Hernandez is getting in trouble already. He's going deep to hitters and he's not going to be long for this game at this rate.
hes pulling the ball a lot more this season and his percentage of fly balls that are homers is rediculous. hes also seeing better pitches as a result of the 5 spot.
Are you kidding me? Robertson needs a good punch in the face. WTF happened to him? This is the guy I couldn't stand two years ago who I thought was never going to make it. Was last year just a mirage? Damn. Can't wait to see what happened to Andy. Ugh...
both the HR's came on full counts, not that it makes it any better. he started off last season in the minors, he needs to find a groove this year.
nah he clipped him...Johnson never touched th eplate so it really doesnt matter if he tagged him or not
Another great deal Cashman...but we got Granderson. http://www.cbssports.com/mlb/story/...t-rookie-star-jackson?tag=globalNav.mlb;cover
I admit it bothers me a bit to see AJax having success over there. I wasn't a fan of the trade when it happened. Then I grew comfortable with it, and eventually was happy when the real games started and Granderson was playing really well. Then he slumped, and now he's hurt. I wasn't really flipping out about it until I just read this on that site: So instead of Coke (who I always liked even when people were shitting on him last year) we have guys like Marte and Robertson (both guys I didn't like at first, then started appreciating when they seemed to change their stripes. Now...) I'm really hoping my first impression with Gardner doesn't come back to bite me too.
The most important part of that quoted article is this: "Still way too early to call a winner in the trade..." Why do people insist on making rash judgments about stuff like this? Remember when people were freaking out because we didn't trade Hughes for Santana?
nice little writeup on Gardner (link) Gardner's play boosting confidence A couple of years ago, when he first started looking like a threat to make the Yankees' big-league team, one of the headline writers in New York took a look at 5-foot-9, 183-pound Brett Gardner, took a look at the position he aspired to play -- center field, the most hallowed spot in New York baseball once upon a time -- and then wrote a headline that perfectly captured the impolite question in everyone's mind: "DiMaggio to Mantle to ... Gardner?" On the surface, Gardner doesn't fit the profile of the Yankees' typical outfielder in a lot of ways. He wasn't a big-ticket free agent. He isn't a power hitter, or even one of those left-handers brought in to take advantage of the short right-field porch at Yankee Stadium. His game is built around speed. Yet, for an idea of just how well he's doing so far this season as a hitter -- and hitting was really the only question the Yankees had about Gardner as an everyday player -- consider what Gardner said once he got back to the dugout Sunday after White Sox pitcher Mark Buehrle busted him with a few inside pitches Gardner wasn't expecting. "If he comes in on me again, I'm going to hurt him," Gardner told teammates. "And sure enough, he did it -- he hit a home run off Buehrle," Yankees pitcher Phil Hughes said Wednesday, still smiling at the memory. The idea of Gardner, who rarely hits more than two or three homers a year, actually kinda, sorta calling a shot is only slightly more preposterous than the idea that a guy like him, a former walk-on at the College of Charleston, beginning Wednesday ranked sixth in the American League with a .346 batting average. Gardner began Wednesday second in the AL in stolen bases (with 12) and fourth in on-base percentage (.427). But Gardner will tell you he always believed this could happen. When he first arrived in New York, Gardner didn't care that Melky Cabrera eventually had a two-year head start on him in the big leagues or that Johnny Damon and Austin Jackson, another top-rated Yankees prospect, were still around fighting for outfield spots, too. Gardner won the center-field job last season coming out of spring training, then lost it, but was back on the field again by the time the Yankees closed out the World Series. Though it's not put this way enough, it was also Gardner's improvement that made the Yankees' two biggest offseason deals -- the swap of Cabrera to Atlanta as part of the Javy Vazquez trade, and the packaging of Jackson to Detroit for Curtis Granderson -- seem palatable. Jackson, a rookie, is currently second in the AL in hitting, at .376 -- four spots higher than Gardner. We'll see if the torrid pace lasts for either player. But if Gardner hits .270 this year, the Yankees would be thrilled because of the speed and defense he brings to the team. If you ask Gardner to describe his plate approach, he doesn't say, "Get a hit." He says, "Get on base." "A walk, a hit, beating out a ground ball -- it's all the same to me." The distinction is important. It means Gardner not only knows his game, he knows how he's going to stick here. Gardner provides the sort of base-stealing and run-scoring threat the Yankees haven't had since the days of Rickey Henderson. And he was probably lucky, too, to arrive just as the Yankees hired a manager, Joe Girardi, who valued what he can do, and gave general manager Brian Cashman more power to shape the organization as he wanted. It's hard to imagine Girardi's predecessor, Joe Torre, trusting a no-name player like Gardner this much over a veteran, let alone using him creatively. How many times in the Torre years did we see the Yankees insist they were happy to come out of spring training with a young