Two Thoughts On Game Two

I know Game One isn't even until tomorrow, but here are two thoughts on the two hot button issues from this post-season, both of which affect Game Two (weather permitting).

First, Mike Scioscia's decision to pitch Joe Saunders in Game Two has been widely questioned, and with good reason in my opinion. I understand Scioscia's desire to utilize a lefty in Yankee Stadium in order to neutralize the Yankee lefties and switch hitters, since Yankee Stadia have historically favored lefties.

However, this Yankee Stadium has been a launching pad of historic proportions through its first 85 games. And as I pointed out when Saunders pitched against the Yanks three weeks ago, he is particularly prone to giving up the gopher ball. Saunders surrendered 29 long balls this year, tied for second in the American League despite the fact that an August DL stint limited him to 186 IP on the year. His 1.4 HR/9 also tied for second worst in the AL. Meanwhile, fellow lefty Scott Kazmir has more experience in the new Yankee Stadium, is a better pitcher overall, and allowed just 1.0 HR/9 this year, slightly less than league average.

A further thought regarding Saunders, Yankee batters this year hit .282/.360/.476 against right handed pitching and a slightly better across the board .286/.365/.480 against left handed pitching. There's no discernible platoon advantage there. The Angels would be best off throwing their best available pitcher in Game Two, and that pitcher is not Joe Saunders.

The second issue is whether Jose Molina will again catch A.J. Burnett. The Yankees have yet to announce that decision, though I'm inclined to believe that he will. But, even if he doesn't, I think we may see a bit of Jose Molina in this series anyway. Despite ranking just 11th in the AL in SB%, the Angels ranked third in the league in stolen bases with 148. In an effort to neutralize their running game, I wouldn't be surprised to see Jose Molina behind the plate in the late innings of game if the Yankees are leading.

This happened once already this year, early in the season in this game. Afterwards, Jorge Posada left the park without addressing the media. If this were to happen in the ALCS, the media storm would dwarf the Molina-gate squall that preceded Game Two of the ALDS.

I'm not sure what to make of this one. No one is going to confuse Jorge Posada with vintage Pudge Rodriguez behind the plate. And Posada shouldn't put his ego ahead of the good of the team. But, given that the Angels were below average in SB% and that all Yankee catchers, including Posada, were above league average CS%, it might be to the Yankees' advantage to tempt the Angels to give outs away on the bases.

Furthermore, if you subtract out caught stealings attributed to the pitcher making a pickoff attempt, Jorge Posada's catcher's caught stealing percentage of 21.6% is close to the league average of 21.9% and superior to Jose Molina's 17.9%. In fact, though the sample size is relatively small, the numbers suggest that if the Yankees decide to make a running based defensive substitution behind the plate, the nod should go to Franciso Cervelli who had an off the charts catcher's caught stealing percentage of 38.1% (8 of 21) in the equivalent of about 27 games behind the dish.

Runnin' On Jorge

Entering this season, before everyone was questioning whether or not Jorge Posada could call a game, the biggest concern was whether or not his shoulder would be healthy enough to throw out potential base stealers. Given that Posada is 38 years old, there was no guarantee that his shoulder would make a full recovery from the surgery he underwent to repair a tear in his rotator cuff and damage to his glenoid labrum. It seems that opposing teams still aren't convinced that he is healthy.

Last year, in 241 innings behind the plate, teams attempted 41 steals against Posada. He was run on in 10.3% of the plate appearances where there was s stolen base opportunity, which was second in the the American League only to Toby Hall (11.2%). Kevin Cash (9.3%) was the only other catcher with significant playing time to be tested more that 8.4% of the time. The attempts against Posada were successful 34/41 times, and of the seven times they were caught, five times the runner was picked off before the pitcher delivered the ball. That left Jorge's percentage of actually throwing out runners at a horrific 5.5%.

This year, one of those trends has reversed dramatically. Teams still are running on Posada, in fact, at an even higher percentage than before. They have attempted to steal in 11.2% of stolen base opportunities, far and away the most in the AL. Jason Varitek has been challenged next most often, but at only 8.5% of the time.

Here is the good news. Despite teams running on Jorge at an even higher rate than last year, they are successful far less often. Would-be thieves have been nabbed in 15 out of 47 attempts, 10 by Posada. That's 32% caught stealing and 21% by Jorge himself. It's still early in the season, but judging by this metric, the results of his surgery appear to be pretty incredible.

Frankie Cervelli gets run on 7.4% of the time (7th among the 21 AL catchers with 200+ SBOs) but has thrown out 31%, and sports a total CS% of 38. Here are the top 10 by Run %.

Theoretically, caught stealing percentage and run percentage would have an inverse relationship because in aggregate, managers should be less likely to test the catchers most likely to throw out the runner (obviously). But a lot of managers still rely on their gut or other instincts as opposed to hard numbers, so the list doesn't really bear that out.

It would seem that opposing managers and speedsters are underestimating Posada pretty drastically. Since a pitcher picking a runner off in the process of trying to steal a base has little to do with who is behind the plate, the best way to determine who gets the least respect for throwing out runners would be to juxtapose Run % with the Catcher's Caught Stealing % (CS% by C above).

Using this method, here are the three most disrespected catchers in the AL, sorted by the differential between the two rankings:

Kenji Johjima has the highest caught stealing and caught stealing by catcher, yet he ranks in the top half in Run % (8th). Talk about No Respect... Kenji is a very low key player, stashed away up in Seattle which must work to his advantage because this is one of the cases where flying under the radar does you a lot of good.

Figure this one out: A.J. Pierzynski only gets run on 5.5% of the time (18th out the 21), but has only thrown out one runner this season. Attention AL Skippers... you might want to start running on A.J. Pierzynski. Navarro and Suzuki are far less egregious cases, but it should be noted that they haven't quite earned the respect they have been given.