The Yankees are behind by exactly one run in a game they exactly must win. There is a left-handed pitcher on the mound, with big platoon splits. The Yankees’ next scheduled batter is yet another left-handed hitter.
Raúl Ibañez.
Yes, there are people who follow the New York Yankees, or work for the New York Yankees, or are paid good money to talk about baseball during national television broadcasts, who seem to believe, as one particularly irascible friend of mine puts it, “that Ibañez has some magical pixie dust than enables him to hit home runs at will, and that someone put the voodoo kibosh on Swisher and A-Rod that won’t go away until they each get two consecutive hits.”
Ah, there they are: Nick Swisher and Alex Rodriguez, our switch-hitter and our right-handed hitter, sitting on the bench. Both have been struggling lately, as you’ve no doubt heart. Swisher started for the Yankees in right field all season; he’s been benched. Rodriguez started for the Yankees at third base all season, and also made $31 million all season; he’s been benched.
Against those struggles, Joe Girardi might have considered this salient fact: Over the last two seasons, Raúl Ibañez has been gifted with 194 at-bats and posted a .206 batting average. With four home runs. Which is to say that against left-handed pitchers, Raúl Ibañez hits like a shortstop. A weak-hitting shortstop with a .236 batting average.
Meanwhile, Rodriguez and Swisher awaited on the bench.
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Really, though, what I wanted to say was that the Rodriguez thing is a bit of a red herring. Nick Swisher has been a better hitter than A-Rod for a couple of years now, he doesn't appear to be as banged-up as A-Rod, and he doesn't lose the platoon advantage if he pinch-hits. He's the obvious choice to pinch-hit there.
(*) Which is to say, he did once.
ARod has the same career OPS (.838) as Derek Jeter in the post-season.
A-Rod can (*) if he gets off to a decent start, but if he starts bad, he never breaks out of it.
ARod batted only .615 in the ALDS in 2000, but then proceeded to bat 1.253 in the ALCS that same year.
Nobody cares about stuff that happened 12 years ago, before he came to the Yankees.
Torre was around him all the time and kicked him down to 8th in the postseason; Girardi's around him all the time and won't play him in the postseason. Those guys know more than a guy in his mom's basement searching clumsily for patterns and screaming about sample size.
It can be, should be, and in fact is, very easy to pull a guy who can't hit LHP against a LHP with the game on the line.
Agreed, but I'm not sure who raised this red herring. He didn't have to go to ARod. Swisher was fine. Or, at a minimum, go to ARod, get Benoit, and then go to Swisher. Anything but letting the guy who can't hit LHP bat against LHP. ARod against a RHP would have been better.
Like what you're doing?
That A-Rod is lousy this year (37 and probably still injured is my guess) doesn't change his overall body of work.
Is "mom's basement" the SABR-equivalent of Godwin's Law?
One of which was off a left-hander.
I get the argument Neyer's making, but I can't really fault Girardi's decision here. Going to A-Rod or Swisher was high-risk (was there even any guarantee that Leyland wouldn't have lifted Coke?) and it's an absolute guarantee that if Ibanez had been lifted and the decision hadn't worked Girardi would have been roasted.
-- MWE
But 2004 still counts, right?
Not exactly. A lifetime of playing and watching sports has informed me that choking exists, and helps me identify it. And when two managers basically tell the world a guy's a choker, and none of his teammates, including Captain Dreamboat, express much in the way of disagreement, I consider that very valuable confirmatory evidence.
That's actually why I would have pinch hit. Leyland would have likely gone with Benoit, who is very susceptible to the long ball. I get Girardi's decision, but I pinch hit Swisher in that situation.
Fine, if you only include the time that ARod's been a Yankee (2004-2012):
ARod - .814 OPS
Jeter - .814 OPS
You're right. It makes a huge difference.
Not going to lie, that surprises me.
ARod - .814 OPS
Jeter - .814 OPS
You're right. It makes a huge difference.
Derek Jeter's aggregate performance has nothing to do with whether A-Rod chokes in the postseason. When things start bad for him, he does. His managers, his teammates, and fans conversant in both numbers and sports psychology, all understand it.
