Well played. I like what I've seen from C Dickerson so far. He's been chipping in when given an opportunity. Nice comeback win today, the pitching continues to be solid.
Good series for the Yankees. 5 of their last 6 have been wins. I'm happy to see this team getting some hits that aren't home runs. How often does a team score the majority of their runs off homers? (Going into yesterday's game 52% of their runs had been scored on home runs.) I firmly believe you can't sustain success if you rely that heavily on the long-ball for run support. If they can start putting together innings where they drive in all those RISP they've been stranding they're going to be an extremely hard team to beat. Their pitching is being underrated by the media. Speaking of pitching, Hughes was cleared yesterday to begin throwing again. I'm really hoping he can return to himself. That would likely push Garcia into the pen as the long relief/fill-in starter.
I'd agree if the problem were that the players were TRYING for home runs (to the detriment of their ability to get another type of hit). But I think most players will tell you that they are just trying to make solid contact every time up. And home runs are a product of very solid contact. I think what you're seeing is more of a product of an inconsistent lineup... which can be kind of fluky. If they're getting a lot of guys on base, eventually they'll drive them in. Another thing is almost everyone in the lineup with the exception of Granderson has had an extended slump or two, and it's typically been almost half the lineup. When Tex, Martin, and A-Rod were hitting early, Gardner, Swisher, Jeter and Posada were sucking. Hard. When Jeter and Gardner started to hit a bit more, A-Rod, Tex, and Martin fell off a cliff (with Swisher and Posada continuing to blow goat). It's hard to have many extended rallies when half your team is a mess like that. Fewer guys on base, and the guys who are on base aren't being driven in.
I agree on most counts. The thing about the home run deal, and I'm not sure how much NY media you're able to follow up there, is that they're acting like the argument is "The Yankees hit too many home runs!!!1111oneoneone" when the actual argument is "The Yankees appear to rely on the home run too much." The issue is, when everyone is a "home run hitter", they tend to create a lot of outs when they're not putting them in the seats. That's what we've seen a lot of this year, though lately they've started getting the ball to touch grass again. (Let's be honest, if the Yankees consistently hit 3 homers a game it would be pretty hard to complain!) The one place I have to disagree with you is the notion that if they get a lot of guys on base they'll eventually drive them in. I don't really have the time to look up the stats, but I know near the end of last season I looked it up and the RISP left on base wasn't good. This has been developing for years now and each year it gets a bit worse as this team severely ages. There is less speed on the bases, and it's hurting their ability to score on balls that don't reach the wall. I still think they'll be fine in the long run, mostly thanks to the pitching being able to keep them in games. They have to get more consistent at the plate though. Hopefully Long will work his magic on Swisher now the way he did with Granderson (though I have less hope since Swisher said something to the effect that he thinks he's fine.) One thing I see as a positive, and I hope the example spreads, is Granderson's bunt. That's the kind of attitude a team needs. Sometimes a guy, even a guy who can put it in the stands, needs to be able to do the small things to drive in a tying or go-ahead run. Far too often the past few years this team has guys coming up trying to hit 5-run homers. I'm not saying tell ARod to bunt when there are RISP, but when a guy like Posada comes up with less than 2 outs, and a runner at second, and his dismal ability to hit at the plate, maybe he should suck it up and not waste time bitching about borderline pitches.
