Here’s where we are up to this point (two weeks ago or so) in the season:

Click for the full-size version.

July was a good month for Yankees pitching. That wonderful difference between ERA and xFIP means that they didn’t give up as many homeruns as expected with a normalized HR/FB rate.

Let’s take a quick look at the breakdown for the month:

Click for the full-size version.

Looking at this, you can see that the rotation was 1) Very good; 2) Pretty much performed (as a whole) as their peripherals said they would. Don’t mistake this for every pitcher in the rotation being awesome,we’ll take a look at that a little further down.

The bullpen has been very good as of late, and their numbers in July reinforce this. Relievers can and do often outperform their peripherals such as HR/FB%. It’s not necessarily a skill or something you should count on as repeatable but it’s not an uncommon occurrence in the limited amount of innings relievers pitch. Take, for example, Mariano Rivera’s career HR/FB rate of 6.3%. And no, not everyone is Mariano—not even close—but do remember that he pitches quite a lot of the relief innings put in by the Yankees bullpen.

Click for the full-size version.

Last month is eerily similar to the first month of the year, no? Anyway, since it’s silly to pretend the rotation was all performing on that level let’s take a look at how each member fared:

To the shock of no one who watches baseball CC Sabathia was the anchor of the Yankees rotation. He was very, very good and his numbers are a very large part of why the overall rotation numbers looked so great.

Andy’s FIP is exaggerated by the 2 1/3 innings he pitched (walking 3) before getting pulled with a groin injury. We miss him and he should come back before I hang myself after watching Dustin Moseley pitch (it’s not Moseley’s fault he just is what he is, and that is not very good).

The reason Burnett and Sabathia have such big differences in their FIP/xFIP is that they gave up so few homeruns in July (big old duh, I know). To be specific, AJ gave up 1 and CC 0. Hard to believe about AJ specifically, but there you have it.

Javier Vazquez was who he is, and Phil Hughes has been working through a bought of Babypitcheritis.

To be fair, Hughes’ numbers are exaggerated by two bad starts. He also had a very good start and two ok starts. Then again, that sort of month is Babypitcheritis in a nutshell. I’m sure he’ll be fine.

Click for the full-size version.

The bullpen went from horrifying to hooray pretty quickly and stayed that way. This is thanks to David Robertson turning things around (which I knew he would because he is clearly powered by my love), Boone Logan somehow turning into a good pitcher (I don’t get it either, but I’ll take it as long as it lasts), no more Chan Ho Park (sorry things didn’t work out, buddy) and so on. Life’s been good lately. No complaints!

Things started off a little scary as the first out was a deep fly to right field. I could not at first tell if it was going over the wall, and honestly I don’t think Nick Swisher could either. It landed in his glove in the end and there was much rejoicing.

Now, if you hang around the internet during games you see a lot of “BABIP nooooooo!!” type comments. It’s sort of a catch all and overused by everyone, including me. I cannot, however, describe the results of the next two at bats as anything but the God of BABIP punching Joba in the gut.

First, Scott Podsednik bunted for a hit. Argh. Next, Jason Kendall hit a ball so slowly that it died halfway up the line to A-Rod for a “base hit”. It was not a bunt, Kendall had made such bad contact with the pitch that it barely moved the baseball, which happened to end up in no man’s land.

At this point the people around me started booing, and calling for Mariano to come into the game. It was pretty ridiculous.

I am not a Joba defender and I think there is more going on with him than just bad luck on balls in play, but last night was clearly a bizarre freak inning. I know that frustration boils over and all that but if there was ever a game where the drama wasn’t his fault, it was yesterday.  Let’s not forget about the blown call at third base where everyone who was watching the game except Chad Fairchild (the 3B umpire) saw Alex Rodriguez tag Podsednik before he slid into the base.

He danced around Billy Butler a bit (or it looked like that from my seat), which was okay by me as he has an OPS of nearly .900 against RHP and took his chances with Jose Guillen. Guillen is a decent, but not great hitter and not at all patient. He quickly grounded out to short, inning over, crisis averted.

Anyway, my basic point here is that Joba didn’t suck. The first out was hit much, much harder than either of the two singles. The inning should have been over before he even faced Butler but the third bungled call of the game happened to go against the Yankees. It was an actual “bad luck” night, and those suck and are awful to watch and the timing was bad but they happen to everyone. It’s happened to Mariano at least once this year.

