Has A.J. Burnett Changed His Approach?

It's common to hear baseball players talk about altering some element of their personal strategy but not have the numbers back up their story. The tasks that both pitchers and batters have to perform occur on a razor's edge with tons of variables and are complicated by the fact that there is someone else on the other side of the equation who wants the exact opposite thing they do. So a player can say they are taking a different tack, try very hard to do it, but struggle to get quantifiable results.

So far this season, A.J. Burnett has fallen on the opposite end of the spectrum. He's hasn't done much talking about adjusting his approach, but he's been pitching great and gotten it done a way that runs counter to the type of pitcher he's been in the past.

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, 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 - and back then he was a different kind of pitcher. Burnett has admitted that in those days he was overly concerned with trying to light up the radar gun, but one of the reasons that Brian Cashman was impressed by him during their free agent courtship was that he claimed that Roy Halladay has instilled in him that pitching was about much more than velocity. So far this season, Burnett has been pitching like a poor man's version of his old mentor - with a two-seamer instead of a cutter and a curve instead of a slider -which is still pretty damn good.

Why the increase in fastballs this season? According to Burnett, it's partially because he's still not comfortable using his curveball.

On paper, it doesn't make sense that Burnett would benefit from throwing more heaters. Last year, his fastball was one of the worst in the Majors and his hook one of the best. So far (working with small sample sizes obviously) both pitches have been pretty close to average.

If you believe the PitchFX data from FanGraphs, Burnett has thrown more two-seamers than in years past. Like, a lot more. Since 2007, only about two percent of his pitches were classified at two-seamers, but this year that proportion is nearly 1/4. It's worth noting that Joe from RAB thinks that this could be a result in a change in the PitchFX system, but based on Burnett's results and comments, I'm inclined to believe there is something there, even if the change isn't as drastic as the the numbers seem to indicate.

In last night's postgame interview, A.J. said that his two-seamer "was running all over the place". He also talked about letting batters hit the ball more than once:

I don't have to strike everybody out. I can let them put the ball in play - here it is, hit it - and more times than not, they'll make plays behind me.

...I’m learning more and more how to throw the ball to both sides of the plate with movement, and trusting my defense. We've got Hall of Famers everywhere behind me playing, so just let them hit the ball.

To distill this into a neat little cliché, he seems to be talking about pitching to contact. And the fact that he's walked fewer batters, struck out fewer and allowed more hits than in the past backs that up.

Perhaps putting the ball over the plate and trusting his defense wasn't something Burnett had planned on, but a place he's found himself in somewhat accidentally because his hook wasn't there for him yet. He's been forced to mix in his two-seamer and found that it could be an effective out pitch - except it's useful for inducing ground balls instead of tallying up strikeouts.

I don't mean to imply that Burnett has reinvented himself as a pitched on a whim at age 33. Of course, everything we are talking about in this post comes with a small sample size caveat and could be nothing more than a fuzzy memory when July rolls around. But he seems to be pitching differently and getting positive results and when he finally finds his curveball, he could be even more dangerous. One way or another, he's not going to finish the season with a 2.43 ERA. But it's hard not to be encouraged by what we've seen so far.

Links For Lunch

Here are some items to keep you busy while we decide whether or not to devote another entire post to our hatred of the Randy Winn signing:

Speaking of the Winner, Rob Neyer doesn't think he's a particularly good fit with the Yankees. Cliff Corcoran ain't thrilled either, saying "If he has a bit of a dead-cat bounce in the Bronx, he’ll go from being a typical bench player to something of an asset".

The Yanks have some interest in Rocco Baldelli, Johnny Gomes and Marcus Thames but Joel Sherman says they won't offer any of them more than a minor league deal.

Joe Girardi says the configuration of the outfield isn't set in stone, meaning Curtis Granderson might end up in left field after all. /crosses fingers

On Twitter, Bob Nightengale announces that the Yankees are going to hire Kevin Towers like it's news, even though we were pretty sure we knew that three weeks ago.

Mike from River Ave. Blues tried to determine what (if any) correlation strikeouts had to overall offensive production. Sorry to all you Adam Dunn haters, but the answer is "not that much of one".

With his Yankee career all but over, Johnny Damon knows one thing for sure. He's "going to grow an incredibly douchey beard".

