Robertson, in happier times.

So far this year Girardi has been hammered for his Larussa-esque bullpen matchup baseball. Detractors say he over-manages and  isn’t “feeling” the situation or the pitcher, and that he mindlessly looks at a bunch of statistics, chooses an algorithm he thinks works in the Yankeee favor. Sure, Joe’s somewhat exhausting bullpen style can be grating, but having looked at the last two years, I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt most of the time considering how effective the ‘pen has been and that Girardi has been the anti-Torre (he’s awake!). Let’s take a look at last night.

Phil Hughes surprisingly gets the call to work the 6th inning with a pitch count above 100 and general command struggles. He manages to retire the first two hitters without much difficulty. Luke Scott, the lefty, now steps to the plate. Phil leaves and in steps Boone Logan, or just one more reason everyone hates Javy. Ben Kabak at RAB does a good job explaining the ins and outs of the Logan-to-Scott decision at result. Personally, I don’t mind that Logan came in. I was thrilled Hughes was able to make it that far without serious damage, Scott isn’t a great hitter against lefties and Logan is a true LOOGY. Sometimes you get burned making the right decisions.

With a guy on 1st after Logan’s walk, the lightly-used David Robertson stood upon Bradenia. Here’s where we confound the crux of the issue: when does the long-term planning trump the situational judgment of the game? Robertson started off with two strikes to the first hitter he faced, Ty Wiggington. On the third pitch he drills him. Awful at-bat. There’s no way to sugarcoat it. Many a Yankee fan immediately said to pull Robertson after that pitch (which put the Orioles in scoring positions, down 2-1). “He doesn’t have command, this is going to end badly,” they said. Well, they were right in a sense. Three runs came in to score.

But they were also wrong. D-Rob should have pitched there and he should have continued, even with his struggles. You need to hedge the long-term needs of the team with the balance of the short-term. Robertson has thrown 6 or less pitches in almost half of his 7 appearances. Perhaps one of the reasons he’s struggled is how he’s been used, or, rather, not used. Pitchers need to pitch to stay sharp. Throwing to one batter and hitting the hay doesn’t do much. We can’t have it both ways to complain that Girardi underused  Robertson and then later complain that he overused him by letting him see more than one batter. Our bullpen will soon round into shape, despite the ugly present ERA of 5.26 (non-Mo division). It’s one of the problems that comes when your starting pitchers generally work deep into games and you have to use a lot of different guy in different spots. I never want to see the team “give up” a game — but if I may be frank, the bullpen was just one part of what went wrong. The baserunning was awful, the defense was abhorrent and the offense missed opportunities. It wasn’t all the bullpen’s fault. You hate to lose, but getting a player some reps trumps the value of winning one game, particularly if that helps him round into shape to win multiple games. It’s a necessary evil.

We’d also be wise to remember that last year’s April bullpen featured such luminaries as Jose Veras, Edwar Ramirez, Brett Tomko, Jonathon Albala–Albala-not-gonna-work-here-any-longer and Brian Bruney. Bullpens are fluid units. If the bullpen continues to struggle at this time next month, there’s cause for concern. Robertson still has options, Park wouldn’t be hard to get rid of if he can’t chop it (UCWIDT), Marte has competition with Logan in AAA. Beyond that, there are some live arms like Romulo Sanchez and Mark Melancon and you could even see SWB starters Zach McAllister, Jeremy Bleich and Ivan Nova depending on how things shake out. Every year our bullpen looks different in April. I, for one, think Robertson will form into shape with more innings regularlity and soon we’ll be joking about this, attributing these early season woes to nothing of consequence.

We need to remember that it’s a marathon, not a sprint. It may suck to watch guys get lit up early in the season, but we may ultimately be better for it.

Who is the future closer of the Yankees? While many think it will be Joba, and there will be support for Dave Robertson, I still believe Mark Melancon is the heir to Mo.

Let’s start by getting one thing out of the way. Nobody is, nor is capable, or “replacing” Mariano Rivera. He simply is unmatched in baseball history at his position. When someone asks who the greatest centerfielder in baseball history is, you’ll hear Mays, Mantle, and DiMaggio. When they ask who the greatest catcher in history is, you’ll hear Berra, Bench, maybe a Piazza. When they ask who the greatest left fielder in history is, you’ll hear Ted Williams, Barry Bonds and the feared one, Jim Rice (wait, what’s that, Jim Rice shouldn’t even be in the Hall?). When anyone asks who the greatest closer in history is Mariano Rivera is the only legitimate answer. If you’re expecting the next Yankees closer to be the next Mo, you’re setting yourself up for failure.

Jim McIsaac/Getty Images

Without getting too much into it, I do not want Joba to be the next closer of the Yankees, with my reasoning stated, and echoed, many times. Plus, if Joba’s velocity stays in the 92-95 range, is his stuff much better than Robertson’s or Melancon’s anyway? With regards to Robertson, I love his stuff (13.0 K/9 in 2009), and certainly think he can be a closer at the major league level. He needs to cut back on his walks (4.5 BB/9 career), or else he’ll be a heart attack closer, no doubt. Even in the minors, Robertson walked too many batters, walking 3.6/9 overall, including 4.2/9 in AAA. I’m sure he could get the job done, but unless he cuts the walk rate, he cannot be an elite closer.

