Thursday, January 28, 2010

High Can O' Corn

OK, my first original thought laid out here...

Maybe intentionally, maybe not, but I think the Yankees may have tapped into a new efficiency model: using their greater financial resources to compile a pitching staff that permits them to use their best pitchers to throw the greatest number of innings. It sounds so simple, but it never seems to happen.

The average AL team totaled 1,441 innings pitched in 2009. The Yankees expected 2010 starting rotation - Sabathia, Burnett, Vazquez, Pettitte and Chamberlain - threw 1,008 combined in 2009. Rivera, Hughes and Aceves totaled 236 more. If you assume a slight innings increase from Joba, you are looking at somewhere between 1,250-1,300 IP in 2010 from the Yankees' top 8 pitchers (usual caveats, disclaimers and provisos apply). This leaves only 150-200 innings for the rest of the bullpen, which can be filled by only two or three pitchers from the Marte, Gaudin, Mitre, Robertson group.

So the Yankees fill more innings from their top 8 pitchers - in fact, as many as 90%. This in and of itself constitutes a competitive advantage. In 2009, the Yankees' top-8 gave them only 1,085 innings out of 1,450, or 74.9%, leaving 365 innings for the likes of Wang, Veras, Albaladejo and Tomko. Squeezing an extra 150-200 innings from your frontline guys rather than your roster filler sure seems like a great way to ease any potential burden on the offense.

The ancillary benefit to this is that they could realistically have only an 11-man pitching staff, instead of the 12 or 13-man staff that has become the norm. This could give them more roster flexibility than other teams, which is another competitive advantage, allowing them to carry, say a third catcher (letting Montero caddy for a while?) or add another platoon outfielder.

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Can't Winn for Losing

Joel Sherman tweets that the Yankees have signed Randy Winn pending a physical. No terms yet, but it better be for no more than $2 million. Color me underwhelmed.

Ostensibly, he's signed to be the righty half of an outfield platoon (although Winn is a switch hitter) - could be for Gardner, could be for Granderson. Although the 35-year-old former (Devil) Ray, Mariner and Giant had decent seasons in 2007 and 2008, he completely fell off a cliff in 2009. But, for the right price he's worth taking a flyer on for 200 ABs out of the nine-spot - decent glove, decent baserunner, passable offense.

What the hell is ANSKY?

Welcome to my baseball blog! I intend to use this both as a brain dump and as a place to link to fun/interesting/provocative articles I see elsewhere online. I hope to include general baseball topics, but expect to see a Yankees slant to things, as I am a lifetime Yankee fan, now transplanted to South Florida.

In case you're wondering about the origin of the blog name, just watch this: