A closer look at the Yankees getting owned by pitchers making their Major League debuts

After spending a lot of time discussing ‘s annihilation of the Yankees last night while continuing to bemoan the team’s performance against pitchers making their Major League debuts, I was encouraged to take a look back at previous instances to see whether the stigma that the Yankees always get owned by rookies in their first career starts held true.

I used Baseball-Reference’s Play Index tool and came up with eight such instances during the past 10 seasons in which the Yankees have faced a starter making his Major League debut. Admittedly I’m not quite an expert with the PI, and so it’s possible I’m leaving someone out here, but hopefully this is close to a complete list (the highlighted starters are pitchers who got the win):

The Yankees are 2-6 in games started by pitchers making their Major League debuts since 2001. While that’s obviously a small sample, it still lends credence to the idea that the Yankees have an inordinate amount of difficulty beating rookie pitchers. In fact, they haven’t beaten a rookie making their MLB debut since 2004, when they pounded . Since then they’re on a six-game losing streak, and have been held to eight runs by the opposing starter over those six games.

Here are some random factoids from these eight games:

- The May 1, 2004 game was won by .

- The June 22, 2002 1-0 Yankee victory over rookie was an absolute gem by , who tossed a complete game, three-hit shutout with 11 strikeouts!

- ‘s opponent in the September 20, 2004 game was .

- ‘s manager in the June 25, 2006 game? Joe Girardi, natch.

- of all people started the June 21, 2008 loss to the Reds.

And if we go by WPA, ‘s superb performance last night was the most dominating start by a pitcher making his Major League debut against the Yankees of the last 10 years. Wow.

Photo courtesy of the AP