Do Yanks Really Rake, Or, Does It Depend?
Posted by Steve L. on July 28th, 2009 · Comments (16)
Here’s how the Yankees offense, as a team, has done (to date) this season split by opponent:
Opponent PA HR BB SO BA OBP SLG BAbip Texas Rangers 251 10 26 31 .349 .428 .560 .371 Oakland A's 256 9 32 45 .308 .395 .509 .353 New York Mets 249 11 34 29 .271 .378 .514 .267 Minnesota Twins 285 10 30 41 .300 .380 .490 .323 Balt. Orioles 453 24 49 62 .266 .350 .518 .260 Tampa Bay Rays 352 17 36 48 .260 .337 .508 .258 Tor. Blue Jays 285 10 32 46 .278 .368 .476 .306 Sea. Mariners 108 5 8 18 .281 .333 .500 .289 Cl. Indians 319 12 41 40 .266 .369 .461 .273 L.A. Angels 241 9 26 38 .282 .369 .459 .305 Atlanta Braves 132 3 19 19 .275 .388 .422 .310 Detroit Tigers 229 8 24 34 .277 .355 .455 .298 Boston Red Sox 329 10 33 67 .267 .347 .420 .315 Ph. Phillies 112 6 2 21 .266 .279 .477 .280 Florida Marlins 112 1 11 20 .257 .330 .366 .313 K.C. Royals 111 1 11 29 .222 .300 .333 .304 Was. Nationals 105 2 11 9 .204 .286 .312 .205
As you can see, New York has beat up on the pitching staffs of the Rangers, A’s, Mets, Twins and Orioles pretty good this year. And, on the flipside, New York has not done all that well against the pitching of the Nationals, Royals, Marlins, Phillies and Red Sox.
What does this all mean? Well, I think you can throw out the numbers against the Nats, Royals, and Marlins, and Phils – since they had less than 150 PA (each) against those teams.
But, the O’s, Twins, A’s and Mets all have below league average pitching this season. So, does this mean the Yankees can only bash against below average pitchers? What do you think?
We’ve hit the Rays pitchers pretty well, and some of the Redsox ones too. I feel our offense has really come on strong lately. So as far as Boston is concerned, we’ll see soon I reckon.
I think it pretty much makes sense. You hope your team destroys bad pitching and hope they hold their own against good pitching. Sometimes you score or sometimes you don’t…whether it’s good pitching or not, whether you’re on a hot streak or not.
For the teams that just rake all types of pitching all year, well, that’s how you become the ’27, ’61 and ’98 Yankees. Pretty much an impossible standard if you ask me. I’m happy with our offense, very happy.
Their OPS against every AL team on that list other than Boston is better than the OPS for any other team in baseball overall. The Yankees mash against everyone but Boston so far.
The Yankees mash against everyone but Boston so far.
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I’m looking forward to that changing very soon.
so basically, good pitcher > good hitting…which is why the organization has beefed up the pitching staff from outside AND within. The difference between this year and all the other 1st round exit-playoff runs we had in the past decade? We can now win the 2-1 games.
yagottagotomo1 wrote:
Fair point.
Another way to look at it:
The last column is the difference between the Yanks OPS against a team and the team’s OOPS allowed. Here, the Yankees are really good – sans against the Royals. But, again, it terms of “getting fat” their big delta is against teams like the O’s, Twins, A’s and Rangers and such.
So, maybe the Yankees “rake” – but, maybe their “rake” rating is inflated by beating up on teams like the O’s, A’s and Twins?
I thought I read the other day that the last time the Yankees had 6 players hit 20 or more HR’s was 1961. I’d say we could definitely match that this year with Tex, Arod, Matsui, Posada, Swisher, and Damon all projected to hit more than 20 dingers
Corey wrote:
have you seen CC’s career post-season numbers?
Yeah, that makes sense Steve. I doubt this is anomalous, however. Most good teams carve up bad pitching, and it seems that the Yankees do fairly well against good pitching as well.
@ Steve Lombardi:
i’ll take my chances with CC over what we’ve had in the recent past (ala Jaret Wright)
it flows naturally that teams will hit more against weaker pitching. not really any conclusions to draw from that.
as pointed out, the yankees have hit everyone but boston, and hopefully that changes next week.
as we (accurately) threw out certain numbers due to small sample sizes in the offensive analysis, it follows that we should throw out CC’s postseason work the last two years (though i know you were joking). not only is it small sample size, but the issue in october is not october itself, but the pressure. CC pretty much took care of the notion he couldn’t pitch under pressure last september, on 3 days rest, 3 starts in a row.
