same rough percentage of fastballs, but you can see that he's been incorporating more sliders into his arsenal each season. This year he's throwing it almost 20% of the time compared to 13% in his rookie year. He is throwing fewer split-fingered fastballs and changeups, but it certainly seems to be working.

Wang's ground ball tendencies have been weaker this year, although his HR rate is improved. The one area of concern I see is a higher than normal line drive rate (for him).

Wang has five wins for a team that has 13. But remember that he's not an ace.
--Posted at 8:14 am by SG / 109 Comments | - (234)



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