2010 ALCS Wrap-Up

Now that we’ve had a couple of days for the reality of having no meaningful Yankee baseball to watch for nearly six months sink in, it’s time to sink our teeth into the postmortem.

Before delving into the numbers, I do have to take a moment to acknowledge how wrong I was about the Rangers. While I still believe that, had the Yankees actually shown up for the series, they would’ve pulled it out or at least made it somewhat more competitive, the Rangers were clearly the better team. My prediction of Yankees in six seems laughable in hindsight, although I’m not sure anyone outside of Fangraphs’ Carson Cistulli would’ve predicted that Colby Lewis would not only beat the Yankees twice, but make them look awful in doing so. I also figured Josh Hamilton was still recovering from injury after his non-showing in the ALDS; holy hell was I ever wrong about that one.

I also didn’t anticipate just how much of a sparkplug Elvis Andrus was going to be at the top of that Texas lineup (not to mention flashing some mighty impressive leather), and he looked nothing like a guy coming off of a .298 wOBA season in the leadoff slot. Andrus’ performance also made me wonder whether Brett Gardner — who, by all accounts, had a significant superior season — could ever be that kind of player if the Yankees ever got serious about letting him lead off, which he absolutely should be doing. It’s almost comical that a team that prides itself on being a practitioner of sabermetrics could continue batting their worst OBP in Derek Jeter in the leadoff hole, but unless the team actually grows a pair over the winter it’s difficult to envision the team telling their presumed $20 million/year man that he’s no better than an eighth-place hitter (if that), but that’s a post for another day.

While no one wants to relive the horror show that was the 2010 Yankees’ showing in the American League Championship Series, for completion’s sake — not to mention that we wrapped up the team’s performance every single month this season — I want to take a look at how the individual players (under)performed in the ALCS and also for the postseason as a whole.

American League Championship Series

Yankee “offense”:

It was the Robinson Cano and Curtis Granderson show on offense, while everyone else basically went to sleep. Remember all the talk of how we needed Cano, Nick Swisher and Mark Teixeira to step up in the postseason after bombing last October but carrying the offense in 2010? So much for that.

Ranger offense:

Two-thirds of the Rangers’ starting lineup OPSed over .800 in this series, and even the ones who didn’t — Elvis Andrus, Ian Kinsler and Vladimir Guerrero — still found ways to make their presence felt. While Hamilton and Nelson Cruz did the bulk of the damage, Bengie Molina, David Murphy and Mitch Moreland were also equal-opportunity mashers. Any time a team OPSes .890 you know you’re in a world of trouble.

Yankee pitching:

It only gets uglier for the Yankees here.Outside of Dustin Moseley(!), Mariano Rivera, Kerry Wood and Andy Pettitte almost nobody pitched well. That the Yankees won CC Sabathia‘s two starts was more about timely hitting than anything else, as ordinarily you aren’t going to be emerging victorious when your starter tosses to a 6.30 ERA and allows more than two baserunners an inning. Phil Hughes was also awful, as Joe Girardi’s rotation gambit blew up spectacularly to the tune of an 11.42 ERA in 8 2/3 innings in Arlington.

Ranger pitching:

What a contrast. Though the Yankees were able to get to Tommy Hunter in Game 4 and C.J. Wilson in Game 5, Ron Washington wisely lifted Hunter before things got too out of control, and his shutdown bullpen shut things down. The Yankees clearly weren’t able to do much of anything against this Rangers pitching staff, and this was another instance where perhaps I was a bit too high on the Yankee offense — however, after the beating administered to the Twins, combined with leading the Majors in wOBA and runs per game, I don’t think anyone could’ve predicted that the Rangers would hold the Yankees to a .670 OPS.

2010 Postseason Overall

The overall performances don’t vary all that much from the ALCS. On offense, Cano and Granderson were beastly; everyone else was basically sub-replacement level. When Derek Jeter has a higher SLG than Alex Rodriguez, that’s a cause for concern. It’s pretty insane to look at these offensive totals and try to reconcile them with what these players did in the regular season. I know a nine-game sample is nothing, but it’s almost inconceivable that a team this loaded with big bats could get so collectively shut down.

The rotation was horrible outside of Andy Pettitte. We can talk all day about whether the extra rest affected guys like Sabathia and Hughes, but ultimately these guys are Major League baseball players, and they have to be able to perform come game time, extra rest or no extra rest. That’s the nature of the postseason schedule; if you sweep a team in the first round, you’re gonna have extra time on your hands. In Hughes’ case, it was likely having never pitched this many innings in a season previously as much as anything else, so I’m willing to give him so leeway. As far as Sabathia goes, I’m not sure what happened to the big man other than perhaps he was also exhausted after throwing over 500 innings these last two seasons.

It’s kind of amazing that the team knew it was highly unlikely that it could get through a second straight postseason with a three-man rotation, and specifically went out to get noted innings-eater Javier Vazquez with an eye on lightening the rotation’s workload and also perhaps having a reliable fourth starter for the playoffs. Despite Vazquez blowing up in spectacular fashion, the Yankees did end up having a fourth-starter option in this year’s postseason — albeit one of the most hand-wringing in recent memory in Burnett — but everyone except Pettitte pitched significantly worse than they did during last October’s run, nearly rendering the addition of the fourth starter moot.

There’s certainly more to discuss in the aftermath, and Mike and Matt may be weighing in with some of their thoughts on the season/postseason as well, but on the whole it certainly wasn’t a pretty end to the 2010 season. That being said, we know the team is better than what they showed in the ALCS — though I’m sure we’ll hear plenty about age-related performance declines, whether merited or not — and we also know the organization will do whatever they have to to make sure the Yankees are in even better position to go on a deep postseason run next October.

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