The Yankees rightfully have a reputation for having a circular lineup that is akin to a meat grinder for opposing pitchers. Going into last night’s game against Baltimore, they were second in the AL in OBP/SLG and first in the league in OPS.
Numerically, the Yankees have been punishing pitchers. Anecdotally, they’ve been shellacking starts. So, to combine these two methods, I took a look at just how well the Yankees are hitting against starters.
Starting simply, the Yankees are hitting both lefty and righty starters very well. Against left handed starters, the Yanks have an .824 OPS. Against right handed starters, they have an .819 OPS. That’s awesome no matter how you slice it.
Going a little more deeply, let’s see just how well the Yankees’ offense grinds out games against starters, before getting to the opponents’ bullpens to add on runs.
Including last night’s game against the Orioles and Brian Matusz, the Yankees have seen 137.7 innings against starting pitchers. Only three starters–Joel Piniero (7), David Price (7.2), and Jeremy Guthrie (7)–have gone past the sixth inning against the Yankees. Every other starter has exited after the sixth inning at the absolute latest. In those 137.7 innings against starters, the Yankees have seen 2,593 pitches. That averages out to 18.83 pitches per inning. Remember that a pitcher wants to throw about 12-15 pitches per inning.
How about on a per game basis? Including last night, the Yankees have had 26 games, and with the aforementioned 2,593 pitches, that means 97.65 pitches per game by the opposing starter. Now, this may not seem like a lot, considering most starters usually end up around 100 pitches anyway. However, we have that opposing starters have pitched relatively few innings against the Yankees in 2010.
Combining innings and games, and comparing it to the league average, we get the following. NOT including last night’s other Major League games (I’m writing this on Tuesday night), there have been 2,179 innings thrown by starting pitchers in 364 games. That averages out to ~6.00 innings per game (actual number: 5.9863). In the Yankees 26 games (137.7 IP by SP), the starter has averaged ~5.30 IP/G (actual number: 5.2962) .
So, yeah, the Yankees crush their opponents’ starters. If they keep this up, the rest of the league is in serious trouble. Getting the starter out obviously means more innings against relatively (compared to starters) weak relievers. That means runs. Runs mean wins. What makes this all better is that the Yankees’ starters have pitched fantastically thus far. Good hitting + good pitching = good season (in other news, the sky is blue). The Yankees are going to have a very good season.
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5 Responses to Yankee Lineup Chewing up Starters
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TIQ IQ
Nice insights. I always look at, and use how the Yankees do against the opposing ace pitchers as a gauge of how well the Team is doing. How they work the counts, run up pitch counts, squeeze out runs, prevent the ace from getting in a dominent streak, and eventually get the big guy out of the game without a “W”, and into the bull pens (prefferably the weaker middle relief), is the better judge of the eventually playoff performance. If they chew up middle or back end of the rotation guys, to me, is not as vital. Though, of course, they have to routinely beat these guys to get the regular season record to get to the playoffs to begin with.
I am very comfortable at where the Yanks are at with handling the better pitchers, with a few exceptions. For instance, the team has to figure out a better way to beat David Price.
Good post! Let’s not forget that some of our guys just aren’t hitting too. Johnson is just coming out of a big slump, A-rod doesn’t look great, Tex also looks like he is slowly getting there and the Yanks are still scoring 5-7 runs a game. That just shows you that the top and bottom of the line up are producing which is a plus when your heart of the order isn’t really getting the job done of late, but so far everything is working out!
Another key point is that last year the team won it all by essentially coming from behind all season long. This puts a lot of stresses on batters having to come up big a lot, and I wouldn’t want this to be the main theme this yr, too. The fact that the team is beating up starters means that they are getting the lead and trying to keep it all the way thru. This is what dominent, championship teams do. Of course, this requires the pen to hold the lead, and it seems we have occasional problems with some people in the early going.Nothing that can’t be fixed. I’m starting to get reminders of the late 1990′s teams.
It’s too bad a certain umpire probably won’t read this, given the upcoming series with Boston and more of those baseball games that are too long….
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