On the Defenestration of Slappy Rodriguez
A few points about A-Rod being benched:
- I don’t think the question of whether Joe Girardi is right or wrong is empirically knowable. The case for his move is clear enough — Chavez has hit right-handed pitching very well this year, and A-Rod has not. The opposite case is also clear — Chavez’s splits against RHP this year represent 244 ABs, and prior to this year the last time he was an even passable major league player was 2007, while A-Rod is an inner-circle HOFer who has always been much better than Chavez and is only 2 years older. The decision is defensible, but not compelled by evidence.
- Girardi did offer some intelligent reasoning defending the move. Distinguishing Slappy from Swisher, he noted that it’s not just the numbers — Rodriguez was chasing a lot of bad pitches and not hitting the ball hard, while Swisher wasn’t and occasionally was. Fair enough.
- The idea that Rodriguez can’t hit in the playoffs is complete nonsense.
- I do think Girardi deserves credit in that it’s a Casey Stengel-style definition of “loyalty.” I give him credit for putting what he thinks is his best lineup on the field, contract or reputation be damned, especially since the decision is at least defensible.
We’ll see how it works out. Four Game 5s, can’t beat that. Go Orioles!
2 quick points and then i concentrate on the game:
1. the fact that someone is an inner circle hof-er isn’t the same as saying he is currently an hof-er; otherwise, the mets should have just kept putting willie mays on the field in 1973 (and while i realize that you’re too young to have seen, for those of us who loved the way willie mays played baseball, it was tremendously depressing). as i’ve noted in a couple of recent comments, arod’s decline has been consistent over a 3-4 year period, just as the “normal” aging process would suggest;
2. you’re skipping over the most compelling piece of evidence: arod had his hand broken. he’s clearly not 100% and it’s obviously affecting his swing and his power. we can’t evaluate him as if he were just slumping….
Howard, you’ll appreciate this. My very first baseball memory — just five years old but I remember it well — watching Willie Mays night at Shea with my father in September 1973. He made me watch for its significance.
i do appreciate that: do some searching on willie mays 1973 world series and you’ll see many comments similar to mine: this all-time great stumbled out of the batter’s box and looked awful in the field. in those pre-sports center days, you didn’t get to see the decline and it was so shocking all at once.
What will probably doom the Yanks either tonight or against Detroit is the fact that they’ve been genuinely terrible all season with RISP. The huge number of HRs they’ve racked up completely masks this fact.
Yeah, but “hitting with RISP” isn’t a repeatable skill separate from “hitting.”
i have a longer spiel about this but i’m going to provide the shorter one now: first, the yanks, to us fans, look teeth-gnashingly deficient in performance with risp, but in fact, they’re a little above average overall and a little below average with 2 out.
my brief theory as to why is that this is a team constructed along what i call ops lines: a lot of guys looking to drive up pitch counts, take walks, or drive the ball.
and sure ’nuff, the yanks are first or second in the league in walks/plate appearances, pitches-per-plate-appearance, percentage-of-hits-for-extra-bases, isolated power, home runs, at bats/home run, and ops+.
but that’s a bunch of guys likely to hit behind the runner or look to hit-and-run or settle for a long fly out: it’s guys who are going to have the same kinds of at bats regardless. and that translates into teeth-gnashing failures in risp that we see, but it doesn’t really dock them runs.
to test that (again, short form) i compared them to the ’77 yanks, whom i consider a good situational hitting team in that regard of manufacturing runs, and without going into all the stats, i figured those yanks scored about 55-60 manufactured runs more than the 2012 yanks, but hit 59 fewer homers, so it all balanced out!
(some other time, i’ll get into the methodology if anyone cares)
sorry, “but that’s a bunch of guys NOT likely to….”
I’m still pining for a Beltway Series – Os and Nats.
Whatever A-Rod has done in the past, he’s not capable of doing it at this point. He may be again when his hand heals completely, but at the moment he’s awful. Girardi did the right thing.
It would be the MARC Train series! Baltimore is not inside or around the Beltway!
It’s got its own Beltway, no? Who says they have to intersect? ;)
How about the B–W Parkway Series?
MARC Train Series! Public transportation, if it exists, gets priority over highways.
All things being equal, perhaps. There isn’t, however, as far as I can tell, good MARC access to Nationals Park, while Route 295 offers something pretty close to a straight shot between the stadiums.
Hmm…I suppose you would have to take a bus from Union Station to Nationals Park (it’s about 2.5 miles), or take two metro lines, but the whole production would still be considerably simpler than taking a subway from Yankee Stadium to Citi Field.
How is that complicated? Take the 4 to Grand Central, hop on the 7.
How is the 4 to Grand Central, then the 7 to Citi not simple? It may take a while, but a 6-year-old could figure it out.
Well it didn’t happen this year, but if it ever does, I think it should be called the Village Series.
If it ever happens, I would expect George Will to say and write things so stupid that the other stupid things he has said and written about baseball will seem insightful and fresh.
I don’t see how an article that purports to demonstrate that A-Rod isn’t bad in the play-offs can get written without the word “2009″ being mentioned at any point.
The defenestration of A-Rod seems to have done him about as much physical damage as Melissa Tancredi’s stamping did on Carli Lloyd’s face. Oh, the humanity.
Well…I guess the decision worked out well.
For some reason, I actually see the Detroit Tigers beating the NY Yankees in the ALCS.
On the other hand, part of me really wants Washington to win tonight. However, as a SF Giants fan, I am really, really worried about the Nationals, who made the Giants look like a AAA team when they played against each other.
Chavez was 0-for-3, never came up with a runner on, and didn’t touch a ball in the field all night. Absent injury A-Rod could not have had a worse night than Chavez did. The decision at best did nothing, maybe cost a bit, but the Yankees won anyway.
It may have been the right decision, but the result certainly doesn’t justify it.
Well, shit. If the Nats-Cards score holds up, then all the series in which I had any kind of vague rooting interest will have come out the wrong way. Fuck the Nationals, fuck the Yankees. I hope they all collectively test positive tomorrow and have to forfeit their respective championship series.
No worries. “Bring out the REAL closer!”
Almost as if the whole thing was planned to sell the most advertising.
Actually, to say that A-Rod is chasing pitches is totally wrong and, in a way, giving him too much credit. if he was being fooled it would be one thing, but he’s generally worked good at bats when the pitchers have worked away from him. His problem has been that he can’t hit fastballs *in the zone*, and O’Day and Johnson have responded by pounding him with fastballs early then adjusting to breaking stuff. He’s totally helpless against righties right now, and has had very little power since returning from the wrist injury.
Being a Yankee fan = being an entitled jackass
Being a Yankee fan = hating Alex Rodriguez and not appreciating a HOF
Me, being a non-Yankee fan means I actually appreciate ARod and wonder how Texiera, Cano, and Swisher escape similar criticism. Reminds of the way Williams was treated by Boston fans