CC and Andy Go Down...Are the Yanks Out?

Within a matter of hours, the Bombers lost both their lefty ace (Sabathia) and their other lefty ace (Pettitte) to injuries.  Are the pinstripes' division-title dreams now in jeopardy?

Just when fans thought that everything was hunky-dory in Yankee Universe, just as they were cranking back the levers on their La-Z-Boys and putting their feet up on their coffee tables, the Baseball Gods administered a sudden and painful shock to the team's starting staff.   Two key southpaws gone within a matter of hours.  When did Wednesdays become so cruel?

Let's travel back to around 11 a.m. Wednesday morning and take a look at the mid-season forecast.  At that point, it was clear skies and smooth sailing for the Yankees' clipper (if you'll allow) on the gentle waves of the 2012 season.  New York owned a 45-28 record, good for a 4-game lead in the AL East.  They were winners in 14 of their last 17 contests, and had put up an MLB-best 24-7 spot since May 22nd (thanks ESPN Research Department for that one).  It was gravy baby, all gravy.

Hours after southpaw ace C.C. Sabathia was placed
on the 15-day DL, Andy Pettitte left Wednesday's game
after a ground ball fractured his left fibula.

Then at about 11:30 a.m., some storm clouds materialized on the doppler radar (yes I am going to continue with this metaphor), as word broke that C.C. Sabathia and his tender groin (...phrasing?) were heading to the 15-day DL.  Certainly not great news, but not devastating injury and therefore not a devastating blow to the franchise.  The seas had roughened but the ship veered little from the course.

Fast-forward to 2:20 p.m.  In the middle of the Yankee Stadium diamond, Andy Pettitte took a sign, kicked, fired, and received a hard ground ball off the left ankle in return.  It was painful to watch.  Andy left the game on the next pitch and, sure enough, x-rays would later reveal a broken fibula.  The Dandy One is placed on the 60-day DL, meaning two months without his dandy antics or his dandy cutter.

Cue the scattered clouds becoming a full on maelstrom and the vessel buckling in the rocky tide.  Cue the feet flying off the coffee and the bodies bolting upright in alarm from their recliners.  Cue the first disturbing twinges of that feeling reporters and analysts love to toss around carelessly in the sports media world: PANIC.

But what if we resisted that convenient urge to panic for say, five minutes?  What if instead we step back, take a deep breath, and share an honest glance at this together before we let ourselves into a state of apoplexy, deal?

Adam Warren will make his major-league
debut for the pinstripes on Friday, replacing
the injured C.C. Sabathia.

For starters, the timing of the injuries is a big positive, especially in Sabathia's case.  Thanks to the upcoming All-Star break, it's likely CC will only miss 2 or 3 starts, assuming there's no setbacks.  My guess is that it's a very light injury, one that management is treating with excessive caution because the timing allows them the luxury of doing so.  Or maybe that's just wishful thinking.  Unfortunately, Andy is going to miss several starts, even with the All-Star weekend. No getting around that.

Recall however that Yankees have one of the better--if not best--bullpens in the business. Actually, it's the strongest aspect of their team. If starters Ivan Nova, Phil Hughes, and Hideki Kuroda can "step up" (in the words of manager Joe Girardi) and provide innings over the next few weeks, it will keep the relievers fresh. That reserve of energy could prove big in moments where the pen may need to help out old man Freddie Garcia and/or any minor-league fill-ins, such as Friday's probable Adam Warren.

Speaking of Warren, who is this dude and what has he done to earn the tryout? A quick scroll through his milb.com stats tells us that he has an 11-13 record and a 3.70 ERA in 42 starts with Scranton/Wilkes-Barre...which is to say they tells us nothing. One anonymous talent evaluator claims that Warren "will not overpower hitters with a fastball that rarely strays out of the mid-90s" (thanks nj.com), and a scouting report from 2010 had him throwing a four-seamer, two-seamer, cutter, change, and slider, with a nasty pick-off move to go with it (courtesy riveraveblues.com for that one). Good to see he has variety of movement on the hard stuff, but can he locate? We'll know soon enough.

Any other farm options for the Yankees?  Ramon Ortiz (having the best season) is aging, Delin Betances (having the worst season) has allowed almost a walk per inning, David Phelps (latest victim: see here) is rehabbing his wing, and Manny Banuelos (remember him?) is on the DL and has hardly pitched at all this year.

Personally, I'd rather see them give both Warren and fellow Scrantoner D.J. Mitchell a shot than watch them run old man Freddie out there again (even despite Mitchell's discouraging numbers). Hell, let Boone Logan have a crack at it and see if he can't get through five, like they did in the past with Phil Coke.

But no, they won't do that. They'll live and die with Garcia and when Warren fails to throw a perfect game in his first couple major-league outings, they'll make an early-August play for Francisco Liriano or Brandon McCarthy or the like. The Yankee farm system is currently so thin at pitcher one can hardly blame the front office for seeking outside help.

In the meantime, New York's offensive fixation with the longball will win them some games, even some series, and may mitigate this horrible Wednesday hangover. Be warned though: when all you do as a team is swing for the fences, you're bound to run into some vicious team slumps. We've seen it already in 2012 and we'll see it again. That's when they'll need to rely on the rotation and the bullpen to plug the leak in the vessel. The clipper is going to take on water; the key is to shovel it out as fast or faster than it funnels in (aka stay at or over .500 baseball...for those of you who've lost interest in the metaphor which I suspect is everybody).

The forecast has indeed become stormy, but it's nothing that isn't normal this time of year.  No need to call in the coast guard just yet.  But keep a watchful eye on the horizon Yankee Universe.  It's a long way to that postseason shoreline.

Should the Yankees Be More Fearful of Fister than Verlander?

Why Doug E. Fist's sudden second-half surge could pose more of a problem for the pinstripes than anything else in this series


It’s a safe bet that most Yankee fans rejoiced when Game 1 of the ALDS was suspended due to a furious downpour that somehow blindsided every local weatherman in the tri-state area.

‘Awesome!’ rang the collective consciousness of the Bronx faithful. ‘Now we won’t have to face Justin Verlander twice in this series! Advantage us!’

Instead, the Yankees will battle Doug Fister (11-13, 2.83 ERA in the regular season) in tonight’s continuation of the meteorological debacle that was the opening game, a game that was supposed to be Verlander’s to win or lose. The AL Cy Young frontrunner must wait until Monday’s Game 3 for a shot at a postseason ‘W’ (assuming he isn’t able to wrest the gameball away from manager Jim Leyland for Sunday’s Game 2…stay tuned).

Either way, if the series does get to a fifth game, it is likely the deciding match will be entrusted to Fister. Yet somehow, against all my better baseball judgment, I don’t feel any more comfortable about this scenario.

Why? What is it about this Fister guy that gives me this odd one-round-and-done feeling?

Fister spent the first two-thirds of the season pitching in Seattle, and, as with all Mariners, flew largely under the radar. Perhaps ‘soared’ is the better verb for that metaphorical cliché. In 21 outings, Fister submitted 13 “quality starts” and held the opposition to 2 earned runs or less 10 times while pitching to a deceiving 8-11 record.

In August, Doug was dealt to Detroit, a club with at least some semblance of an offense and a bullpen. The extra support made a profound difference: Fister went 8-1 in 10 starts with an outstanding 1.79 ERA. That’s quiet domination embodied.

On the year, Fister had only three, count ‘em three truly bad starts.

Looks like those Bronx boys have their work cut out for them this evening. Sit on the change-up, work the count, and DO NOT underestimate this guy.

Why do I have that awful, awkward, uncomfortable feeling about this? Guess I’ll be praying for more rain.

Sure, Sabathia's 'W' Over the Sox Was Gutsy, Courageous, Crucial, and Ameliorating, BUT...

...Why Yankee Universe Should Celebrate with Cautious Optimism and What Carsten Charles Needs to Do If He Wants to Beat Boston in October

YES Network commentator Ken Singleton probably summed up C.C. Sabathia's victory over the Red Sox most aptly last night when he noted that the southpaw had "definitely earned this one."

And even that might be an understatement.

The 290-lbs. Yankee ace has been known to perspire rather profusely when on the bump, but Sabathia pushed the term "sweating buckets" to its literal limits Tuesday evening. In six innings of work, C.C. threw a season-high 128 pitches (tied for second-most in his career), while enduring 30 batters, 10 hits, and 2 runs en route to his 18th win of the year. And keep in mind that this was a Yankee-Red Sox game, meaning each plate appearance lasted approximately half an hour.

By the time he recorded his 18th out, the man looked like he had spent five days in a sauna in the attic of a greenhouse in a submarine that was submerged in the river Styx.

Hyperbole? Never that.

Not only did C.C. sweat this one out in the physical sense, but in the metaphorical as well. The Sox had a runner(s) on base in all 6 innings, had a runner(s) in scoring position in 4 of the 6, loaded the bases in the 2nd, left 10 runners on base total, and forced the lefty to throw 78 of those 128 pitches from the stretch. Boston bent him and bent him and bent him, but the big man refused to break.

For the Yankees and their fans, this crack-but-don't-crumble narrative was a pleasant departure from the crack-then-crumble-in-miserable-fashion sequence they had come to expect when Sabathia toed the rubber against the Sox. Entering Tuesday, C.C. was a horrid 0-4 with a 7.20 ERA in four starts vs. Boston. Ouch.

A feared and formidable foe against the rest of the league
in 2011, Sabathia had looked mentally and emotionally
overwhelmed by a relentless Red Sox entering Tuesday

And here's what hurt even more than the ugly stats if you're pro-pinstripes: Boston was IN HIS HEAD. They had psyched out the Yankees' best pitcher. The man looked unsinkable against everyone else in the league, but as soon as he saw that old-English style 'B' and the matching red lettering on the caps and jerseys of the opposing team, that same man capsized harder than the Lusitania (too soon?).

Simply put, Sabathia looked scared of the franchise nemesis. It was in his body language on the mound. It was in the lack of confidence behind his pitches. It was in his fear of coming anywhere near the plate against even the weaker hitters in the Sox lineup.  In fact, you could argue that Boston jarred his mental skeleton so badly in his previous outing (6 IP, 9 H, 7 ER) that it carried over into his next three starts, all of which were subpar by the his standards.

So that brings us to the essential question (and inevitable follow-ups) posed by this article: how encouraged should Yankee Universe be by what they saw in Fenway last night from C.C. Sabathia?  Was this a C.C. that showcased a better attitude, approach, and plan against the Sox, or was Boston just having an off day?  Did we see relative continuity or a clear change?  Was it luck?  Was it courage?  Some other vague adjective?

To begin, I'll have to reference the obvious and the trite for a moment: it's a win.  A huge win.  It was a huge team win for a number of reasons (bounce-back from some bad losses, tone-setter for the rest of an important series, AL East standings implications, and so-on, and so-on).

It was also a huge individual win if nothing else for the fact that it was a win.  Just the sight a '1' on the left side of those '4' losses on the stat sheet was most likely a significant psychological boost.  It's a jolt of momentum in his favor.  It's positive energy he can build off of for the next time they meet, whether that's in late September or late October.  It's video that he can look back to and say, 'Okay, this is what worked when I beat these guys, this is what didn't.'

So from a mental and emotional standpoint, it's a definite sigh of relief.  Thus, the Yankee organization/fan base should feel free to bask in this moment of exhalation right along with him.  Go ahead y'all.  In through the nose, out through the mouth.

Enjoy that?  Good, because here comes the however...

HOWEVER, let's keep in mind that Sabathia labored heavily (128 pitches/buckets of sweat) just to get through six innings yesterday.  In addition, there were plenty of hard hit balls off Boston bats that happened to find Yankee leather, and if Adrian Gonzalez didn't have such a gaping blind spot for Sabathia's slider, things might not have worked out in #52's favor.

Now, while his pitch execution certainly played a role in all of that, I think that it was the pitch selection and his overall approach that led him to struggle as much as he did, despite avoiding the big blow.  So although Sabathia's future attitude and pitch execution against the Red Sox may very well improve thanks to this latest pick-me-up victory, I am not convinced that Sabathia's overall strategy showed marked improvement from his previous starts.  To specify, I noticed three things that I believe Sabathia will have to do if he wants to survive the Sox come playoff time.

1) Dude, where is your change-up? The change-up, the change-up, the change-up. I can't say it enough. It's such a key pitch against any team, but especially when facing a killer offense like that of the Sox.  I might be wrong (and according to Tyler Kepner of the Boston Globe, I am--see paragraph #5), but I'm pretty sure C.C. didn't throw a single change-up last night.  It is the culmination of a disturbing trend in which Sabathia (or whoever is calling his pitches) has upped his slider usage while steadily dropping the dosage on his change-up.  I don't know what doctor wrote you that prescription, but that guy's a quack for sure.

