yankees228

I do think Soriano is a pretty good outfielder, even by the eye test. As for UZR, it's not perfect, but I think it can be trusted when the sample size is so large. As for the rest of your point, I agree with it. But remember, the position I'm arguing against isn't "the Yankees probably aren't going to make the playoffs" it's "the Yankees should completely give up on trying to make the playoffs". That's the part that seems silly.

Except according to UZR Soriano not only grades out well this year, but he has consistently graded out well for his entire Cubs tenure. And we could make this about one pitcher, but I think the larger, and more important point is that the Yankees, as a staff, pitch well enough to be a playoff team (9th in ERA, 5th in xFIP). They just need to hit and right now that's a tall task ... but the addition of Soriano and some of the injured guys returning should help. Again, I'm not making the case that this team will make the playoffs, or is even likely to make the playoffs. But considering where they currently stand, acquiring a bat to help make a run is reasonable.

That's a bit silly, no? I'm not saying I expect the Yankees to make the playoffs, but there's a good chance that by the end of the day they'll only be 2.5 games out of a playoff spot. I don't blame them for one second for trying to acquire some offense.

Had a more than respectable year in 2012. Worth a shot.

Well Alex, we'll always have 2009.

Believing something to be true is not the same as insisting that it's a guarantee. I implicitly left the door open for you to be right, because that's the nature of making prognostications. As for holding me accountable, that's fine, but it's still probably premature to start declaring victory.

You absolutely could be right, and if you go back through my posts you won't find me objecting to that possibility. My contention is that other possibilities were either as likely or more likely. Believe me, as Yankees fan, watching CC last night was not fun and I am absolutely concerned about his future.

If you're good enough to make the playoffs you're good enough to win the World Series. It doesn't mean you're the most likely team to do so ... you may be the least likely team of all ten that make it. But as cliche as it sounds, once you get in you have a shot, especially in baseball where it's very much a crapshoot. And I'm not saying the Yankees are good enough to make the playoffs. I'm not sure that they are.

I think it's a relevant example concerning the misuse of small sample sizes. Arguing by analogy is not uncommon and hardly silly. But OK, we can move past it if you wish.

Velocity: not a peripheral K-rate: not at a career worst level, and it's nearly his career average HR-rate: I already acknowledged this I don't fall into either of those positions. I admit that his loss of velocity is a factor, but it's only two MPH and it can absolutely be overcome. And I think he has been unlucky this year, to an extent.

The sample size is still way too small and the fact that you're using AAA numbers makes it even sillier.

"Why did the Yankees release Chien-Ming Wang? He had a 2.33 ERA, 1.16 WHIP at Triple-A and he now has a 2.61 ERA at he major league level after shutting down the Rangers and O's in consecutive starts." "Why is Shawn Kelly on the Yankees and not Chien-Ming Wang? All the Yankees had to do to keep Wang is call him up, right?" That's not you claiming that the Yankees should not have released CMW? That's how I read it. Those are pretty clearly leading questions, and the implication is obvious.

It's funny because you can very easily say that most of his peripherals aren't all that different than what he has done for most of his career (and some have even improved BB rate), and that the one outlier is his HR/FB and HR/9 rates, which can easily be explained by bad luck in a short samplings and can be expected to normalize as the sample size grows. That's a totally reasonable position, and the complete opposite of the one you presented.

You claimed the Yankees made a mistake by letting him go after a couple good starts with the Blue Jays. It's relevant because it's an example of making a snap judgement based on a meaningless sample size. I guess we disagree about CC on a few different levels. I think it's premature to take his results this season and read anything more into them than that he's off to a rough start. I admit, he could be in decline, but you seem to be stating that as a fact and I think that's an overreaction to a sample size that doesn't warrant such conclusions. I also think you're overstating the significance of the velocity drop and are misapplying some of the peripherals to aid your argument. These are things I've already stated and elaborated on in other posts, and doing so again seems pointless. I see your points, and we'll just have to see how it plays out over the rest of the season and in subsequent years. EDIT: Your use of the peripherals in your argument is completely cherry picked, as you're really only making comparisons to the last couple years while ignoring peripherals in other, really good seasons along with career averages. I'm surprised you don't see this.

Because one time he took Johan out after five innings and almost one hundred pitches while on three days rest, and then watched one of his relievers pitch two scoreless innings, what a fool blah blah blah.

Well I guess this becomes a matter of interpreting results, assigning blame, etc. Those things tend to never be as easy as they appear.

Ah, my faith in humanity is partially restored.

Yes, because decisions should be made about Ron Gardenhire's job status based solely on how he does against the Yankees. That's an excellent point. Never mind his five postseason appearances (and a one game playoff that they lost), with a mostly small market club. Or anything else about the impact a manager truly has on a baseball game. "It's an outrage ..." ... I mean, lol. Hyperboles coupled with intense language is never the way to go.

I'm saying we can't judge CMW based on two stats. It was you that did that. As for CC, you didn't really respond to anything I posted. Let me ask you this, though. Did you think that John Lackey was in permanent decline in 2011? How about Josh Beckett in 2010? There are many more examples where those come from. I mean, the way you're harping on the velocity makes it seem like he's barely touching 90 anymore. He's sitting slightly above 93, only 2 MPH less than where he was in 2011. That's still pretty good.

It's not semantics at all. His FB velocity has declined. That's a skill, and it's both obvious and observable. The other things are a matter of interpreting results, which is an entirely different matter. The results, especially over the course of a half season, can be flukey, and don't always represent the type of dramatic shift that you're claiming. The moment you start using that sort of sample size as a completely accurate reflection of what sort of pitcher someone is is the moment where you've gone too far, in my opinion. When you say "this is declining" or "that is declining" you're overstating the predictive value of a half season worth of results. This is the type of thinking that would lead one to claim that the Yankees made a mistake in letting CMW go because he had a couple decent starts. And yeah, since 2009. But that's a convenient, arbitrary endpoint. If I recall he did alright in 2007, 2008, and 2009.

Well OK, I think you're mixing different types of changes. I thought you were strictly referring to changes in his abilities (FB velocity), rather than changes in his production (RHHs, K-rate, GB rate, FB rate, etc). In small samplings those aren't always related. Also, his GB rate and FB rate are right in line with his career averages.

Dramatic changes is a bit of an exaggeration. He's not a completely different pitcher now that he has lost a couple MPH off his FB. Time will tell, I guess, but I fully expect his ERA and xFIP to meet much closer to where his xFIP currently is than vice versa.

CC has his issues, namely, as you mentioned, his lack of success vs RHHs. But his HR/FB% is way up above his career average, along with his HR/9, while his FB% remains almost exactly in line with his career average. To me, at least in part, that seems like the product of some bad luck. And ERA, WHIP, ERA+, and FIP, while not useless metrics by any stretch (well, ERA and ERA+ might be, but that's for another discussion), do not accurately reflect true performance levels as well as xFIP does ... a point you've made in the past, both implicitly and explicitly.

CC is still the best pitcher on the team. Best xFIP by a significant margin.

Well the good news, for the Yankees, is that this is the best Robbie has looked since mid April. The other good news is that they're probably going to win their second straight game. The bad news is that they still are pretty crummy and Kuroda was sent back to NY for tests on his leg. Girardi will address that situation after the game.