New AJ, Same As The Old AJ

Back on April 30th, A.J. Burnett was sporting a nifty 2.43 ERA and had picked up three wins in his first five starts. After a dominant outing against the Orioles he talked about learning to pitch to contact, so we asked if he had altered his approach:

Traditionally a guy with a propensity to both strikeout and walk a lot of batters, A.J. has seen both of those rates drop to roughly 2/3 of their career norms. At the same time, he's given up more hits, is throwing slightly more strikes and is getting more outs on the ground.

About 3/4 of the pitches Burnett has thrown in 2010 have been fastballs, a proportion that he hasn't approached since his days with the Marlins.

Despite discovering his curveball somewhere along the way and tossing 7 1/3 strong innings his next time out, in his nine starts since then, Burnett's ERA is 5.50 and his record is 3-5. He's had four starts in which he's surrendered more than six runs, while in his first five outings the most he allowed in any outing was four.

A.J.'s still throwing over 70% fastballs, about 60% of all his pitches for strikes, inducing ground balls and allowing line drives at roughly the same rates (just under 50% and around 17%, respectively). So what has the difference been? Let's take a look at his rate stats:

Burnett's strikeout and walk rates have unsurprisingly returned close to his career norms and a slightly higher BABIP has led to an increase in hits per nine. But even all of those things in conjunction shouldn't cause his ERA to more than double. The real culprits (highlighted in red on the chart) are his home run and strand rates.

In 31 1/3 innings at the beginning of the season, Burnett had allowed just one long ball. In the 54 innings he's pitched since then, he's given up nine of them. To put it another way, he gave up home runs almost six times more often during his last nine starts than he did in his first five.

The league average stand rate is 72%. Burnett was very fortunate in that department early in the season but has been rather unlucky since. Of course, the fact that runners have stolen 19 bases off him and only been caught three times certainly isn't helping in that department.

Clearly, Burnett hasn't pitched as well since the beginning of May as he did before that. Home runs involve a certain amount of luck but a six-fold increase tells us that Burnett has been leaving plenty more balls out over the plate and hitters have been capitalizing on his mistakes. His strand rate has also been dragged down by all those long balls as well.

At the risk of stating the obvious, Burnett caught a lot of breaks early in April and saw his luck even out in a major way in the past month and a half. His home run rate won't stay as high as it has been and his strand rate will regress towards league average as the season continues. If you look at his expected FIP (based on batted ball types allowed) on FanGraphs, it's just about the same during his great stretch as it is throughout his awful one.

It's boring to say, and again this is pretty self-evident, but the true A.J. Burnett lies somewhere between the Cy Young candidate that showed up in April and the replacement level scrub that has been serving up 'tater salad since then. If he can lean just a little towards the former from here on in, he and the Yankees will be just fine.

The Divergent Paths Of Matsui & Wang

The Yankees signed two bona fide stars from Asian countries in the 2000's. After the disasters that were Katsuhiro Maeda and Hideki Irabu and before the debacle of Kei Igawa, Chien-Ming Wang and Hideki Matsui played vital roles on the team this decade.

Wang was acquired all the way back in 2000, starting at the one of the lowest levels of professional ball the Yankees could place him in (the short season NYPL) and didn't make his Major League Debut until 2005. On the opposite end of the spectrum, Hideki Matsui arrived via much fanfare after winning both the Central League MVP and Japan Series title in 2002 and joined the Yankees out of Spring Training in '03.

The graphic below follows the careers of the two men, both of whom are athletic heros in their respective countries. In many ways, left the Yankees the same way they came to them; Matsui a champion and a hero and Wang an unwanted minor leaguer. It shows in their salaries as well. Matsui has already made $73M in the United States and is due $6.5 more while Wang netted about $10M between the Majors and Minors and will have to take when he is given from his next team.

1. The Taiwanese right hander was signed as an amateur free agent in 2000 and made his debut pitching in the short season New York Penn League for the Staten Island Yankees. He had a fantastic first season, throwing 87 innings at a 2.45 ERA.
   
   
2. Wang injured his shoulder and missed the entire 2001 season. However, he rebounded nicely in 2002, compiling a 1.72 ERA over 78 1/3 innings.
   
   
3. Amidst much hype, Hideki Matsui was signed as a free agent from the Yomiuri Giants of Japan and given a Major League contract. Expectations varied but many expected his prodigious power to carry over from Japan. He hit only 16 home runs his first year but did rack up 42 doubles.
   
   
4. During 2003 and 2004, Chien-Ming made most of his ascent through the Yankees' minor league system. He began at Rookie ball in Tampa, and jumped to AA by the end of '03. Despite an ERA in the 4.00's during his time in Trenton, he made it to AAA by the end of 2004.
   
   
5. Hideki Matsui's ostensible prime as a Yankee came in 2004 and 2005. He played in every game in both years, hit .302/.378/.509, averaged 27 home runs and 112 RBIs while striking out scarcely more than he walked.
   
   
6. 2005 was the year that Wang made the jump to the Big Leagues. He wasn't pitching spectacularly in Scranton but when Jaret Wright got injured the Yankees were forced to call him up. He pitched 7 innings of two run ball in his first start and ended up sticking with the team for the rest of the season, going 8-5 with a 4.02 ERA in 17 starts.
   
   
7. In May of 2006, Matsui broke his wrist attempting to make a catch in the outfield, ending his season and his consecutive games streak of 1768 which he had carried over from Japan. He was in the middle of a solid offensive season, hovering at a 128 OPS+ through 51 games.
   
