Checking In With Our Friend Gino

You guys remember Gino Castignoli, don't you?

He's the construction worker who thought he cursed the Yankees by burying a David Ortiz jersey in the New Stadium? How'd that work out for you?

Closer Implosions

Good morning, Fackers. We began yesterday talking about Huston Street's blown save and how it fit into a trend of closers not being able to lock it down so far this postseason. Aside from the aforementioned meltdowns by Jonathan Papelbon, Joe Nathan and Ryan Franklin, other shutdown late inning relievers like Phil Hughes and Ryan Madson stumbled as well.

These late inning offense outbursts, couple with the long layover before the League Championships Series begin have swung a huge amount off attention towards the closer role and have fans of various allegiances doing a fair bit of hand wringing.

It's not just the fans though. David Pinto, a former chief researcher for Baseball Tonight whose Twitter moniker is "@StatsGuru" thinks Joel Sherman might be somehow jinxing the Yankees with this column, entitled "Rivera Gives Yankees Edge In October". Pinto says:

After watching Nathan, Papelbon, Street and Franklin get lit up, Joel Sherman really shouldn’t write this headline.

Pinto's own headline is "Bad Time To Put Your Faith In Closers", implying that they rise and fall in relation to each other as if they are some sort of commodity. That would be like saying that the LCSes are going to be terribly umpired even if Phil Cuzzi and C.B. Bucknor are watching at home. Anyone feel comfortable making that prediction? I don't think I have to remind a "Stats Guru" that a rash of bad performances by someone's peers doesn't make them anymore likely to mess up themselves.

Tom Verducci over at SI.com attempts to unlock the mysteries of October in a single column, entitled: "Here's why it's so hard to close out a game in October". Intriguing, yes? What secrets has Tom uncovered? How long must it have taken him to research countless postseasons to find the relevant trends? Enlighten us with you timeless findings, Mr. Verducci! [emphasis mine]

Take all the closers this postseason [...and] look at what they did in their 18 ninth-inning appearances of the Division Series, and compare that to the major league average ninth inning -- not just those thrown by closers -- for the 2009 season.

Wait, what??!?! Where do we even start with this statistical atrocity?

First and most obviously, he looks at one round of the Divisional Series with a robust sample size of 18 innings (or an average of just over 2 per pitcher) and tell us why "it's so hard to close out a game in October"? That's not even a good method of comparing data for this year, let alone postseason play in general. Apparently Dane Cook was right, there really is "ONLY ONE OCTOBER!!".

Secondly, why the Major League average 9th inning? If you wanted to find out what is unique about closing out games in October, it would probably be wise to compare that to closing out games in other months of the year, don't you think?

With this shoddy methodology, Verducci's main conclusions, aside from pressure which he mentions briefly, are that hitters have better scouting reports which they can only really pay attention during the postseason and batters have a more "intense focus".

But baseball is a zero sum game. So pitchers have better scouting reports and a more intense focus, too, right?

I'll grant Verducci the point that it is harder to close out games in October, but I think he's forgoing Occam's Razor in a major way here. Maybe closers' arms are a little bit worn out when the postseason rolls around, but does it really come down to much more than pressure and facing better offensive teams?

Did you see Joe Nathan's face when he was on the mound on Friday night? He looked like he was heading through US Customs with a kilo of cocaine in his suitcase, except even a tweaked out drug mule wouldn't have been doing that thing with his lips.

It's easy to dismiss pressure as a contributing factor during the regular season. Closers are built to handle the stress of closing down games and do it all the time, but rarely is there anything more on the line. Once the playoffs roll around, a blown save doesn't just cost you a game, it could very well cost your team their season. It's human nature to feel that pressure - we all do it as fans, just watching it on TV.

If it really was scouting reports and batter's focus, would Mariano Rivera have an 0.74 ERA in the postseason, almost exactly 1/3 of his regular season mark despite facing better competition and averaging more innings per appearance? I think not.

Mariano Rivera isn't perfect, but he's a lot better at dealing with pressure than any other closer remaining in the postseason, so Joel Sherman and Burt Blyleven don't think twice about the titles to their columns even though a bunch of lesser closers lost their shit in the LDSes.

There's no guarantee that Mo gets through this postseason perfectly. In fact, he already failed to clean up for Phil Hughes in Game 2, allowing an RBI single to Denard Span. But he came back out the next inning and got three outs. And he popped up on the mound in Game 3 in Minnesota to break Joe Mauer's bat like stale loaf of bread in the 8th inning and lock down the save in the 9th.

Saying that he gives the Yankees the edge isn't going to somehow jinx him, because there are no such thing as jinxes. He's the best postseason pitcher of all-time by a mile and if someone gets the best of him it's because nobody's perfect.

Game 146: The Man's Too Strong

Tonight the Yankees begin their last series of the season against the Blue Jays, a quick two game set in the Bronx. The Yanks lead the season tilt 11-5, winning every series against Toronto save for a 4 game split the last time they met.