1997 Good2000 Bad
2000 Good
2004 Good
2004 Good
2005 Bad
2006 Bad
2007 Good
2009 Good
2009 Good
2009 Good
2010 Bad
2010 Bad
2011 Bad
2012 Bad
2012 Bad
In his Yankees career he was 6-2 through 2009, but then has been bad for 5 straight. A little bit chokey, a little bit old.
2004 ALDS:
ARod: .421/.476/.737/1.213
Jeter: .316/.350/.526/.876
2004 ALCS:
ARod: .258/.378/.516/.895
Jeter: .200/.333/.233/.567
2007 is "good" only on a very low curve. He struck out 6 times in 15 ABs and OPSd 820. 2009 he got going early and never got to the point of choking. He's choked in every series since.
In the same comparison, Jeter has the exact same score as ARod from 2004-2011 (6-5), but for 2012 he's 1-1 while ARod's 0-2.
Girardi's errors in the playoffs, itemized in broad strokes:
1. Girardi benches ARod and Swisher based on a sample of, what, anywhere from 4-7 games. So he weights the last 4-7 games over the last 162 or 324 or 648 games, because they are postseason games. In so doing he buys into the silliness of talk radio as epitomized by SugarBear here in this thread. I realize that ARod has not done well against RHP this year, but even in his diminished capacity against RHP - if you think that is his real skill level - he has his uses. And he still had a .900+ OPS vs. lefties this year.
2. Girardi leads off last night with Gardner, a player who had gotten 6 PAs since April. Leads off with him. Gardner doesn't get the ball out of the infield. Twice he doesn't get the ball past the pitcher, although one of those I guess was hit fairly hard. In the fateful ninth inning, Gardner is allowed to bat against Verlander, and while it's not a lefty-righty issue, it is an issue of Gardner simply not seeing live major league pitching enough. Gardner when healthy is a nifty player, but someone whose value is linked to his defense at a time when Girardi needed offense; Gardner is not Barry Bonds, such that you take a chance with him even though he's not seen live MLB pitching.
3. Girardi, with the game on the line after Hughes is knocked out - even setting aside that Hughes by his own admission could have stayed in - goes to Phelps, Rapada, and Eppley. Again, basically with his season on the line. That it "worked" is beside the point that the _process_ there was just bad.
4. Girardi, down 2-0 in the 9th in a virtual elimination game, allows Nunez to hit for himself against Verlander. Certainly ARod and Swisher are better bets than Nunez. The fact that Girardi lucks out when Nunez runs into a pitch and hits it out of the yard was fortunate, but, again, bad process. Eventually these moves are going to probably burn you, and just minutes later they did.
5. Girardi then allows Ichiro to bat against Coke. Ichiro's OPS against lefties this year was .650. Coke gets beat up by righties. No ARod, no Swisher. And no Andruw Jones, who has inexplicably been left off the ALCS roster while back-end pitchers like Lowe, Eppley, Phelps, and Rapada have been left on. Take your pick. Jones was a better option than at least one of those.
6. With 2 outs and 2 on in the 9th, and down 2-1, Girardi allows Ibanez to bat against Coke, simply because Ibanez has been hot lately, even homering off of a LHP against Baltimore. But that is simply not the way to bet. As a manager, Girardi's job is to put his players in the best chance to succeed. Ibanez vs. Coke is not it. Girardi could have PH Swisher and welcomed the Benoit/Swisher matchup instead. ARod/Benoit was also a better matchup than Ibanez/Coke.
People keep saying "the Yankees" aren't scoring, but these are not "the Yankees." Girardi has gutted his lineup - even ARod's replacement is 0-15 or whatever - and then, after he has done so and therefore has good pinch hitters on the bench - he fails to use them. Much of the woes of the lineup can be dropped at the feet of Girardi. He has buried two of his regulars, two good players, based on a week of poor play.
Girardi has simply failed here, and in a spectacular way. And the hilarious part is that he has scapegoated ARod such that the blame for losing this series will be placed on the player who didn't get an opportunity to win it.
Jeter was 4 for 19 in those games. Matsui 5 for 19. Sheffield 1 for 17.
