The Merits Of A Pitcher's Stats Against One Team

Mike from The Yankeeist has some strong words for the way media built up the return of Roy Halladay last night:

The problem wasn't the hype itself, but how it was justified. There should be pregame excitement anytime the Yankees face a pitcher who is having the kind of season Doc is having. But the game was sold to fans on the basis of Halladay's career numbers against the Yankees. This kind of sloppy journalism is prevalent in the baseball media, and should be criticized.

I think not citing Halladay's career numbers would have been a far more egregious error. It's a valid storyline. He'd pitched more than a full season's worth against the Yankees in his career and had great results. How do you not bring that up?

Of course, as Mike goes on to explain, even though Doc had thrown a ton of innings to the Yanks, the numbers he compiled don't really mean anything:

The baseball media frequently cites a player's career performance against a given team to provide insight into how that player should do right now against that same team. This makes no sense. Sticking with the current example, Roy Halladay has been logging time in the AL East since 1998. How, exactly, do his numbers against Scott Brosius or Jason Giambi help understand what he can be expected to do when he faces the Yankees in 2010? The answer, of course, is that they can't, but baseball struggles to grasp this.

In addition to the Yankee lineup fluctuating, the defense behind Halladay has constantly shifted, the turf underneath him in Toronto has changed, he's thrown to tons of different catchers and most importantly, he's evolved as a pitcher. Essentially, what you are looking at when you try to analyze Halladay's career stats against the Yankees (or any pitcher's line against a certain team) are a bunch of very small samples, recorded over a very long time, and smushed together to look like one big one. And, by the way, looking at his career numbers against the Yankees tells you the same thing that looking at his overall numbers tell you - Roy Halladay is like, really awesome at pitching.

But there's two parts to this - the validity of the stats and how they are being used. Mike calls it "sloppy journalism", but that strikes me as a sort of hollow, straw man argument. Its' not like it's factually incorrect. Halladay has owned the Yankees and you can bet that the players in the clubhouse are keenly aware of it. Why then shouldn't the media talk about it? It doesn't have predictive value, but no one I care to read was trying to predict what the outcome of the game would be anyway. It was one of things that was ubiquitously noted because, well, it was worth noting.

Did anyone guarantee that Halladay was going to turn in a great game? I'm not aware of such a proclamation. I think most Yankee fans sort of braced for impact (like Mike's co-author at the Yankeeist, Larry did) simply because after seeing it happen so many times, it's a natural reaction.

So why do we fans have the desire read about games before they happen? Why do we bother to write a preview for all 162 of them here? It's rare that something your read beforehand will manifest itself in the game in a meaningful way, isn't it?

In general, we are all probably a little anxious for the game to start and reading about it helps pass the time. We love the team and find that harnessing some of that anticipation and reading up on an impending game helps us look forward to it.

More specifically, when I write a preview or read one that someone else has written, it's because I want to have an understanding of any trends and storylines coming in and try to develop some sort of a framework that will make what's unfolding on the field a little more coherent and interesting to me. Some of those things might be statistical, but the personalities and rivalries and the who-owns-who are compelling in their own way, even if they don't pass the statistical smell test.

About Last Night

Before I pass along a few thoughts from last night's game, let me throw one more thought out about the much-discussed bullpen. Rebecca Glass at Purist Bleeds Pinstripes has a nice post about an impassioned answer delivered by Joe Girardi during last night's post game media session. Girardi bristled at a question suggesting Javier Vazquez was skipped against the Red Sox due to past performance, and emphatically explained that Javy was needed there due to the state of the bullpen last night.

First off, kudos to Girardi for defending Vazquez and painting him in a positive light. Regular readers here know where Jay and I stand on Vazquez, so I'm glad to see that Girardi did all he could to squash the avoiding-the-Red-Sox storyline.

That said, as I explained yesterday, I still have some objections to thought process behind skipping Vazquez. Yes, the bullpen certainly did need a longman last night, with Joba Chamberlain and David Robertson unavailable. But that longman did not need to be Javier Vazquez. If the ineffective Boone Logan, instead of Ivan Nova were optioned out to make room for Chan Ho Park, Nova could have been last night's longman. In fact, if they made that move Sunday, when Park was ready to return, CHP might have pitched Sunday leaving DRob or Joba available last night. Or, if they were so hell bent on getting Nova off of the roster, they could have given him the spot start Sunday, burned him, and sent him back down, thereby allowing Sergio Mitre to return to his longman role. It's all moot now I suppose, but the explanations still don't fully add up in my eyes.

On to happier news. As I mentioned yesterday, my buddy Gripp and I had batter's eye seats last night. When I first went to the Stadium during the exhibition games against the Cubs last year, I immediately singled out those two rows atop the Mohegan Sun Sports Bar as the best seats in the house. Sitting there for the first time last night, that opinion has only grown stronger.


We arrived right when the gates opened and were able to catch the tail end of Yankees batting practice. Unfortunately, Robinson Cano had already finished hitting, so we didn't get any BP home runs hit up there. We did, however, have the pleasure of watching Mariano Rivera shag flies in center field. It's been said that Mo is the best center fielder on the Yankees, and watching him last night didn't disappoint. Just as he does on the mound, he moves gracefully, gliding underneath flyballs. His throwing accuracy isn't just limited to his cutter either. At one point, Mo fielded a one hopper in deep center and spotted Curtis Granderson stretching behind first base. Mo wound up and unleashed a one hopper that caught the unaware Granderson square on the hip.

