Dave Eiland recently made some comments that suggested that Yankees pitchers are afraid to throw strikes in the New Yankee Stadium. While I have a more extensive study planned for this weekend, I did want to reference what Steve Lombardi wrote on this this afternoon:
I was surprised to see how well the Yankees have done this year, to date, in terms of OPS allowed on the road. New York is pretty close to being second best in the league here. Seeing this, if I were a Yankees pitcher, I think I would be somewhat upset about what the new ballpark in the Bronx is doing to my numbers.
Although this sounds like the Yankees have pitched well overall and have just been victimized by their park, this is not the case. The Yankees are 12th in the AL in ERA+, a stat that corrects for ballpark factors. They have not pitched well regardless of the ballpark, although I reserve the right to change the mind if the research I am doing shows some further extenuating circumstances. It is also important to note that the Yankees lead the AL in OPS+, which is also corrected for ballpark.
This being said, I do believe that there is a championship level staff currently within the organization. I have a decent amount of faith in them having three or four very good starters come playoff time, and in the playoffs, you may have Joba and Hughes in the pen with Bruney, Aceves, Coke, and Robertson. That should be plenty.
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3 Responses to Judging Yankee Pitching
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TIQ IQ
Yankees will live or die on the starting pitching.The bullpen will be fine with Bruney and the youngsters and Melancon will help before it’s over also.
If Burnett can’t be counted on to go out and beat the Red Sox and the other contenders, it’s going to be tough because CC has been an inconsistent #1 type pitcher his entire careeer.Just when you think he’s the Black Sandy Koufax, he suddenly gets very hittable.
If Wang and Pettitte hold up their ends, YAnkee staff is fine but to me, Burnett needs to establish himself as an ACE type guy who can go out and shut out a team in a big game.He has the talent.
One note, ERA+ can’t correct for Yankee Stadium number 3 as there is no data to compare it to as of yet. Thus, they might pop up a bunch of spots when there is a number of years to compare the data to. I assume they’re using either YS2 or a neutral park for the park effect but I don’t know
I was wondering about that- someone at RAB told me they use data for the current season, but that seems to create sample issues. I’m going to try and find out.