Girardi's Obsession with Rest Strikes Again

One of the critical moments in today's painful loss occurred in the top of the 3rd. The Yankees loaded the bases with no one out. This opportunity to at least get a crucial run by advancing runners was pissed away when Granderson popped out and Andruw Jones struck out with a truly pathetic at-bat.

Manager Joe Girardi was not on the field, but he also contributed to the failure here. How so? Because Russell Martin clearly, absolutely, unequivocally should have been in the starting lineup against a lefty starter. If he were in the lineup, he would have hit ahead of Kingman Granderson and Mini Kingman Jones....

Of course there is no way of knowing whether Martin would have helped the Yankees score. However, I feel comfortable in asserting that having Russell Martin in the lineup would have giving the Yankees their maximum odds of winning; and maximizing the odds is a big part of a manager's job.

Martin's helped carry the inconsistent offense. This month he has 6 HRs, 16 RBIs, and a .274/.369/.562 slash line. The best lineup today clearly would have included Russell Martin.

So why would Martin have been sitting on the bench?

Since it was a day game following a night game, and since the Yanks are in the midst of a stretch of games without a day off, it was not unreasonable for Girardi to put Chris Stewart behind the plate. However, Martin could have been used as the DH; especially since the Yankees are now carrying Cervelli as a third catcher. Instead, Girardi opted to DH Jeter and use Nunez at shortstop. For 5 innings. Before the bottom of the 6th, Girardi apparently remembered Nunez has a glove of lead, and so he moved Jeter to shortstop.

Think about it - with 4 more games to go, and the Yankees clinging to a 1-game lead, we're supposed to believe it helps Derek Jeter to have 5 innings off? Ridiculous - and yet those few innings of rest is why one of the Yankees few hot hitters was not hitting in perhaps the game's biggest moment.

This is the third time this week that Girardi has managed the team as though it were a mid-season game. The days dwindle down to a precious few - except in the alternate universe in which Joe Girardi apparently resides, where it apparently is still mid-July.

Is Girardi Running a Baseball Team or a Rest Home?

In the latest installment of  "Joe Girardi Makes Yankee Fans Crazy", Jayson Nix was in the lineup tonight and the night before last at the expense of Eric Chavez. While we can never know if the Yanks would have won those games with Chavez in the lineup, certainly he would have increased their changes.

The other night Nix got into the lineup as a consequence of Girardi giving Cano a half-night off as a DH, even though Joe himself said it probably didn't matter:

"I don’t know how much you can refresh a guy this time of year, though."

Tonight it's not even clear why. I guess it is because Chavez had played one consecutive game.

Now the best thing you can say about  Nix's .241/.305/.385 slash line is that he leads the team in sacrifices. Chavez by contrast is hitting .283/.343/.483. Chavez has just got to be playing in these critical games.

The Odds of Ichiro's Hot Streak: Fun Times with Binomial Probability

In the 5 games from September 19th to the 23rd, Ichiro had 14 hits in 20 ABs. What are the odds of that?

Binomial probability provides a way to calculate these odds. For the probability factor - the probability that Ichiro will get a hit in a given at-bat - we'll use batting average data. Since this probability is for an ongoing season, we'll use Ichiro's projected 2012 batting average of .288 as calculated by Marcels. Marcels projected he would hit .288.

Note: .288 is nearly identical to his actual 2012 batting average to date, which gives me confidence in using it.

With .288 as the probability factor, binomial probability indicates the odds of Ichiro's 14-for-20 streak is 1 out of 7226. For context, Ichiro has 8039 career ABs; meaning that if Ichiro were a .288 lifetime hitter, these 20 at-bats would have been a once-in-a-career event.

This made me curious about how often Ichiro went 14/20 in his prime years of 2001-2010. In that period, he hit .331. The binomial probability of a .331 hitter going 14-for-20 is 1 out of 1519; meaning the binomial probability estimates he would have had 4 14-20 streaks.

In reality in that period, Ichiro went 14-20 9 times; 7 times in August and September of 2004, and twice in June 2006.

9 is reasonably close to 4 or 5. Moreso perhaps when you consider that 4 of these 20-consecutive-at-bat streaks occurred in the August 14/15 games; they were part of a larger hot streak.

Finally, let's look at one more set of stats. The following table shows:

• The number of times Ichiro got a given number of hits in 20 ABs in the years 2001-2010;
• The number of times the binomial probability estimates it should happen. 

