Links: Injured Players, Defense, Posada, Logan, and “Pitchers They’ve Never Seen”

There are a bunch of of stories and blogposts that I wanted to highlight today, so let’s do a link-around:

1) Larry Rothschild watched Phil Hughes throw a bullpen session yesterday, and sounded encouraged by the results:

“There was a clear difference with the way the ball was getting to the plate,” Rothschild said. “Now it’s just a matter of going through kind of a spring training type thing to get ready. We’re not going to rush it but when he’s ready he’s ready.”

Bartolo Colon also threw some pitches over the weekend:

“I heard he threw all of his pitches, he threw well. He’s going to throw somewhat of a simulated game on Monday and then we’ll see how he’s feeling after that,” manager Joe Girardi said on Friday. “Hopefully that goes well and we can continue to move forward with him too.”

It sounds like Colon and Hughes are both getting close to returning, which could serve the Yankees like a midseason trade might. The rotation has been adequate to this point, and would look significantly stronger with Colon and Hughes in the middle of it. The Yankees will likely throw both into the rotation once ready, and then use the next few weeks to determine whether they ned to enter the trade market to acquire a starter.

2) Mark Simon at ESPN took a great look at one area of weakness for the Yankees thus far: defense on the right side of the infield, particularly in the hole between Mark Teixera and Robinson Cano:

In the past two seasons, Cano was adept at getting to the ball hit between him and Teixeira. He turned six more plays on balls hit to that hole than the average second baseman would have turned on the same batted balls.

This season, Cano rates below-average, and it’s a significant drop-off. If he maintains it, it’s about a 10-play difference from last year to this year. He currently rates four plays below an average second baseman.

Teixeira is also not getting outs those same batted balls. His plus-minus on balls hit to that hole has also dropped. He went from three plays above average to three plays below.

Cano’s defense has looked worse to the naked eye, so these results are not much of a surprise. Still, it is interesting to be able to identify exactly what is going wrong and the sorts of plays that are hurting the club, and I would recommend clicking through and reading the entire piece.

3) Boone Logan is turning things around against lefties:

Logan had a rough start to the season. Through his first 14 appearances, he gave up 9 hits to lefties in 29 plate appearances, including two doubles and one home run. However, he’s turned things around as of late, yielding just 4 hits to left-handed batters in his last 26 faced. Location seems to be a big part of his turnaround.

Click through for some pretty stark heatmaps. Being a LOOGY, Logan is not going to get very many innings to prove his worth to the club. He needs to begin performing, and fast, if he wants to retain his role on this team, and he has begun to show signs of improvement. Having a serviceable lefty in the bullpen can allow Joe Girardi to compensate for the loss of some of his top relievers by playing matchups and putting his lesser arms in the best possible position to succeed.

4) Jorge Posada is not dead yet, as Joe Pawlikowski :

Jorge doesn’t even have very far to go before he reaches league average DH status. The AL average DH hits .263/.343/.412. If he somehow goes 0 for 0 with 5 walks in his next game, he’ll be right there. Even with a more normal batting line, one that includes some outs, he should be about a week away from reaching the AL average DH level. That’s quite remarkable given the way his season started, and how for a few months it didn’t seem to get any better.

Click through to read the rest of the post. Joe makes the same Posada-David Ortiz comparison I made earlier in the season to try and find some hope that Posada was not done. While I do not expect Jorge to perform like Ortiz is right now, I do think it is fair to say that he is not quite done yet.

5) Jay Jaffe at BP took a look at the idea that the Yankees struggle against pitchers they have never seen before and found it to be accurate:

Despite winning 95 games and leading the majors in scoring, the 2010 Yankees found themselves easy prey when matched up against starters that they had never faced before, going 5-9 against a set of fresh faces that included not only pedigreed hard throwers like Clayton Kershaw and Max Scherzer but also less heralded soft-tossers such as Hisanori Takahashi, Kyle Kendrick, Sean O’Sullivan, Josh Tomlin, and Bryan Bullington. Those 14 first-timers posted a collective 3.29 ERA and yielded just under a baserunner per inning while baffling the Bomber bats, and getting a ridiculous amount of help from their defense. The Yankees did rough up the occasional first-timer, even good ones such as Hiroki Kuroda and Trevor Cahill, but compared to the way they devoured such Johnny Come Latelys in 2009, the difference was striking.

Though the likes of Philip Humber and Carlos Carrasco have baffled this year’s Yankees in recent weeks, the 2011 squad has been marginally less forgiving of these newcomers, although they’ve still struggled relative to the rest of the slate, considering that they’re pumping out 5.25 runs per game.

Click the link for the exact numbers, and then read our own William J’s take on the same issue. William finds that the effect is not quite as real as it seems. Also, Jay does a nice job recapping Old Timer’s Day, so you’ll want to read to the end of his post for that.