I know that a lot of people have lost all confidence with Joba, and I admit I don’t really have much because you never know which version is going to show up until the inning is in progress. But if you go crazy and overreact every time there’s a little blip it’s probably not very good for your health.

Let’s kick this off with the usual staff overviews.

Well, it stayed mostly flat. That’s not bad as a whole. Probably not what the Yankees were expecting but that’s what happens when some guys pitch terrible and some guys pitch really well. And that’s generally how baseball goes.

Here’s a focus on the rotation’s year so far:

June was the first big stumbling block for the Yankees’ rotation. When Javier Vazquez was bad early in the year, everyone else was good. In June, A.J. Burnett was flatout awful and Phil Hughes hit a few bumps. Here’s the individual rotation results:

A.J. gets a special star for having a HR/9 of 3.52 for the month of June!

Javy is crawling back to where he should be, his strikeout numbers have been picking up and his walks have been ticking down. As has been discussed to death he will always be hurt by homeruns, but that’s just how it goes. I’m not overly concerned about him outpitching his peripherals at the moment because they are improving. He also had a very weird start in Arizona where he walked 2 guys but only struck out 1 over 5 innings (4R/ER). Over the course of a year, those things work themselves out and get lost as blips.

Phil Hughes had a few rough starts, including one where he managed to give up 7 runs to the Mariners and fail to retire Rob Johnson. It happens, and he’ll just have to work through things like that and make adjustments. I believe he can do this, and so does pretty much everyone else so it’s not anything to be concerned about.

Here’s the K/BB stacks for the rotation:

That sure is a red bar you’ve got there, AJ.

Finally, the bullpen:

The bullpen was much better in June than May for a few reasons:

• Their numbers are always skewed by Mariano Rivera, who pitches a lot of excellent innings.
• David Robertson pitched a whole lot better last month.
• Joba Chamberlain only had one terrible blowup all month (yay).

Imagine what this would have looked like if Chan Ho Park could get his act together? Oh, to dream.

That’s all I’ve got this month, stay tuned for the next installment of As The Graphs Turn.

A challenge was handed out on a sports message board that I read:

Is there any sort of graph that can display how bad Burnett has been in the last month vs the beginning of the season?

This was the best I could come up with on short notice but I think it works as an overview.

Click to view the full-size version.

First off, here’s the usual ERA/FIP/xFIP comparisons:

In a nutshell: May not as good as April. If you’ve been watching the games, you probably figured that out by yourself.

The Yankees rotation pretty much matched their peripherals as a whole in May. This is only part of the story, however, and I think it’s worth looking at the pitcher breakdown here.

The things that stand out here:

• Javy Vazquez really improved a lot in May. Which isn’t that shocking because it would be hard for him to repeat the awfulness in April. The end results (ERA) were not pretty but the FIP/xFIP are very encouraging, as has been his recent string of starts.
• C.C. Sabathia put together a very nice April and then had a really awful May. I hope this is just his one month blip for 2010 because it wasn’t very pretty to watch.
• Andy is probably due for some bad starts soon, which will be painful but I think everyone has been waiting for it.

Yep. The bullpen was pretty bad in May, at least in terms of results. They gave up a lot of homeruns. It sucked but it’s already gotten better (except for Chad Gaudin who is struggling hardcore).

Lastly, the obligatory K:BB graph for the starters:

Andy doesn’t strike out a lot of guys (except when facing the Blue Jays I guess), the good news is he also does not walk a lot of guys. The low strikeout numbers are what drag his FIP and xFIP down, of course.

Phil Hughes walked 11 batters in 3 starts (18IP) in April and then 8 in 6 starts (38 2/3 IP) in May. That’s what you might call an improvement. The first month, he was getting somewhat lucky but cutting down that walk rate has helped out his peripheral stats a lot. What he’s doing is still not really sustainable but cutting down on the walks dramatically is a good sign because if he keeps that up, he’ll keep on being awesome.

CC’s K/9 ratio in May was 6.38 which is not what you expect from him. It’s about a strikeout off from what you get from normal, not beastly, CC and just helps to highlight the struggles he had last month.

And that’s all I’ve got for this month. Hope you enjoyed the pretty bars with numbers in them for May!

