The Fateful Fifth

Without falling victim to the fallacy of the predetermined outcome, there are is a rational way to look back at a baseball game and wonder what might have been. You have to identify a turning point in the game and restart from right there, assuming nothing going forward. But that method is always going to be unsatisfying because you can't say that that the Yankees would have won if a certain event didn't happen, you can only say that they might not have lost.

There are a lot of points that the Yankees probably wish they could rewind time and start last night's game from. Perhaps they'd like to put Brett Gardner up again with the bases loaded and one out in the fourth inning. The score was tied, but that was a real chance to break it open. Instead, Gardner settled for an RBI fielder's choice, Francisco Cervelli stayed in - instead of Jorge Posada pinch hitting - and struck out looking against Derek Holland and the Yankees walked away with a scant one run edge.

If they had to choose one spot though, it would likely be the moment before Mark Teixeira's fateful, balls-out sprint to first in the bottom of the fifth. As the ball dribbled up the third baseline, Teix reached for an extra gear that he apparently didn't have in order to beat out the double play and about fifteen feet from first, then reached for his right hamstring, lost his momentum and fell into an inadvertent feet-first slide, narrowly beating out the throw.

[As an aside... Could the hamstring have been weakened by the awkward attempt at tracking down the ball popped just into the stands by Nelson Cruz in the fourth inning? Maybe that at-bat would be a decent place to restart the tape from.]

Teixeira is a defensive wizard and generally a great hitter, but something about the postseason doesn't seem to agree with him. He's always said that one of the reasons he tends to start slow at the beginning of the regular season is that it takes time for both his right and left handed swings to align properly. Perhaps the long layoffs that are inherent to October baseball keep him too off balance to be the kind of devastating hitter he has the ability to be. In any event, it's not inconceivable that his replacement could hit better than he would have, in a small sample, from here on out. The Yankees will surely miss the plays Teix makes in the field (like the 3-6-1 DP he started in the top half of the fifth inning) but it's not impossible that the Yankees could win a World Series without him in their starting line up.

Nonetheless, this was still a soul-crushing moment. You could hear a groan of pure despair emanate from the crowd as he was helped towards the dugout and the feeling was that, even if the Yanks got out of this game with the win, their chances of defending their title just took a big hit. It was all too easy to forget that they were still holding at 3-2 edge, with men on first and second, only one out and had a roughly 75% chance of winning the game, according to WPA.

But A-Rod rapped into a double play, putting an end to what had begun as a two-on, no out potential rally and dropped that WPA down to 63%. That twin killing completed what might have been the worst imaginable outcome of having your 3 & 4 hitters up with two men on base and nobody out: force out (season ending injury), double play.

Still, it wasn't the end of the world. A.J. Burnett had acquitted himself quite nicely over the first five innings and seemed to be about as in control as one could rightfully expect him to be under the circumstances.

Burnett allowed a single to Vlad Guerrero to start the frame but sat down Nelson Cruz on a pivotal fielder's choice. Why is that important? Because Ian Kinsler, the next batter up, ripped a deep fly ball into center field that Curtis Granderson caught just off the warning track. The ball was so deep in fact, that Cruz tagged up from first base and slid safely into second, just ahead of a high throw from Granderson. Would Vlad and his ancient legs have tried to tag up under those circumstances? Highly doubtful.

So by advancing to second, Cruz opened up first base. And with David Murphy due up, Joe Girardi made one of the more controversial decisions of the evening and chose to intentionally walk him based on his history with Burnett, opting to face Bengie Molina with two men on instead of Murphy with just a man on second.

David Murphy is a capable hitter, but if Joe Girardi didn't like the match up, then why didn't he go to his bullpen in an attempt to shuffle the deck instead of putting a guy on base and leaving Burnett in?

What was he going to get out of Burnett, one more inning at most? Burnett was supposed to be on a short leash. Girardi might be the biggest proponent of two out pitching changes in the history of the fucking sport. Joba Chamberlain had been warming up for roughly two hours at that point. WHAT THE FUUUUCCCKKKK!??!?1

Sorry, I lost it for a second there. But for all the talk that there would be a quick hook for Burnett, the decision to walk Murphy (in addition to the one not to pinch hit for Cervelli) simply don't make any sense. Girardi was trying to ride Burnett for as long as possible and he paid dearly for it.

We all know too well what happened next. Molina took the first pitch he saw deep into the left field seats an delivered the running cockpunch from which the Yankees wouldn't recover.

