Photo via friend of the blog Amanda Rykoff

How would you remember George Steinbrenner?

The question has been asked and answered, and for many, the monument that now graces Monument Park behind center field in Yankee Stadium, would seem fitting and appropriate as a tribute to a man who was, in many ways, larger than life.

Ask a similar, but very different question:

How would George remember George Steinbrenner?

The answer becomes not quite so clear.

Steinbrenner, we know, was a man who spared no expense when it came to the Yankees, willing to do anything to bring a winning baseball team to New York City–and seven Word Series titles later, he most certainly did– seemingly regardless of the consequences it may have wrought.

Yet Steinbrenner was also a man whose community involvement is something we can only wish to emulate, and this Hal Steinbrenner quote about his father, from the article linked above, says volumes:

“He always told us that America is supposed to be the land of milk and honey, and there are too many people left behind,” Hal Steinbrenner says. “And he taught us if two or more people know you are doing it, you’re doing it for the wrong reasons.”

Does that come across as a man who’d want a giant, bombastic monument that overshadows those of Ruth, Huggins, Gehrig, Mantle, DiMaggio and the victims of 9/11 (among others)?

Of course, only George himself knew what he would have wanted, so perhaps it’s wrong to say that the monument is too big or a noble effort but misguided.

@emmaspan tweeted that “it would be kind of inappropriate if Steinbrenner had a tasteful, understated, modest remembrance,” and my co-writer at You Can’t Predict Baseball @jordan_smed told me, “I think George wouldn’t have wanted a giant monument, but it was still the right thing to do…because the guy he was demanded it.”

There is certainly some truth to these notions, but I’m still left wondering if Steinbrenner was about the monuments and the tributes so much as he was the cause, be it the Yankees or helping out the underprivileged wherever he could.

Don’t mistake this for hagiography–Steinbrenner wasn’t a saint, and I doubt he’d enjoy classification as such, but that’s kind of the point.

Our society still bears traces of those that came before, of the idea that bigger is better (a sociologist or anthropologist would probably love to examine the root causes of this notion), that the more gold, the heavier trophy, the bigger monument you get, the more important you were.

In the postgame, Derek Jeter was asked about it and commented, ““It was big,” Jeter said. “Probably just how The Boss wanted it. The biggest one out there.”

Jeter, unlike me, would be in a position to know, and yet it’s hard to reconcile his comment with the notion of the man who thought the highest form of charity was that done anonymously.

It’s hard to argue that any one person was more important to the Yankees than the Boss in his prime, since he held the purse strings and thus the keys, but does that make Steinbrenner more important than the Yankee name, brand, legacy or ethos?

More importantly, did Steinbrenner see himself as such?

The monument is there, and by all rights and purposes one should be there, but when it was unveiled the great reaction–via IM, Twitter, correspondence from those at the game–was one agog at how big the monument was, more than anything else.

I never knew Mr. Steinbrenner, so I can’t answer the question with any certainty, but I wonder…

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Right now, my Facebook page is dotted with references to the Hartford Whalers, Winnipeg Jets and Montreal Expos.

It’s 1.30 in the morning, and I’m drawn in by the power of teams no longer there, contracted or moved elsewhere, their original incarnations working their way until they become favorites of ours.

I’ve been to Montreal, and I’ve seen the Expos play (in 2002, versus the Houston Astros), and I remember falling in love with a young Vladimir Guerrero, and despite the last place team, despite the empty stadium, despite my most prevalent Expo memory having been David Cone’s perfect game, I still found myself liking the team. I liked it then, and I love it more now.

The Expos are only one of many teams where the nostalgia permeates, in baseball and in other sports, but they might be the most obvious example of this feeling because they were torn from us, undone by the strike, just when they were the best team in all of baseball. That’ll create nostalgia, just like the Dodgers skipping town only a couple years after winning their one and only World Series.

Sometimes I wonder if what I love is the team…or the idea of the team.

What I love isn’t so much Tim Raines or Andre Dawson or Dennis Martinez; what I love is the idea of a team, playing in a city that loves their team, like Seattle loved their Sonics, like Cleveland loved their original Browns.

I wonder, if/when the Nets move to Brooklyn, will their New Jersey tenure be looked back upon with a sense of fondness? The idea of a basketball team in Brooklyn has a ton of pull, and even I, a native Jerseyan, don’t absolutely hate the idea, but what my reaction will be when the move is finally done…I have no idea.

On the surface, it’s crazy to compare the move or contraction of a team to the death of someone you know and love, but when you get to the fanatical level that you’re probably at if you’re reading this post, the relationship becomes complicated. You know the team, everything you possibly can know about them, celebrate their successes and mourn their failures even if you know the reciprocation is never coming.