For example, Ichiro went 2-for-20 114 times; the binomial probability estimates it should happen 99 times. As you can see, the actual and estimated numbers are close (their correlation coefficient is .9987):

Hits/20 AB	Actual	Predicted
0	3	2
1	28	21
2	114	99
3	317	293
4	638	617
5	982	977
6	1213	1208
7	1144	1196
8	899	961
9	627	634
10	315	345
11	152	155
12	104	58
13	44	18
14	9	4
15	0	1
16	0	0
17	0	0
18	0	0
19	0	0
20	0	0

A-Rod and the Boobirds: the WTF Edition

Let's say that you had a player who put up the following stats:

• 130 Runs
• 130 RBIs
• 32 HRs
• 22 Stolen Bases

You'd probably cut him a little slack if you went to a game and he had an 0-4 with 3 strikeouts, right?

The above numbers are A-Rod's stats in the 15 games since he's returned from the broken hand, prorated to 162 games. A-Rod's 3 HRs in this period prorates to 32 HRs; his 12 RBIs in 15 games prorates to 130 RBIs; etc.

The vocal minority of boobirds who got on A-Rod in the nightcap of today's doubleheader really make me wonder. Of course I do not expect people to spend their time prorating stats. But I would have assumed any fan trekking out to the Bronx would have noticed and appreciated the jolt A-Rod's given to the struggling Yankee offense this month.

A-Rod Carrying the Team: What Would that Look Like?

There's been a lot of talk about the possibility of A-Rod carrying the Yankees now that he has recovered from his broken hand. "Carrying" is part of our baseball vocabulary.

However; the exact meaning of "carrying" is in the eye of the beholder. So I thought it would be fun to put some numbers to the concept of "carrying". How many homers, hits, etc. would A-Rod have to hit to attain "carrying" status? The answer is rooted in another question: what's a realistic estimate of A-Rod's potential upside for the season's last 17 games?

A way of gauging his upside is to use the quantile function of the binomial distribution to estimate A-Rod's upside for the last 17 games. To do so, we need to determine the following values:

• The number of trials. In this case, that is the number of ABs A-Rod is likely to have in the remaining 17 games. We'll estimate 64 ABs.


• The probability of success. For example, to estimate the number of hits, the probability would be A-Rod's batting average talent level.
  
  We're going to use 2 sets of probabilities to estimate 2 different potential upsides. The reason is that this blog has periodically been evaluating whether A-Rod's 2011-2012 home run performance represent a permanent decline in his slugging talent as compared to his 2009-2010 numbers. So we'll continue in this vein by gauging A-Rod's potential upside using both his 2009-2010 and 2011-2012 numbers for probabilities.


• The quantile of the distribution we are interested in. Since we are interested in gauging A-Rod's upside, we'll use .8 (80th quantile) - in other words, we are looking for only the upper 20% of A-Rod's likely outcomes for 64 ABs.

The following table lists the potential upside for A-Rod over the last 17 games. The way to read this is that for each number listed (other than AB), there is a 20% probability that A-Rod will hit at least as well as what is listed:

Seasons to use for probabilities	PAs	AB	H	D	T	HR	BB	SF	HBP	BA	HR%	SLG	OBP
2009-2010	75	64	21	4	0	6	9	1	1	.328	.094	.672	.413
2011-2012	73	64	21	4	0	4	7	1	1	.328	.063	.578	.404

In other words, this table describes rational expectations for A-Rod's upside over the last few weeks of the season.

Derek Jeter and Willie Mays

Derek Jeter's great season has been one of the fun things to watch this year. It occurs to me that the words "fun" and "Yankee baseball" have not often been used together during the last 6 weeks, in which watching the Yankees has sometimes been about as enjoyable as colonoscopy - though at least they give you a sedative for that!

However, seeing the Red Sox fans' indifference over the last 3 games in Fenway Mausoleum Park certainly puts things in perspective: it is fun to have your team in a pennant race.

One of the fun things Jeter has given fans this year is his climb on the all-time hits list. Tonight Derek tied Willie Mays with 3283. Seeing Mays' name on the TV screen reminded me of they Say Hey Kid's famous catch in the 1954 World Series, one of baseball's most storied plays.

That thought brought to mind another legendary moment in baseball history: Jeter's flip throw play in the 3rd game of the 2001 ALDS. The moment was especially dramatic because the Yankees were playing an elimination game and clinging to a 1-0 lead in the 7th; Jeter's play was probably season-saving.

