Paul O'Neill, talking to Michael Kay about going back in time and building Saefco Field. Or something like that. Whatever.

It’s hard to be upset when your team scores 8 runs. It generally means the team really came through. And that’s not necessarily untrue in this game, but it does present some still-lingering concerns. Just a few quick notes from tonight’s game.

*Hughes again looked very good overall, which is nice to see after his previous outing. His pitches were razor sharp in the opening frames and he never really got into serious trouble, though he sputtered a bit. He now has a 2.70 ERA and six wins to one loss and with eight strikeouts, he now has a K/9 over nine.

One thing, though: while he may be a guy with great strikeout stuff, it seemed like he was trying to strike out every single batter. It was working really well for a point in time – he struck out the first five batters – but maybe it would be better to elicit some contact here and there. His pitches weren’t as good in the middle parts of the game and his pitch selection became fastball-cutter, fastball-cutter. That’s not necessarily a recipe for success, and it also leaves him susceptible to left-handers (hello, Russell!). The game was very encouraging and he ended well, but he was facing a shitty lineup and he got away from what makes him most effective as a pitcher – mixing his excellent curve ball with his plus fastball and plus cutter. I don’t want to sound like a negative Nancy, but it wasn’t perfect. He’s a young starter with a world of potential, so maybe it’s not a bad thing that he has some things to work on.

Maybe one day he’ll start throwing changeups, too? (The team lied to us. Phil’s changeup is absolutely not the reason he won the 5th starter’s role.) [...]

For those who saw the game today, few things went right.  The hitters were stymied by Joel Piniero, who had great movement on his pitches and rarely had the ball above the belt. He was effective; sometimes you just have to tip your cap and play another game.

On the pitching side, Javy didn’t exactly get lit up but his stuff was unimpressive and he ended up catching a loss after throwing only 5.1 innings and giving up 4 runs. Unfortunately, — and not surprisingly — boos could be heard from all corners of the stadium and certainly from living rooms and onto the screens of forums, too. This prompted quite a few at RAB to wonder when booing appropriate and to whom?

First, history clearly plays a role here. Had Javy not been such an infamous figure for his struggles in the 2nd half of the season and playoff meltdown, I don’t think he’d be facing such vitriol. Nevermind that he pitched very, very well in the first half of 2004 and had sustained an injury that he pitched through (which likely caused the ineffectiveness), things like that just aren’t forgiven for some. Such are the perils of playing in impatient New York. The passage of time is irrelevant; it may as well have happened last year.

But do fans have the right to boo? Of course, this is subjective and I don’t believe there’s a definitive answer, but that doesn’t mean we can’t evaluate when, if ever, it’s appropriate. You purchased a ticket and believe you’re well within your right to show the powers that be your wallet is upset at what it’s witnessed. I get that. But there’s a courtesy aspect to this. It reminds me of driving. Whilst in your car, you feel more protected and behave in ways you ordinarily wouldn’t if not for your steel bubble of protection. You’re stuck in non-moving gridlocked traffic. Literally nothing is moving. Yet you honk and yell at the cars in front of you. You: 1, Reality: 0.

Similarly, when the masses assemble and they all have the same rooting interests, common courtesies often dissolve. It’s suddenly fashionable to disregard perspective and become reactionary. I have a right to yell at some old lady taking too long to pay for the groceries. But that doesn’t resolve things, and rarely bears fruit for me. So what’s the point? Because I can do it, I should do it? Is that a mantra we should live by?

My personal outlook is that booing is rarely appropriate and if one were to employ such measure to express displeasure, it should be reserved for those that really deserve ire. All-Stars or players that have long, solid track records should be beyond the pale, right? The only examples I can think of are Pavano, and certainly you can argue Kevin Brown, Randy Johnson, Igawa and last year’s incarnation of Chien-Ming Wang —these players one can argue are somewhat deserving. Maybe even guys like Cody Ransom and Angel Berroa are worthy of indiscretion. Again, I wouldn’t do it, even to Pavano, but I can also understand that if you’re not meeting expectations — even meager ones — you should be open to criticism, even if booing (to me) shows crass, classless behavior.

Guys that come in and have high expectations and talent but, over the course of the season (I’ll get into that more in a bit) greatly underachieve are then fair play. Check. Got it. Guys that have never been good are also fair game. Again, got it.

What about guys like A-Rod, Jeter, Mariano, Pettitte, Teixiera, Sabathia, etc.? Have they earned the right to not face boos, as their large samples of success all but ensure they will continue to be effective players, even if they briefly struggle? And by what measure do we use to evaluate who is untouchable? I can understand (but not condone) why people dislike Rodriguez and pepper him with insults and “tough love”. He’s a polarizing figure.

But Yankee fans have actually booed Mariano Rivera (!), as hard to believe as that is. Let’s also take a look at Teix’s case: we know he’s a slow starter. It’s written in the numbers. I’m assuming virtually all Yankee fans are aware of this. Yet they still boo? He was among the top players in the league last year, even after having a very poor April. Even if you’re upset at his April performance, wouldn’t keeping quiet when he records an out or cheering him when he comes up to bat make more sense, if you in fact believe your showing of displeasure affects the player’s performance? Booing can only weigh on their psyche, right? Maybe cheering would bring better results, since you’d likely be happier if the team wins, yes? Yes?

Let’s also move to the point — and it’s an important one — that we’re still in April. There simply aren’t enough games to indicate a representative sample of how the player will do. All hitters and pitchers go through slumps. It’s the nature of playing 162 games. Is Javy Vazquez going to pitch with an ERA of 9.82 through October? Sure, it’s possible. But it’s extremely unlikely. It’s far more likely that he’ll settle in, regain his velocity (pitchers almost always regain some heat as the weather warms) and be the 200 IP, 200 K, 4 ERA pitcher he’s shown he is for virtually his entire career. Two starts of poorly-pitched ball do not mean he’s a bad pitcher. They also don’t mean he should face boos. There shouldn’t be a carry-over effect because fans are frustrated from what he did six years ago. If they’re going to do it, fans shouldn’t be booing until at least mid-to-late May, when there’s at least some sample that’s worth being analyzed.

There’s a reason Yankee fans have a poor reputation, even though there are many well-infomed, even-keeled folks that recognize the benefits of seeing the forest from the trees. You can boo Javy, A-Rod, Teix all you want, guys. But don’t expect that it benefits anyone, yourself included. You merely look like a fool that lacks higher-level reasoning skills and worst of all, class. LET’S FUCKING GO, GRANDMA!

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.”