Maybe it’s the notion that they’re there, like that Nike Ad from last Christmas said, when everything else fails, when rent is too high, the weather too 33-and-raining, the wrong candidate wins the election…the team is still there, still showing up, still playing, for good or ill. So, then, when the team is taken from you, be it after a long, drawn out process or something sudden and nearly overnight, that certainty, that fallback, that pride, is gone.

What would happen if the departed team came back? If the Nationals went back to Montreal or the Carolina Hurricanes back to Hartford?

Would they be welcomed back with open arms and live happily ever after as we hope? Or are we more in love with the nostalgia than we are the team itself?

As geography constantly changes, so too will teams in their locations, choosing to migrate to more populous or lucrative areas, and fans somewhere will be left in the cold. The Expos and the Whalers and the Jets and the Sonics will go from living experiences to the memories of a Wikipedia generation, and the nostalgia will continue to grow.

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Recently, on one of the blogs I read regularly, there ensued a debate as to whether the commenters on that one, or on another much-frequented blog knew the game better.

Tonight, a question was posed that’s one of those so-simple-it’s-profound: “What exactly is knowing baseball?”

Immediately, a few different ideas come to mind.

There’s knowing baseball in the sense of knowing the rules, written and unwritten.

There’s knowing baseball in the sense of “I’ll take 1970s St. Louis Cardinals for $400, Alex”.

There’s knowing baseball in terms of knowing about OBP, OPS, FIP, BABIP, K/BB, WAR, LI, and so on.

There’s knowing baseball in the sense of owning season tickets, of going to as many minor league games as major league ones, and recognizing names that may or may not jump out at you.

There’s knowing baseball in the sense of knowing its place in culture and lore.

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We sit here and read blogs and writers and come to conclusions about whether or not someone knows baseball, whether or not he or she possesses the analytical mind necessary to dissect it’s “finer points”, as my grandmother likes to call ‘em.

We spend hours constructing optimal fantasy rosters–indeed, fantasy sports is now so huge (and not just baseball) that there’s a company that underwrites insurance policies for fantasy team owners.

We buy Baseball Prospectus and The Baseball Codes, Ball Four and Baseball Between the Numbers all in our effort to expand our knowledge, from the statistics to the rules of etiquette on the baseball diamond, from behind-the-scenes of a world only a select few ever get to experience, to evaluations of each and every player expected to don a Major League uniform in the coming season.

We watch The Natural and Field of Dreams, Bull Durham and the Sandlot in an effort to live and breathe that which matters so much to us, even if it has to be vicariously.

We draw conclusions, make assumptions, and then stare in wonder as these are blown up or taken down right before our very eyes.

****

Is baseball truly knowable? Is it something that can be truly understood via facts and figures only, or is it something that must be intuited, something that can be grasped only by sensing it?

That, of course, is part and parcel of the scout-vs-saber debate, and it seems that we’ve reached a point where we can say, you really need a bit of both, when it comes to prospects.

Yet, you can hardly argue that evaluating prospects is the same as knowing baseball, because baseball it involves so much more.

It involves an entire mythology of its own, an entire culture and an ethos not entirely different than what you’d expect if you suddenly found religion. The similarities here may be endless. If you’re born into baseball, such as you may be born into religion, and it’s nurtured right, you may never know anything else. If it’s forced on you the wrong way, you may rebel and say you want nothing more to do with it, or you may come from the outside, with no connection other than a feeling that yes, this is right, this is where I belong.

****

So what makes an intelligent baseball fan/writer/person? Someone with whom you can converse, and with whom you enjoy conversing, reading or playing or otherwise utilizing the sport?

Maybe it’s this–and this is just one example of many, many others, but it’s what comes to mind:

If you saw the 27th at-bat against Armando Galarraga on one June night not too long ago, if you shared in any part the pervading emotions–happiness, shock, outrage, sadness and then, for many, forgiveness, if you smiled with Galarraga or cried with Jim Joyce, if you advocated expansion of replay or argued for the system to remain as it is…

…if you did any of that, if you sensed and you felt like you understood what had just happened, and not just what happened but that it was important, even if you didn’t necessarily know why…

Then you understand the pull that this game can have, and if you understand the pull of the game, then you know baseball.

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Sometimes, the best way to understand the numbers is to place them on a scale. That is, sometimes the best way to understand how good Robinson Canó’s batting average is, is to see how many other players have hit .370 or better this late in a season (hint: it’s not going to be a lot).

