Yankees Update 06/06/09

Still No. 1

After losing the series to the Phillies, the Yankees won 2 series against the Indians and Rangers. The Indians have been scuffling so that was not particularly surprising, and the league leading Rangers were possibly not for real. The opening game with Tampa was washed out, and they lost the first game. Over all, the Yankees went 4-4 this week. They really could do with a win against Tampa tomorrow.

In amongst all that, the Yankees went into this weekend tied with the Red Sox for the division lead. Boston might look like they're scuffling with injuries but they're still pretty competitive.

Wang Returns To Rotation

Chien-Ming Wang and Phil Hughes swapped places as Hughes went to the bullpen and Wang pitched the last game against the Rangers. He only lasted 4.2 innings, 2 of which were good and 2 of which were shaky.

The indication is that his sinker has got its sink back. He's steadily been reducing his ERA from the enormous 34.50 it blew out to, so if nothing else, he's probably pitching closer to league average. Because the front end of the rotation is stacking up to be Sabathia, Burnett, Chamberlain and Pettitte in order of effectiveness, the Hughes/Wang spot is now the fifth starter role. Wang just need to be able to go 6-7 innings with an ERA of 4.5 to be useful.

The Hitting Is Much Better


As of this writing, the Yankee team offense line is .281/.358/.483 for the season. A team hitting .841 collectively is a pretty solid. Teixeira is hitting .284, with an OPS of .993. A-Rod is only at .250, but his OPS is .916. Swisher's OPS is .906, Posada is hitting 1.030, and Jeter, Cano, Melky, Damon and Matsui are hitting over .800 in their OPS. That's a pretty solid team. Certainly, it's not surprising for Cano to be there and they're career norms for Jeter, Damon, and Matsui.

At this point, it's pretty close to the way the team was drawn up as an offense. Maybe A-Rod's average could be higher, Maybe Melky is over-achieving, Xavier Nady is not quite in the picture due to injury, but the rest of it is as projected.

The Starting Pitching is Mostly Sound

As mentioned before, the Starters have been doing much better in the last 5 weeks. Still, looking at the pitchers, it's not as impressive as what the batters are doing, apart from Sabathia and Chamberlain.

Pettitte's ERA is at 4.50 which is league average-ish. Burnett has had a couple of rough starts where his ERA has blown out to 4.69. Phil Hughes was sitting at 5.40.  Wang of course has pared back his ERA down to 14.46 in his brief relief outings.

Pettitte had an ugly patch in late April through to early May where he gave up 13 runs in 17.2 innings. Since then he's given up 14 in 29.2 IP.

In the case of Burnett, he's ben steadily paring back his ERA since that game where he gave up 8 runs, but he had a couple of hiccups with games against the Blue Jays and the Phillies where he gave up 5. He's been good in the other 7 or so starts.