And the play itself was beautiful to watch -and replay and rewatch, and replay and rewatch! First, you have to like Jeter showing his usual baseball intelligence, positioning himself to back up the cutoff man. Then when Shane Spencer's throw went way off-course, Jeter raced to the first-base line, grabbed the bouncing ball, then somehow while still on the run turned around and shoveled a perfect throw to Posada.

For everyone who does not inhabit Bobby Valentine's alternate universe, it was a superlative, historic play, in the class of Mays' catch.  Jeter literally reversed the direction of the Yankees' season when he rerouted the ball to Jorge Posada with such grace and style and athleticism.

Yankees Ongoing Homage to Dead Ball Era Omits the Hit-and-Run

Look at the stats of the number 5 through 9 hitters in the lineup for tonight's loss to the Red Sox:

Player	BA	OBP	SLG
D Jeter SS	.323	.367	.449
N Swisher RF	.257	.344	.454
A Rodriguez DH	.275	.356	.455
R Cano 2B	.301	.370	.537
R Martin C	.209	.313	.386
S Pearce 1B	.241	.320	.425
C Granderson CF	.234	.324	.479
A Jones LF	.205	.292	.414
J Nix 3B	.250	.306	.400

They all have horrible-to-mediocre batting averages and on-base percentages, and only Curtis Granderson has a slugging percentage rising above that level.

When the bulk of the batting order resembles the lineup of the 1967 Yankees more than that of the 2009 powerhouse, mixing in some hit-and-runs is imperative. Girardi however has abandoned the hit-and-run throughout the team's ongoing offensive malaise.

Tonight was typical, alas - there were a few hit-and-run opportunities:

• In the 3rd inning, after A-Rod and Cano led off with walks.
• In the 4th, after Andruw Jones led off with a walk.
• In the 8th, when Andruw Jones walked with one out.

Girardi Bungles Teixeira's Injury

I'm glad I wasn't driving when I learned that Mark Teixeira will be out for awhile, possibly even the season, after aggravating his calf injury in last night's game, as I fear hearing the news would have triggered a spasm of road rage.

Girardi chose to play Teixeira yesterday even though he knew his slugging, Gold Glove first baseman had a "tight calf" and that Mark should not "give it that extra burst." This decision would be understandable if it were a do-or-die game or the World Series.  But this game didn't rise to that level. While the Orioles series is huge, there will be 22 huge games remaining after the series.

So basically Joe Girardi risked pissing away a few weeks of Mark Teixeira to get 9 innings out of an injured Teixeira on September 8.

It's the worst decision by a Yankee manager in my lifetime. It tops the previous record-holder, which was Bob Lemon's decision to pinch-hit for Tommy John in the fifth inning of the last game of the 1981 World Series. That decision was flawed because the score was tied at 1-1 and Lemon's reliever was the mediocre George Frazier, who of course proceeded to lose Game 6 the same way he lost game 3 and game 4. Lemon's decision was awful; but in his mind there no doubt was some reasoning behind his decision. What logic could there be behind Girardi's decision?  The risk of losing Tex for the season so exceeds the benefit of having him play last night that it comes across as a mere panic move.

Bud Selig Adds Oriole Victory to His Record of Ineptitude

Bud Selig's record includes allowing a World Series to be cancelled and failing to do anything about baseball's PED usage until after it became a PR disaster.

But those immense screw ups alone do not define the boundaries of Selig's incompetence. Indeed, Selig's reign of ineptitude is on display nightly. Because very night there seems to be some truly atrocious call. Which, statistically seems to be the case: according to Jeff Passan, in 2010 MLB's director of umpiring says there is a bad call every 12.2 games. (And this excluded calls on balls and strikes!)

Think about it - MLB can predict that on average, each night fans who have poured their time and hearts and hard-earned cash into following a team are going to experience a head explosion over an umpiring error. And yet Selig just twiddles his thumbs instead of showing some leadership for a change and fixing the damn problem.

Now a few years back, Selig did make a token acknowledgement to reality by allowing reviews of HR calls. But even that was poorly implemented in that the review process wastes time - a manager has to protest, the umpires have to gather together, then go off the field to review. Jeff Passan wrote up an excellent description of the real solution, which is to add a fifth umpire to each game whose sole job is to use replay to overturn bad calls.