We don’t necessarily need to focus on a player though; we can also analyze the numbers for a team, and in this case, see where the Yankees rank amidst their competition.

We’ll start simply. The Yankees’ may be “only” tied for first, but their 40-23 record is tied for the best in all of baseball. Ultimately, in the end, this is what matters. This might not be the blistering pace if 1998, but it’s pace enough to win 103 games, and if 103 wins doesn’t have you playing in October, then there’s something seriously wrong with the entire system.

The Yankees are 22-7 at home; it’s the most wins at home and only the Braves have fewer losses–though they’ve played four fewer games in their home park.

On the road, the Yanks’ are a little more pedestrian, as most teams are, with an 18-16 record. Even so, their record is good enough to rank fifth for road marks, and they haven’t entirely had an easy road schedule either–two visits to Boston, one to the Angels, one at Citifield (where the Mets are pretty good…).

Now, we can break down the Yankees’ performance into offense and pitching.

Offense

The Yankees rank first in runs scored (355), but NOT in hits, doubles, triples or home runs–though they rank fourth in hits and sixth in triples. How is this possible?

Simple. The Yankees, with a .365 team OBP (best in the Majors) rank second in MLB with 268 walks. Only Atlanta’s (?!) 295 rank higher. The Yankees, with 414 strike outs, are 7th or 23rd, depending on how you look at it, but they’ve struck out fewer than 22 of the other teams. Less strikeouts and more walks is usually a sign of good things, and it’s no different here.

The Yankees are second in OPS to Boston (.817 to .810), but whereas the Yankees have a higher BA and OBP, the Red Sox are more dependent on power. Given how dependent the Yankees were on their power hitting last season, this is an interesting development. The Yankees are scoring the runs they are not because they’re massacring the ball, but because the Nick Johnson of get-on-base-at-all-costs philosophy seems to have taken over the entire team.

Pitching

The Yankees’ team ERA of 3.82 ranks just ninth–pedestrian for a team on a 103 win pace, but much of that is due to the team’s bullpen. The starters–yes, include Javier Vazquez–have an ERA of 3.72 that ranks sixth, and second in the American League (it was obviously lower before Hughes’ performance yesterday).

In terms of runs allowed, the Yankees have allowed the 8th-fewest in the league and only three teams have walked fewer than the Yankees’ 188. Though the Yanks’ pitching may be giving up runs (on occasion), they’re not terribly hurting themselves by walking opponents left and right, either.

The Yankees rank dead middle-of-the-pack 15th in strikeouts, and with Sabathia struggling (for him) and Hughes’ leading the team in strikeouts, this may not be entirely surprising. That said, now that Javier Vazquez is pitching more like the guy the Yankees traded for and not the guy in April, I’d look for the strike out ranking to rise as the season progresses.

The 504 hits Yankees’ pitching has surrendered ranks third fewest in the league, so I wouldn’t worry too terribly much about the middle-of-the-pack strikeout-ness. Yankee pitching is getting outs, and that, in the end, is what matter.

Opponents have a .311 OBP against Yankee pitching–which is good for third in all of MLB. (a you-can’t-predict-baseball note: opponents have an OBP under .300 against San Diego.) That said, opponents have a .703 OPS against the Yankees (7th overall and 2nd in the AL). The low OBP and higher OPS doesn’t bode well for slugging…and, while it’s all relative, the Yankee pitching does drop to 12th (.393) in this category.

What does this mean? Yankee pitching isn’t walking a lot, and they’re not giving up a lot of hits, but when they do, they tend to be good hits.

Indeed, the Yankees’ 65 home runs surrendered are the eighth most in MLB, and you can take your pick–blame Javy, blame CC, blame Chan Ho Park, etc. Lots of candidates. That said, both Vazquez and Park have been pitching somewhat better of late and the Yankees’ do play in the AL East.

The Yankees have allowed the sixth fewest in total bases, and the fewest in the American League, and when that happens, your team’s pitching is probably doing just fine.

Summary

The summary is simply put: the Yankees are at or near the top in a number of offensive and pitching categories, and this is what you’d expect for a team with the best record in baseball.

In the American League you need to hit, and the Yankees are doing that just fine, but what makes the difference is that they’re also pitching well, in the harder league, to boot. What’s sustainable and what’s not is up for debate, but none of the numbers, offensive or pitching, seem so outrageously ludicrous as to not be–and in some cases we might even reasonably expect the numbers to approve.

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A few weeks ago, I posed a question on Twitter: Is it too early to dub 2010 the Year of the Pitcher (redux, II, the sequel, or whatever you so choose?)

The answer that I most remember was @jay_jaffe remarking that yes, it was far too early to dub the season as such given that we were still awaiting warm(er) weather and the subsequent rise in offensive production.

