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Thursday, October 2, 2008

Why Did the 2008 Yankees Disappoint?(Relief Pitching Edition)

After looking at a bunch of underperformance, there was one bright spot in the 2008 Yankees’ season, the bullpen.  Like with the starters, I’m just going to look at the optimistic scenario from the pitching projection entry back in March.

Mariano F’ing Rivera

FR: FIP converted to runs allowed
FIP: Fielding independent-pitching
RSAR: Runs saved above a replacement level pitcher.

Mariano Rivera is awesome.  Mo rebounded from what looked like the start of his decline to put up what was arguably the best season of his career, at least on a rate basis.  How dominant was Rivera?

It was only the second season EVER where a pitcher pitched 60 or more innings and had a WHIP less than 0.675.

It was only the second season EVER where a pitcher pitched 60 or more innings and had a K/BB ratio greater than 12.

Opponents hit .165/.190/.233 against him.

It was the third lowest OPS+ ever allowed by a pitcher who pitched at least 60 innings.

Rivera passed 1000 innings pitched this year, putting him on the top of Baseball Reference’s ERA+ career leaderboard.  No pitcher has ever prevented runs relative to his era and ballpark better than Rivera has.

So yeah, Mo’s pretty good. And he did all this with bone spurs in his throwing shoulder.  We are fortunate to have watched him.

Rivera’s season was 14 runs better than projected.

Joba Chamberlain

Somewhere, Mike Francessa is sighing wistfully about Joba the reliever.  Joba did pretty well in the pen again in 2008, although he was more valuable as a starter.  I am hoping that Chamberlain will start 2009 in the rotation, even if it takes some juggling to keep his innings down, and early offseason talk is that Joba will start exclusively in 2009.

Chamberlain was about 4 runs better than projected to be in relief, partially because he pitched 5 more innings than expected out of the pen. 

The Farns

Raise your hand if you miss the Farns.  While his ERA was respectable during his 2008 Yankee stint, his HR rate led to a very frightening FIP.  Although the Ivan Rodriguez trade didn’t really work out, the Yankees sold Farns at the right time.  Still, he saved a couple of runs more than projected.  He’s a free agent this year, maybe the Yankees should re-sign him.  NOT!

The Hawk

So we were 3-3 with guys exceeding expectations, but LaTroy Hawkins breaks the string.  He seems like a good guy but his Yankee stint was disappointing.  He was 7 runs worse than expected before being traded to Houston, where he ripped up AAAA.

Chris Britton

Britton’s probably begging for a trade at this point.  He projected decently but didn’t get much work, and when he did he didn’t do much with it, ending the year at 4 runs worse than projected.  I’d be surprised to see him on the Yankees in 2009.

Brian Bruney

Bruney was very effective in 2008, although his peripherals indicate a fair bit of luck.  His walk rate is still pretty high, but his stuff is dominant.  He was throwing a 90 mph slider at the end of the year.  He missed a good chunk of the year with a foot injury, but was quite good on both sides of that.  He saved 10 runs more than expected.  I wouldn’t expect him to be quite this good next year, but I think his FIP is a reasonable expectation for what he may do, an ERA in the mid 3s.

Edwar Ramirez

Despite what some beat writers will tell you, Edwar Ramirez had a pretty good year.  Yeah, he’s HR prone, but that’s really his only major weakness, although I guess I’d like to see him walk fewer people too.  I wouldn’t necessarily trust him to be a setup man right now, but he was a good solid arm to have in the middle of the pen and should be next year as well.  Edwar pitched more than I expected him to and did pretty well, saving 4 runs above his projections.

Ross Ohlendorf

Gone and not really missed.  The Yankees have a bunch of guys who profile better on the way.  Ohlendorf has good stuff, but it didn’t translate to the field as he got hammered in the bigs, allowing 9 runs more than his relief projection.  He didn’t do much better in Pittsburgh, matching his 66 ERA+, although that came as a starter.

The Others

I didn’t include any of these guys in my original projections so they get lumped together here.  Jose Veras had a surprisingly good start to the season before faltering over the last month.

