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Tag: Luis Ayala

Blogs • Monday Mentions • Yankees

Sep 28, 2015

Monday Mentions: Bad Pitching, Hitting, Managing and Contracts

The good news is that the Yankees are going to the playoffs for the first time in three years. The bad news is they’re going to be in the one-game playoff.

Joe Girardi

The Yankees are going to be hosting the one-game playoff next Tuesday thanks to what happened last week in Toronto. The good news is that they’re going to the playoffs for the first time in three years. The bad news is they’re in the one-game playoff. The worse news is if they win the one-game playoff, they’re likely going to have to go to Toronto and not Kansas City for the first two games of the ALDS.

Here is another installment of “Monday Mentions” focused on questions and comments from Twitter about what happened over the last week to the Yankees.

I’m a Chasen Shreve fan, so it’s hard for me to talk badly about him, considering he was good for and only recently fell apart. I’m not sure if it’s fatigue or that the league has adjusted to him or a combination of the two, but something is certainly off with him. Look at these two pitching lines from him:

First 50 appearances: 53.1 IP, 33 H, 12 R, 11 ER, 27 BB, 60 K, 6 HR, 1.86 ERA, 1.125 WHIP.

Last seven appearances: 4.1 IP, 11 H, 6 R, 6 ER, 5 BB, 4 K, 3 HR, 12.46 ERA, 3.695 WHIP.

The guy was lights out for nearly the entire season and helped save the bullpen and essentially the summer when Andrew Miller was on the disabled list. Outside of Shreve and Dellin Betances, and I guess Justin Wilson, there was no one and I mean no one else who could get an out in the bullpen. That’s when Esmil Rogers and David Carpenter were still being asked to pitch regularly. Here’s to hoping Shreve bounces back quickly and these last seven appearances goes down as nothing more than a bad stretch at a bad time.

https://twitter.com/Thereal_ktex/status/646513736316923905

After playing in the one-game playoff, the next scariest part of the postseason is that Joe Girardi will sit down and try to decide which pitchers not named Masahiro Tanaka, Luis Severino, Michael Pineda, CC Sabathia, Andrew Miller, Dellin Betances and Justin Wilson he is going to carry in the playoffs. After those seven, there really isn’t anyone worthy of a spot, but five or six more pitchers are going to make it.

If the Yankees win the one-game playoff and reach the ALDS and trail in any of those games are in any of the games in the postseason at all, Girardi needs to realize the game is not lost. You would think this would be obvious, but in the 2011 ALDS, he brought in Luis Ayala twice before bringing in David Robertson once, in games the Yankees started to mount comebacks in. In the 2009 World Series, he brought in Brian Bruney and Phil Coke into the ninth inning of Game 1 and they gave up two runs to increase their deficit from 4-0 to 6-0. In the bottom of the ninth, the Yankees had two on with no outs to start the inning. They only scored one run, but they were one swing away from being back in the game. Don’t bring B and C and D relievers into a playoff game. The division was already lost partly because of this.

https://twitter.com/MattyinMaine/status/646467891886452736

I never wanted Jacoby Ellsbury. I wrote about it the second Robinson Cano signed with the Mariners and the Yankees turned around and threw their Cano money at Ellsbury. It was the exact type of signing the Yankees preached about avoiding in the future because they were going through the effects from the contracts given to Alex Rodriguez, Mark Teixeira and CC Sabathia and what they had previously endured with Jason Giambi. But that doesn’t mean I want to call Jacoby Ellsbury “The Thief”. I would much rather call him something that resembles him earning his $130,511.46 per game.

Outside of one great season in Boston, Ellsbury has been Brett Gardner. You could even say Gardner has been better than him. So why did the team give Gardner $13 million a season and give Ellsbury $21.1 million per season? They essentially bid against themselves since the Red Sox supposedly didn’t even make an offer to Ellsbury and none of the other big spenders were about to give that kind of money to a player whose entire game is based on speed and who is on the other side of 30.

It’s not out of the question that Ellsbury was given the worst contract in Yankees history. Everyone will always point to Carl Pavano, but he made his entire deal in less than two years of Ellsbury’s, and Ellsbury’s is a seven-year deal. If he’s this bad and this unproductive and this injury prone as a 32-year-old center fielder, what exactly is he going to be when he’s 36 and 37?

Hey, if me calling Ellsbury “The Thief” and Chase Headley “The Bum” could in any way turn around their seasons with a week to go and the one-game playoff waiting next Tuesday, I will gladly create a negative name for every player on the team. Though it will be hard to think of one for Dellin Betances and Andrew Miller.

I gave Chase Headley the nickname “The Bum” recently because he perfectly fits the description of a “bum.” Well, so does Jacoby Ellsbury, but he’s already “The Thief,” so I have to spread the names around.

I remember the rumors that Headley’s agent started that he had an offer for five years and $65 million on the table. I know this was a rumor and never actually a real offer because his agent wouldn’t have had time to leak this number to the media because Headley would have been signing it as fast as humanly possible. Headley received four years and $52 million from the Yankees because they were desperate for a third baseman and there was nowhere else to turn on the free-agent market. If the team willing to spend the most money needed to fill a position and they gave you one year and $13 million less than you reportedly were offered, well, it never happened.

