Triple Play Masters

A little lunch update:

I haven't written in a long time, but have watched the games.  In my last writing, I discussed how hard it was to watch this team.  Between such a frustrating lack of offense, such horrible base running, finding ways to lose, we just didn't have much excitement.   I wrote, "It should get better" and it has.  We still have our moments where we have 2 outs and nobody on and then we allow 2 hits and a 3 run HR after an 0-2 count (this was when Peralta came in and against a lefty threw a hanging slider to a weak-hitting lefty and he hit a 3 run HR.  Peralta has good stuff, but his control/command is just not good enough)

A few negatives before I list some positives:

• DJ has not played well!  a .685 OPS isn't getting it done.  His defense at 2nd is fairly solid, but he takes too long to turn a DP in my view as he is a little long in his catch and release.  Overall, he is the biggest disappointment because of all the money he is getting.
• Torres at a .663 OPS and overall poor defense hasn't been getting it done enough as well.
• Gardner, Andujar and Frazier have about 450 plate appearances and they have a rough combined .640 OPS
• Higgy has been terrible at the plate over the last 30 days (.440 OPS)
• Pitching - Taillon is really the largest disappointment with a 5.59 ERA.  Peralta on only 15 innings and a 5.28 hasn't been sharp nor has Justin Wilson with his 6.08 ERA

Positives:

• We are seeing a trend of more positive results from the hitters above.  Over the past 30 days, Sanchez has been hot (1.063 OPS), Gardner (.805) and Andujar (.761).  
• Torres' defense has been adequate since the horrible beginning.  I still have concerns as adequate isn't good, but if he has an OPS of .800+, I can live with the more recent defense.
• Getting Voit back will be a huge plus if he can give us his expected OPS.  Moving DJ back to 2nd improves our defense and our offense at 2nd base.  
• I wrote many times about how much I liked Loaisiga last year, but he has taken a larger step than I envisioned with a consistent 98 MPH running 2 seamer!  1.63 ERA can be maintained with his excellent stuff.
• Three triple plays in a year are pretty rare.  Ending a game on a triple play with a one run lead was a lot of fun to watch; we need more of that satisfaction!

 

The Yankees Are Hard To Watch - But It Should Get Better!

This team is incredibly underperforming.  The overall pitching has been very good, but in key times it has let us down.  The hitting has been abysmal scoring 3.72 runs a game which is the worst performance since 1972.  We have the 6th fewest runs in baseball.  The stats/projections say we should be scoring 5.53 runs a game, but our subs have been as awful as our starters.  We walk enough and we hit the ball hard and we actually don't even have a high chase rate.  The worst thing offensively is that we have simply been very bad (worst in baseball) in scoring the guys we get on base.  Our 11.2% base runner scoring rate is the lowest in all of baseball.  These numbers are pretty close as 1st place is Boston at 16.1% (league avg is 14.1).  This is because our base running is terrible; we have had 28 guys thrown out on the bases (most in baseball) and no team has taken a lower rate of extra bases than the Yankees 30%.  Finally, our % of grounding into DP's is the worst in baseball (13.3%) with the league avg at 9.8%.  TB has the lowest at 6.5%.  

Outside of Urshela and Judge our defense has been bad.  

Our coaching and managing have not been very good either.  While all the baserunning issues have something to do with boneheaded running plays (Frazier and Sanchez leading the charge), clearly the coaching could be better.  Boone himself has made some very poor decisions in using pitchers and making out lineups in my view. Some very recent examples: 

• Saturday against the RedSox, the Yankees are up 2-0 and Tallion has been effective for 5 shutout innings but wasn't very sharp.  A good manager realizes that Boston hasn't swung as well and is watching the worst pitcher in your rotation (about a 5 ERA) go into the 6th for the first time this season.  While I probably would have taken him out, I can understand leaving him in if you feel he has a lot left in the tank.  He got the 1st out so that was good, but then allowed a single.  I am uneasy now as the pitches have been hittable, but Boone leaves him in there.  The next batter was Bogaerts, he had a meatball to hit but didn't get all of it.  The ball went back to the wall but Andujar didn't and he misplayed into a double.  Now it is 2nd and 3rd with their top hitter Devers up (they were without their other in JD Martinez and still swept us).  With an open base we could walk him, or we could bring in a lefty to face Devers in a key spot.  Devers has an OPS of .975 against righties and .754 against lefties.  There is no chance we should pitch to Devers in this spot unless you brought in a lefty.  Boone lets him to pitch to him and gives up the game tying single.  THEN, Boone takes him out.  It makes no sense.  if Tallion couldn't;t go on after this, what was the point in leaving that matchup?  Too many dumb decisions like this.  I hate leaving a guy in and then taking him out after he allows the 2 run HR.     
• Sunday, we are up 3-1 going into the 6th inning.  German has pitched very well, but after a 2 out walk, Devers was up and Boone might have learned his lesson so he brought in Luetge.    He strikes out Devers and left Boegarts at 2nd base (He advanced on a Wild pitch).  Hey, this can work if we use common sense.  Luetge isn't reliable as he hasn't pitched much in the past 4 years, but he has been respectable. Next mining, with the righties up, it is time to get Luetge out of there, but Boone leaves him in there and after allowing a walk on 4 straight pitches, I was pretty annoyed that it would take Boone that to pull him rather than have a sense of urgency to lock this game down.  But, I was still wrong as Boone left Luetge out there and he allowed a 2 run ZHR to tie the game.  
• The same lack of sense of urgency to win is the issue I have had with Boone resting his players against our key rivals TB, Boston and even Toronto.  Not having Judge in RF cost us as Frazier allowed DJ to misplay a ball by not taking control (DJ should have caught it, but it is far easier for a RF).  Further, we saw how poor Fraziers throws can be with his 5 step rainbow throws.  All year we have rested guys at odd times.  When you are playing Minnesota, you can rest guys, but not your division foes.  Three of those losses are 6 game swings later in the year and we can see we will need them.