May 3 - Aug 24
IP: 46.7
H: 38
R: 14
ER: 14
HR: 6
BB: 17
K: 50
ERA: 2.70
FIP: 3.82
xFIP: 3.68
tRA: 4.45

His peripherals indicated that he was probably lucky to have an ERA of 2.70, and sure enough a correction came.

Aug 27 - Sep 28
IP: 11.3
H: 16
R: 9
ER: 9
HR: 1
BB: 12
K: 14
ERA: 7.15
FIP: 5.05
xFIP: 5.55
tRA: 5.51

I’m still skeptical about Veras because his command is still not very good.  I do think he can be a useful middle inning reliever, although I’d probably peg him as a true talent 4.50 ERA guy, not the 3.64 ERA guy he was this year.

Phil Coke is a bad-ass.  I wouldn’t read too much into the results of 14.7 innings, but he just looks like he’s got the goods to be a strong lefty reliever.  In his last outing of the year he was hitting 96 mph.  I’d still probably try him out as a starter first though, with the bullpen as a fall-back if that doesn’t work.

Dan Giese is probably a decent depth guy to have as a fifth starter or long reliever, and he had a pretty good season, although I don’t see the Yankees keeping a spot on the roster open for him to start 2009.

Alfredo Aceves impressed after his callup, although his FIP says we should expect him to not be quite so good. Still, I liked what I saw from him in his limited time and think he could be average or slightly below as a swingman.

Damaso Marte did not impress in 2008 as a Yankee, although his FIP is encouraging.  His option isn’t cheap, and he’s a type A free agent, so the Yankees may think long and hard about picking up his option.  If I had to guess, they will eventually do so.  He’ll still be a Type A free agent next season, and he buys the Yankees more time to sift through the kids.  He could also be traded mid-season for prospects like Jeff Karstens.

David Robertson’s ERA isn’t pretty, but really, he pitched pretty well in the majors for the most part.  A 3.60 FIP is very good for a young relief prospect, and 5 of the 18 runs he gave up came in one brutal outing.  Take that outing out of his line, and his ERA falls to 3.90.  And I know you can play that game with almost anyone, but it makes me feel better.

I won’t run through the rest, but overall, even the non-projected relievers pitched pretty well, putting up a 4.11 ERA and saving 17 runs above replacement.

Here’s what the final tally for the bullpen looks like.

If you wanted to draw one positive from this year’s Yankees, the emergence of the bullpen has to be it.  While the bulk of the credit for that has to go to the pitchers, Joe Girardi also deserves some credit.  For the most part he seemed to spread the work around (although I think Jose Veras may be Spanish for Scott Proctor), and the bulk of the pen was effective because of it.  They were collectively 64 runs better than replacement level, or 31 runs better than projected. Take away Hawkins, Ohlendorf and Traber since they’re no longer on the team and they would have saved 79 runs above replacement level.  While we have to rationally expect Mo to give back some of his 2008 value and Joba to not be in the pen (hopefully), there’s enough good depth here to make the bullpen a strength again in 2009.

The even better part is, there’s more potential help on the way in Jonathan Albaladejo, Humberto Sanchez, and Mark Melancon.

So we should change the title of this entry, because the relief pitching had nothing to do with the disappointment.  In fact, if you factor in leverage, they may have been the difference between this being an 81 win team or an 89 win team. 

Looking at the final numbers, we have an offense that underperformed by 141 runs, a defense that underperformed by 18 runs, a starting rotation that underperformed by 30 runs, and a bullpen that overperformed by 31 runs.  We probably shouldn’t separate out the defense from the pitching since that would double-count it, so we basically have a team that had a run differential 140 runs worse than expected.  Adding those 140 runs to the Yankees’ Pythagenpat wins (87) and re-calculating Pythagenpat would have made them a 100 win team.  Factor in their strength of schedule, and you end up right around the optimistic projection of 97 wins.

So as long as the Yankees fix the offense, defense and starting rotation for 2009, they should be fine.