Headley has been horrible. He hasn’t hit for average, he hasn’t fit for power, he has played some of the worst defense in the league, he has no speed and his throws are wild. Is there an opposite of a five-tool player because that’s what Headley is.

https://twitter.com/Shane_Corey/status/646854052203102208

Joe Girardi definitely had a hand in the Yankees losing the division over the last week-plus when he turned to Triple-A relievers and made questionable decisions in the biggest games of the season. But for as bad as Girardi has been recently and for as much as I have crushed him, there are two real reasons why the Yankees lost the division:

Chris Capuano
The Yankees gave Capuano $5 million to return this season after he pitched to a 4.25 ERA in 65 2/3 innings last year for them (after he was released by the last-place Red Sox on July 1). You know who else got a one-year, $5 million deal? Stephen Drew. (We’ll get to him.) I guess a one-year, $5 million deal is the going rate for pitchers and players that aren’t good and that no one else wants. I’m pretty sure neither of those players was going to get that much money from any other team in baseball.

But it’s not about the money with Capuano. It’s about the fact that he was given three starts in May and lost all of them. And then he was brought into an extra-inning game against the Nationals on June 10 and lost that. And then in his next and what was his last start (to this point), he gave up five earned runs and got only two outs in the first inning in Texas, but luckily, the offense backed him with a 21-run game.

Second Base
All season we had to watch Stephen Drew and Brendan Ryan struggle to get base hits and at times struggle to field despite supposedly playing because of their defense. Everyone in the world had a theory as to why the two were being given unlimited chances to succeed while Rob Refsnyder kept on playing in Triple-A. Eventually, I gave up and just figured there was no chance Refsnyder would be given another chance, even after September call-ups, and had to settle for the idea he would have to win the job in spring training next year (though he should have won the job in spring training this year). Then, with a postseason berth on the line, Refsnyder started a game, and another one and another one and kept on starting. Between Refsnyder against left-handed pitchers (and sometimes against right-handed pitchers) and Dustin Ackley against right-handed pitchers, the Yankees suddenly had an unacceptable Major League platoon and weren’t giving up an out every time that spot came up in the order.

Now Ackley hadn’t been on the team all season and once he was traded to the Yankees at the deadline he instantly went on the disabled list after about 15 minutes. But Refsnyder has been with the organization and wasn’t allowed to play nearly the whole season until the stretch run with the team trying to clinch a playoff spot? How does that make any sense? If the Yankees really wanted him to wait until next season, they would be giving him at-bats here and there over these final weeks to continue to get his feet wet in the majors. But to make him the starting second baseman as part of a platoon with Ackley, while Drew and Ryan continue to sit goes against everything we have been led to believe by the Yankees this season.

Now that #GiveRobTheJob has worked and Capuano no longer hurts the team as a member of the rotation and barely a member of the bullpen, the Yankees are a better team. But they could have been this team all season and because they weren’t, they have to play in the one-game playoff.

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Blogs • Yankees

Aug 14, 2014

The Joe Girardi Show: Season 5, Episode 4

David Roberston went unused once again as Joe Girardi called upon Shawn Kelley to hand the Yankees’ their fourth straight loss in the middle of a playoff race.

Jacoby Ellsbury, Derek Jeter

Each off day for the Yankees feels like an eternity, but after the rain created an off day on Tuesday, I thought it would work in the team’s favor after a two-run lead became a blowout loss. Here we are again with another off day for the Yankees and the lingering feeling from Wednesday night isn’t going away and I’m not sure it’s going to.

Last Friday, I said:

I haven’t been this excited about the Yankees since the moment right before Nick Swisher misplayed a ball that became a Delmon Young doubled, which led to Derek Jeter breaking his ankle on the next play, just five pitches later.

As of now, I haven’t been this down on the Yankees since, well, what I said next last Friday:

But Swisher misplayed that ball, Jeter broke his ankle, I nearly broke down in tears in Section 230 at the Stadium and aimlessly wandered home.

After winning three of four against the Tigers, and playing well enough to have swept the series if Joe Girardi only knew Matt Daley wasn’t going to be a good idea, and then beating up on the Indians last Friday night, in my delusional Yankees mind, I thought that I prematurely wrote the column “Sign Me Up for the Second Wild Card” and thought they could make a real run at the Orioles and their then-five-game lead. But here I am, six days after beating the Indians and the Yankees haven’t won a game since. Back-to-back losses to the Indians at home followed by back-to-back blown-lead losses to the Orioles on the road and the Yankees have played themselves out of contention for the division and each night their chances at winning the second wild card fade a little more.

So yes, the last time I felt this bad about the Yankees was when Jeter got carried off the field and now the realization that Game 1 of the 2012 ALCS might have been the last time Jeter ever plays in the postseason and that the last Sunday in September in Boston might be the last time he ever plays baseball is a real possibility. The only way that Game 162 isn’t Jeter’s last game if the Yankees win at least 25 of their remaining 43 games, and even then that might not be enough.

