And yet, if you believe the sabr-squids, Pedrophilia crushes him on just about every defensive metric there is. I have to be honest, I don't understand any of that nonsense, but it has to have something to do with the guy's athletic ability. true story: some 20-25 years ago you could actually get an argument for why Lenny Dykstra was a better centerfielder than Ricky Henderson. No lie.
Ugh, I read Dierking talk about Dykstra 20 years ago and I was like "WTF?! That wasn't twenty years a...oh...shit..." Anyway, Robbie is ridiculous. The guy is completely locked in. My brother actually just texted me that he doesn't care if Vazquez never wins a single game, being rid of Melky was so worth it for this. Teixeira is starting to get wood on the ball. I expect him to break out on the homestand. ARod looks like he's just trying too hard again. He needs to just relax. At least he's making some productive outs. What's scary is that soon pitchers are going to start having to give him better pitches to hit thanks to Cano. That's pretty sick. How about AJ? I'm actually surprised I haven't seen any mention of him being without Posada last night. (Not that I buy into that story myself, just that I'm surprised no one has taken the opportunity to say "See? He throws a 3-hitter when Posada isn't his catcher!") What's scary though, as good as the Yankees have been, is that the Rays have a 2.5 game lead. Their run differential is +69. Holy shit! I do attribute it to having an easier schedule than us so far, but damn, that's a big difference. By comparison, we're at +37.
^ The difference between the Rays and the Yankees is ONLY 2.5 games. The bigger difference is that EVERYTHING is working for the Rays right now...pitching, hitting, fielding... The Yankees have been getting great pitching and defense, but their hitting is not up to potential right now. (Cano carrying the team?) So that's scary for the Rays not the Yankees.
Trust me, I don't fear the Rays. Last year they had an insane run differential for the first couple months of the season too. I said it back then that it was more a product of them having played weaker competition, and that proved out by September. This year I think they'll perform better and get into the Wild Card running, but I'm not convinced they'll be a team we need to worry about this year. At least not anymore than we've worried about the Sox or Angels in previous years. My only point was that even with a lower level of competition so far, their performance is pretty impressive.
There's an article on fangraphs that points out that the Rays run differential is much more in their favor than you'd expect. In other words, they've been lucky. I'll see if I can find it in a bit. ETA: Although the biggest problems the Rays had last year were health, Upton sucking, and the bullpen. This year, it looks like they're fine in those areas (of course, health can always go).
While I'm all for Boston being knocked off, a few things: 1) They're pretty much doing it to themselves, which is far more satisfying than another team usurping them. 2) I don't want the team doing the usurping to be in the AL East. While I don't actively despise the Rays as I do the Sox, I do really, really, really dislike them. Same with Toronto. Same with Baltimore. (Not unlike my dislike for Buffalo, while I completely despise Miami and New England in football.) There are very few teams outside of my teams' own division that I wouldn't rather see succeed. Off the top of my head, any team in any sport that plays in Philadelphia, in baseball the Angels and Mariners, and in football the Raiders, Colts, and Dallas.
There are some outstanding athletes who are poor defensively. Athleticism is only a small part of playing defense. Pedroia is better defensively, but it's not because he's a better athlete. I don't think Cano suddenly became great because Melky was traded. Not a big story. He pitches better without Posada and that's why Posada often doesn't catch him. Nothing new.
That made little sense to me. Seemed like more media hype at the time than anything else, because of that one clip of AJ saying, "WHY?!" after giving up a HR. I mean, I know his ERA with Posada was 4.96 and his ERA with Molina was 3.28, but Burnett has some stellar games with Posada catching last year, too. It's not that he couldn't pitch to him. The main difference in their line was that Posada caught a few of Burnett's stinkers, the biggest ones being on April 25th, June 9th, and August 22nd, all against Boston -- a solid offensive team last year. And - as we all know - when Burnett stinks, he really, really stinks. If you take those three starts away, Burnett's ERA for the season with Posada would have been 3.79. In other words, I don't think it has or had anything to do with the relationship between AJ and Posada specifically. I think Molina and Cervelli both call a better game than Posada, and are vastly better defenders in general. That could account for the difference, but I think you see that difference across all pitchers.