At the time, the answer satisfied me, but now, fast approaching the middle of June, when All Star managers have already made their coaching selections, I’m not so sure.

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If this is not, in fact, the Year of the Pitcher (something to which we might blame the bullpen of Arizona, the starters of Milwaukee and Charlie Morton), then perhaps it is at least the year of the singular pitching feat.

It’s June 10th, and we’ve already seen two perfect games that should have been three, another no-hitter, a fourteen-strikeout game in a major league debut, four pitchers–including a rookie–with ERAs under two (and one under one), 24 pitchers with ERAs under three, a double-header today that saw one team retire 22 in a row in game one, and then the other team retire 21 in a row in game two.

I could go on, but I’ll spare you.

***

Last year, at this point in time, we were talking about the seasons that Joe Mauer and Albert Pujols were having, about how much they were destroying the lead, producing seasons for the ages.

This season, the closest we have to that is…Jose Bautista?

No, this season, no one is talking about offense. Everyone is talking about pitching.

Ubaldo, Strasburg (who’s made one start!), Halladay, Lee, Jaime Garcia, Mike Leake, Josh Johnson, Matt Cain…

…Even the guys we would expect to be talking about, Felix Hernandez, Zack Greinke, Tim Lincecum are getting the short of it not because they’ve imploded, but merely because they’ve become something more akin to human, a large part due to the fact that none of them pitches for a team that understands the concept of scoring runs.

***

What gives?

Is it that we’ve finally moved away from the Steroid Era? Is it that the new understanding of pitchers’ health, about the Verducci effect and the idea that you can very easily blow out a pitcher’s arm if it’s not cared for to some degree?

For one thing, with the possible exceptions of Halladay and Lee, who are in their prime, all the other starters listed above are young. In the AL East alone, you’ve got Phil Hughes, Jon Lester, David Price, Ricky Romero…and that’s just to start.

So many of these pitchers are younger, ones that may have had the benefit of advances in sports science and medicine, and the advantage (debatable, of course) of pitch counts and innings limits, but we cannot discount those on the other end of the age spectrum–Livan Hernandez, Andy Pettitte, and, of course, the Ageless Wonder himself, Jaime Moyer (Moyer’s ERA may not be anything special, but his WHIP places him 13th in the league. He can has some defense?).

***

Of course, the YCPB take on this is that we don’t need to search for an explanation, and that it may be best to just sit back and enjoy it, but what we’re seeing this season isn’t just some good pitching, it’s something that’s trending towards the historic.

Look, when Braden and Halladay pitched their perfect games in the same season, it hadn’t happened since 1880. When Armando Galarraga, for all intents and purposes pitched his (Imperfect Game? Almost Perfect?), it would have been the third such in a season, which has never happened, as long as baseball records, as such, have been kept.

How crazy has this season been? On the day that Ubaldo Jimenez pitched his no hitter, something usually seen only once or twice all season, if that, he was upstaged by a Mets-Cardinals game that was scoreless until the 19th inning. While you can joke about the Met offense all you want, St. Louis, as the defending NL Central winner, isn’t exactly punchless at the plate.

Sure, it’s one thing to throw scoreless games in April in cold weather cities when all you want to do is go warm your hands in the dugout, but a double header on June 10th in which the losing teams combined for three hits, that’s something. Even in Citifield, even with the Padres and the Mets.

We don’t know what’s going to happen from here on out, if the pitching performances we’re seeing are sustainable, if late season injuries are going to bite or if the hitters will suddenly turn it on and unleash a fury of runs like no one’s business.

If it happens, it happens, but for the moment, I’m going to go start circling Ubaldo’s next few starts on my calendar.

(The ESPN pitcher leaderboard can be found here. It updates real time; fangraphs and B-Ref update the day after)

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Generally speaking, I don’t mind interleague play.

It’s kind of fun to see teams that you otherwise might not, and it’s a welcome break from playing the Red Sox and the Orioles and the Rays and the…wait, we haven’t played the Jays yet? Huh?

That said, I have one big issue–the fact that AL pitchers have to bat in NL parks notwithstanding.

My issue is this: interleague games have the feel of exhibition games, even though they are very real and do count in the standings.

However, since they don’t have the luster of divisional or even wild card play, the non-premium, non Yankees-Mets/White Sox-Cubs/Giants-A’s matchups can seem, well, meh. I mean, I can get up for the Dodgers just fine, but the Astros only provoke memories of Chien Ming Wang’s destructed career.

So, what should be done?

Well, I have a solution, and this solution will also take care of another well documented issue.