Until that happens, we almost nightly experience something straight out of a satirical novel: here in the 21st century, the umpires are virtually the only parties involved that do not see a replay. Every fan watching at home sees replays that confirm what the naked eye saw; the players and the coaches and the bat boys and the managers see the replay; fans watching the game on smart phones see the replay; the radio audience hears the announcers disgustedly describing the replay.  Only the 4 guys who have the power to correct the error that do not see the replay,

It is hard to describe the stupidity of this situation. It is like a law that would allow every one see your X-Ray results except your doctor.

Bud Selig could easily fix this. A real commissioner would have done this years ago - if nothing else, the availability of video on the Internet means that every time an umpire makes such a blatant error, hundreds of thousands of fans can see the error - note the 600,000-plus YouTube hits on the Galarraga play - so you would think the Commissioner would fix this for the embarrassment factor alone.

But Selig is clearly beyond embarrassment. His own words reveal this - here is his attempted self-defense of his inaction in either word or deed regarding PED usage in the 1990s:

"I don't want to hear the commissioner turned a blind eye to this or he didn't care about it. That annoys the you-know-what out of me. You bet I'm sensitive to the criticism. The reason I'm so frustrated is, if you look at our whole body of work, I think we've come farther than anyone ever dreamed possible.... I'm not sure I would have done anything differently. A lot of people say we should have done this or that, and I understand that. They ask me, 'How could you not know?' and I guess in the retrospect of history, that's not an unfair question. But we learned and we've done something about it."

Someone capable embarrassment would have apologized and explained why he said and did nothing, instead of whining and evading the issue. But this quote is Bud Selig in a nutshell; and the lack of ownership it reveals explains why the Yankees' 9th-inning rally was snuffed out last night by an incredibly bad umpiring call.

Outfielders Making Too Many Outs

In drilling down into the Replacement Level Yankees Weblog's post listing Yankees' batting and pitching stats for the 44 games in which the Yankees lost their 14-game lead, the combined performance of Curtis Granderson, Andruw Jones, and Raul Ibanez shocked me.

These guys have had 22% of the Yankees' plate appearances in this period. In 368 plate appearances, this trio has combined for these totals:

• Batting Average: .180
• On-Base Percentage: 258
• Slugging Percentage: .307

By comparison, the AL averages for these stats are .256/.320/.412. However, comparing to league average alone does not reveal the putridity of these performances; these guys are outfielders and DHs, positions typically manned by above-average hitters. In 2012 DHs and outfielders have hit .263/.328/.431.

One thing Granderson, Jones, and Ibanez do have going for them in this stretch is they've outhit pitchers, who in 2012 have a combined slash line of .130/.163/.164.

As a fan, I find Andruw Jones especially maddening.  This is mostly because he does not hustle; the man apparently will only run out a ground ball if he gets a bonus. And then Jones pulls every single swing, no matter how far outside the pitch is; his lack of adaptation makes me think of the Einstein quote "the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."

The only somewhat bright spot is that Granderson had some production in those 44 games, hitting 9 HRs and leading the team with 27 RBIs. However, his OBP was .259; obviously the Yankees really need him to improve on that over the stretch run.

Joe Girardi Feels Our Pain

The way Joe looks is the way I've been looking the last couple of weeks. Look at that huge vein that runs from Joe's left ear to under his eye. I hate when it starts pulsating like that:

Picture source: Lohud Blog, at http://yankees.lhblogs.com/2012/09/04/yankees-division-lead-disappears/

Hal Steinbrenner's Greed: Why the Yankees Lack Depth

This year there was one no-brainer international signing that the Yankees should clearly have made. This is Yoenis Cespedes, who was signed by the A's to a 4-year contract averaging $9 million per year.

My head almost exploded when I saw this great talent go to a team that the Yankees easily could have outbid. And my poor head still pulsates whenever I look at Cespedes' excellent rookie stats after watching the ghost of Andruw Jones stumble around the outfield.

If the Yankees were run by George Steinbrenner instead of Hal "Spreadsheet" Steinbrenner, Cespedes would be in Pinstripes, and the Yankees would not be so dependent upon ancient mistake hitters such as Andruw Jones and Raul Ibanez.

And since Brian Cashman's farm system hardly has a ton of outfield prospects in the pipeline, signing a 26-year-old talent such as Cespedes would have deepened an area of weakness: young outfielders.

Report: A-Rod to Replace Girardi, Become First Player-Manager Since Pete Rose

I wish this were the case. Because A-Rod would not have let Hughes pitch to Mark Reynolds in the 6th inning of today's debacle.

But then who else on the face of the earth would have left Hughes in other than Girardi? Grady Little perhaps?