Melancon, drafted in the same draft as Robertson, and a few weeks older, fell behind Robertson due to injury. After pitching just 7.2 innings in Staten Island in 2006, Melancon missed all of 2007 after Tommy John surgery. He didn’t get the memo that pitchers usually struggle coming back from TJS, and was absolutely lights out in three levels in 2008. Not only that, but likely due to rounding into form after the TJS, Melancon’s WHIP, H/9, and HR/9 all decreased as he got promoted. His K/9 and K/BB got better at every level. While certainly small sample sizes, Melancon proved he had no problem getting outs at the upper levels. In 2009, Melancon got his first taste of the majors, and while he showed some promise, his pinpoint control deserted him, with 10 walks (and 4 HBP) in just 16.1 innings. He still managed a solid 3.86 ERA, but didn’t pitch well. As much as the results weren’t there, I was impressed by Melancon. He threw harder than I had expected and didn’t give up any HR’s. His fastball velocity averaged 93.0 MPH, and he threw his curveball 17.5% of the time, and his changeup 7.4% of the time. By comparison, AJ Burnett threw his 3rd pitch just 2.7% of the time last year (and was just a tick higher at 94.0 MPH on his fastball). While he may not throw 97 MPH (though he did top out around 95), he’s truly a three pitch closer, and certainly has the stuff to get the job done at the major league level. Unlike Robertson, Melancon does not have a history of walking too many guys at the minor league level, walking just 2.0/9 in his career, and just 1.8/9 at AAA. While he doesn’t strikeout as many guys as Robertson, he does have a solid 8.8 K/9 in the minors, including 9.5/9 in AAA.

I can certainly see Robertson and Melancon being the end of the Yankees bullpen when (if) Mo ever retires. As of now, I think Melancon will be the pick to close, as the Robertson’s walk rate is just too high. Also, in a very small SSS, Robertson has shown a propensity to get out of jams (sometimes self inflicted). For the most part, non-Mo closers come in with the bases empty expected to pitch one inning. If a guy is needed in the 7th or 8th with runners on, Robertson is likely better equipped for that role, and Melancon is better equipped for the 1 clean inning role.

At the end of the day, while the Yankees will never replace Mo, they certainly have guys capable of closing at the major league level. Along with Melancon and Robertson, (and I guess Joba), they have a ton of solid young starters that could be moved to the pen down the road, and potentially close.

K-Ruh-roh?

Another game, another Yankee win. However, it wasn’t without strife or concern. David Robertson pitched the 9th, but had some trouble. The first hitter, Howie Kendrick, hit a ball that just found a hole. Nothing to really worry about, that stuff happens all the time. Catcher Jeff Mathis lays down a picture-perfect bunt. Men on first and second, no outs. Still, it’s hard to say that Robertson made terrible pitches. Balls sometimes find seams; the Angels simply got two solid, well-placed hits. Brandon Wood makes an awkward swing at a ball dipping down and in. Incredibly, the ball jumps off the bat to right field, right over Randy Winn’s head. Winn didn’t get a good read on the ball, and from my vantage, should have gotten to it. While the box score would read three hits, and although technically true, it was more a combination of luck, poor defense and good hitting than it was a pitching meltdown.

K-Rob then strikes out Erick Aybar on a few very nice pitches, including a dip-set curveball for strike 3. Unfortunately, it all unraveled when he left a ball with little movement over the middle of the plate and Bobby Abreu just shot it well over the wall in right-center. It was hit so hard the camera had trouble finding it. Terrible pitch, excellent swing. Result is obvious. Grand slam.

Some day PitchFX will give us a better insight into the even more nuanced batted ball data, but for now we’ll rely on both visual evidence/inductive reasoning and the statistical quantification of such.  They’re not mutually exclusive, however.

Of course, reactionary fans immediately sprang up shouting of K-Rob’s outing, saying he’s lost any running in the 8th inning job, that he looked terrible and should be dropped to AAA in favor of Melancon, etc. — the typical overreactions one would expect.

As I wrote, while his performance was nothing to celebrate over, it simply solidifies the argument that a larger sample is mostly predictive of players’ true abilities; we can’t fall prey to the statistics of the short-term event, either. The statistics at this point don’t express how D-Rob really pitched but some snootily issue the same tired arguments like, “Oh, now you say there’s baseball beyond the numbers. I thought you statistically-minded ‘fans’ only saw the numbers and not the game.”

This is an inaccurate supposition on two fronts. Firstly, no one (that I’m aware of) says the numbers at this point can tell you everything about baseball or that there are aspects that still cannot be adequately quantified. That’s a lazy construct. The box score — or even more advanced sabermetric stats — cannot necessarily discern what was hard hit, what juust got through, a dribbler, how deep the fielders were playing, should a play have been labeled an error?, the speed of the ball off the bat, the wind’s impact, game shadows or all kinds of other variables. We know a lot more than we did 30 years ago, but we don’t know everything. And no one claims to.

Secondly, — and this is related to the first point — after a reasonable period of time we’ll realize that with enough innings and batters, Robertson (and any pitcher, for that matter) will  be able to give us a better sense of output than the hysterical cries after a bad outing.  So it is a sample size issue but it’s also the issue that for individual batters and pitchers we simply don’t have the formulas open to the public to show exactly why a result happened. We only have the result. But baseball is a game of accruation, something we’d be wise to remember when watching these games. There are enough games, and the statistics will show us when we should be hitting the panic button and when we should chalk it up to baseball being baseball. What we see depends mainly on what we look for, according to John Lubbock. But we’d also be wise to remember the Einstein quote on perspective: “Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.”