The Futility Infielder

Thanks in part to Buster Olney, it's fashionable among the mainstream media to compare the character and talent (in that order) of the current crop of New York Yankees to that of the dynasty which won five four World Series in a six-year span from 1996-2001 and find them lacking. By this reasoning, players such as Tino Martinez, Paul O'Neill, Andy Pettitte, Scott Brosius, David Cone, Joe Girardi, even Chuck Knoblauch and Luis Sojo are exalted for knowing how to win in the grand pinstriped tradition. Expensive replacements such as Alex Rodriguez, Jason Giambi, and Kevin Brown are amoral mercenaries who don't have what it takes to make it in the Bronx, while the likes of Mike Mussina, Javier Vazquez, Hideki Matsui are competent but pricey substitutes who lack the leadership to return the Yanks to their winning ways. This is a tired trope, though the current pariah-hood of Giambi and Brown, with their bloated contracts and high-profile transgressions, makes them easy targets.

But if there's one area where the current crop of Yanks deserves criticism for not measuring up to their glory days, it's the bullpen. While closer Mariano Rivera remains the axle around which the Yanks' postseason fate spins, the failure of his supporting casts has conspired to keep the Yankees championship-free in the new millenium. Though much of that shortfall is due to failures of performance -- even from the once-indomitable Rivera, who saved 30 out of 32 games in the Octobers prior to 2004 -- larger issues such as Brian Cashman's roster construction, Joe Torre's deployment of the available parts, and an organization-wide lack of vision have left the Yanks with uncomfortably razor-thin margins for error.

I'll spare you the epic version of the pen's pre-2004 saga, as it's become one of this site's most oft-told tales, starring Jeff Nelson as the fabled prodigal son. But suffice it to say that the 2004 Yankee bullpen was an expensive, top-heavy Frankenstein-like response to the previous years' woes. To support Rivera and compensate for the unlikelihood of Steve Karsay's return from rotator cuff surgery, the Yanks signed pricey but proven righty setup men Tom Gordon and Paul Quantrill while re-upping two late-'03 lefty acquisitions, Gabe White and Felix Heredia, handing out over $17 million worth of guaranteed contracts.

Though the popular perception was that the Yanks finally had some setup men worthy of Mariano the Great, the reality was darker. Rivera was still the best closer in the league, setting a career high in saves while putting up another sub-2.00 ERA. Gordon was a smashing success in the first half of the season, earning an All-Star trip with a 1.78 ERA, and then showed some wear as the season went on, as 36-year-olds will. Quantrill hurt his knee in his Yankee debut and was consigned to a brace for most of the season. He was a complete mess in the second half (7.09 ERA), one which the team refused to address at the appropriate trading deadlines. Rather than give him a two-week vacation on the DL, they simply kept handing him the ball, with predictably diminishing returns. White and Heredia were both unmitigated disasters, with the former's greasy porn-stareque countenance shipped back to the Reds for a prospect who'd gone the other way in the Aaron Boone deal and the latter banished to the minors to get his shit together, heralding the arrival of C.J. Nitkowski and his Amazing Tales of Salvation. Ugh, I'd rather read the porn star's blog.

Torre rode his top trio -- christened QuanGorMo -- very hard, to the tune of 240 appearances between the three. But for all of their spending, the bullpen lacked depth, especially once it grew apparent that the lefties couldn't cut it, and that became a huge problem for the Yanks when the team's starters began dropping like flies. Though the rotation got a huge boost with the resurrection of Orlando Hernandez, the wait for Karsay's return proved so interminable that fellow Yankee blogger Cliff Corcoran began referring to him as Steve Hearsay. Youngsters Brett Prinz, Scott Proctor and Jorge DePaula were given shots, but the latter succumbed to Tommy John surgery after only two outings, and neither of the other pair could throw enough strikes or keep the ball in the park enough to merit much work. As a result of all of this, much-maligned mopup man Tanyon Sturtze was given every opportunity to become the team's number three reliever as the playoffs approached, thanks to a surprising display of late-September dominance once he learned Rivera's cut fastball technique and reeled off a dozen scoreless innings.