That was a team wide shutdown by the offense.
And Jeter was 4-for-19 in the last 4 games of 2004.
So if I get it right, ARod started choking in 2004, sorta didn't choke in 2007, stopped choking in 2009, and started choking again after that?
But because Jeter sucked for 2010 and 2011 (.627 OPS combined), and in 2004 (.686 OPS) and in 2001 (.566 OPS) and in 1998 (.622 OPS), but was good the other times, it's different?
I don't think A-Rod quite fits that scenario. He missed a month plus and upon his return did not really hit much (.261/.341/.369 in September). I think it's a reasonable theory that there is something physically wrong with the 37 year old coming off injury. I'd rather have him in there than Chavez but I think there is very much a non-choker logic that can support keeping Rodriguez out of there.
Are you under the impression that no one else here has played or watched sports? If so, you are sadly mistaken.
Yes, exactly.(*) And on the opposite side of the issue from Girardi, Torre, Yankee teammates, and the Yankee front office -- none of whom have raised any stink about poor "scapegoated" A-Rod in the multiple postseasons in which he's been "scapegoated" -- are some lawyers and stat dorks. This lawyer and amateur stat dork knows which side he'll pick.
Some guys choke in the postseason and the biggest moments. Sorry, that's just a fact of sports.
(*) And, of course, A-Rod's litany of postseason gakkery extends far beyond "4-7 games."
Next time A-Rod gets a pinch hit will be his first, he's 0-14 career. Swisher is 3 for 25.
But they only choke when you think they choke, and sometimes they definitely don't choke, and other guys don't choke they just don't do well because they have a history of not choking.
This "choking" seems to be grounded in reality as much as homeopathic remedies.
Sure. It's New York. If teammates or managment thought A-Rod was getting "scapegoated" as a choker, they'd tell the media. If they thought Torre hitting him 8th after only 3 games was hurting their chances of winning, they'd say so. Or Jeter or somebody would go to Torre or Girardi before the game and say, "I don't know about batting A-Rod 8th, Skip," and A-Rod probably wouldn't hit 8th.
Modern managers aren't dictators. They need and seek out the support of other organizational factions. No faction of the Yankee organization has pushed back against two managers treating A-Rod as if he was a postseason gakker.
Likely an effect, largely, of them being injured in some way, which is probably why they were out of the lineup to begin with, in most cases. That doesn't apply here.
The other effect is probably that most PH situations are in late innings and often managers counter the PH with a pitching move to exploit the platoon side. But doing that here would STILL result in a better matchup than Coke vs. Gardner/Ichiro/Ibanez.
Girardi allowed his season to go down the tubes with Coke vs. three lefties (*), two of whom can't hit LHP, one of who hasn't hit all year. If that's not wrong, then nothing is and no tactical moves are ever worthwhile.
EDIT: Sorry, two lefties (Ichiro and Ibanez).
He has zero confidence that A-Rod will be able to get a big postseason hit. Can you blame him?
Gardner didn't face Coke.
Umm, yes?
Seriously, SugarBear, the crap you are peddling was bad enough before ARod won the WS in 2009. Now it's beyond silly.
You're right; I had that correct above, and then lost it. But the Coke point remains, and allowing Gardner to hit against Verlander was also bad.
Based on what -- the fact that he had a decent postseason three years ago? That's it?
Seriously, SugarBear, the crap you are peddling was bad enough before ARod won the WS in 2009. Now it's beyond silly.
It's not just me peddling it; it's Joe Girardi and, by implication and silence, the rest of the Yankee organization. Joe Torre believed in the essence of the charge before Girardi, when it took him a mere three games to tire of A-Rod's postseason act. Which, to repeat, is not never being able to hit in the postseason; it's starting off poorly and never reversing the downhill spiral -- for predominantly mental reasons.
No, you see this time he's on the side of the fanboys.
I'm not an MLB manager, but I really don't think that's how they choose their lineups.
So idiots believe something that is idiotic. Why is this news, and how does it help you?
(Also: I'm not sure what "silence" you're talking about and why it's relevant. Jeter and Pettitte are supposed to openly critique Girardi's lineup decisions?)
Umm, yeah, it is. Torre wouldn't have hit A-Rod 8th if he didn't think he had the support of Jeter and other important Yankees.
The other day Mike Francesa (WFAN host) was blaming ARod, absolving Girardi, and his point was that ARod should not accept the benching and should go in there and demand to start. And so Girardi's decision not to start him was ARod's fault, because it was really ARod's decision, ultimately. Or something. The stupid hurts.
say the same output happens. pinch-hitter hits homer. now its bg, is and leyland leaves verlander on the mound
i think most managers leave gardner in place. not saying it's right or wrong. but lefty against tiring righty i think managers stand pat
pinch hit for ichiro? i don't know of any manager today who would pinch hit for ichiro. again, not saying that is the right answer. but that is the likely approach
now if everything still plays out and you get to raul 'then' i think you have a case where some managers figure the guy off the bench might be better against whatever pitcher leyland calls in if he does make a change
so let's say it's a-rod for the yanks. guess is that leyland goes to benoit.
so really do folks think a-rod/benoit is better for the yanks than raul/coke?
boy, i think boy options stink
College of coaches!
Because I don't believe you know more about baseball and A-Rod than Joe Torre and Joe Girardi, accomplished managers who spend every working day with A-Rod. Nor do you know more about baseball and A-Rod than the Yankee players.
But even though that's true, there's yet another factor at play -- those people have a far greater interest in handling and deploying A-Rod properly than you do. So even if they were bigger "idiots" than you -- they aren't, but let's play it out -- you don't have the motivating factor of self-interest pushing you toward the right decision. And they do.
as i wrote above i don't think there is a manager working today who would pinch-hit for ichiro
I think this depends on whether or not you've used Swisher earlier in the inning. If you hadn't then you have him hit for Rodriguez (assuming your fact pattern).
Frankly, I think the decision to let Nunez bat, despite the fact that it worked, was a bad one. Kudos to Nunez for a great great at bat I think that is as bad a decision as letting Ibanez face Coke.
Meanwhile the guy who is getting the starts over A-Rod, Chavez, doesn't even have a single hit this postseason.
I know. Speaks volumes about Girardi's confidence in A-Rod, doesn't it? At this point, Girardi should just slap the scarlet "C" on A-Rod's uni and be done with it.
He's has a career .564 OPS in the post-season.
But wait! We shouldn't include his time before he became a Yankee, since SBB says it doesn't count.
Fine.
He has a career .000 OPS in the post-season (2011-2012) as a Yankee.
Yes, it does.
It also speaks of Girardi's blinders about ARod, where he thinks Chavez is still the better option.
I thought MAYBE it could be the case where ARod doesn't do well against Verlander, but nope...1.005 OPS (37 PA) against Verlander in his career.
Ichiro has no platoon split whatsoever. If you think he should be in the starting lineup, you might as well leave him in there to face the lefty.
How do you know that didn't happen?
How do you know that didn't happen?
Because we would have heard about it and/or it would have otherwise manifested itself in observable ways.
Not unless Bubba The Love Sponge has a video of it. I mean, what the hell?
How do we find out about this?
SBB at his circular best.
"A didn't happen"
"How do you know A didn't happen"
"Because B happened."
"How do you know B happened?"
"Because A didn't happen."
Yep.
The opening response was so over the top I am not sure how anyone would see it as a legit post.
Nobody cares about stuff that happened 12 years ago, before he came to the Yankees.
Torre was around him all the time and kicked him down to 8th in the postseason; Girardi's around him all the time and won't play him in the postseason. Those guys know more than a guy in his mom's basement searching clumsily for patterns and screaming about sample size.
Doesn't matter didn't happen in NY? Torre 'kicked' him down to 8th? I mean jesus he even has an unathletic-mom's basement-hysteria trifecta to seal the post.
And SBB is a lawyer? *shudder*
No comprende, it's a riddle. There are a bunch of tabloids and microphones in NYC, or hadn't you noticed?
And, yes, the silence is perfectly understandable. After all, what interests Joe Torre and Joe Girardi, and the Yankee players, and the Yankee front office isn't winning playoff series, and generating more home playoff dates, and perpetuating the Yankee legacy of winning, it's concocting an elaborate six-year con to convince the public and the baseball community that their star player, to whom they pay $25 million per year, is a choker.
Jeter tells the press. Or slips it anonymously to a friendly columnist. Or tells one of his teammates, who tells the press. Or Torre tells the press. Or Torre puts it in his book.
Or any one of an almost limitless number of permutations by which sports people in New York let people know what they thought of certain things.
Ray, could you (or someone else) expand on this a bit. I don't follow the Yankees at all, but as a Tigers fan thought Girardi did a decent job of juggling the pitchers to keep it to two runs (with some luck thrown in).
What were the better alternatives or process here?
Basically, invert the bullpen and get your best relievers in first.
2009 was more than 6 years ago?
But none of these are automatic. It's entirely possible that Jeter (or other influential players) disagreed with their manager and that that didn't come to light because it would make all parties involved look bad.
2006 was. That's when Joe Torre first made it clear he thought A-Rod was choking in the postseason (and no one really disagreed).
But none of these are automatic. It's entirely possible that Jeter (or other influential players) disagreed with their manager and that that didn't come to light because it would make all parties involved look bad.
It's all but "automatic" that, if there was disagreement with the managers' belief that A-Rod was choking, it would be known to the public by now. The Yankee factions aren't in the business of keeping their mouths shut, and losing baseball games.
Torre batting A-Rod 8th made A-Rod "look bad," and that didn't stop him. And Torre was among the most diplomatic people in the organization.
Or A-Rod is just a dick and nobody wants to stand up for him. That has no bearing on the dumb baseball decisions Girardi is making. All it does is prove that people think A-Rod is a dick. He doesn't come across as the most likable guy.
Someone has to explain the rules about "choking" again. If you were choking and then stopped choking, can you start choking again? Or is the label for choker removed after you don't choke?
Is it the same as "clutch"? Can Jeter be clutch in some playoff years, and not clutch in other playoff years, and still be considered clutch?
It's all so very confusing!
I remember the same thing came up last year in the ALDS game 5. Nova got knocked out early and, with the season on the line, Girardi went to Hughes (5.79 ERA!), Logan (3.46 ERA), Sabathia (2 days rest) and Soriano (4.12 ERA), for a combined 5 innings, before finally going with his unhittable 8th and 9th innings guys in the 8th and 9th innings. It's incredible how conservative managers can be. It's THE LAST GAME OF THE YEAR, David Robertson is capable of pitching the third and fourth innings if that's what's best.
This is some serious nonsense.
I suppose now we can't disagree with Ben Bernanke on ecomomics, or Andy Reid on football play-calling, or Vikram Pandit on how to run a company. This may kill the internet.
Too soon.
Not true:
Of course, you'd know this if you ever actually went down to the basement to play RBI Baseball...
Huh?
I think his point is that you should hit a 19 against a dealer's 6, as long as you only do it a few times. Because, hey, we know the dealer is going to pull to 20 and beat you.
No, it doesn't compute.
And then Torre was out the door one year later.
Go big or go home.
But essentially no manager is willing to do this. Is it because they're afraid of being second-guessed? Because the players don't want to deviate from that role? I mean, clearly the front offices are aware of this, and since it isn't happening, what does that tell us?
The "manger has more information than you do, so he must be in the right" angle would imply that you cannot criticize a manager, ever, for any move they make. Doesn't matter how bad the move looks, he had more information, so he must be right. Or at least you have no way of knowing if he's wrong.
That's a ridiculously silly and unrealistic position to take, since 90% of sports discussions, by fans, internet posters, and beat writers alike, are about what the losing manager did wrong. It also conflicts with Girardi's own statements. Didn't he admit that the (successful) decision to PH Ibanez for Rodriguez was made on gut feeling?
Not exactly. It merely implies that if you believe the mental side of the game can and does drive the physical side and performance, the manager is in the best place to observe whether that is happening -- and certainly in a far better place than any of us. He can, of course, be wrong about whether it is. In this case, two managers and effective silence from everyone else is pretty telling.