Craig from Circling the Bases exposes Scott Boras' failure to spin the Johnny Damon debacle into something positive. Take that for what it's worth though, as Craig is notoriously "irresponsible".

Andrew Katz thinks that Damon is the victim of a conflict of Boras' interest. I have to agree.

Walkoff Walk brings us the baseball tweets of the week. Props to Rob Iracane for using the word "brotard" to describe Nick Swisher.

Hank Waddles from Bronx Banter did an interview with Mike Vaccaro of the New York Post.

Also at BB, Cliff Corcoran grades each Yankees hitter on their 2009 season great detail. Spolier alert: there are a lot of A's.

Our pal Jason Rosenberg put together a volume of some of the dumber comments made in regards to steroids in baseball and lets you figure out who said them via the matching game. If you don't have that kind of patience, the quotes are paired with their speakers here.

Also, the IIATM,S Hall of Fame has a new member.

Can someone please tell John Harper of the Daily News that Randy Winn isn't replacing Johnny Damon? And that Brain Cashman's ego wasn't the reason Damon isn't on the team. And that his picture on the NYDN's website makes him look like Nick Nolte before he went off the deep end.

Sky Andrecheck takes a look at evolution of stolen base strategy over the years over at the Baseball Analysts blog.

Via Baseball Musings, a study shows that pitchers from the South are more likely to plunk batters especially in the name of "justice" or "protecting social identities", but only if the batter was white.

K Is For Kubel

At the risk of not giving the Twins proper credit for their remarkable late season comeback, they were a relatively weak playoff team. The won baseball's poorest division, and needed an extra game to do so. Three clubs (Texas, Florida, and San Francisco) sit at home this post-season despite having better records than Minnesota. Atlanta had the same 162 game record as the Twins, while Seattle, Tampa Bay, and the Cubs - three teams never even considered contenders down the stretch - all finished within three games of the Twins' 162 game record.

None of which takes away from the fact that had a couple breaks gone the other way, this series could still be going, and could be going with Twins in the driver's seat (more on that later this week). But the point is that the Twins were a weak division champion, and in this instance the Yankees actually benefited from the pointless rule that the supposedly weak Wild Card team cannot play its own Division Champion in the DS.

That said, the Twins had a razor thin margin for error heading into the series. Their starting pitching was average at best and they were playing what amounted to replacement level offensive players at as many as five spots in their line up. What the Twins had on their side was the law of averages and a short series (again more on that later), momentum (which doesn't matter nearly as much as sports writers lead us to believe), and a heart of the order that's as good as any other in the league. In order to win the series the Twins needed to catch some breaks (so much for that Phil Cuzzi), do the "little things" well (ditto Gomez and Punto), and get production from their three big bats.

They did get production from Joe Mauer (.417/.500/.500 in 14 PA) and Michael Cuddyer (.429/.429/.429 in 14 PA), but the third man in that triumvirate, Jason Kubel, was ice cold. For the series, Kubel went 1 for 14 with no walks and nine strikeouts. After fanning twice in Game One, he took the Golden Sombrero in Game Two before getting a base hit off Damaso Marte in the 11th, then followed that with a Silver Sombrero last night. Over the course of the series he went 0 for 2 with RISP and left seven runners on base. Even when he seemingly caught a break - like when Robinson Cano missed his liner in the fifth last night - bad luck caught up with him, as the ball went straight to Nick Swisher in right, allowing him to force Cuddyer, who had rightly retreated towards first, at second base.

The nature of baseball is such that one player truly can't win or lose a series on his own. Just as Alex Rodriguez wasn't solely responsible for the 2004 ALCS or the ALDS in 2005, 2006, and 2007, Jason Kubel isn't entirely at fault for the Twins getting swept. A bad three game stretch doesn't make him a post-season choke artist either. But his failure to produce in this series is a huge contributing factor to the Twins' ouster given how reliant their club was on those three middle of the order bats.

A Few Lines On Coke

I have to admit, it wasn't until all the Twitter feeds came pouring into yesterday's live chat that I realized just how bad Phil Coke has been of late: 17 ER over his last 15.1 IP. His ERA has ballooned from 2.97 to 5.05 in that stretch.