Overall, the bullpen threw 105 more innings than the previous year, the workload of about two mid-level relievers. Despite the rotating cast, their strikeout, walk, and homer rates remained pretty stable, but their collective ERA rose four-tenths of a run (SP ERA is the ERA of the starters):

       ERA    IP    K/9  K/W   HR/9  SP ERA

2004  4.43  501.3  6.68  2.11  0.88  4.82

2003  4.02  396.0  6.84  2.10  0.84  4.02

2002  3.64  427.3  6.36  2.29  0.70  3.97

2001  3.38  477.0  7.98  2.66  0.72  4.34

Here's are the key stats for the relievers who finished the season in pinstripes:

Pitcher     IP   ERA   WHIP  K/9   K/W   HR/9  BABIP  dERA

Quantrill  95.3  4.72  1.51  3.49  1.85  0.47  .332   3.67

Gordon     89.7  2.21  0.88  9.64  4.17  0.50  .235   2.41

Rivera     78.7  1.94  1.08  7.55  3.30  0.34  .279   2.91

Sturtze    77.3  5.47  1.40  6.52  1.70  1.05  .283   4.64

Heredia*   38.7  6.28  1.66  5.82  1.25  1.16  .300   5.19

Halsey*    32.0  6.47  1.72  7.03  1.79  1.13  .343   4.61

Prinz      28.3  5.08  1.48  6.99  1.57  1.59  .280   5.39

Proctor    25.0  5.40  1.72  7.56  1.50  1.80  .308   5.46

Karsay      6.7  2.70  1.05  5.40  2.00  2.70  .158   6.71

Nitkowski* 33.0  5.73  1.70  7.09  1.63  1.09  .333   5.02

I've included rookie starter Brad Halsey in this group for reasons I'l get to shortly. Late last week, Heredia was traded crosstown for Mike Stanton and $975K, while the Yanks picked up another reliever, Felix Rodriguez, by shipping disgruntled valet Kenny Lofton off to Philly. Nitkowski wasn't offered arbitration, so he's gone, praise the Lord. The stats of the two arrivals:

Pitcher     IP   ERA   WHIP  K/9   K/W   HR/9  BABIP  dERA

Stanton    77.0  3.16  1.34  6.78  1.76  0.70  .269   3.96

Rodriguez  65.7  3.29  1.37  8.09  2.03  1.10  .282   4.34

At first glance both look like serviceable arms but little more. Both of these guys walk too damn many batters, about 4 per nine innings, which won't play well in the Bronx, or anywhere else for that matter. And there more... or less to these numbers. First Stanton, who as I said before had the second-worst performance of any reliever when dealing with inherited runners, costing his team an extra 8.6 runs. He also had a pretty low rate of hits on balls in play (BABIP), so we can expect some backsliding there; an ERA in the low- to mid-4s is likely.

The once-unhittable Rodriguez's homer rate was up about 60 percent over his career rate, and while it's tempting to explain it away by pointing to his pitching in that brand-new palace of gopherdom, Citizen's Bank Ballpark, the reality is that he gave up only one homer as a Phillie and allowed seven while pitching for the Giants, who play in the single most difficult park to homer, SBC Park (insert accusatory glare at Barry Bonds here). Not good, but what we're talking about still boils down to an extra three mistake pitches over the course of a season, something that could easily go the other way.

Once seen as a future closer, Rodriguez has lost velocity over the past few years while struggling with his command. Transaction Guy Christian Ruzich reports that he's an extremely slow worker on the mound, a pitcher made for the TiVo age. Ugh. We could be in for a long summer in the Bronx, especially if Rodriguez is actually replacing Gordon, who was a rumored component (along with Javy Vazquez, Eric Duncan, the state of Connecticut, and a cure for cancer) of the supposedly dead Randy Johnson deal with Arizona.