I'm not taking them away completely, and I'm not taking them away just for the sake of taking them away. I'm offering context. Look, if Posada caught AJ only against Baltimore and Toronto last year (middle of the road offenses in 2009), and Molina caught AJ only against Boston and Tampa (two top five offenses in 2009), who do you think would have the better cERA? And do you think that would be because Burnett couldn't throw to a certain catcher? Or might the difference in the opposing offenses have something to do with it? The point is that most of the difference in AJ's lines with the different catchers last year was due to three very bad starts facing a very good offense. So it's difficult to then say, "It's because AJ doesn't get along with Posada." Yes, he had something to do with them. The question is how much. People seem to be blowing it out of proportion and thinking it's about the pitcher/catcher relationship. And while that might have some effect, the issue is clearly not that AJ can't throw to Posada, or even necessarily that you see more improvement from Burnett when Posada isn't catching him than you would expect to see from any pitcher who gets an upgrade at the position to a better game caller/defender. This start against Baltimore was a perfect example of how it gets blown out of proportion, too. Burnett has been pitching well all season. Two starts ago, against Texas (a better hitting team than Baltimore), AJ pitched seven innings of shutout ball (111 pitches)... the only reason he didn't go eight like he did against Baltimore (116 pitches) is probably because he struck out three more guys against Texas. Guess who was catching that Texas game? Who catches Burnett is a seriously confounding factor as to causes of Burnett's performance.
I was responding to: That doesn't make much sense. Why would you take away the performances when Burnett pitched badly with Posada catching? I guess we could also take away the performances when Burnett pitched well with Posada catching.
You're missing the point. It's not what his ERA is minus those three games. It's how much lower it is minus only three games. And that those three games came against a very good offensive team. You're seeing most of the difference from a small handful of games. They are outliers, and the difference seems to have more to do with the confounding factors like not having your best stuff on days when you're facing a very good offensive team than they do with the relationship between the pitcher and catcher. If you assume that a pitcher like AJ is going to somewhat randomly have 4-6 very games every year where his stuff is absolute shit regardless of who is catching (it usually happens), and Posada's is catching 60% of the games caught by either him or Molina... it's not that improbable that Posada will wind up with the bulk of those shitty games. And that can skew the line. The same could happen the other way around if it were Molina who got the bulk of the shitty games. And sure, you could take away the games where Burnett pitched well, if you want... IF there was a reason to do so... but it depends on what information you're trying to describe here. Those three games clearly fall outside of the normal range. Maybe Posada is responsible for them. Maybe he's not. Are there reasons why you should take away the three best games? You don't do it just to "be fair." (It's actually the opposite of "being fair.") As an example, if you wanted to measure how high you could jump... you run and jump, touch as high as you can on the wall, and measure the height. Do this 100 times. Take the average. That's you're average jump height. If on four of the attempts, you trip and fall, and on three other attempts, someone says, "Boo!" and distracts you, you probably shouldn't include those seven attempts in your average. It won't give you a true reflection of how high you can jump. The same applies here. If we're interested in what effect two different catchers have on a specific pitcher's performance, you have to normalize for the different effect the catchers would have on any pitcher's performance, and you have to normalize for the quality of the opponent faced. Otherwise you're not getting a true readout of the effect of the catcher's relationship. Now, I'm not saying that those three games prove that there's no effect. I'm just saying that - combined with all the other information - it leads me to believe that there's far less to it than people make it out to be.
Not at all my point. The only point is that without the childish behavior Melky conducts himself with, Cano has been able to better focus on the sport, rather than goofing around with yet another "handshake" that takes 47 seconds and involves at least two asscheek bumps. Not necessarily, and I disputed this last year too. While they definitely seemed to get their signals crossed a few times last year, I think the media has made more of a story here than actually exists. Plus, Posada has been catching Burnett all year except last night, including a night where Burnett topped his career record for strikeouts.
I'm still pissed that we let melke go. You have to have guys like him and swish to loosen up the locker room.
You have to have them? Says who? And who's to say There aren't plenty of others to replace him? He seems very replaceable. And I liked the guy. I just don't think he'll be more than average at best.
RE: Burnett I think the evidence shows that Burnett has had, on average, more success without Posada than with Posada. I'm not going to get into what the reasons might be or exactly how much better he is without Posada, but the numbers don't lie. It sounds like it was exactly your point.