Some may want to blame this on his over-use, as his 59 appearances are the most on the team by a good margin (Rivera is next with 52), and his 51.2 IP in relief is third behind Alfredo Aceves (61) and Rivera (53). And maybe that has something to do with it, but not very much.

Most of what's happened to Coke over these last 20 outings is just good old statistical correction. As I've stated before, particularly when evaluating relievers, I prefer to look at Fielding Independent Pitching (FIP) rather than ERA. As you may recall, FIP is dependent upon the three things pitchers can control: strikeouts, walks, and home runs, and is then is adjusted to an ERA-like scale.

Unfortunately, I can't find game-by-game logs of Coke's FIP, nor do I have the free time to calculate it at the moment. However, at every point this season that I looked at his numbers, his ERA was outperforming his FIP - by a lot. These past twenty outings have served to correct that gap, so much so that after yesterday, Coke's ERA (5.05) is now worse than his FIP (4.86).

So what's the good news/bad news here? The good news is that the numbers seem to indicate that Coke has at worst leveled off, at best is due for a small improvement. The bad news is that where those numbers stand right are not all that good. The good news is the Coke's strikeout (7.14 per 9) and walk (3.14 per 9) rates are slightly better than the league averages. The bad news is his home run rate (1.57 per 9) is a half home run worse than the league average, and that's what is killing both his FIP and his ERA.

Another number to look at is Coke's batting average on balls in play (BABIP). Evidence has shown that a pitcher has little control over balls in play (which is why FIP is a valuable statistic) and that most pitchers end up having a BABIP close to the league average. Currently, Coke is at .234, far better than the league average of .304. This could suggest that we haven't seen the bottom for Coke yet; if his BABIP regresses to the mean over the final five weeks he could be in for a few more rough outings.

However, given Coke's K and HR rates, I would expect his BABIP to be a bit low. His K rate is higher than the league average, meaning there are fewer balls in play against him. Furthermore, 6.1% of batted balls off Coke are home runs, as opposed to 4.0% for the league. As such, hitters are making contact less against him compared to the league, but when they do, the ball is traveling over the fence far more often. While the latter certainly isn't a good thing, I do think that indicates that Coke's BABIP likely won't get close to the league average by season's end. Besides, any BABIP regression to the mean may be a good thing for Coke, as it could indicate that his gigantic HR rate is dropping off a bit.

So what does it all mean? Phil Coke isn't as good as he appeared to be through most of the summer and isn't as bad as he appears to be right now. He gives up way too many home runs, and Yankee Stadium may have something to do with that (18.2 AB/HR at home, 25 on the road). If he can get his home runs down, his K and BB rates suggest he is a relatively effective pitcher.

Relievers are highly volatile due to the relatively small number of innings the pitch. One or two bad outings, like yesterday or Coke's 0.1 IP 6 ER disaster in Chicago on 8/1, can have a major impact on a reliever's statistics. Despite being a former starter with a decent arsenal of pitches, and despite his numbers being good against right handed batters for most of the season, Joe Girardi has insisted upon using Coke as a match-up lefty for most of the year, with 30 of his 59 appearances lasting less than an inning.

Coke has been pretty high up in the bullpen pecking order for most of the season. He'll need to show some improvement over these last five weeks to justify keeping that status in October. If he can keep the ball in the ballpark more often, he has a good chance at making those improvements.

About Those Chickens...

Jay Jaffe of Baseball Prospectus did not heed Matt's advice from this morning when penning this column for New York Magazine, applying BP's "Secret Sauce" for postseason success to this year's Yankees. The formula, developed by Nate Silver and Dayn Perry, isolates three key variables that have predicted team's outcomes in the postseason more accurately than others over the past 30 years:

They found that age and postseason experience had no effect on a team’s chances; surprisingly, they also found no significant correlation between any measure of team offense (including bunting and stealing) and postseason success. What they did find important were three measures of pitching and defense, which they called the “Secret Sauce”.

The best predictors of October glory are a pitching staff with a high strikeout ratio, a strong team defense and a solid closer. Since scoring is depressed in the postseason, it's valuable to have a pitching staff that avoids bats, a defense that can save runs and a closer than can lock down victories. Jaffe does a great job of explaining in detail why these factors increase in importance in the playoffs and concludes (emphasis mine):

None of this is meant to knock the offense, which has helped make them a near-lock for the playoffs. But it’s the Secret Sauce that bodes well for their chances once they get there. The last time the team made such a drastic leap in the Sauce rankings was 1996—which, fans will remember, was the end of their last excruciatingly long World Series drought.

