The All-Star break is usually denoted as the halfway point of the season, and so what better time to look at how the rotation is doing. You’ll notice there are only four starters, and that is because at the minute the Yankees only have four starters. Chien-Ming Wang is injured and presumed dead, Alfredo Aceves is not really an option and Phil Hughes is hanging out in the bullpen causing me a great deal of personal angst. With this in mind, let’s get things started.
Here’s the basic stats:
| W | L | ERA | G | IP | H | R | ER | HR | BB | IBB | HBP | WP | BK | SO | Avg IP/GS | |
| CC Sabathia | 8 | 6 | 3.86 | 19 | 128.1 | 110 | 58 | 55 | 11 | 38 | 4 | 6 | 4 | 0 | 95 | 6.74 |
| Andy Pettitte | 8 | 5 | 4.85 | 18 | 107.2 | 121 | 64 | 58 | 15 | 44 | 1 | 3 | 1 | 0 | 70 | 5.96 |
| A.J. Burnett | 8 | 4 | 3.77 | 17 | 107.1 | 95 | 48 | 45 | 14 | 53 | 0 | 7 | 13 | 0 | 101 | 6.30 |
| Joba Chamberlain | 4 | 2 | 4.25 | 17 | 89 | 97 | 52 | 42 | 12 | 42 | 1 | 9 | 2 | 1 | 78 | 5.24 |
CC Sabathia is giving the Yankees a lot of innings, and though he’s had some bad starts he has overall been very good. He had a rough April and has rebounded nicely from it, though there have been some bumps along the way since then.
Andy Pettitte is obviously underachieving quite a bit, or maybe that’s just his current level of skill. He was supposed to be the 5th starter this year, and he’s pitching like one. Unfortunately circumstances have changed and that’s not really true right now. What he is managing to do is give the Yankees about 6 innings a start, which is pretty useful. It will be more useful if he gets better, and if he doesn’t get better don’t be surprised if the Yankees look for someone to replace him.
A.J. Burnett’s basic line shows us what we all knew already: he throws a lot of wild pitches, walks a lot of guys, and strikes out a lot of them as well.
Joba Chamberlain’s 2009 season has been a hair-pulling experience so far: his ERA is very deceptive because of those 10 unearned runs, and he doesn’t give the Yankees very many innings.
And overall, the Yankees’ pitchers have been giving up a lot of homeruns. The short porch in right doesn’t help but it also doesn’t explain why lefty Andy Pettitte has suddenly seen his HR/9 spike at home.
Now that we have the basics of what’s going on, let’s take a look at some more of what is going on.
| K/9 | BB/9 | K/BB | LD% | GB% | FB% | ||
| CC Sabathia | 6.66 | 2.66 | 2.5 | 19.5 | 41.8 | 38.7 | |
| Andy Pettitte | 5.85 | 3.68 | 1.59 | 18.1 | 44.8 | 37.1 | |
| A.J. Burnett | 8.47 | 4.44 | 1.91 | 15.8 | 41.8 | 42.4 | |
| Joba Chamberlain | 7.89 | 4.25 | 1.86 | 22.1 | 45.8 | 32.1 |
CC’s K/9 rate sitting at 6.66 is kind of scary. It’s a huge drop from his last three years when he posted K/9s of 8.93 (2008), 8.03 (2006) and 7.8 (2007). In addition to that, his walk rate is up a tick (it was just about 2BB/9 last year and 1.3BB/9 in his Cy Young year). Why is this happening? I have no idea, and both of these can improve in the second half but it is concerning. These changes turn CC into a very good pitcher when the Yankees need him to be an excellent pitcher.
Andy Pettitte has always been a guy who pitches to contact and seen a lot of hits get through, but has put up sustainable numbers in a few different ways. 1) His pickoff move; 2) Doesn’t walk dudes; 3) Lots of groundballs. The not walking batters probably being the most important part in the equation, especially as he doesn’t have a lot of pure stuff and needs to be more of a “Crafty Lefty”. Unfortunately, he’s not been so crafty and his BB/9 has ballooned. It’s not the worst it’s ever been, but whenever his BB/9 reaches 3.0+ the quality of his pitching drops dramatically. Maybe he’ll have one of those Andy Pettitte second-halves but it could just be age catching up. Step #1, though, is getting that walkrate down.
Speaking of walks, A.J. Burnett gives out a lot of free passes. Always has, always will. They seem to come in bundles and his ability to strike out guys at a high rate gives him a bit more wiggle room. His groundball rate is still very off from his career norm (about 1.5GB:FB), and it would be nice to see it get back where it is but other than being really frustrating to watch when he loses the ability to throw strikes there’s not much to complain about out of his pitching. The less flyballs he gives up, the less we’ll see drop over the short porch in right, though.
Lastly, the by far most frustrating of all Yankees starters: Joba Chamberlain. Here are some more advanced stats from Joba this year:
| AVG FB | F-STRIKE % | ZONE % | SWING% | |
| 2008 | 95 | 60.2 | 50.5 | 43.6 |
| 2009 | 92.3 | 56.5 | 44.3 | 38.8 |
Joba’s fastball is not as explosive. You expect to see a drop here to a certain degree because he isn’t pitching in relief at all, but it should still be closer to his 2008 number than where it sits currently. In relief in 2007, he averaged 97MPH on the fastball so that 94 is probably just about where it should go (think: A.J. Burnett). But it’s not, though in his last start it was a lot closer to what it’s been. But why does he have so many starts where we don’t see that? It’s a mystery to me, and I think most people. It could have to do with the mechanical tweaks the Yankees say they had him do in Spring Training but I’m no expert and can’t comment there. All I know is that Joba should be able to break out a high 90s fastball when he reaches back like Justin Verlander but we haven’t really seen a lot of that.
F-Strike% and Zone% tell us another thing that we know: Joba simply is not throwing a ton of strikes. He starts behind in the count almost half the time and then continues to…not throw strikes. And on top of that, batters aren’t swinging at his stuff at much. But that happens when you stop throwing pitches in the zone.
And no, none of this will be miraculously fixed by putting him in the bullpen. Going into the bullpen doesn’t magically give you the ability to throw strikes.
It’s so rare for a young pitcher to come on the scene and destroy it like a Tim Lincecum that I think we all expected Joba to hit some bumps. The problem is that nothing is getting better and people are starting to get really irritated (this is helped alng by his “I think I pitched great!” post game blurbs recently).
I am trying to be patient but when you’ve got another member of the staff under-performing in Pettitte and one who has not been able to pitch well at all this year in Wang it’s very frustrating. If the bottom half of the rotation does not fix itself at least a little bit and the Yankees do not do something to add at least one pitcher better than Chamberlain and Pettitte, they are going to be overtaken by the Rays and miss the playoffs.