They have this thing called the internet that lets me follow it pretty well. :smile: Right, I guess my issue with how the media is handling it is that it's not something that's controllable... or has too much to do with the HRs. If they rely too much on the home run, the solution isn't to hit more singles/doubles at the expense of home runs... it's to hit more singles/doubles at the expense of strikeouts/pop-ups/ground outs. Why not just talk about it that way? To put it another way: the problem isn't that they're hitting too many HRs at the expense of other hits... it's that they're making outs too frequently. I just don't know why they choose to frame this issue as though the HRs are at fault. HRs are good things. They don't want to do good things less frequently. They want to do the bad things less frequently. I guess what I mean is, if they continue to put runners on base, they will - by the end of the season - very likely drive in runners at a clip commensurate with their overall performance. It evens out. If the team BA is .250 without runners on base, it's likely to be close to that with runners on base. If it's .290 w/o runners, then it'll probably be close to that with RISP. Here are the batting lines for the team last year, overall, with no one on, with men on, and with RISP. Can you tell which is which? Is one much worse than the other? .267/.350/.436/.786 .258/.363/.420/.782 .267/.357/.441/.798 .267/.343/.432/.775 And I agree that a lack of speed hurts, in general... but I think this is actually one of the fastest Yankee teams in recent history. Think about the teams the Yanks fielded several years ago. Gardner blows Matsui out of water. Tex, although not fast, is faster than Giambi. Granderson is at least as fast as Damon was. Martin is 10x faster than Posada. Swisher is faster than Sheffield. The Yanks have lost speed because of Jeter, A-Rod, and Posada getting older and slower. (Oh, and to save you the trouble of looking it up, the order of the batting splits listed above is season totals, RISP, men on, no one on.) I agree that the Yanks should be able to do the small things, like bunting, but I wish they'd only use it when it's useful. I strongly disagree with the idea of having the team's hottest hitter giving up an automatic out to advance the runners. Or with giving up an out in the fifth inning. You're (almost) guaranteeing an out in order to (hopefully) score some runs. But with someone like Granderson up, you've got a solid chance to score runs without giving up an out, and still have the opportunity to advance the runners while making an out (via fly ball or grounder to the right side, etc.). Your team only gets 27 outs. They are precious. I don't like to see them wasted.
Hah, okay. I guess I should have phrased it more like "I don't know how much you bother to keep up with it. :wink: I completely agree. That's the point many fans keep trying to make to the media guys, who keep responding with douche comments when they hit one like "Oh, I guess this was a bad time to hit a homer!" or when they single they say "Yeah, that's so much better than a home run!" It's illogical, but I guess that keeps them employed. As I said, I doubt anyone would object to seeing them giving nose bleed seats fans extra souveniers. It's when there is one out, bases loaded, and they ground into a 5-4-3 that is infuriating. I'm sure it'll even out more, but with the team just hitting worse overall, evening out doesn't give a lot to look forward to. (FTR, I haven't given up hope on the team hitting. I'm still confident everyone will get hot once the weather stops being miserable.) That's the key. In the past you could at least rely on Jeter and ARod to be faster on the bases, so when they'd be cold at the plate at least a walk would carry hope of runs. Now they're more of a liability on the basepath. You have to look at the cases you mentioned more deeply though. Sure, Gardner is possibly the fastest guy we've had since Henderson, but he can't touch Matsui's offensive production. Tex is faster than Giambi was, but Giambi hit whenever he was healthy. I love Teixeira, but there are days I want Girardi to just bench him. I still believe he and Cano should be switched in the order. Granderson is admittedly a far better baseball player than Damon ever was for us. I've said it already but it bears repeating that I was completely wrong about him. Martin is definitely faster than Posada, and is a far better catcher, but his offense has grinded to a slow crawl since his hot start. Swisher may be faster and a better fielder than Sheffield, but Swish doesn't even sniff Sheff at the plate. Overall, I think the Yankees just aren't as good offensively as they've been over the past few years. Fortunately I think this is the best pitching staff they've had since at least the early years of this millenium, which is going to give them opportunities at late wins all year. That's big for a team with potential to have "one big inning." I agree with you almost 100% here. I actually didn't see the Granderson bunt live, but I saw the rest of the inning. The bunt moved the tying run into scoring position. If Granderson is allowed to hit, and grounds to short, suddenly instead of 2nd & 3rd 1 out, you have a meaningless runner at third, two outs and a pitching staff capable of finishing the job. I totally agree with the bunt in that situation. I do agree that you try not to hand away outs, but when you have the chance to move runners into a game-tying situation, and only have 1 out with no DP in play, you have to take it. Especially when you're talking about the two supposed "best" hitters on the team coming up next. You have to assume at least one of them will extend the inning.
