yankees in playoffs

Cafe Society
21

This is interesting. I’d be mildly surprised if the Yankees manage to pull it together and win the Wild Card, because as RickJay noted, they’d have to vault an awful lot of teams, and because the Mussina-Pettite-Clemens troika is only a guarantor of success if you happen to be playing baseball in 2002 or so.

But I’d be stunned, absolutely gobsmacked, if the Yankees win the American League East (barring the entire Red Sox major league roster getting suspended for steroids or something). I mean, the Yankees are 35-35 today, which means they have played 70 games. Let’s say that of their 92 remaining games, they win 60. This would be a winning percentage of .652, which would equate to about 106 wins over a full season; I see no reason to believe that this Yankee team is anything like a 106 win team, so granting a winning percentage of .650 the rest of the way is incredibly generous. It assumes that the Yankees will have basically no bad streaks for the rest of the season, starting now. But let’s assume it anyway.

This extremely generous forecast would give them 95 wins at season’s end. As of this morning, the Boston Red Sox have 46 wins with 91 games to play. To finish behind the Yankees with 94 wins, the Red Sox would have to win 48 games the rest of the way, which translates to a .527 winning percentage. So, in other words, even if everything breaks right for the Yankees in terms of their own performance - no injuries, no breakdowns, no bad streaks, no bad luck - even if they play about as well as can be reasonably hoped for the rest of the season - the Red Sox would still have to turn into the Colorado Rockies, winning percentage-wise, in order for the Yankees to win the division.

I just can’t see why this would happen. The Red Sox aren’t a weak division leader; they have the best record in baseball through very nearly half a season. In the entire sport, only Detroit has a better run differential and only Oakland has generated better pitching. What indicators do you see that suggest that the Red Sox will not only be worse in the second half, but regress so incredibly dramatically?

22

See my post above. How would this happen?

23

The “B” on their hats.

24

A few years ago that might have hurt. You gotta believe, man. :slight_smile:

25

Actually, that was not a very helpful previous post of mine. The numbers you lay out, storyteller, seem compelling, but let me give you a scenario that doesn’t seem all that unrealistic to me. At present, the Yanks are nine games back. They next play the Red Sox at the end of August. Let’s assume that in the intervening time, the Yanks make up two games on the Sox – not an unreasonable proposition. The Sox then play three games at New York starting on the 28th of August. A Yankee sweep puts the Yanks four back. They meet again for three in mid-September. This time, let’s say, the Yanks take two of three. Now they’re three back with two weeks to play.

The Sox close out their season by going an underwhelming five of 12, while the Yanks go nine of 12. There you have it – the Yanks win the East. Could happen, right?

26

Back before the end to the Drought, and before The Single Biggest Choke In Pro Sports History, I would have agreed with you. But now I have faith in the ability of the Yankees to lose big when they have to.

27

10 1/2, actually.

28

Note, too, that the Sox schedule gets substantially *easier * in the second half, including *all * their Tampa Bay games.

The Yanks can still make the wild card, but only if they make some quick-fix roster moves for, oh, Gagne and Buehrle and Helton. It’ll cost them their farm system, but that’s okay with me. :smiley: But even if they do, it won’t matter - in the playoffs, pitching means everything, and Boston, finally free of the Curse of Tom Yawkey *has * it.

29

Sorry I took so long coming back here, but the last few days have been weird, and without internet access.

To answer your question, nothing more than gut feeling, mostly. However, I would point out that–having re-checked last year’s final standings–the Yankees finished 11 games ahead of the Red Sox in 2006. And while I don’t have archived newspapers handy to check the pre-All Star break standings from '06, I do seem to recall that Boston was ahead or tied with of the Yankees in the middle of the season last year. Even later than this same date last year, if memory serves me right. That was an awfully, terribly big turn around what happened last year, when Boston just fell apart. Which is something Boston always has to fear, because there’s always so much “psyche” in any given Red Sox season. Despite present appearances, it is not yet over.

Wait. I lied. I just went over to mlb.com and they have a nifty little ‘standings as of whatever date you like’ feature. Boston was 44-28 last June 24, 2.5 games in front of the Yankees. My math tells me that last year, from this point onward, the Red Sox lost 13.5 games to New York in the standings.

Boston does look more solid this year but, you know, things change.

30

I don’t believe this point has been broached thus far, but YANKEES SUCK! :wink:

SDMB not available in Boston or what?

31

Yep. Since mid April almost all of the teams that the Red Sox have played are (currently) .500 or better teams: the only ones which don’t qualify are Baltimore, Texas, and San Fran, 4 series total. After this latest road trip that will change, tho in the pursuit of objectivity I’ll also point out that the Yankees’ schedule also gets a bit easier too.

Yeah I’m a Red Sox fan too Ripper…

32

With all the Yankees on the DL and whatnot, is it really a good idea that any of them do any sort of extra digging? That’s a back injury waiting to happen.

33

Things haven’t been getting any better for the Yankees over the lifetime of this thread, to be honest. They’ve lost five of their last six, and have actually succeeded in dropping a place, behind Toronto - it’s only half a game, but there’s one more team to have to beat. It’s not generally a good sign if you can’t keep up with an injury-plagued team fielidng half its AAA club every night.

11.5 back and they have to beat five teams for the Wild Card. 97% likely they’re toast.

34

A month later with a little over 2 months left in the season, and the Evil Empire has climbed to within 6.5 of Boston and 4.5 of the wild card.

35

I know that it’s easy to have 20/20 hindsight, but i did say on June 22 that it was too early to count them out. Even a month ago, when they were 11 games back, it was reasonably clear that if they ever got any pitching, they would be a threat.

One month ago, on June 27, they had scored 400 runs. More than any other team in the AL East, and equal 4th in whole of the Major Leagues. And, based on runs scored and runs conceded, they were 7 games below their Expected Win-Loss ratio, which was the largest negative discrepancy in the majors.

Actually, the XW-L discrepancy is still the same; while they are currently 54-47, their XW-L is 61-40, which would put them half a game behind Boston, and two and a half games up in the AL Wild Card race.

Over the last month, they’ve gone 18-8, scoring 179 runs (6.88 runs per game) and conceding 118 runs (4.53 per game).* Obviously, Yankee fans would like the pitching to be better, but an offense like that can stil win you plenty of games.

  • The runs scored stat is skewed somewhat by the massive series against Tampa Bay, where the Yankees scored 45 runs in three games over two days, against one of the worst pitching staffs in the majors, and one of the worst bullpens in the recent history of baseball.
36

Meh. They lose their soul in the process…a bad back is the least of their worries.

37

A-Rod is earning his money, so I’ll omit him, but when the Yankees realizes they could get three pretty good pitchers for what they pay Clemens and a good shortstop and another good player for what they pay Jeter and his bullshit “intangibles” to hit 18 HR and 77 RBI, that’s when they’ll make the playoffs.

38

You’re definitely right that the Yankees could get a bunch of decent players for the same money that they pay Clemens and Jeter. But you have made one particular assumption that applies to just about every team in baseball, but not the Yankees—you have assumed that the money they have to spend is limited.

Of course, in a literal sense that’s true, but Steinbrenner has shown that he’s willing to just keep forking out the cash to get the guys he wants. For the Yankees, the fact that they might be overpaying a particular player (like Jeter) isn’t very important, because they don’t have the same need as most other teams to get the best possible talent for the least possible money.

This is not like Billy Beane, who has to look for the slimmest possible margin of utility in order to make the most out of a limited budget. Beane might be willing to take a slightly less-good player if it saves him a bunch of money to spend on someone else; he has to balance money and player quality. For the Yankees, money’s not really an issue, so they can focus solely on results. So, if they have a choice between paying $18 million for a a guy with a 2007 OPS+ of 132 (Derek Jeter, career OPS+ 123) or paying $8 million for a guy with a 2007 OPS+ of 120 (Jimmy Rollins, career OPS+ 97!!), they’ll take Jeter, even though Rollins might be better value for money to someone with a limited amount to spend.

(Note: Rollins might not be the best example here; i just chose him because he’s one behind Jeter in OPS among shortstops for 2007; also, i haven’t considered fielding stats like FRAR or FRAA, where Rollins is better than Jeter, although still not great)

I do agree with you about all the bullshit “intangibles” crap that gets bandied about when Jeter is the topic of conversation. “Mr. Clutch” and “Mr. October” references to Jeter also really get on my nerves.

But while i do think that Jeter is often overrated, he’s still actually a very good offensive player. This season (admittedly, a relatively small sample size), among shortstops, he’s 4th in average, 7th in slugging, 1st in on-base percentage, and 4th in OPS. That doesn’t necessarily mean that he’s worth $18-20 million, but if you’ve got $18-20 million that you’re happy to spend, Derek Jeter is still a pretty damn good player to have in your lineup. And while he defense has always been over-rated, this is the third season in a row where his FRAA is positive (i.e., he’s actually better than average), after ten straight negative years.

39

Yankee pitching is still too weak.

40

Yankee pitching isn’t as strong as I would like, but it should be capable down the stretch. Looking forward to Hughes replacing Igawa. Pettitte and Mussina aren’t as consistent as I would like - especially Mussina - but they’ve got pitching to get them to the show if it doesn’t break down. Middle relief is always a toss-up, but Rivera can still bring it.

I’m more worried about the inconsistency at the plate. While we are on a good run, we haven’t been getting the kind of hitting performance a playoff team requires out of our outfield. Damon and Abreu have been in funks all and most of the season, respectively, and Cabrera isn’t stepping up at the plate like someone who wants to replace Damon. It’s good to see Philips doing some good things at the plate, because 1st base has been another hitting black hole this season. Dead spots where you generally find better hitters than fielders is not good. If A-Rod wasn’t knocking in enough runs for two people, and Posada having a great first half at the plate, this season would be much, much sadder for those of us who bleed pinstripes.