You know how we like to complain that the All Star Game should be an exhibition and not actually mean anything? So like, when it goes fourteen innings we don’t have to stay up till two AM wondering who won?

How about this:

Don’t use the All Star Game to decide home field advantage for the World Series; use interleague play.

Look, I realize that right now the American League is a stronger league, and thus would likely (continue to) reap a benefit, but such things cycle, and in some time the National League will again be better. Maybe.

Anyway, the point is, you’d make interleague play actually worth something directly relating to itself. You could argue whether or not the schedule should then be constructed so decent teams play decent teams and poorer teams ones on their level, although I don’t think that’s entirely necessary.

Thus, the All Star game can go back to being a pure exhibition, as it’s meant to be, and there can be an actual benefit (besides monetary gains) to interleague play itself, as opposed to it merely serving as a distraction from the same old opponents.

Just a thought.

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Today, the Yankees did as is long standing tradition for the winners of any major American sports championship, and visited the White House.

It was all very much golly-gee amusement for the fans (the heartwarming part happened earlier, when the players went to visit the vets at Walter Reed), the type of feel-good, we-rule-the-world thing that has us living vicariously through multi-million dollar athletes for a few hours of the day.  Nothing to see here, move along…

…that is, until someone brought up that President Obama did not mention Alex Rodriguez by name.

ZOMG, CONTROVERSY!

Only, not.

*****

Like any devoted Yankee fan, I’ve heard it from all comers on A-Rod.

I’ve heard about how he’s a great person, about how he’s a horrible person, about how he’s the best ballplayer ever, about how he’s a fraud, on and on it goes.

I think I’ve shocked more people when I tell them that Rodriguez is not my favorite Yankee (Mariano is; of course you, dear reader, know this by now…) than I have when I say that Jeter is not.

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For the non-Yankee fan, A-Rod would seem to sum up all there is to hate about the Yankees:  the big money contract, the glamour, the aura of inaccessibility, the drama.  He’s like Derek Jeter, but with hubris.  (Thus far, it’s either that Jeter’s hubris is his defense, or he doesn’t have one.  Which is kind of crazy in 2010).

For Yankee fans, A-Rod is the ballplayer that can do and does some crazy awesome things on the field, but somehow, for some reason, always manages to be the center of attention.  Some Yankee fans will tell you that it’s only what he does on the field that matters, and because of this they’ll wear their #13 jerseys without a second thought; others will tell you that he’s not a team player, yadda yadda.

****

In 2009, the A-Rod story arc was actually one worth following–the hip injury, the steroid admission (at this point, I can no longer remember which came first, though I believe it was the latter), the home-run-on-the-first-pitch-of-the-season, the walk off against Boston, the grand slam on the last pitch of the season, the bottom-of-the-ninth game tying home run in the ALDS, the extra inning home run in the ALCS, the camera home run in the World Series…

In 2010, it almost feels like in The Lord of the Rings, after Frodo and Sam have been to Mt. Doom, and are on their way back to the Shire.  They’ve conquered the big, bad demon of Sauron (in this case the injury and the “unclutch” reputation, and proving himself to be a “true Yankee”),  but they still have to deal with the just-as-annoying Saruman (in this case, the media-yes, the blogging community, too-that will grasp at straws to create controversy where there is none, just because it’s Alex).*

A-Rod has now won MVP awards, won games, contributed monumentally to postseason wins and won the World Series with the New York Yankees.    He’s done what he was expected to do, and early on in 2010, he’s performing pretty well as is.

At this point, any controversy feels strained and forced, as though somehow some in the media are yearning for more Dallas Bradens to come forth, just because it’d make for good copy.

I don’t really care that Obama didn’t mention A-Rod by name–and if Alex himself cares, that’s his business, not mine.

Or maybe I’m just a bad media-type.

*Note:  The Scouring of the Shire, while a central part of the Return of the King book, was left out of the movie due to fears of anti-climax and time constraints.  No word exists on whether or not  Peter Jackson cut the scene in order to appeal to Joe West, who may have thought that the movies were too long and a disgrace to the cinematic community.

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Early season statistics can be funky.

For example, right now, the league leader in ERA is…Livan Hernandez? Huh? (Mike Pelfrey and Carlos Silva also make the top ten, along with the names you’d be more expectant to find there, such as Halladay, Lincecum, and Wainwright).

So, as I’m sure you, the astute fan you are, know that it’s not really a great idea to put too much into the early season leaderboard.

That said, when Andy Pettitte makes an appearance there, with an ERA of 1.29 after four starts and a WHIP of 1.07, you start to wonder: can this be a fluke? Or can this be like Cliff Lee in 2008 or Zack Greinke last season?