I was only talking about speed, since you said the Yanks have less speed on the bases and that that is hurting their ability to score runs. Obviously, those past teams were even slower, but scored runs. So the "lack of speed" is kind of a red herring. It's the lack of hitting. Right. And if the bunt goes awry, or if the next batters don't get the job done, or if they do but the runner gets thrown out at the plate or falls victim to a spectacular defensive play... or any number of possibilities... well... then it didn't work out. It can go both ways. So what is more likely to happen? In the long run, the team is better off not bunting in almost every situation (possible exception being the ninth inning). It might only be a slight difference worth half a dozen runs over the course of a season, so I don't sweat it too much... but I still don't like it. It's the baseball equivalent of the third and fifteen draw play.
Yeah, obviously if you're hitting well as a team "speed" makes no difference. But when you're not hitting, and you're slow, it's a compounded problem. We're always going to disagree on this one. You subscribe to the Moneyball idea that sacrifices are outs given away. I believe that a properly timed sacrifice makes the difference between winning and losing in a tight game. The examples you gave about how a bunt can go wrong are fringe examples that nearly never happen. The vast majority of the time a bunt is successful in its purpose. When you have no outs, the tying run on first, and a guy who actually practices bunting at the plate, you're crazy if you don't sieze that opportunity. You give that out to get that runner into a position to score on a single, especially late in the game. We've already established that we have completely opposite feelings on tenets of Moneyball though. This argument would just be cyclical to continue. I accept that you feel the way you do, and I'm not trying to get in the last word on the subject. We just fundamentally disagree about the usefulness of the sacrifice bunt.
That's a distortion of what I believe. I also believe that a properly timed sacrifice can make a difference in a tight game. We just seem to differ on what it means to have a sacrifice be "properly timed." Most times, it is better for a team to let the guy hit. The bunt going wrong was just one example of how it might not work. And it was the least likely to occur (although the Yanks seem to screw it up plenty). Why did you seize on that one? Far more likely than a botched bunt is that the batters following the bunter are unable to drive the advanced runner in. Let's just use the example of first and second with no one out in a tight game... Granderson is up, Tex and A-Rod are on deck. Scenario #1: Granderson bunts successfully. Good job, Grandy Man! Second and third, one out. What are the following batters (the heart of the lineup) likely to do? Using his career numbers, Tex reaches base 37% of the time. When you factor in his infield fly rate, his K rate, and all the ways he could hit the ball that don't score a run, and subtract out all the hits that would have scored non-advanced runners anyway (over half of his hits are for extra bases), in all, you expect to score a run in about 30% of the ABs where you would not have scored one anyway. That is, you expect Granderson's sacrifice to directly lead to a run about 30% of the time with Tex hitting behind him. (Incidentally, this is lower than Granderson's OBP.) Apply the same to A-Rod, both with and without Tex making an out before him. Then compare it to what you expect if Granderson doesn't sacrifice. In the end, you'd see that more runs score if you don't sacrifice. But like I said, that doesn't apply to every situation. In the ninth inning of a tied game, with a chance to win, that one run is at a premium. Or if it's the bottom of the eighth inning at home, same thing. And possibly earlier, if you're in a game with two very good bullpens.