   
8. Wang's peak as a Yankee was high but it was also steep, lasting only two complete seasons. In 2006 and 2007, just as Matsui was relegated to the background, Wang burst onto the scene. He won 38 games in those two years (the most in the Majors during that time) and pitched 417 1/3 innings of 3.67 ERA ball.
   
   
9. Matsui re-emerged in 2007 but injuries to his knees and hamstrings limited his defensive ability and he appeared in 143 games, 112 in left field. In 2008 he was injured again, appearing in only 93 games and putting up a 108 OPS+, the lowest of his career.
   
   
10. On June 15th, 2008, Wang's career entered a downward spiral from which he has not recovered. He missed the rest of the '08 season and when he returned in 2009, he couldn't have been much worse, surrendering 23 runs in 6 innings in his first three starts. The Yanks jerked Wang around (/obligatory) calling him up after only two minor league starts after Joba Chamberlain got hit with a line drive. He alternated between the bullpen and the rotation for 9 more appearances before being placed on the disabled list July 15th and undergoing shoulder surgery.
    
    
11. Hideki Matsui rebounded in 2009, having one of his better offensive seasons strictly at the Yankee DH. He hit 28 homers and drove in 90 runs despite playing in only 142 games. Of course, his career as a Yankee was capped over with a resplendent World Series recognized by the MVP award. He just signed a $6.5M contract with the Angels.
    
    
12. In the process of rehabbing his shoulder injury, Chien Ming Wang waits in limbo. The Yankees declined to tender him a contract and he doesn't figure to be ready to pitch until May at the earliest. As such, he may wait until then to sign his contract.

Not To Rain On The Pettitte Parade, But...

[Update: I need to work on my PitchFX interpretation a bit. Will from IIATM,S sets me straight and you should probably just read that]

It wasn't just the magic in the air and the abundance of Yankees fans at Camden Yards cheering him on last night that helped Andy Pettitte flirt with perfection:

[The red squares are called strikes and the green squares are balls]

According to the PitchFX tool on Brooks Baseball, Home Plate Umpire Marvin Hudson called 24 of the 104 pitches (23%) Pettitte threw last night as strikes when they should have been balls. Conversely, he called only two balls inside the zone strikes, both very close pitches at the knees. Not that the strike zone is perfect denoted by the black box in the chart above, but it is the width of home plate and gives you a pretty good idea of what is what.

Pettite threw 73 "strikes" last night, but only 8 of them were swinging. He threw 32 breaking pitches, 24 of them for strikes, no whiffs. None. Is ths because he has all of a sudden developed an incredibly deceptive curveball and slider, or because the pitches were not in the zone?

Below, I drew the red box to represent what Pettitte's actual strike zone looked like last night.

When you look at the red box as the strikezone instead, there are 13 "strikes" being called balls, which makes it twice as accurate as Hudson's zone, with which he incorrectly identified 26 pitches. The only problem is that the zone is roughly twice the size it should be. Home plate is 17" inches wide, but apparently to Hudson last night, it was nearly 36". The difference between the highest and lowest pitch he called for strikes, just for Pettitte, was more like 39".

Sure, Hudson was more or less consistent in calling pitches for both teams, mainly in terms of expanding the strikezone inside to right handed batters (which was more beneficial to Pettitte as a lefty), but in what other profession does being consistently wrong make it okay? The strikezone has to be a little subjective since it varies with each hitter, but not to the point where it can be doubled in size, right?

At certain point, Hudson had to know that he was calling pitches that were well off the plate for strikes. Andy Pettitte sure did, because he took advantage of it again and again. He also changed speeds beautifully, but some of the credit has to go to the extra-large target he was throwing to.

So while some might be tempted to blame Jerry Hairston, Jr. for his error in the 7th inning which broke up Pettitte's perfect game, they should be thanking Marvin Hudson for his ridiculous strikezone which made Pettitte's dominant performance possible in the first place.

OPS w/RISP

Over at Circling the Bases, Matthew Pouliot's stat of the day yesterday was team's OPS with runners in scoring position. Overall, the Yankees ranked 18th, but in realtion to the total OPS, they had the third largest lag in the league with .53, behind only the Diamondbacks and the Nationals (those numbers have obviously changed as of today).

I think as fans, we have all at a certain point been frustrated with the Yankees' recent inabilty to get "clutch" hits and drive runners home, so I decided to try and get some historical perspective on this. 

Using Baseball-Reference, I took it all the way back to 1989 and charted the team's OPS, OPS w/runners in scoring position and winning percentage.

Here are a few things that jumped out:

• Between 1989 and 2007, there were only three years in which the team's OPS w/RISP was lower than the team's overall OPS. However, that was the case last year and is so far this season as well. Is this more than a small sample size fluke? Is it a trend developing? 
  
  
• Total OPS has a fairly strong correlation to winning percentage, with the expection of this year. 
  
  
• Take a look at the increase in total OPS from 89-94. Sure, the team was getting better winning percentage-wise, but can you think of another thing that was starting to happen throughout baseball at that time?  
  
  
• Interestingly, the 2009 Yanks have almost the exact same OPS as the 1998 team (.817 to .818), however in '98 that number with runners in scoring position was .860 compared with .793 this year.
  
  
• That .860 figure is not the highest on the list. That would be the .862 belonging to the 2002 Yankees, who scored almost 100 fewer runs that the '99 team due to a lower total OPS. 

Any other observations?