Well, in that game, Robertson and Rivera weren't going to pitch 7 innings. So you may as well start with your other guys and ride them for the middle innings as long as they are effective. Particularly if the other team isn't likely to pinch hit early, the lesser pitchers will be getting more favorable matchups.
And it seems like Girardi's use of relievers in that game and last night's game worked out just fine -- he played matchups, was pretty aggressive about pulling guys early rather than late, etc.
What would be a real-life example of a player, manager, or team executive objecting to a player being "scapegoated"? I can't think of one off the top of my head.
I thought Sabathia and Pettitte were key, as was Burnett (at least prior to his last postseason start that year). But to be fair, it was Girardi who pushed those guys into a 3-man rotation with short rest (Sabathia in the ALCS, and all 3 in the WS), which seems obvious to many of us but definitely is no longer the accepted practice among MLB managers. I still wish Charlie Manuel would have pushed Cliff Lee into that usage in 2009, could have at least made it a 7-game series, if not flipped the outcome.
This is nonsense. Major league baseball players do not choke, so it is impossible for Girardi to have any such information (let alone for SugarBear to have it). Major league baseball players are not beer league softball players coming from work for the game. They are not high school players. They are not college players. They are not even minor league players. These are people who rose to the very pinnacle of their profession, and they had to overcome all kinds of obstacles and beat out so many others along the way. That is pressure. And anyone who wasn't capable of overcoming it is not facing Doug Fister in the ALCS, nor is he hitting 600 bleeping home runs in the major leagues, or whatever it is. Pressure to these people is not batting with the game on the line in the playoffs. And anyone who thinks otherwise simply doesn't understand baseball, where players go 1-15 in July at the blink of an eye. Anyone who thinks otherwise doesn't understand what he is watching, and I for one see no need to go easy on people when this happens. Stop thinking that these players are like you and me. They're not, and it's incredibly silly and naive to believe that they are.
Major league baseball players do not choke. Please stop with this nonsense. I wouldn't mind, but this is not even a difficult subject. It's a very, very, easy call. It's clear what is going on - and what's not.
St John's Wart says you can go #### yourself. Not me, you understand, the plant says that.
But that does not seem like it would change things much. So Robertson goes in first, perhaps makes it through a second inning. At that point you have 3-4 innings still to go, so you end up with one of Rapada, Eppley, or perhaps Soriano, with Chamberlin or Logan getting in there for match ups. Not a huge difference with what was actually done.
Edit - I mean Phelps has a 3.34 ERA with about 2/3 of his appearances coming in relief (22 of 33). I gues I don't see bringing him in to this situation as an awful decision or even necessarily wrong.
Yes, they do choke. They overcome it by (a) facing a very low percentage of "chokable" moments as a percentage of overall moments (*); and (b) extraordinary physical skills. A-Rod may not be the same as the guy in his mom's basement; but he very much is the same as other people who've played competitive sports at reasonably high levels. (Other than his physical skills, which are off the charts. It's easy to "beat other people out along the way" when you're that physically gifted.)
It is entirely plausible, and not remotely internally inconsistent that A-Rod could both (i) get nervous and choke more in the clutch than a good college player; and (ii) have had the career he did. It is an intellectual fail to suggest otherwise.
(*) Which the uninformed and underinformed spin as "small sample size." The very reason choking is hard to prove statistically is that players are presented with so few moments to choke.
Not sure it's quite what you're looking for but Pedroia going to bat for Youkilis when Valentine called out Youk in the press earlier in the year seems at least to be along those lines. I don't know that anything associated with the Red Sox' 2012 season is something we want to be in favor of. Youk wasn't quite being "scapegoated" and "singled out" (he was legitimately playing poorly at the time) but I think it's roughly similar.
Didn't Jeter come out on Giambi's behalf many years ago?
You have a couple of potential benefits. One is that if you can get back into the game or take a lead you can manage a bit differently in terms of matchups. Secondly if you go to Robertson in the 8th you get one inning out of him. If you go to him in the 4th or 5th you can could get 2 or 3 innings out of him if he is effective and efficient.
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