This is why Girardi gets criticized and has earned the moniker "Joey Looseleafs." If you sit and analyze every stat down to the molecular level, you may as well fire up your XBox and stop playing with human beings. Last night, Jeter showed why letting a guy swing with runners on first and second, with less than 2 outs isn't necessarily a good thing. With the insanely hot Granderson on deck, The Captain grounded into a 5-3 inning-ending double-play. That was after running the count to (IIRC) 3-1 and having already squared to bunt as a fake, with the infield playing him back. As for Teixeira, obviously I have the advantage of hindsight, but when you wrote your post did either of us think we'd be viewing Jorge Posada and Mark Teixeira as last night's heroes? (Not counting Granderson, of course.) Stats don't always serve you. Even current ones. Just to be clear, I wasn't intentionally trying to skew your argument. Not to rehash the past, but the arguments over semantics are why I stopped having conversations with you before. I like to talk baseball, and you're an intelligent fan, but if we're just going to get into arguments over assumed motives or semantics let's just not and say we did. I'd much rather we just talk about the Yankees themselves. :beer: I only half agree. Yes, when a guy is swinging the bat like Granderson it's a tough call to ask him to bunt, but if it's a situation where it puts the tying run of a well-pitched game in scoring position, I'd find it hard to oppose the move. I'd equate it with pulling a starter who is on a roll with a one run lead and a lot of gas left for the greatest closer of all time. I agreed with the move last week, regardless of the outcome, and I still do today. I wouldn't ask Granderson to bunt an insurance run over, but I would ask Albert Pujols, Alex Rodriguez, Barry Bonds, Mickey Mantle and Babe Ruth in any of their primes to bunt over a tying run late in a game.
Why is it hard to believe that Teixeira would be the hero? His average is a little low due to the shift, but with runners on he's as good as anyone. I don't think even the most old school, small ball manager in history would agree with you here.
Actually, his average is really good this year with runners on this year has been better than his overall I think, so you're right, but he's still been questionable this year, so my expectations have been lowered for him until very, very recently. Actually, as early as yesterday I was still calling for Cano to swap lineup slots with him. Well, I'm not them. :up: (Though yeah, I was being a bit ridiculous with the names I posted upon review. My only excuse was that I hadn't yet had lunch.) ----------------- On a different note, congrats to Mo on 1,000 appearences with the same team. The only pitcher to ever do so!
Yes, there is a human element to the game, and of course we should account for it. I don't know if I buy that Jeter example, though, for a couple of reasons: One, a single example of a failed attempt doesn't meant anything when we're talking about the average runs scored over the long haul. If he got a base hit there, I wouldn't be saying Jeter showed why hitters should swing away there. Even the best hitters fail more than 2/3 of the time. One AB doesn't tell us anything. The evidence in favor of swinging away comes when we look at the big picture. Two, I could be convinced that last night's seventh inning AB was one of the situations where bunting isn't as horrific of a play: aging, slowing, ground-ball/DP machine up with a super-hot hitter on deck and Romero pitching a hell of a game. Of course, it's a three-run game at that point, and the odds are still a bit better letting him swing away in the sense that - if this situation repeats itself 1000 times - the Yanks will probably wind up with more runs if Jeter doesn't bunt, all other things being equal. I say that not because I have some crystal ball or whatever... it's just that that is what has happened in the past, and there's a ton of data to support that. Check out these run expectancy matrices. (It sounds nerdier than it really is.) Here's the part that's relevant to our discussion: From 1993 to 2010, on average, teams scored 1.556 runs in an inning from a first and second, no out situation. They scored 1.447 runs, on average, from a second and third, one out situation. As I've mentioned, it's not much difference, but it is a difference, and a significant one at that over such a large sample. For every ten times those situations come up, an extra run scores in the former. The other odd thing to me about that situation is that - while you criticize Girardi for "going by the book" and not bunting there - if anything, he agrees more with you regarding the approach to the bunt. I don't think it amounts to more than half a dozen runs one way or the other over a course of a season. But some of those runs might be important, and I prefer to see my teams make the moves that have the best chance of success. I don't discount the human element to the game... I just think the human element is often reflected in the stats. There could be any manner of extenuating circumstances in a given situation that could change a decision in a particular game. The difference in run expectancy isn't so great that it's hard to nudge one way or the other. Maybe the pitcher is dealing that day and runs are at a premium, or maybe the third baseman is gimpy and the bunt is more likely to go for a hit, or maybe it's someone like Gardner who can bunt for a hit at a higher rate than most, or maybe the guy has lousy numbers against this pitcher and the next guy has great numbers. I'm fine with all of that. All I'm saying is that - over the course of history - teams score more runs when they don't sacrifice as opposed to when they do. Just so you know, I'm not saying this because I want to argue semantics or "be right" or anything, and I don't say this to be adversarial (and never have... as I've said, I think of this as a part of talking baseball, and just enjoy the discussion).