player like Bubba Crosby or Andy Phillips, then trade for some bold-face name to take their place within weeks? "As a young guy, you're aware of it," Gardner says, "and I don't want to say young guys got overlooked here before. But there are so many superstars and great players here all the time, young guys have often stayed under the radar here in the past." What Torre did worked. But the way Girardi manages a game works better for Gardner, who usually bats anywhere from seventh to ninth. "Our lineup is strong, and our lineup is long" was the way Girardi put it Wednesday. Gardner is so fast, there was a debate going in the Yankees' clubhouse before Wednesday's game about who is the fastest man in baseball: Is it him or Ichiro or Carl Crawford in Tampa Bay? Is the Mets Jose Reyes still in the conversation? Philadelphia's Shane Victorino has to be, right? Gardner said he thinks the quickest he's been timed to first base after an at-bat is about 3.9 seconds. Hughes, who shook his head, said it isn't just Gardner's sheer speed that's bothersome to a pitcher -- "It's like he stands over there saying, 'I don't care if you know I'm going, because I'm going anyway'" -- it's that Gardner works hard on all the subtleties such as studying what a pitcher's move is, how quickly he's been timed to home plate, how he holds his hands when he comes set, the catcher who's playing. The works. Just the other day, as Hughes was preparing for his most recent start, Gardner came into the video room and said he wanted to study the pickoff move of some new reliever the White Sox have. Laughing, Hughes said, "A couple of us just looked at him and said, 'Dude? Just go. They're not going to throw you out.'" Gardner did go. And the White Sox didn't. "It's been a good start," Gardner allowed Wednesday. But only that. He knows the Yankees don't give out monuments for good Aprils.
and one on Hughes (link) Phil Hughes: Lucky, But How Lucky? Any time a pitcher has an early-season ERA more than two-and-a-half runs lower than their career ERA, the easy tendency is to attribute the success to luck. And to some extent, this is true - it's very, very rare for a 4.00 ERA pitcher to put up a full season with a 2.50 ERA. But young pitchers also make strides, and real progress shouldn't be discounted. Where does Phil Hughes fall in this spectrum? If you look at the spider graph below from Bloomberg Sports Fantasy Tools, he's certainly looking good right now. First, let's tackle the low-hanging fruit. Batters have a .162 batting average on balls in play against Hughes right now. That number will regress toward the .286 career BABIP that Hughes has accumulated. That means more dinks and dunks and line drives past outstretched gloves - and more runs. Hughes has also stranded 87.4% of his batters on base; MLB average for that largely luck-based stat is usually around 70% MLB-wide. So we know that some correction is on the way with Hughes. But Hughes has also made some legitimate strides. Check out Hughes' fastball velocity on FanGraphs; much was made of an initial drop in his velocity, from the mid-90s to a less exciting 91 MPH. Then the team moved him to the bullpen, where pitchers traditionally add about 0.7 miles per hour in velocity according to this study by Jeremy Greenhouse. In the bullpen, Hughes' fastball started crossing the plate at an average velocity of 93.7 MPH, making him an outlier in terms of adding gas. The good news is that Hughes is currently starting and he retained some of that extra oomph, as he's averaging 92.4 MPH this year. Typically, when trying to get at the true talent of a pitcher that is suffering from either bad or good luck, it helps to look at a players' FIP (fielding-independent pitching). This number strips out BABIP, strand rate, park effects, defensive impact and other factors to get at what a pitcher "should" be putting up in an ERA scale. Hughes' FIP right now is 3.14, based mainly on his excellent strikeout rate (8.64 K/9). But if you look at Hughes' xFIP (expected fielding-independent pitching), you'll see that he's sporting a more moderate 4.26 number. What gives? Hughes' xFIP takes into account that the home run per flyball rate across baseball comes in between 9-11% and that few pitchers stray far outside of this range. But right now, Hughes has a 3.3% HR/FB rate. Even regressing that towards his low career 7.5% number would mean more home runs are on the way. Wait, you might say - Hughes has a 0.27 HR/9 in 300+ minor league innings, and a 0.83 HR/9 in the majors. Why can't he limit the number of home runs he gives up? Well, once the ball is in the air he has less control. About one of every 10 fly balls leaves the park across baseball, and that number holds steady, which has spawned more than one impassioned plea for the use of xFIP over FIP. The best way to limit home runs is to keep the ball on the ground, that much we can understand. Hughes is a flyball pitcher with a low groundball rate (36.2% this year). He doesn't fit the homer-suppression profile. Rest-of-season projections that use this knowledge of home run rates predict that Hughes will put up about a 4.3 ERA from here on out. This sounds like a big letdown, but it would still result in an ERA around 3.70 for the year. If you told a Hughes owner that he would get a 3.70 ERA with a WHIP under 1.3 and almost one strikeout per inning from his pitcher by the end of the year, he'd be thrilled. Unless you get a knockout sell-high offer on Hughes, hang onto him.
^ I really think many stats are over-thought. I think Hughes is just a better, older, more experienced pitcher.