Since there’s not a whole lot of data out there yet I am just doing the basics. In case you’re not familiar: FIP is a statistic that only takes the things the pitcher directly controls (Walks, Hit Batters, Strikeouts, Home Runs) into account. xFIP normalizes the home run rate at the league average because pitchers all tend to have around the same rate on HR/FB% unless something weird is going on.

There are some measurements that take batted ball types into play like tRA and SIERA but I’m not including them in this round, maybe I will for May.

With that out of the way, here’s how the Yankees pitching staff did in April according to these three stats:

Very nice especially considering how bad Javier Vazquez has been. Compared to last year, it’s much much better. Thank you for a nice April, pitching staff. I expect them to come back to earth a bit when the rotation sees some more balls fly over the wall but it shouldn’t get too much worse if Vazquez or whoever replaces him pitches decently.

The bullpen has been shaky on and off but is bolstered by Mariano Rivera having a well, very Mariano Rivera month.

Next up is a look at the starters and their K:BB ratios:

What I am most impressed by, and what is probably the least sustainable is that A.J. Burnett is not walking dudes. This is a revelation because walking dudes is A.J.’s specialty. His strikeout numbers are down but I expect those to climb along with the walk rate.

Hughes has walked a few too many but I think that’ll get better as he goes on and “learns how to pitch” as people love to say. His start today against the White Sox was a nice start for that.

The next graph doesn’t mean anything really because of the sample size but it made me laugh and also cry at the same time so I decided to include it:

In April, the Yankees rotation gave up 10 home runs and 5 of those were from Javier Vazquez. This does not include his recent disaster start against the White Sox. CC gave up 2 and everyone else gave up 1. This is not going to hold, but hopefully everything gets spread out nice and easy instead of coming in bunches.

Here’s everyone’s HR/FB% for April, which should correct itself to 10-11% by the end of the year:

Little Phil is going to get pretty hard with a correction if he doesn’t start getting more groundballs. But I believe that he can. 55% of batted balls being flys is ridiculous and not likely to hold up, even if he does wind up with a pretty high percentage when it’s all over. His LD% is also pretty low so expect that to change. He’s had a great, weird, month and even as everything evens out you can expect him to be pretty good going forward.

What does May hold? Well, the Yankees rotation is going to give up a few more runs than they did over April but you can still expect them to be good. I have no idea what is going on with Vazquez so I can’t comment on that, that’s for the Pitch F/X experts and scouts to talk about and I am neither of those things.

Oh and also CC Sabathia is awesome.

This year I added inherited runners and inherited runners scored for relief pitchers because it always drives me crazy at how much I have to dig to find those numbers. Now they’ll be in an easy place for me (and anyone else interested) to find.

Relievers:

Starters:

I’ll try to keep them updated after every game, but it’ll probably wind up being something more like every two or three games.

1. CC Sabathia
2. AJ Burnett
3. Andy Pettitte
4. Javier Vazquez
5. Phil Hughes
6. Sergio Mitre o_O
7. Your guess is as good as mine but mostly people you really don’t want to think about.

If Mitre is in the pen as the long-man, that puts him at #6. Chad Gaudin was unconditionally released for what seem to be financial reasons. Joba Chamberlain and Alfredo Aceves will then be in mostly one-inning roles that means they can’t just jump out and start when AJ Burnett finally has that injury we were waiting for all last year.

In perfect world land, I’d have the depth chart look something like this:

1. CC Sabathia
2. AJ Burnett
3. Andy Pettitte
4. Javier Vazquez
5. Phil Hughes
6. Joba Chamberlain
7. Sergio Mitre
8. Alfredo Aceves

Aceves is sort of a dream here, and he’d be limited in his first time out but when you reach 8th on the depth chart that is extreme emergency territory.

The important difference is Joba Chamberlain at #6. He really should be sixth on the depth chart because there’s no way you can get me drunk enough to believe that Mitre is a better option. Plus, in the future we want Joba to live up to as much of his potential in the starting rotation as possible. To be blunt: He should spend as much of his last option year in AAA as needed to continue working on the two pitches he often neglects (change and curveball) and be available to the team in the event of an injury to one of the old overworked guys in the rotation.

I don’t think that Joba should be slotted into the 8th inning role for a couple of reasons. Firstly, because I think it’s important for them to not take a step backwards in his plan after last year and secondly because I’m not sure if he’s actually a better choice than the David Robertson/Damaso Marte tandem at this point in time.