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Going into this season, any Yankee fan worth his or her salt would have told you that the number one concern for this team was their dependence, still, on the “Core Four”, a quartet (Derek Jeter, Jorge Posada, Mariano Rivera and Andy Pettitte) that seems to have somehow gotten a hold of naked pictures of Father Time, or something. Year after year, writers and fans inscribe their doom; year after year, they like to prove us wrong.

Okay, so there are some signs that they may be slowing just a little, but the dramatic fall off and collapse many have predicted has never materialized.

In fact, switching Derek Jeter to the leadoff role last season seemed to spur a renaissance, and Mariano Rivera had the best season (thus far) of his career at the age of 38.

Given the hijinks of this quartet, then, is it really any surprise that Andy Pettitte is off to one of his best starts in career history?

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The question, then, is thus: how can we tell if it will last? Logic tells us that there is no possible way Pettitte will end this season with an ERA of 1.29; experience tells us that with a member of the Core Four, anything, really, is possible.

For what it’s worth, there have only been two seasons in Pettitte’s career–two out of fourteen completed–where he has finished with an ERA under 3.00 (1997, and 2005 when he pitched for Houston), and only six where he has finished with an ERA under 4.00. This would seem to indicate that there’s no way Pettitte could maintain his start, but if that was the end-all of the argument, you wouldn’t be reading this.

The sabermatician in all of us knows that there’s really only two ways to figure out if Pettitte’s tremendous start is a fluke or not:

a) Watch all of his starts from now until the end of September and look at his final statistics, or
b) Look at his peripheral statistics.

So let’s start by analyzing the most basic of these.

Walks = good. Strikeouts = bad.

In Pettitte’s career, he has average 2.33 strike outs for every walk–while it’s always good to strike out more than one walks, Pettitte is hardly (nor has he ever been known as) a strikeout specialist.

In 2010 thus far, Pettitte has 22 strikeouts to 9 walks–a not-so-different ratio of 2.44.

What does this mean? Whatever the secret to his early season success, it’s not that he’s striking out any more batters.

Still, we’ve known for a while–since 1995, really–that Pettitte isn’t really a strikeout pitcher. That’s why the almost-no-hitter he had in Baltimore last year, the one where Hairston’s error caused him to lose a perfect game, was so weird. Out of all the starters on the Yankee staff, Andy Pettitte is the one guy you’d least expect to do it–he’s a “ground ball” pitcher, and as BABIP will tell you, sometimes balls get through.

Ground Ball pitchers may not have all the flash of the CC Sabathias or the Tim Lincecums, but they can be pretty effective in their own right when they’re on–ever watch Roy Halladay pitch?

Actually, one of the cool things about good ground ball pitchers is that since they can induce swings early in the count, they can keep their overall pitch count down. It’s certainly not the only reason, but it’s likely one of the reasons Halladay seems to pitch a complete game every single time he steps on the mound.

The converse, however, might be what we saw from Chien Ming Wang last season–when ground ball pitchers get hit, they can get hit hard. Pettitte’s not traditionally considered a sinkerballer in the way that Wang is; it’s perhaps less imperative for him to keep his pitches low than it is for Wang, but if Pettitte starts giving up lots of fly balls and home runs, there’s probably something wrong.

By now we’re pretty familiar: a hallmark Pettitte start involves some base hits, a couple double plays, and more likely than not, some sort of caught stealing or successful pickoff.

ANYWAY, the point here, is that just as for some pitchers we look at strikeout-to-walk ratios, with Pettitte, we need to look at groundball-flyball ratios as well.

Our friends at Fangraphs tell us that, career wise, Pettitte pitches to a tune of a 49% groundball percentage (for comparison, Javier Vazquez is at 39% ).

Fangraphs has yet to update with today’s start, but through three starts in 2010, Pettitte’s groundball rate was…dun dun dun…48%.

So, once again, we have a peripheral statistic that’s pretty much in line with his career norms.

Where, then, is the difference? Pettitte’s career norms aren’t that of someone who pitches to a 1.29 ERA, so something’s gotta be going on, right?

Right.

This is where we take a journey over to the BABIP column. As many of you will know, batting average on balls in play is basically an indicator that tells us how often batted balls “find holes” or otherwise eschew fielders. It’s basically a measure of luck–though maybe (and I stress maybe here) someone could find a way to include BABIP in an analysis of a team’s defense.

A normal-ish BABIP is about .300. For his career, Pettitte’s BABIP is .315. Through three starts, as Fangraphs lists it, Pettitte’s BABIP is .260.