If that's not the case, then with Quantrill, Gordon, Rivera, Stanton, Rodriguez, the resurgent Sturtze (who doesn't have enough service time to qualify for free agency) and perhaps Karsay (stop laughing!), the Yanks have a reasonably full bullpen, and that's without picking up another lefty. They'll likely find one, even when they've got a decent option for a LOOGY (Lefty One Out GuY) in young Brad Halsey, because that's the Yankee Way. But Halsey's performance against lefties was impressive enough that he ought to be considered for the role. Here are his numbers against lefties in the context of the other pitchers under discussion:

           AB   AVG   OBP   SLG

Halsey     28  .143  .212  .250

Gordon    162  .185  .246  .272

Rodriguez  99  .192  .308  .253

Rivera    154  .234  .287  .286

Heredia    74  .216  .333  .405

Quantrill 185  .292  .341  .432

Nitky      31  .258  .378  .419

Sturtze   153  .261  .352  .464

White      45  .422  .449  .556

Stanton   108  .269  .370  .426

That's a small sample size, but what the hell. The kid certainly deserves a shot to build on numbers like that, especially because, if you'll recall from his previous tour of duty in the Bronx, Stanton actually has a reverse platoon split; against righties over the last three years, he's yielded a .646 OPS, while against lefties, he's at .695 and that includes a pretty lousy performance against them last year. F-Rod (if we may call him that) also shows a reverse platoon split: a .717 OPS vs. righties over the past three years, and .653 against lefties.

It makes sense that the Yanks will probably be in the market for a lefty, and the name of Steve Kline, who pitched for the Cardinals last year, has been tossed about. The 32-year-old spent the past four seasons in St. Louis, where Tony LaRussa's tiresome obsession with platoon-driven matchups limited him to 0.82 innings per appearance -- about 62 innings for 75 appearances on average. He does a real number on lefties, a .587 OPS over the past three seasons, compared to .706 against the righties in that span. Below are his numbers from last season, along with those of all the other free agent relievers who pitched over 30 big-league innings, many now signed with the passage of the arbitration date. Most of these pitchers no longer pertain to the Yanks, but I've already pulled this together, so feel free to refer to this handy chart if you want some context for your favorite team's signing or arbitration pink-slip (TEAM refers to the final one if a player made multiple stops last season; innings have been rounded, lefties are denoted by an asterisk):