Sergio Mitre and his 7.02 ERA will jump the bump for the Bombers this evening. After his brilliant one-hit outing against the White Sox was cut short by a line drive to his forearm, Mitre was rocked for his worst start of the year his last time out by the same team he'll be facing tonight.

The Serge was tagged for 9 runs in 4 1/3 IP and two more unearned came to the plate during that time. He struck out 5 and didn't give up any home runs, but the Yanks made three errors behind him and every ball the Jays hit seemed to find a hole. At the risk of jinxing the man, I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that this start can't possibly be as bad as his last one.

Going against the Yankees tonight will be the man that has given the most trouble as a starting pitcher since he has entered the league.

Starting with at the end of the non-waiver trade deadline, Roy Halladay didn't appear to be himself. During his six starts in August, opponents hit .316/.333/.526 against him including 8 home runs, his most in a single month since April of 2003. He gave up 22 earned runs in 42 innings and allowed another 5 unearned to that total. To the casual observer, it might have seemed like he had been thrown off of his game or had mentally given in after not being traded.

However, Doc's K/BB ratio was still a fantastic 7.20, and he had gotten quite unlucky in terms of BABIP (.354) and HR/FB% (14.4%). It should have come as much of a surprise then, that he has started off September with two vintage Halladay starts, a complete game shutout against the Yankees on the 4th and a complete game loss against the Twins on the 9th.

He's thrown 9 innings in three of his four starts against the Yanks this year but has just two wins to show for his efforts. In 34 career starts against them, he has more complete games (7) than he does losses (6). He haunts the Yankees like no other active pitcher and they're going to need to put forth a solid offensive effort to overcome the strength of Halladay.

And I can still hear his laughter,
And I can still hear his song,
The man's too big,
The man's too strong.

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.

Eeeeey, Gino Castignoli...

...You're a friggin' Mush...



Remember Gino? Well, he is the jerkoff who buried David Ortiz's jersey in the New Stadium last April. 

How did that work out for you, guy? It did fetch $175,100 for the Jimmy Fund, but I'm pretty sure that's not what you had in mind. 

It's not to say that the New Stadium has been all cupcakes and ponies to this point, but after yesterday afternoon's performance it looks like Ortiz's jersey being buried in cement is quite the apt metaphor. In 12 innings against the Angels, he went 0-7 with 3 K's and left 12 men on base in a game they lost by one run. He's hitting .220/.333/.317 (67 OPS+) on the season and has fewer homers and a lower slugging percentage than Brett Gardner.

Sorry if I triple un-jinx him by writing this, but we might as well enjoy it while we can.  

Hate To Break It To You, But There Is No Santa Claus Either

[Jinx is Magic Hat's Scotch Ale]

As A.J. Burnett walked off the mound in the bottom of the fourth inning last night, John Sterling mentioned that he was carrying a no-hitter. I couldn't see the box score, and I cringed for a second, knowing that there are scores of people out there who actually think that mentioning a no-hitter or perfect game in progress "jinxes" it. Apparently Michael Kay said it on the YES broadcast as well.

Friends, we live in an age of science and reason. How, exactly, does what an announcer says into a microphone in a box 50 feet above the field impact what happens when a pitch crosses home plate? You think that's the only thing stopping a pitcher from throwing a no-no every time he takes the mound? Where do you draw the line? What if a fan in the stands mentions it? What about you at home? What if I type it? ZOMG JINX!!!1!one1!!exclamationpoint!!

No-hitters are extremely rare, there have only been 256 in the history of the MLB, or about two per year. You know what keeps them from happening? Probability. Why doesn't this apply for the cycle? There are just about as uncommon, and when a batter comes up to the plate with a 1B, 2B and a HR, you hear the announcer say "Just a triple short of the cycle" every single time and no one says a peep.

I think it's cool that the players leave the pitcher alone in the dugout. It's a great old-timey baseball tradition/superstition, and it could actually directly affect the pitcher. If a person says something odd to a pitcher that gets in his head, it might put him in the wrong frame of mind when he goes back out to the hill. I get that.

What I don't get are the morons who are going to call into the Michael Kay Show today and bitch about the fact that Kay mentioned it on the air. If John Sterling took calls during the pregame, he'd have to deal with these Druids too. Until Sterling mentioned it, I didn't know Burnett hadn't given up a hit yet. If he had never brought it up, who knows how many in the radio audience would not have realized what was taking place. It's called broadcasting. You are supposed to inform your audience of what is going on. It made the game a whole lot more interesting for the listeners.

If you are outraged that broadcasters mention no-hitters on the air, please go to Thesaurus.com and look at the antonyms for superstition:

Antonyms: fact, reality, truth

Dueling Jinxes

CC gets the cover but the Mets get the World Series prediction.

WHICH WILL BE WRONGEST???