In addition to stretching, Granderson also took some hacks in the cage, marking the second consecutive day he's taken BP as he works his way back from a pulled groin. He also took some flyballs in center last night, but since gates open an hour later this year than they did last year, we weren't able to catch that.

David Robertson was shagging flies in left field, as most pitchers do during BP. Unlike other pitchers though, Robertson was fielding and throwing with his opposite hands, sporting his glove on his right and throwing with his left. Unlike Pat Venditte, Robertson wasn't trained to be a switch thrower, he did it out of necessity. As a high schooler, a bout of right shoulder soreness caused Robertson to learn to throw left handed. He was able to stand on the left field warning track and throw balls to the screen behind second base. As someone who was forced to throw with his opposite arm for a year following elbow surgery, I can assure you that's no small feat.

Alex Rodriguez launched a BP homer off the same Monument Park wall that Jorge Posada hit during Saturday's game. Unfortunately for us, this one didn't carom up into the seats. Fortunately for the people in Monument Park, it hit the retaining wall. Six inches to the left and it would have fallen in the small gap between the wall and the netting that covers the park, right where two girls were having their picture taken at the time.

After BP, I had the chance to meet up with Ben, Mike, and Joe from RAB, as well as Moshe from TYU, who I didn't know was going to be in attendance. It wasn't until this morning that I found out that Mike from Yankeeist was also at the game, otherwise I would have attempted to say hello to him as well. Quite a few us dorky bloggers in the house last night.

As for the game itself, there isn't much I can add that hasn't already been said. Aside from Game Two of the ALDS last year, it was probably the best game I've attended in person. I can't overstate how great the vantage point is from the batter's eye seats. You're right on top of the field, you have a clean view of everything, you get a true track of the ball's flight right off the bat. The latter was particularly valuable last night as homer after homer was hit. If you ever have the opportunity to sit there, I highly, highly recommend it.

Interview With The Yankeeist

We'll have a full batch of links coming up in a little while, but we wanted to direct your attention towards an interview that Larry from The Yankeeist conducted with Matt and me.

We've linked to the excellent Q&A's Larry has done with Was Watching, RAB, Bronx Banter, The Replacement Level Yankees Weblog, and TYU and we are extremely pleased that he was interested enough in our blog to ask some really thoughtful and thought-provoking questions of us.

The interview runs over 7,000 words, so it's long enough that you might want to print it out, but we think there is a lot of interesting stuff in there. If you want to know more about the background of the blog or where Matt and I are coming from, please check it out.

Humpday Linkaround

This links came up a little short, kind of like Nick Johnson trying to leg out a double last night:

Ben from River Ave. Blues joined Cliff and Alex from Bronx Banter to do a video preview of the 2009 season. The first part (about pitching) is here, the second one (focusing on the offense) is here and the final installment (concerning the competition) is here.

Two of the characters from that series (Cliff and Ben) join Steve Lombardi from Was Watching and Justin Sablich of the New York Times for part one of a written preview over on their dot com.

Good news: Mark Teixeira is scheduled to take batting practice today.

Mike over at The Yankeeist has rounded up the Spring Training stats for both hitters and pitchers. Nothing to get worked up about - we'll have plenty of time to make a big deal out of small sample sizes when the regular season starts - just something interesting to scan over.

Joe from River Ave. Blues cranked out some excellent pieces yesterday including this one on the delicate balance the front office has to find between winning now, winning later and appeasing the media and this one that looks at the back up plans for each position.

The Yanks are set to spend 16 times more than the Blue Jays on their starting rotation this year. I'm not going to lose any sleep over it, but that's like, a lot.

I should have done this a while ago, but if you'd like to thank Tom Tango for the excellent sabermetric work he's done over the years, head over here and fill out a playing time forecast for the Yanks. Somehow, they are pretty underrepresented at this point and it doesn't take long to do. If you feel like you are familiar enough with another team, do one for them too.

Add Mike Cameron to the list of Red Sox who is inahguably nawt appreciated for his true talents. When will the rest of the country finally acknowledge the players in Boston for their incredible production and work ethic? It's borderline criminal!

Joe Posnanski is asking for help in selecting players for the Bad Baseball Hall of Fame and the nominations are rolling in. The cut offs are 462 1/3 IP for pitchers and 843 PAs for hitters. Any Yankees come to mind?

Ross from NYY Stadium Insider has the scoop on an iPhone app called Venuing that will have features specially designed for sporting event and concert experiences. It will be live in Yankee Stadium, Fenway, Citi Field and Citizens Bank Park when each of them opens this season.

Time Warner is now offering a package that will allow you to watch all of the 127 games that YES carries on your computer, provided you are in the Yanks' market. I'm sure there are some select circumstances where this would be convenient (you don't have cable, but do have high speed internet, etc), but for most of us it doesn't apply. It does, however, illustrate why MLB.tv is blacked out within local areas - because cable companies want the opportunity to charge people themselves. If there was one price people could pay to watch any game, anywhere, these subscription services would be a lot more popular. Not that I'm going to hold my breath for it...

Will Leitch did an excellent review of the movie Fantasyland for New York Magazine's website. I hadn't heard much about the movie before but I definitely want to see it now.

Man, the Mariners have some good advertising and promohshonz.

Finally, I'm not sure if this guy is still taking emails, but if you left a briefcase with $78,383 on the Lower East Side the other day, you might want to claim that.

Maybe you could use some of it to buy a piece of Yankees/television memorabilia.

That's it for now. Our AL East Q&A's roll on at noon.