I also believe that it’s time for the team to bring Mark Melancon up to the Bronx and let him pitch his way into or out of a Major League job for real. Like Robertson he has the stuff you need to be an above average relief pitcher in MLB and just needs to be given an opportunity to go out and do it already.

I’m sure this is all a dream though, and when I wake up Joba Chamberlain will be in the MLB bullpen. After all, Joe Giardi has already announced that Joba’s next appearance will be Saturday for one inning which offers some insight that makes me a lot sad.

Ultimately this is all about the Yankees and their need to win, now and always to uphold their brand and sell tickets at outrageous prices. Hopefully they have some better alternatives planned out to try and develop all of their young arms for MLB that we, the general public, do not know about.

The Phillies decided to give their best starter (that would be Cliff Lee if you haven’t been paying attention) his normal rest so he is starting Game 5 tonight.  The Yankees are now activating their plan to have their best three pitchers all go on short rest for whatever remains of the series.

I’m sure that the Yankees never expected to be in a position where they would have to use a 3-man rotation in the series but things played out that way and it’s important to stick to it now. There’s some rumbling that Chad Gaudin should be starting instead of Burnett on short rest and honestly that’s just people freaking out.

Cliff Lee is by far the best pitcher that the Phillies have. He’s been at a base level good and very often excellent. By starting Gaudin the Yankees would essentially be handing the game to Philly which is not how you operate. You never know if you’re going to win tomorrow so you have to give yourself the best chance today.

Why am I so sure that Chad Gaudin is the worst possible choice (other than deciding to stretch out Phil Hughes, Joba Chamberlain or Alfredo Aceves over night)? There are two pieces:

1) He hasn’t actually done much pitching over the last month.

2) He has really bad lefty/righty splits. They are painful to look at so you may want to avert your eyes before scrolling down to the table:

Sure pitching AJ Burnett on 3-days rest is not optimal but if he comes out at 90% he still gives the Yankees a better chance. If this were game 4 and the Yankees were up 3-0 it might be acceptable to start Gaudin but probably not.

I’ve seen some concern that Burnett, Andy and CC might wind up injured from this and honestly that’s pretty silly. Other than CC the staff is only being asked to pitch on short rest once.

It’s also ridiculous when you consider that when other teams–such as the Twins–were doing this to get into the postseason they received high praise. If it’s okay to do it to get into the door why is it suddenly not okay when it means winning the whole thing?

We don’t know how it will turn out but there is no doubt in my mind that this is the right decision. The Yankees can blow it–and if there is a team that can crawl back into things for sure it’s the 2009 Phillies–but there is a lot of overthinking from the general public and some of the media going on here.

For all the ridiculous lineup and bullpen decisions we’ve seen this is something Joe Girardi is doing correctly: Putting out his best pitchers to win games that the Yankees need to win. How can you step back and argue that it’s not the right thing to do?

Here’s the final wrap for the season. As you can see, the team took a big hit in September but that’s what happens when you’ve got Joba pitching bad and guys like Chad Gaudin just pitching.

Here’s the final tally for the season as a whole:

And just for fun, here’s 2008:

And before you cry oh God the pitching was so much better last year, how is that possible?

• Offense, as a whole, was down last year. That 4.28 ERA was good for 8th in the American League. After that, you start getting into the truly awful pitching staffs like the Orioles and Rangers.  That 4.28 this year was good for 3rd in the American League.
• Reliever ERA and FIP is easily inflated by things like Jose Veras being awful for two months. This is why it’s useful to look at it broken down by month. It’s also only so useful to look at the entire bullpen which is often a revolving door of Anthony Claggetts. The important relief pitchers for the Yankees are: Mariano Rivera, Phil Hughes, David Robertson, Alfredo Aceves, Phil Coke, Damaso Marte. The righties are all good-to-excellent and the lefties kill lefties.

So there you go. Because of the demise of Chien-Ming Wang’s body and pitching ability, things didn’t go as planned and the staff isn’t as rocksolid as was hoped but it’s not terrible. The biggest issue I see in the playoffs is that AJ Burnett and Andy Pettitte both have consistency issues (and with AJ it’s more like will he be awesome or awful). If there were a way to ensure that the good versions would come out, I’m sure the Yankees would have looked into that but there’s not so let’s just hope the two faces act plays in the team’s favor.