| Christopher Reina. 4th May, 2009 - 6:37 pm
 1. How Wang's numbers affect Yankees pitching totals
The Yankees have a blood-soaked 5.93 ERA, which is dead last in the entire big leagues. But if you isolate the 23 earned runs Chien-Ming Wang has allowed in six innings, that ERA drops to 5.12, a still bad but much better 25th.
That would also increase their Opsera from 2.32 to 3.13, which bumps them up from the 27th ranked team to tied with the Giants for 13th.
Some more creative accounting: The Yankees have a 5.15 ERA away from the winds of Yankee Stadium and that number drops to 4.28 by removing Wang's 15 earned runs in 4.2 innings. Joba Chamberlain has a 1.47 ERA in 18.1 road innings and Phil Hughes pitched those six scoreless innings in Detroit. This ERA includes A.J. Burnett's 5.89 ERA and Mariano Rivera's 5.79.
2. The middle of the lineup has been a bigger problem than the bottom
The eighth and ninth place hitters had an OPS of .652 and .616 respectively during the 2008 season, but despite makeshift solutions at third base and center field, those slots are hitting .729 and .664 this season. The sixth and seventh slots have increased even more dramatically with differentials of +.203 and +.196. This is largely a result of Nick Swisher, the return of Robinson Cano and a healthy Jorge Posada.
But in the middle of the lineup, Mark Teixeira and Hideki Matsui have been disappointments in the place of Bobby Abreu and Alex Rodriguez. The third and fourth hole hit .863 and .915 in 2008, but those two positions are hitting .773 and .752 this season, which ranks as the sixth and seventh most productive slots in the lineup.
Alex Rodriguez impending return will push back everyone currently in the fourth hole on down and hopefully allow Texieira to settle in at the third slot in the lineup.
3. Melky Cabrera's surge
He lost the center field job to Brett Gardner coming out of Spring Training, but he closed the month of April hitting .327/.400/.571 for one of the best months of his career, with only July of 2007 rivaling it.
Cabrera's 2008 season was a huge disappointment, but he finished that September with a .924 OPS in limited duty. He is the more productive option at this point, but he also had an .864 OPS in April 2008 before having the bottom all out in May. |
