— Twenty-four, Twenty-five, Twenty-six.... ?
CTR Week in Review
Record: 2-4 (2-4)
Runs Scored/Allowed (Ranks): 35/23 (3/3)
Projected Pythag. Record: 113-49
Key Wins: April 3 15-2 vs. Oakland; April 9 10-1 vs. Anaheim.
Bad Losses: April 4 4-3 vs. Oakland; April 8 3-2 vs. Anaheim.
It was a week of bookends - with the Yankees breaking out for two double-digit scoring efforts around some real offensive struggles.
In the first and last games of their West Coast trip, New York scored 25 runs, pounded out 33 hits including five homers. In the middle four, not surprisingly all losses, the team managed just 10 runs on 28 hits.
Surprisingly, and encouragingly so, the pitching help up very well. New York’s top two starters have combined to throw 28 innings, allowed just 8 runs and have struck out 22 men against four walks. That’s two turns from the Randy we thought we bought as well as two from Good Moose.
Chien-Ming Wang’s numbers are skewed abit as he was cruising when he wasbetrayed by some terrible defense by Derek Jeter, who was not “picked up” by Wang even though he botched what would have been an inning-ending double play.
Offensively, Hideki Matsui (.400/.444/.800), Alex Rodriguez (.320/.393/.560) and Derek Jeter (.348/.464/.565) all had especially good weeks, although virtually every regular could point to something positive on the trip.
As a group, the Bombers are hit .275/.363/.468 last week, while their pitchers held opponents to .238/.295/.332 - not shabby at all.
Overall, the week was acceptable, winning twice against two strong AL contenders and in position to will all six games on a West Coast trip is nothing to sneeze at.
Really the only complaints are, per usual, Joe Torre’s roster usage. Mariano Rivera made his first appearance in a 10-1 blowout Sunday, despite Torre letting a obviously distracted Scott Proctor take the ball in the ninth inning of a tie game in Oakland.
Torre also gave some ABs to Miguel Cairo on Sunday, letting Andy Phillips, Giambi’s nominal backup rot until garbage time.
I suppose we expected too much.
I won’t recap too much of what the kids on the farm are doing, save to say Phil Hughes is the man, and for a more comprehensive daily look, check out ingeorgewetrust.blogspot.com
In the week ahead, New York gets three day games against Kansas City before heading back out on a five-day, two country, two time-zome road trip (Minnesota for three then Toronto for two).
I’d look for New York to take advantage of some suspect Royal pitching in the brief homestand before heading back out on the road.
Sean McNally
Posted: April 10, 2006 at 10:48 PM |
21 comment(s)
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Clever. Two time-zones and two domes.
Or you just can't type.
Yes.
You know, I get that Kay made this an issue because of his absurd claims that Wang should have made up for it, but you guys are riding this Jeter error thing into the ground. He makes errors, everyone does. He even took full responsibility for it after the game. I don't know what the issue here is, unless it's that Kay sucks alot, which we already knew or that Jeter isn't a Gold Glove SS which we also already knew.
i don't think the poor outings from Wang and Chacon can in any way be turned into useful evidence those guys are worse than they were projected before the season. I'm not saying anyone should be particularly worried.
I just think it's funny to see the lengths to which McNally will go (Jeter's error, summing the starter's stats) to elide the poor starts by Chacon and Wang.
Obviously, pythagorean records are useless after 6 games, but when to they start to become more accurate. They seem to work for hoops, but not that well for football, which is a 16 game season.
I've wondered that myself GGC... without thinking of the math, they're supposed to represent your 'true' talent, right? Is a week when your closer only pitches once a good sample of your true talent? What about a 6 game stretch where your number 1 starter pitches twice, and 4 and 5 only pitch once each?
Obviously you'll never have a team that represents its 'true' talent, as things are changing all the time, but surely you'd have to get out to the 60 game or so mark before that has much meaning. Of course, if at 60 games your true talent is that of a team 10 games over .500, and you're 30 and 30, it may be too late for you to recover.
Maybe it's relative to expectations, but I wouldn't use the word "poor" for Chacon's outing in particular. It can be argued that Wang's outing fits under that adjective, but I'm disinclined to use it for a "one bad inning" start.
I'm not saying these guys are now destined to go out and suck in the future. But those are poor performances, and McNally's attempts to avoid stating it are funny.
when balls in play keep turning into hits, the only way to make an out is with a k.
Because that DP would have gotten Wang out of the inning, IMR.
who's IMR?
No. They're assumed (by some anyway) to reflect your "true" performance more accurately than actual W-L records. They can't "correct" for things like injuries or poor roster utilization.
The latter, at least somewhat different, although as nasty as Wang's stuff can often be, he does seem to be prone to one bad inning per outing at this early point in his career.
That's a pretty big if.
If you are suggesting that the Yankee defense on that play was unusually bad, then I disagree with you.
The Yankee pitchers are going to get burned by the bad defense all summer.
Well, pre-Jeter error, here's what Wang did.
First inning: Kotsay singled, Ellis struck out, Chavez lined out, Thomas lined out. (12 pitches)
Second inning: Johnson grounded out, Bradley grounded out, Payton flied out. (8 pitches)
Third inning: Kendall grounded out, Scutaro singled, Kotsay grounded into 3-6-3 DP. (10 pitches)
Fourth inning: Ellis grounded out, Chavez singled, Thomas
grounded into double playbounced into Jeter error (8 pitches).AFTER ERROR
Johnson walks, Bradley singled (two runs), Payton singled, Kendall grounds out (one run), Scutaro struck out. (18 pitches)
Fifth inning: Kotsay singled, Ellis grounds into FC, Chavez singled, Thomas struck out, Johnson walked, Bradley walked (one run). (26 pitches)
Pre-error he was cruising, looks like he fell apart after Jeter failed to pick him up.
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