C.C. Sabathia's changeup, a staple of his arsenal earlier
in the season has all but disappeared in recent outings

The absence of that devastating fourth pitch gives opponents a massive advantage for many reasons.  For one, it's one less thing to worry about at the dish, one less thing to clutter the batter's mind.  Sabathia's success is stems primarily from his wide array of pitches, and his ability to mix them, work off of them, and throw all of them for strikes.  It keeps hitters guessing, and second-guessing, and third-guessing themselves, because you know that at any given time, you could see any one of those pitches.

In other words, Sabathia's deadly and varied arsenal disrupts the batter's timing and their comfort-level in the box.  The change-up bolsters the arm-action of the fastball which plays off the depth of the slider which complements the velocity of the curveball.  It's a symbiotic relationship, and when you take the changeup out of the equation, you weaken that balance exponentially and allow the hitter to get that much more comfortable.

One last comment on the change-up or lack thereof...think of this from the lens of the hitter.  When C.C. is on and using all his pitches, the thought is this:  If you see white (cowhide) out of the hand and violent arm-action, it's EITHER a fastball OR a change-up.  If you see a spinning red eye out of the hand (seams), it's a breaking ball.  But if you know that C.C. is not using the change-up, you can simplify your pitch-tracking process into cowhide=fastball, seams=breaking ball.  Much, much easier.

I don't know why the change-up has disappeared from Sabathia's repertoire so rapidly.  Could it possibly be motivated by a handful of bad results? (Kelly Shoppach's homer on 8/13 comes to mind.)  Regardless of the cause, I do know that if C.C. doesn't return to it, and return to it soon, he's going to be hard pressed to beat Boston in the playoffs.

2) You must pitch inside.  Again, this applies to facing any team but especially the Sox.  Boston, maybe more than any other team in the league, loves to hang out over the plate and sit on your junk pitches, waiting to pounce on them.  Kevin Gregg recognized this and delivered the appropriate message to Ortiz in the form of three fastballs inside to David Ortiz (sparking one of the greatest SOT calls by any NESN announcer ever).

I'm not saying that C.C. should go to the lengths that Mr. Gregg did.  Then again, maybe sending a message with a high-hard one earlier in the season when he was getting shellacked wouldn't have been the worst thing.  Regardless, what I'm talking about fall under the category of pitching 101.  You throw inside to open up the other half of the plate.  You don't need to put a guy on his back.  Just fling a fastball on the inner half towards the hip/hands every now and again to let the hitters know that it's YOUR plate and you're just letting them borrow it.  Now instead of hanging out over the dish and sitting on your junk, the hitters have that nasty little memory of the 96-mph fastball that nearly clipped their pelvic bone to deter them.

This is nothing new or alien to major league pitchers, yet it took Sabathia nearly four innings Tuesday to finally muster the nerve to throw anything convincing in towards the batter.  That batter happened to be Jacoby Ellsbury, who flinched as a fastball streaked by his hip flexor.  The next pitch was a fastball on the outside corner he hacked meekly at for strike three.  Well whadaya know.

If C.C. and the Sox dance in October, the Yankee ace will
have to get bold and start throwing more pitches inside and
to contact if he wants his team to repeat the success the
enjoyed in 2009.

Ironically, C.C. is usually a guy who isn't afraid to pitch in tight, at least relative to the average modern pitcher.  Against the Sox though, Sabathia rarely makes batters even slightly uncomfortable, and last night was no exception.  This to me signals that a part of him still has mental issues with Boston, and until he mans up and starts challenging these hitters on the inner half, he'll only be making harder for himself.

3) Don't walk the couple of guys in the order that can't hit.  It's one thing when you try and nibble against Ortiz, Pedroia, and Ellsbury, but when you load the bases because you're trying to throw perfect pitches to the likes of Darnell McDonald, we've got issues.  This one speaks most loudly to the larger confidence issue C.C. is having.  Why are you messing around with sliders in the dirt and fastball six inches off the edge of the plate when you've got a .192 hitter at the dish?  It simply does not compute.  Rear back and let it fly.  Trust your stuff.  Failing to do so is only going to more trouble when the dudes who can really swing the stick come up again.

With all of that said, let me reiterate that C.C. Sabathia pitched one hell of a courageous game Tuesday night.  But there were too many moments in which that timid pitcher emerged. I still saw an ace who was scared of pitching to contact, scared of coming inside with emphasis, and scared of utilizing a pitch he was so dominant with earlier in the year.

Was every bead of sweat was worth it?  Without question.  Do I have concerns that future beads of sweat expended against the Sox won't be?  You bet your overly-baggy baseball pants I do.