Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Yankees (103-59) @ Angels (97-65), Tuesday, October 20, 2009, 7:57pm **Mismatch Chatter**
Lineups
1899 Cleveland Spiders
Derek Jeter, SS (.334/.404/.465, 5.7 WAR)
Johnny Damon, LF (.282/.364/.489, 3.1 WAR)
Mark Teixeira, 1B (.292/.383/.565, 4.7 WAR)
Alex Rodriguez, 3B (.286/.402/.532, 3.5 WAR)
Jorge Posada, C (.285/.363/.522, 1.3 WAR)
Hideki Matsui, DH (.274/.366/.509, 1.9 WAR)
Robinson Cano, 2B (.320/.352/.520, 3.5 WAR)
Nick Swisher, RF (.249/.369/.498, 3.0 WAR)
Melky Cabrera, CF (.274/.333/.416, 0.9 WAR)
Total, (.291/.372/.502, 27.6 WAR)
California Angels
Chone Figgins, 3B (.298/.391/.393, 5.7 WAR)
Bobby Abreu, RF (.293/.390/.435, 2.1 WAR)
Torii Hunter, CF (.299/.366/.508, 3.0 WAR)
Vladimir Guerrero, DH (.295/.334/.460, 0.0 WAR)
Juan Rivera, LF (.287/.332/.478, 2.1 WAR)
Howie Kendrick, 2B (.291/.333/.444, 1.6 WAR)
Kendry Morales, 1B (.306/.355/.569, 3.4 WAR)
Mike Napoli, C (.272/.350/.492, 1.3 WAR)
Erick Aybar, SS (.312/.345/.423, 3.1 WAR)
Total, (.296/.358/.466, 22.3 WAR)
Yankee Win Probability: -100.0%
After a tough loss yesterday, the Yankees look to rebound in Game 4. The good news is that they’ll be sending out their ace, CC Sabathia, to try and do it.
Sabathia will be pitching on three days of rest, something he’s done four times in his career. He’s managed to be effective doing it, but four games is a very small sample size so it doesn’t necessarily mean we should expect him to be as good as he’s been in the past.
According to chapter 7 of The Book, pitchers who started on three days rest allowed a wOBA of .369 on average. The same group of pitchers allowed a wOBA of .352 on four days rest.
So pitchers on three days rest are roughly five percent worse than they would be on four days rest.
Sabathia’s going-forward projection has him allowing about 0.104 runs per batter faced. He averaged 28 batters faced per game this season, but I’ll knock that down to 24 to account for the fact that they probably won’t extend him as long since he’s on short rest. Plus you need to make sure you use EVERY SINGLE RELIEVER IN YOUR BULLPEN IN EVERY GAME.
But I digress.
Anyway, the difference between normal Sabathia and short rest Sabathia would be something like 24 times 0.104 (2.4946) vs. 24 times 0.109 (2.6193). Or .125 runs. That lowers their win probability from 53.0% to 51.4%.
The Yankees blew a chance to take a commanding 3-0 lead in the ALCS with yesterday’s loss. A loss tonight would knot the series at 2-2, and give the Angels serious momentum. We all know that momentum is far more important than the talent of the two teams when figuring out who will win the series. We know this because of the fine analysis at Go Halos.com.
If the Yankees lose tonight, they have no possible chance to win this series. At all. They may as well not even play the rest of the series. That makes tonight an absolute must-win game, and the most important game in the history of the Yankees. Since the Yankees are the most important team in baseball, this is the most important game ever in the history of baseball.
It won’t be easy, because they’ll be facing Scott Kazmir, who has held the current Yankees to a collective line of .222/.307/.323. This is far more telling than any of the other things Kazmir or the Yankees have done against everyone else.
Only Mark Teixeira, Jorge Posada and Melky Cabrera have hit better than .182 against Kazmir among the Yankees who’d faced him at least ten times. Teixira has traded in his bat for Cody Ransom’s, so forget about him. Posada may be able to get on base, but if he does he’ll either run the bases horribly enough that he won’t score, or he’ll be pinch-run for in a move that will have a domino effect that will eventually culminate in Francisco Cervelli replacing Alex Rodriguez in the lineup and with no DH. As far as Melky, he’s hitting .200/.259/.200 this postseason, so you’ll forgive me for being skeptical about him doing anything useful.
So yeah, this game is going to suck. Maybe the Yankees will get lucky and the home plate umpire will have an awful strike zone that causes Joe Girardi to go off on him and get ejected. Then he can’t SCREW UP THE GAME BY CHANGING RELIEVERS UNTIL HE FINDS ONE WHO DOESN"T HAVE IT.
But I digress, again.
Maybe the Angels will make four or five errors that allow the Yankees to score a few runs, because the Yankee offense sure can’t do it on their own. Then maybe the Angels won’t pinch-hit with Jeff Mathis, who is apparently the best hitting catcher in MLB, and they’ll fall a run short of however many runs their defense give the Yankees.
Maybe.
Possibly.
Go Yankees.
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