Simply put, then, either Pettitte is getting some really, beyond-the-pale help from his defense, or he’s just been pretty darn lucky.

This doesn’t mean Pettitte’s pitched poorly (so don’t fret); just that a season long ERA of 1.29 is probably unsustainable.

Thus far, if we’re to be encouraged by anything, it should be that Pettitte’s given the Yankees four quality starts by the standard definition (6 IP with 3 ER or less), and that in each of his past two starts, he’s given the Yankees eight innings. In fact, I’m personally encouraged that Pettitte’s worked deep into his most recent games considering that due to the weather deities, he didn’t pitch nearly as much as he would have otherwise during Spring Training.

So, there will probably be a clunker in the near future, but even if Pettitte only pitches to his career norms, that should suit the Yankees just fine.

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Of all Major League teams, thus far, the Yankees rank just twelfth (as of this writing) in hits.

That’s almost as middle-of-the-pack as you can get, given the thirty teams in the league over all. Not all that remarkable, one would think–certainly, one might expect a team which hits so, well, averagely, to be closer to the middle of the pack in the standings.

If, however, you learned baseball fan (which, by this point, you probably are), visit the stats page, and then move to the column third from right, labeled OBP, and click that to sort, you’ll see that the Yankees rank not 12th, but second.

On a team where Mark Teixeira and Nick Johnson are both hitting under .150, and Robinson Canó, albeit briefly, had a higher batting average than an on-base percentage, it can occasionally be hard to believe that the team has not yet had a game where they’ve scored less than three runs, or that they’ve scored five in nine of 12.

Still, if one really wants to know what’s gotten into the Yankees this season, all one has to do is look at the just-completed series with the Texas Rangers to get some idea.

The Rangers are not supposed to be a poor team, pitching wise, yet in this series only one of the three starters pitched more than four innings.

On the flip side, the Yankees starters all went at least six innings–and Sabathia, who threw 73 pitches and had a staggering 58 of them count as strikes, would have certainly pitched longer had not the game been called due to rain. AJ Burnett pitched seven innings; today Andy Pettitte has, despite not having his greatest ‘stuff’, pitched eight.

One can’t discount the Texas offense, either–a team with Michael Young, Josh Hamilton, Nelson Cruz and Vladimir Guerrerro is hardly the Pittsburgh Pirates or the San Francisco Giants of recent memory.

So here you have it: the Yankees aren’t (necessarily) blowing teams out 10-0 every game, but with the way the starters are throwing and the bullpen is not making headlines (because it is, by and large, doing its job), four runs begins to feel like twenty.

It’s been a while since the Yankees have had this good of an April–not only are they winning, but they are winning against teams that should shape up to be among the league’s elite–so there is certainly a temptation to let it go to one’s head.

Yeah, this team is good, but Yankee fans should know better than most that the baseball season is a marathon (yeah, yeah, cliché and all that). A hot April can turn out to be insignificant if the team levels off in June and July.

That said, the more last season progressed, the better the Yankees became. Right now, the Yankees are pretty darn good, but some of their best hitters aren’t even hitting the Mendoza line, and Javier Vazquez has, well, not been great. So, as good as the Yankees are, there’s still plenty of room for improvement.

That’s reason enough to be optimistic, if ever there was one.

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[This is going to be a very odd juxtaposition given my last post, and some of you may even accuse me of treason, of a sort, but the question did arise, and after giving some thought to it, it's a point that needs to be discussed]

Today’s inevitable Joba/Hughes debate, and the resulting arguments, one might come to realize, beg a question that’s much larger than who is the Yankees’ fifth starter in 2010.

The question:

Can the Yankees develop, successfully, a starting pitcher?

The answer, one that I’ve avoided very often, is that it’s been a very, very long time.

Since Andy Pettitte came through the system in the mid-90s, what starting pitcher has come up through the Yankees system, you are hard pressed to find a pitcher who came up through that same farm system and went on to have sustained success with the Yankees.

If you think about it, almost every 1-4 Yankee starter over the past decade, with very rare exception, from David Wells and David Cone to CC Sabathia and AJ Burnett, have come to the team via another team, whether it be trade or free agency.

The Yankees have developed pitchers in that time–but none that’s had any sustained success.

The closest we can come is probably Chien Ming Wang, who pitched great for a couple years before hurting his foot in Houston, effectively ending his career as a Yankee. It should be worth noting here that it might have not been the actual foot injury, per se, that derailed his career, but rather his rushed return.

The Yankees, in recent seasons, have not been without their prospects.