Since Jaffe is a BP guy, he's not concerned with jinxes and is speaking in no uncertain terms because their odds have the Yanks' odds of making the postseason are at 99.4%.

The leap he's talking about comes mainly from a jump from 26th to 3rd in Fielding Runs Above Average and a big boost in K/9. The increase in strikeouts is obviously driven by the acquisitions of CC Sabathia and A.J. Burnett but the cosmic leap in defense is harder to explain. Even with Derek Jeter suddenly above average at short and Hideki Matsui, Jason Giambi, and Bobby Abreu out of the field all together it's hard to imagine the Yankees jumping 23 slots in that ranking.

Do I trust the rankings implicitly? No, but it certainly is encouraging to know that the Yanks have a team built for success not only in the regular season, but into October as well. Whether or not that translates into anything this year remains to be seen. Those are the chickens that Jaffe doesn't dare to count either.

One Mo Thought

Mariano Rivera issued his first walk of the season today, and that might not be a bad thing. It was the only baserunner he allowed on his way to converting his sixth save of the season in a 5-3 victory over the Orioles. 

Given that Mo has been touched up pretty good recently, it might do him some good to work off the plate more often and get hitters to chase instead of just pounding the strike zone. With diminished velocity, he might have to change his approach a little, and not be afriad to issue a walk if it might diminsh the chance of surrendering a home run. 

Game 22: #8

Not what I was hoping to capture with that shot. Hang in there Teix.

The Hook

We sort of left off on a sour note last night, but you had to be encouraged by the way the Yankees played. 

The star of the show was of course the Jobanatior, who needed only 88 pitches to get through seven innings. The only bump in the road was the third, in which he allowed only one run, despite issuing three walks and a hit. He shut down the threat by striking out one of the last guys in the league you'd want to see in that situation, Miguel Cabrera, on a diving 74MPH curveball down and away: 


 
 Doesn't get much better than that. And that's his third pitch. 

Game 7: Kashmir

As the Yankees send their groundball machine Chien Ming Wang to the mound tonight to avenge his horrible showing in Baltimore, the Tampa Bay (Nothing Ungodly-Sounding) Rays counter with lefty strikeout tallier Scott Kazmir.

Scott's dad co-owned a company with Adam Dunn's father in Houston and despite being 5 years apart, used to play wiffle ball together growing up. Kazmir was quarterback of his football team in high school, but found that his talents on the pitcher's mound far exceed those under center. Kazmir threw two no-hitters as a sophomore and then four consecutive no-hitters his junior year. As a senior, he broke Josh Beckett's strikeout record for the state of Texas by punching out 175 in 72 innings and was named Baseball America's High School Player Of The Year.

The Mets were surprised when he fell to them at the 15th pick in the draft and signed him for $2.15M, the largest bonus the team had ever given out (guess who his agent was). Kazmir continued his dominance on his rise through the minor leagues, but was traded when he was still in Double A. He was moved to the (at the time Devil) Rays for Victor Zambrano and Bartolome Fortunato at the behest of pitching coach Rick Peterson who thought he saw a fixable flaw in Zambrano's mechanics. Although Steve Phillips is commonly assumed to have made the trade in hindsight (since it was retarded), it actually occured Jim Duquette's watch.

After missing the first month of the 2008 season, Kazmir signed an extension last May with TB that locked him up through 2011 with team option for '12. He made 27 starts last year and had a 3.49 ERA, but averaged only 5 2/3 innings per start (5.8 for his career). As is the case with many strikeout pitchers, Kazmir has trouble keeping his pitch count down. In his first start this season he went six innings and gave up one run, but needed 111 pitches to do so.

I know Mets fans pine for Kazmir like an old girlfriend who got away, but he's not a guy that I particularly wish was on the Yanks. Don't get me wrong, if Scott Kazmir is your second or third best pitcher, you've probably got a great staff. But he doesn't seem like a true top of the line starter to me because he puts too much pressure on the bullpen. And I hate guys who throw too many pitches.

Don't go proving me wrong now, Scott.


[I know, the spelling isn't the same, but it's close enough]