They surely tried, however. With the bases loaded and the Bombers down by four in the eighth inning, Nick Swisher tried to avoid an inside breaking ball that got away from Darren Oliver. Replays showed that it caught Swisher's pant leg and he should have been awarded first base, thereby forcing in a run and putting the go-ahead run at the plate with just one out.

But on a night where almost everything went just about as wrong as possible for the Yanks, Angel Hernandez didn't see the contact and didn't buy Swisher's attempt at selling the fact that he got clipped when was contorted in some sort of yoga position (the dying giraffe?) on the ground.

There are losses and then there are impossibly brutal, heart-stabbing defeats like last night. The Yankees are still technically alive in the series and are a good bet to win tonight behind CC Sabathia, but even if they take the next two games, they'll have to get past Cliff Lee in Game 7. It's not over, but it certainly fucking feels like it is.

Other incredible/horrible moments that didn't make the cut:

• Jeffery Maier Part Douche
  
• Lance Berkman's overturned near homerun, that might have even glanced against the foul pole
  
• Brett Gardner's bat breaking the TBS camera
  
• A near Bartman moment in the top of the 5th

ALCS Game 3 Recap

Well, not a full recap, just a mini one. I just got back from the Stadium and need to get some shuteye. Here's some footage I shot of the top of the ninth inning:

Fun With Shutdowns and Meltdowns

Based on a conversation which originated at Beyond the Boxscore and continued over at The Book blog, FanGraphs created two new stats for relief pitchers based on WPA. Fortunately there are no intimidating acronyms. The positive one is "Shutdowns (SD)" and the negative one is "Meltdowns (MD)". I think everyone can understand that.

The Yankees are tied for the fewest meltdowns in the MLB with 8 but they've also had the second fewest appearances by relievers this year primarily due to the length their starting pitchers have provided for them. Yankee starters are averaging 6 1/3 IP per start and on nights when Javy Vazquez isn't pitching that number jumps over 6 2/3.

Looking at it another way, the Yankees' ratio of meltdowns to shutdowns is better than 1:2, which is good for 7th best in the league. Without getting my hands too dirty, that seems like a pretty good way to rank the performance of team's bullpens so far this season. When sorted by meltdowns/shutdowns, the teams fall out into three distinct tiers.

Tier 1: These teams all have a better than 2:1 shutdown to meltdown ratio. Most of them have an ERA better than league average with the exception of the Tigers (13th), Nationals (18th) and Pirates (dead last).

(The columns next to ERA and MD/SD are the

team's league-wide ranks in those categories)

What's apparently right away is that there is a decent general correlation to ERA but some extreme outliers (likely due to the fact that it's still early in the season).

The Tigers have a bullpen ERA that is slightly higher than league average but still have the best MD/SD in the MLB. Detroit has converted 80% of their saves (tied for 4th best in the league) which is a good indication that they have been getting the job done when it matters but giving up a lot of runs in low leverage situations. The Nationals are in the same boat with a bad ERA (19th), high SV% (11/13) and a solid MD/SD (5th). The Pirates are an interesting case, as their ERA is clearly inflated by having eight losses by seven runs or more, including two games they lost to the Brewers by a combined 33 runs. Those big losses have essentially no effect on WPA after a certain point but are given equal weight in ERA.

Tier 2: All of these teams have between a 1:2 and 3:4 MD/SD ratio.

The Reds have the fourth most relief appearances in the league so it makes sense that they have the most shutdowns with 33 and are in the top 5 for meltdowns with 18. They might have a good ratio but their ERA is indicative of the fact that their 'pen is over-taxed. Paging Aroldis Chapman. The Red Sox are in a similar situation with fewer shutdowns but a lower ERA. The Mariners are the only team in this cluster with an ERA in the top 1/3 of the league.

Tier 3: The final tier consists of teams who have more than 3 meltdowns for every four shutdowns. Four of them - the Cubs, Dodgers, Giants and Royals - have more MDs than SDs.

Incredibly, the Giants, who are leading the league in bullpen ERA, have only 10 shutdowns (last in the MLB) and are second to last in terms of their MD/SD ratio.

Clearly, over the course of the season, teams like the Giants and Tigers are going to see their ERA and MD/SD ranks converge on each other. The Giants will get some good performances from their relievers when it matters and the Tigers will see their guys give up some runs when it counts too.

Neither ERA nor MDs and SDs are perfect ways of measuring reliever's contributions but each brings their own unique perspective. And when combined with or contrasted against each other they have a way of teasing out information that we might not have known before. It should be interesting to keep on eye on these stats as the season goes forward and FanGraphs includes them on the player pages.