He better pitch well in October, hes getting paid enough to do it. And if he doesnt, then Cashman is a bum for signing him. Isnt that right? Lets trade hughes montero melky and melancon for Halladay now I WANT INSTANT SATISFACTION!!!!! and if that fails we will bang cashman again on that one
I’m sorry, Steve, but your study shows the Yankees hitting EXACTLY as they should be, for the most part. As with W-L records, for the huge majority of cases, good hitting teams will hit great against teams with bad pitching, and so-so to poorly against teams with good pitching, and there’s usually an anomaly or two for every team in every season, the way losing 2 of 3 to the Nationals with an OPS of .598 was an anomaly this year:
Well, since you’re not going to want to believe me, let me take the ultimate test case, the 1998 Yankees. They “bashed” everybody, right? The good pitching as well as the bad, right? Well, to put it bluntly, no they didn’t, not at all.
The 1998 Yanks’ overall BAVG/OBA/SLG/OPS (BOSO) line:
.288/.364/.460/.825
(roundoff discrepancy on the sum, no doubt)
Besides the Yanks, 5 other AL teams had a better than league average ERA that year. Here’s those teams, their team ERA’s and the Yanks BOSO line against them:
Anaheim (4.49) .263/.354/.406/.760
Cleveland (4.45) .260/.341/.413/.753
Tampa Bay (4.35) .281/.360/.418/.778
Toronto (4.29) .259/.326/.387/.712
Boston (4.16) .276/.352/.427/.779
There were two teams the Yanks faced in interleague play who had good team ERAs:
Mets (3.77) .232/.319/.354/.672
Atlanta (3.25) .254/.327/.371/.718
The NL East also had 2 very bad pitching staffs that season:
Philadelphia (4.99) .286/.400/.495/.895
Florida (5.64) .284/.417/.489/.905
And here’s the data for the 5 worst pitching staffs in the AL in 1998:
Detroit (4.93) .276/.362/.418/.790
Seattlle (4.99) .316/.376/.565/.941
Texas (5.00) .335/.398/.578/.975
Kansas City (5.16) .310/.395/.522/.918
White Sox (5.24) .275/.357/.484/.836
And there it is: against the 7 staffs with the best team ERA, the Yanks were at least .047 (and as much as .153 (!!) ) under their OPS for the season as a whole, and there are no exceptions among the seven teams.
Against the 7 staffs with the worst team ERA, the Yanks hit better against 6 of the 7, and much better against 5 of the 7. The inevitable anomaly is the Tigers, who had the 5th worst team ERA in the AL that year, yet held the Yanks under their overall OPS. You could argue that the White Sox were also an anomaly, as the Yanks did only slightly better than overall against them, despite their pitching staff being the worst in baseball that season.
It would be as accurate to say that the 1998 Yanks could only “bash” against the Royals, Rangers, Mariners, and Phillies as it is to say that this year’s edition can only “bash” against the Twins, Os, A’s, and Mets.
Really; this is another study which is self-redundant. It shows, setting aside a few anomalies, that a good hitting team will hit great against teams with bad pitching, and not so great against teams with good pitching.
We all already knew that, right?
Steve Lombardi wrote:
Well, no, not really. The Rangers? Yeah, sure the Yanks bashed them. But these are your father’s Texas Rangers. They happen to be 6th in the AL in ERA, better than the Rays, better than the Angels. The Red Sox had an OPS of .593 vs. the Rangers this year, which is .195 UNDER their overall OPS (or -.195). They’ve also quashed the Rays (.541), the Dodgers (.707) and unlike the Yanks, kept the Angels right around their overall OPS (.792)
As for the rest, their OPS “plus” scores against Tampa and Seattle, two teams with good pitching (1st and 7th in the AL in ERA, both below the league average), are significantly better than their plus vs. the Orioles, about the same as their plus vs. the Twins, and “fatter” only than their plus vs. the A’s.
So I would say that, at best, your conclusion holds a relatively small amount of water.
“are NOT your father’s Texas Rangers”.
Another fine pretension messed up by the lack of an edit button.
Sigh.
I just find it funny that we have an “OOPS” stat