Let’s take a look at the prospect list presented in the 2007 Baseball America Prospect Handbook and see how it breaks down, pitchers in bold:

2007:
Phil Hughes
Jose Tabata
Humberto Sanchez
Dellin Betances
Joba Chamberlain
Ian Kennedy
Tyler Clippard
J. B. Cox
Kevin Whelan
Brett Gardner
Marcos Vechionacci
Jeff Marquez
Eric Duncan
Chris Garcia
Mark Melancon
Alan Horne
Angel Reyes
Austin Jackson
Chase Wright
George Kontos
Jesus Montero
Steven White
TJ Beam
Zach McAllister
Colin Curtis
Jeff Karstens
Josue Calzado
Bronson Sardinha
Tim Norton
Dan McCutchen

Of that list, Hughes, Chamberlain, Betances, Sanchez, Whelan, Garcia, Melancon, Horne, Kontos, and McAllister remain in the Yankees’ system.

Sanchez, Garcia and Horne have injuries almost on cue annually; Kontos is just coming off Tommy John and Melancon is strictly a reliever.

That leaves Hughes, Chamberlain, Betances and McAllister as remaining pitchers who were in the Yankees system in 2007, and remain with the Yankees as starters; Betances and McAllister have not pitched on a Major League level yet, though I believe it’s assumed McAllister will debut at some point this season.

While both Hughes and Chamberlain have had success out of the bullpen, the closest either has had to real success in the rotation is the way Hughes pitched in the rotation just before the Yankees rushed Wang back and shuttled Hughes back to the bullpen. Neither has had what we could consider sustained success as a starter; though it’s not for lack of trying with Joba, but with the exception of a week after the All Star break in 2009, his starts have generally been marred by high pitch counts and nibbling. The same kind of nibbling that got Mussina pulled from the rotation in 2007.

Now, of course, most prospects do not become superstars and it’d be erroneous of us to expect that. There are a number of teams that don’t have a solid #2 starter–heck, the Dodgers earlier named Vicente Padilla their Opening Day starter, so by this measure the Yankees shouldn’t have any reason to complain, right?

Not so fast.

There was a reason, in the mid 2000s, that the Yankees kept signing the high-priced free agents, or trading for the old(er) stars, such as Randy Johnson: the Yankees did not have the farm to be self-sufficient.

In the ideal world, of course, a team’s farm system is so stocked that they don’t need to make trades or sign free agents; but do so only because it takes their team say, from an 89 win team to a 95 win team–the crucial difference between playing in October or watching football on TV.

The Yankees, however, needed to make those trades and sign those free agents just to be competitive enough to make the postseason.

The year they didn’t do it–2008–is, not coincidentally, the year they missed the playoffs.

Around 2006, it’s widely considered that the Yankees began to draft decently, again, taking Chamberlain/Kennedy, among others (Hughes had been drafted in 2004, my error)

It takes time to see results, and it may be a while before we see the results of the 2008 and 2009 drafts, but, as one commenter on River Ave Blues phrased it, the current brain trust has yet to produce one pitcher who has come up through the Yankee farm system and gone on to have sustained success with the team.

It’s widely believed that Hughes and/or Chamberlain will go on to do this, but that is contingent on two things:

1) that they remain healthy–original injuries are not the fault of the brain trust, but injuries that occur as the result of rushing a pitcher through rehab or over use are (at least in part), and

2) that the shuttling of the pitchers between the rotation and the bullpen stops. Just, stops. They have to decide if Hughes and Joba are starters, and then commit to it. The point is fast approaching where Hughes and Joba will simply be too old to go back and forth between the two positions.

****

One commenter phrased it thus: where would the Yankees be had CC Sabathia and AJ Burnett not been available as free agents after the 2008 season?

One can, of course, argue that all of the Yankee moves starting in the 2007 off-season were predicated on the likelihood of Sabathia, at least, being available, but there was never any set-in-stone guarantee, nor was there a guarantee Pettitte would come back for one more year in 2009, or that his arm would not fall off.

In that sense, the Yankees ended up being the luckiest of all teams, because both Sabathia and Burnett decided they wanted to play for the Yankees.

****

The fact, however, remains that we’re still waiting for the Yankees to develop a successful starter. Maybe it will be Hughes.

We have to hope it will be, anyway.

A successful team isn’t the team that wins the World Series one year; it’s the team that can remain a contender every single year, not just because they have money, but because they can successfully manage all levels of their organization. They’re the team that can lose their #1 starter due to injury and come up with enough resources on their own to overcome it.

The Yankees can not and will not achieve any sort of sustained success, this decade or the next, if they cannot develop their own players–and, with everything else in baseball, it starts with the pitching.

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