TEAM PITCHER       IP  ERA   WHIP  K/9   K/W   HR/9  BABIP dERA  

FLA  R. Seanez     46  3.33  1.26  9.00  2.42  0.59  .288  3.16  signed SD

HOU  D. Miceli     78  3.59  1.30  9.62  3.07  1.16  .299  3.25  

FLA  A. Benitez    70  1.29  0.82  8.01  2.95  0.78  .173  3.32  signed SF

NYM  M. DeJean     61  4.57  1.69  8.85  1.82  0.30  .368  3.34  signed NYM

SDN  A. Osuna      37  2.45  1.17  8.84  3.27  0.74  .290  3.35  

TEX  D. Brocail    52  4.13  1.41  7.39  2.15  0.34  .317  3.37  signed TEX

NYM  R. Bottalico  69  3.38  1.27  7.92  1.79  0.39  .263  3.44  

LAN  W. Alvarez*  121  4.03  1.16  7.61  3.29  0.90  .276  3.53  

OAK  J. Mecir      48  3.59  1.34  9.25  2.58  0.94  .296  3.71  

STL  S. Kline*     50  1.79  1.07  6.26  2.06  0.54  .238  3.76  

OAK  C. Hammond*   54  2.68  1.29  5.70  2.62  0.67  .306  3.79  

CHC  K. Mercker*   53  2.55  1.25  8.66  1.89  0.68  .254  3.83  

ATL  A. Alfonseca  74  2.57  1.34  5.50  1.61  0.61  .281  3.84  signed FLA

PHI  T. Jones      82  4.15  1.42  6.45  1.79  0.77  .298  3.88  

DET  E. Yan        87  3.83  1.43  7.14  2.16  0.83  .316  3.94  

COL  S. Reed       66  3.68  1.35  5.18  2.24  0.95  .301  4.05  

SFN  D. Burba      77  4.21  1.25  5.84  1.92  0.82  .261  4.08  

PIT  J. Mesa       69  3.25  1.41  4.80  1.85  0.78  .312  4.13  signed PIT

PHI  R. Cormier*   81  3.56  1.19  5.11  1.77  0.78  .256  4.18  signed PHI

SFN  Hermanson    131  4.53  1.36  7.01  2.22  1.03  .293  4.20  signed CHW

LAN  E. Dessens   105  4.46  1.47  6.26  2.35  1.29  .310  4.25  signed LA

ARI  J. Fassero*  112  5.46  1.61  4.82  1.36  0.72  .325  4.30  

BAL  B. Groom*     53  4.78  1.58  5.47  2.00  1.03  .337  4.33  

KCA  D. Reyes*    108  4.75  1.52  7.58  1.82  1.00  .313  4.41  

CLE  B. Wickman    30  4.25  1.45  7.89  2.60  1.21  .333  4.43  signed CLE

BOS  R. Mendoza    31  3.52  1.04  3.82  1.86  0.88  .232  4.47  

STL  C. Eldred     67  3.76  1.31  7.25  3.18  1.48  .302  4.49  signed STL

BOS  T. Adams      70  4.76  1.60  7.20  2.00  1.29  .336  4.53  

FLA  B. Koch       49  4.41  1.65  9.18  1.39  1.10  .289  4.55

SEA  R. Villone*  117  4.08  1.42  6.62  1.34  0.92  .249  4.63  

DET  U. Urbina     54  4.50  1.30  9.33  1.75  1.17  .228  4.65  

ANA  T. Percival   50  2.90  1.25  5.98  1.74  1.27  .242  4.88  signed DET

MIN  Mulholland*  123  5.18  1.59  4.38  1.82  1.24  .336  4.88  

FLA  D. Weathers   82  4.15  1.46  6.67  1.74  1.31  .300  4.89  

NYM  J. Franco*    46  5.28  1.52  7.04  1.50  1.17  .286  4.90  

PHI  R. Hernandez  57  4.76  1.68  6.99  1.52  1.43  .322  4.90  

CIN  Van Poppel   115  6.09  1.46  5.62  2.25  1.72  .306  4.96  

TBA  J. Halama*   119  4.70  1.36  4.47  2.19  1.29  .293  4.97  

NYY  Nitkowski*    33  5.73  1.70  7.09  1.63  1.09  .333  5.02  

CIN  G. White*     60  6.94  1.41  6.18  3.42  2.11  .296  5.08  

HOU  D. Oliver*    73  5.94  1.49  5.70  2.19  1.73  .315  5.10  

ARI  S. Sparks    121  6.04  1.52  4.25  1.27  1.34  .288  5.16  

DET  A. Levine     71  4.58  1.51  4.08  1.33  1.27  .300  5.23  

CLE  R. White      78  5.29  1.49  5.06  1.52  1.72  .292  5.58  

SFN  Christiansen* 36  4.50  1.67  5.50  0.85  0.75  .274  5.59  

BOS  C. Leskanic   43  5.19  1.78  7.68  1.23  1.66  .305  5.70  

TEX  J. Wasdin     65  6.78  1.63  4.98  1.57  2.49  .294  6.23

I'd love to delve into these numbers more, and perhaps I will at a later date. As I've said before, I'm headed to Anaheim for the Winter Meetings on Friday. I'll do my best to check in with at least one entry during the weekend. If you're going to be in Anaheim as well, drop me a line so we can rendezvous.