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Wednesday, July 28, 2010

Neyer: Why do Yankees lose to debutantes?

“Jahn, I still remember Billy Traber’s one-hitter against the Yankees in his debut.” Isn’t that amazing that it was his 23 ML appearance, Suzyn.

Caveat No. 1: SMALL SAMPLE SIZE. All those rookie starters who have fared so well against the Yankees? There are 11 of them.*

* Or 10. Kansas City’s immortal Eduardo Villacis, in his first and only major league appearance, got hammered. None of the other 10 guys gave up more than three earned runs in their debut.

I’m sorry, but 11 outings (and 66 innings) in 11 seasons simply isn’t enough outings to merit more than a sideways glance. I mean, seriously ... We’re going to draw some grand conclusions based on 66 innings? On seven innings per season? You can. I won’t.

Caveat No. 2: They didn’t pitch as well as you think. The data’s in the chart, but the Captain’s Blog ignored it. In those 66 innings, the rookies gave up only 46 hits, while walking 26 batters and striking out 34. They gave up two home runs. You know what I think? I think they were (naturally) afraid to throw the ball over the plate and were hit-lucky and were homer-lucky and probably strand-lucky. In six of the 10 non-Villacis games, the rookie struck out two or fewer Yankees.

Is that really good or really lucky?

It would be a lot of fun if the Yankees’ $100 million lineup really was vulnerable to the fuzzy-cheeked kid just up from the Lickskillet League. But the numbers—not to mention every ounce of common sense I can summon—suggest that they’re not, really.

Repoz Posted: July 28, 2010 at 08:22 PM | 24 comment(s) Login to Bookmark
Tags: history, indians, projections, sabermetrics, yankees

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1. bunyon Posted: July 28, 2010 at 08:44 PM (#3601906)

I think they struggle against rookies because they can't figure out if its a starter or a reliever.

2. SoSH U at work Posted: July 28, 2010 at 08:53 PM (#3601918)

Don't every team's fans wonder why their team seems to struggle against unheralded rookies?

3. FrankM Posted: July 28, 2010 at 08:56 PM (#3601922)

Yes they do. Probably because due to expectations they remember it more than the (likely) more frequent times that their team knocks the unheralded rookies around.

4. Bob Dernier Cri

Posted: July 28, 2010 at 09:05 PM (#3601934)

they remember it more than the (likely) more frequent times that their team knocks the unheralded rookies around

Well, but the Yankees' newbie opponents are 8-3 with a 2.32 ERA since 2000. That's the whole sample, not just the bad memories.

One thing I couldn't find (maybe just overlooked?) in TFA was home/road breakdown. Is there a tendency for teams to start newcomers against the Yankees only at home ("can't expose the kid to the Stadium," that kind of thing). The only one of these starts I remember was Sikorski's, which was in Arlington (mainly because I was there). Sikorski won all of three more games in the majors. He turned 36 yesterday; he's been pitching in Japan the past few years.

5. The District Attorney Posted: July 28, 2010 at 09:08 PM (#3601936)

I can't believe that Yankees would lose to debutantes, when they kicked the ass of Southern gentlemen.

6. tribefan Posted: July 28, 2010 at 09:15 PM (#3601940)

This was one of the best games I ever attended. Danys Baez throws 8 shutout innings against the Yankees. He got in trouble in the 9th, but still got the win. Baez was no rookie at the time, but he was pretty young and yesterday watching Tomlin reminded me of that game.

It was also the game that I've had the best seats I've ever sat in, 5th row behind first base.

7. Repoz

Posted: July 28, 2010 at 09:18 PM (#3601943)

I swear I've been hearing about this Bill Rohr's early season one-hitter against the Yanks in '67.

I was all set to blame Frank Messer, but he joined in '68.

So Joe Garagiola will do.

8. tribefan Posted: July 28, 2010 at 09:24 PM (#3601951)

I still think the Indians should have let Baez work it out as a starter for a while longer rather than make him closer in '03.

9. McCoy Posted: July 28, 2010 at 09:30 PM (#3601956)

we hear this all time whenever the cubs face a rookie.

10. jyjjy Posted: July 28, 2010 at 09:36 PM (#3601967)

I think the focus here is too limited. They seem to have trouble with rookie starters in general from my observation. Taking a look at that would certainly help with the small sample size problem.

11. Walt Davis Posted: July 28, 2010 at 09:38 PM (#3601972)

Well, what we need is for somebody to run the numbers on all debuts over the last 10 years or so.

It wouldn't surprise necessarily that new guys do better than you think they would. Why not, the hitters have never seen them before. And there almost seems an unwritten rule to go up there hacking against a newbie. Similarly there seems an almost unwritten rule to throw rookie hitters nothing but fastballs for the first 3 weeks or so ... then if he puts up the 400/450/600 line they decide to throw him a curve or two.

It also wouldn't shock me if rookie/debut pitchers are hammered overall. I wonder if you'd need to take out the Sept starts when teams are kinda just throwing stuff against the wall to see what sticks.

12. Crispix Attacks Posted: July 28, 2010 at 09:43 PM (#3601979)

Anthony Schumaker was my favorite debutant.

I can't believe that Yankees would lose to debutantes, when they kicked the ass of Southern gentlemen.

LOL

13. Tuque

Posted: July 28, 2010 at 09:56 PM (#3601986)

It also wouldn't shock me if rookie/debut pitchers are hammered overall

I remember hearing once that if you were to take the average of all HOF pitchers' first seasons, it would be a below-average season. I can't remember where I heard that though. Was it Bill James?

14. kthejoker Posted: July 28, 2010 at 10:09 PM (#3601994)

I don't have a subscription to Play Index, but fooling around with the "player's first N games" filter, I get:

From 2000-2010

381 debut starts
109-127 record

Game Score breakdowns:
0 - 19: 34
20 - 29: 35
30 - 39: 62
40 - 49: 81
50 - 59: 80
60 - 69 : 64
70 - 79: 22
80+ : 3

So basically, they perform maybe a little worse than the typical starter (their avg. game score ~ 45, according to one random blog, the average game score across the league is around 49.)

If you expand it to their first 10 starts, the numbers swing up ever so slightly (a few more 40s and 50s, not many more 0s and 20s.) So as a set there's nothing special (good or bad) about rookie starting pitchers.

15. Jolly Old St. Neck Wound, Moral Idiot

Posted: July 28, 2010 at 10:15 PM (#3601999)

Why do the Yankees lose to debutantes?

One word: Sportsmanship. Why is this so hard to figure out?

16. Walt Davis Posted: July 28, 2010 at 11:50 PM (#3602084)

I remember hearing once that if you were to take the average of all HOF pitchers' first seasons, it would be a below-average season.

Well, #14's got some pretty good data but I wasn't meaning to suggest rookie pitchers did well over an entire season. I would expect hitters to catch up to them in pretty short order.

On #14, I wonder how that compares to the regular distribution of game scores? It could be higher variance. Anyway, looks close enough to typical that any differences are probably small. I suppose that debut starts are basically league-average starts is a bit unexpected.

17. TerpNats Posted: July 28, 2010 at 11:53 PM (#3602087)

I think we all recall how Brenda Frazier baffled the Yankee bats that afternoon in '38.

18. Don Malcolm

Posted: July 29, 2010 at 12:56 AM (#3602118)

When I saw the headline I thought (hoped) this had something to do with paternity suits.

[drum roll, please...]

Alas, that would've been a whole lot more interesting than what Rob came up with here. Slow blog-trawling day out there, Mr. Neyer!

19. Walt Davis Posted: July 29, 2010 at 03:34 AM (#3602283)

Alas, that would've been a whole lot more interesting than what Rob came up with here. Slow blog-trawling day out there, Mr. Neyer!

well, it's also on the NY Times baseball blog -- all the blogs that are fit to digitize or something.

20. McCoy Posted: July 29, 2010 at 04:06 AM (#3602313)

If you takeout September callups from that list of 381 you get a record of 97-105 in 334 starts. They also had a 5.25 ERA

21. McCoy Posted: July 29, 2010 at 04:12 AM (#3602317)

The Cubs surprisingly have done pretty well against pitchers starting in their first ever MLB game. Opposing pitchers are only 2-6 with a 4.42 ERA in 16 starts since 2000. A pretty weird finding since I always recall the Cubs struggling against young pitchers, so I'm guessing I would have to expand the filter to look at more games than simply the first.

22. jwb Posted: July 29, 2010 at 04:15 AM (#3602319)

It would be a lot of fun if the Yankees’ $100 million lineup

$100M? Who did they release?

23. jyjjy Posted: July 29, 2010 at 04:48 AM (#3602344)

$100M is actually quite accurate;
Player - AAV in millions(per Cot's)
A-Rod - 27.5
Tex - 22.5
Jeter - 18.9
Posada - 13.1
Cano - 7.50
Granderson - 6.01
Swisher - 5.35
Thames - 0.90
Gardner - 0.45
Total - 102.21

That leaves out Johnson's 5.75M but he is(of course) on the DL so he isn't in the line-up.

24. OsunaSakata Posted: July 29, 2010 at 01:37 PM (#3602467)

Somebody explain this to me. I've heard this before and not just from the Yankees. A guy with ordinary stuff pitches a gem. The victims invariably say,"We've never seen him before." If this is true, why don't teams do any of these things:

-Compile an extensive video library in the minors of opposing pitchers likely to be in the majors within the next year. Batters can watch that in preparation.

-Compile a similar scouting library, if you like scouts better.

-If the guy has ordinary stuff, there's probably a very similar pitcher already in your system. Have your guy pitch batting practice as his side session.

Is this impractical?

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Neyer: Why do Yankees lose to debutantes?

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