These are the kind of conversations where you and I can really chat. :beer: The bolded is exactly why I'm in favor of the bunt in the situation Granderson was in (I framed my example poorly with the Jeter situation). The best hitters ever failed at least 60% of the time they came to the plate. The odds are always against you getting hit, no matter how great you are, or how great you're currently doing. The bunt is a "sure out" (though we saw that wasn't the case the other day too) but it's also a "sure thing" to get the runners into scoring position in that particular case. (Obviously it's not 100%, but the odds are better of moving the runners over than if he swings.) Right, and I won't dispute anything here. In most cases, at least. When I will go against these statistics is when it's a situation where you can move the tying run (and almost only the tying run) into scoring position. Especially in a well-pitched game. That's the real key. Again, I didn't format my example well enough to make my point, but Granderson (like Jeter in the following game) failing to move runners over and GIDP is what I'll anticipate happening with the tying run on first, and I'd rather he give himself up than ruin a shot at getting a game-saving run in. Also, I'd be less apt to put the bunt on with an out on the board already. In that case, giving him up leaves you in the situation where you still need a single to get the tying run in anyway, so he may as well give you a shot at the go-ahead being on base as well. Sure. I wouldn't dispute Jeter swinging in that particular situation, since it wasn't playing from behind and only amounted to a shot at an inning that could blow the game open. A bunt in that particular situation would have been unnecessary. We're really not that far off in opinion after all. I don't advocate the bunt just to move runners over in situations where it doesn't provide an important run. That's why I agreed with the Granderson bunt. Regardless of his current bat, he at best has a 40% shot to get a hit safely. That's a lot of risk that a DP could come out of it, leaving you with a runner on third, the tying run coming back to the plate, and two outs. Giving up practically any hitter in that situation is desireable to me, but even more when you have hitters like Tex and ARod to follow up. That's two shots at a game-tying single. It's cool. Like I said, I think this is the kind of conversation we can really enjoy.
The odds are better of moving the runner over, but not for getting that runner in, which is the real goal. The next batters still have work to do (with one less out at their disposal). When you account for K's and pop-ups for the following batters, and also account for productive outs and hits for the bunting batter, the odds favor the non-bunt. (As seen with those run expectancy matrices.) No disagreement there. But it still depends on when it's happening in the game. Right. 40% chance to get a hit and leave the team in a far better situation PLUS another whatever% chance to advance the runners without a hit and have the same net situation. For what it's worth, the risk of a DP isn't that high. In 198 plate appearances with runners on first and second, Granderson has hit into 2 DPs. Agreed.
Without re-quoting everything the only real response I have at this point is that, yes, I understand the idea that there is a shot to score runners without risking an out, but in the specific case Granderson was in during that game (7th inning of a well-pitched game, with a bullpen capable of shutting the door, with the tying run on first, with two strong hitters following him and no outs on the board) the bunt was the rare decision from Girardi I support 100%. In other situations I might have a totally different opinion, but in the particular situation at the center of the discussion, I am as much in Girardi's corner as I was about pulling Colon for Mo in the 9th of a 1-run game. For me, the Granderson situation was stats vs. risk assessment. There's a better risk to assuring the runners make it to 2nd and 3rd with 1 out than risking an infield ground ball that leaves one on two out. Once those runners are in scoring position, a ground ball to the right side gets a run in and the tying run 90 feet away. A wild pitch or ARodian pattened dribbler then ties the game. Sure, these odds are slimmer, but still an overall less risky chance than Granderson becoming an unproductive out (even assuming he doesn't GIDP, a fly ball doesn't move the tying run to second either, nor does a K). The bunt is all but certainly a productive out. In that particular situation it's the risk I would always advocate taking.