On Wednesday night, Hal Steinbrenner tried to be his dad by saying his team “has to step it up and they know it,” in what was the emptiest of all empty gestures since everyone will be back and paid next season and everyone will keep their job even if the Yankees miss out on the postseason for the second consecutive year in a world where 33 percent of the league gets into the postseason. While Hal was busy meeting about who the next commissioner of baseball should be (and it should be anyone other than Tom Werner), his team was busy giving away another game to the first-place Orioles thanks to some more questionable decision making from Joe Girardi.

So once again, it was necessary to fill in for Michael Kay on my version of The Joe Girardi Show.

Why the sudden urgency to use Dellin Betances?
Someone must have told Girardi that last night was Game 119 of the season and there are now only 43 games left because I can’t think of another reason to explain his sudden urgency. The urgency that I have begged for and waited for all season came in the sixth inning when Girardi turned to Dellin Betances to get nine outs, something that he hasn’t done as a reliever and something that I’m happy he asked him to do. But why all of a sudden, Joe? Where was this urgency when you didn’t care about giving away games or playing with the mindset of losing battles to win the war even if you might not end up winning the war anyway? I’m ecstatic to know that you know not only what “urgency” means, but that you are now also aware of the date and how many games remain on the schedule.

Betances got the first seven of nine outs before giving up a solo home run to Jonathan Schoop. Schoop is hitting .217/.255/.349 with 11 home runs and 32 RBIs this season in 97 games. But against the Yankees, Schoop is hitting .379/.400/.862 with four home runs and 11 RBIs in just 29 at-bats. So of course the newest Yankee killer, and Orioles’ No. 8 hitter, was the one who blew Betances’ impressive outing to that point with a game-tying home run.

Maybe Girardi didn’t expect Betances to get all nine outs, but I have a hard time believing that he was going to ask Betances to get eight outs and then with Betances cruising with two outs and no one on in the eighth, that he would then call on David Robertson. So if Betances retires Schoop, he faces Nick Hundley. But Betances gives up the home run and Joe Girardi calls on Shawn Kelley to get the final two outs of the eighth inning instead of Robertson. So it’s Kelley in a now tied game, a game the Yankees had to win to have any hope of fighting for the division and to keep them from losing further ground in the second wild-card race.

Why did Shawn Kelley relieve Dellin Betances?
Before Joe Girardi calls on Shawn Kelley to relieve Dellin Betances, here is what we know about the situation: Shawn Kelley isn’t good at pitching. And really that’s all you need to know about the reliever you’re bringing in instead of the best reliever in your bullpen.

Kelley got Hundley to ground out before giving up a single to Markakis and walking Chris Davis. (Now would be a good time to bring in your best reliever, right? Wrong.) First-pitch slider to Adam Jones … ballgame over.

Kelley followed his horrendous outing by talking to the media and saying, “I think we’re looking more at the second wild-card spot. That’s a little bit better number, it’s a little more achievable at this point.”

There’s nothing quite like single-handedly destroying a game and then saying that the team is no longer playing for the division after losing to the team in the division you’re trying to catch because of your own performance.

Is David Robertson ever going to pitch again?
Today is Aug. 14. David Robertson last threw a pitch on Aug. 7 against the Tigers. He has pitched in four games in August and has thrown 57 pitches in 14 days, or 4.07 pitches per day for August. The Yankees have pitched 109 innings in August and Robertson has pitched four of those, or 3.7 percent of the Yankees’ pitched innings. Adam Warren, Chase Whitley, Shawn Kelley, David Huff and Esmil Rogers have all thrown as many or more innings than Robertson in August. But why would you want to use your best reliever more than once a week while fighting for your playoff life?

I guess Joe Girardi’s plan is to save Robertson’s arm for 2015 when he could be on a different team since he is a free agent at the end of the year, the way he saved Mariano Rivera’s arm so he could play catch with his kids for the rest of his life, or the way he is saving Derek Jeter, so he has enough energy to play on the beach and make love to Hannah Davis for the rest of his life. So while Shawn Kelley was busy destroying the Yankees’ chances at splitting two games in Baltimore, David Robertson was sitting in the bullpen, unused for the fifth game in a row.

This shouldn’t really be a surprise though when you look at the history of Girardi and the rest he has given Robertson. In 2011, David Robertson pitched 13 1/3 innings in September, appearing in only 13 of the Yankees’ 28 games. He threw 11 pitches in Game 161 on Sept. 27 to get some work and also be completely rested for the playoffs. But once the playoffs started, he continued to go unused, pitching just two innings in the five-game series loss to the Tigers. His first appearance in the series didn’t come until Game 3 on Oct. 3 (so he had five full days off). But guess who pitched in Games 1 and 2? Luis Ayala! And even Cory Wade got to pitch in Game 2 before Robertson. So Joe Girardi used Luis Ayala and Cory Wade before his rested, dominant, All-Star setup man in the playoffs. Why? Because playoff innings don’t matter the same way games in August apparently don’t matter. And with this bullpen management, games in September won’t matter either.

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