And don't get me started on the Odor call that was a joke in extra innings.  Calls usually even out and overall they probably have, but recently we have lost games by the umps and the pitches haven't been close.

The positive is that we are 31-29 and we can be much better.  Can't expect much more from the pitching, but our base running, defense and most importantly or offense will get better.

Still Many Issues!

I have a ton to write about but in the interest of getting this out, I will focus on a few points.

After a bad start, the umpiring started to be much better, but the recent games have slipped again where the umpiring, specifically, behind home plate, has been very poor.  It hasn't always gone against us, but it has been so inconsistent, which is just not good for baseball.  Remember when Urshela had a 3 pitch walk?  How does that even happen?  How is it possible so many people were not on top of this?  I watch the game fast-forwarding between every pitch and when he started to walk to first, I figured I must have missed a pitch, but where was everyone else?  

Last night, against TB in an important game, the umpire behind home plate, cost us the game.  Those are strong (perhaps absurd) words considering we lost 9-2, but the ump made a huge difference which also led to events spiraling somewhat.  There were at least a dozen pitches that went against us and these were big AB's.  Not only did their pitcher consistently get clear balls well outside the strike zone called strikes (Frazier was struck out, ironically and stupidly on his part on a real strike that was a great pitch, but all of the previous 5 pitches were well outside the strike zone), but Cole was getting pitches that were called balls in the same spots but even closer to the zone than the ones called strikes for TB.  The other odd thing was these were outside to righties and they had a lefty and Cole is obviously a righty so you would think the other way would happen if anything.  On the Frazier AB, it was with 2nd and 3rd and one out.

Before a 2 run HR, Brandon Lowe walked on 2 pitches that were strikes! In the 5th inning where TB scored 3 runs and put the game in deep trouble with how pitiful our offense has been.  The leadoff batter walked after being down 0-2: Cole threw a strike called a ball, then barely missed and it was called a ball and then missed in the exact spot that we were called strikes against us at least 6 times and it was called a ball.  Then Kiermaier clearly ran out of the running lane to 1st base to avoid a tag and the home plate umpire didn't rule him out for this and I assume it is not reviewable.  It was really a pathetic job by Chad Whitson, the HP umpire.

The night got more frustrating because in this gifted 3 run inning, with 1st and 2nd, a pitch was hit off the end of the bat to Frazier in RF and with 1st and 2nd and 2 outs, their catcher on 2nd was waived home and Frazier made an awful play to not only allow the slow runner to score when he should have been easily out but threw a rainbow allowing both runners to move up to make it 2nd and 3rd and they both scored.  On the Frazier play, the ball was hit to RF and he started in and then waited for the ball to land (rather than charge it) and then flat-footed caught the ball and took his 5 steps (which drives me crazy) and then threw a rainbow well offline.  First, it is never good to take 5 steps to throw, but if you have to, you better make a good strong throw and make it accurate.  He actually fielded the ball (even waiting on it) with the catcher still 2 steps away from 3rd base and Frazier was not deep.  By the time he released the ball, the catcher took at least 4 strides and probably still might have been out if the throw was online.  Frazier has made some good diving plays (an excellent one a few nights earlier that he had to come in on) and he has made some diving plays that were unnecessary, but he does not throw well and this was as bad as it gets.  

This brings me to another point, they are now throwing up graphics about the speed of the OF's throws and they are using that as the answer to whether the OF'r should be run on or not.  It is good to know what their arm strength is, but it says nothing about accuracy nor how quick the release is.  So if an OF took 5 steps after catching the ball and threw 85 MPH and an OF threw 82 MPH but took 2 steps (assuming the same accuracy), which throw would arrive first?  The answer is the 82 MPH throw.  There is a good reason why catchers do not take multiple steps to throw to 2nd base, it is because they would never throw someone out if they did.   

I have more that I will discuss in the next post, but I don't understand why Boone is resting players so often when our offense has simply been putrid compared to expectations?  How is Judge not in RF against the team in 1st place in our division?  Where is Stanton against a lefty?  I know he has been bad since returning from his injury, but I would rather him up than any of the FOUR guys in our lineup that batting .185 or below .200!